Where to Find Poems to Analyze

There is a substantial collection of excellent poetry you can peruse at www.poetryoutloud.org – as of 2020, they have added a “Collections” feature that helps you discover a poem by topic, and they’ve also added searching by keyword.

Poetry Magazine also has an extensive list of poems, and even more options for the collections. Go to www.poetryfoundation.org to check it out!

Many of these poems are pretty famous, we strongly discourage you from looking up some website’s interpretation of your poem. That’s plagiarism, as it consists of you writing someone else’s interpretation of what really matters in your poem. Remember, what matters is that you come up with your own interpretation of what the poem is all about. We’d rather read an analysis that misses some important points, or that gets it wrong occasionally, than one that comes from some online “expert” opinion, that may not even be all that good to begin with.

Finally, be cautious of blog poems that have not really been vetted by any panel of judges or editors. A lot of them… a LOT of them… are really not poems that stand up to close examination very well.

Need more help?

List Of Great Poetry
(according to your English teachers)

These are all fantastic poems, and nearly all of these can be found online by typing in the poem’s title and poet’s name.

Finally, a reminder: As many of these poems are pretty famous, we strongly discourage you from looking up some website’s interpretation of your poem. That’s plagiarism, as it consists of you writing someone else’s interpretation of what really matters in your poem. Come on. You are smarter than Shmoop.

POEM	POET	# of lines	It is “about”…
Anthem For Doomed Youth	Owen, Wilfred	14	War and Youth
Annabel Lee	Poe, Edgar Allan	41	Creepy love
Another Feeling	Stone, Ruth	18	Regret
Archaic Torso of Apollo	Rilke, Rainer Maria	14	What we know
Argument in a Restaurant	Rathburn, Chelsea	32	Trials of love
Bagpipe Music	Macneice, Louis	34	Really odd
Death, Be Not Proud	Donne, John	14	Mortality
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night	Thomas, Dylan	19	Father’s death
Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep	Frye, Mary	14	Death/Immortality
Domestic Violence	Boland, Eavan	48	Silence & Guilt
Dover Beach	Arnold, Matthew	37	Eternity
Dulce Et Decorum Est	Owen, Wilfred	28	War is Hell
Emperor of Ice-Cream, The	Stevens, Wallace	16	Weird
Equator	Stone, D.C.	14	Broken relationship
Funeral Blues	Auden, W. H.	16	Mourning / Loss
God’s Grandeur	Hopkins, Gerard Manley	14	Piety
Hand That Signed The Paper, The	Thomas, Dylan	16	Fate & Power
Ice	Mazur, Gail	24	Love and Youth
Invictus	Henley, W. E.	16	Self-pride
Irish Airman Forsees his Death, An	Yeats, W. B.	16	War / Mortality
Jabberwocky	Carroll, Lewis	28	Nonsense / Heroes
Jenny Kissed Me	Hunt, Leigh	8	Cute
Kubla Khan	Coleridge, Samuel T.	36	Trippy / Paradise
Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds	Shakespeare, William	14	Eternal love
London	Blake, William	16	Life is horrible
Man He Killed, The	Hardy, Thomas	20	War/Circumstance
Mid-Term Break	Heaney, Seamus	22	Youth & Death
Miniver Cheevy	Robinson, E. A.	32	Chivalry / Sadness
mother, the	Brooks, Gwendolyn	32	Motherhood /Loss
Musee Des Beaux Arts	Auden, W. H.	22	Suffering
My Last Duchess	Browning, Robert	56	Revenge & Hatred
My Mistress’s Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun	Shakespeare, William	14	Individual Love
Not Marble, Nor the Gilded Monuments	Shakespeare, William	14	Immortality
Not Waving But Drowning	Smith, Stevie	12	Misunderstanding
On the Eve of His Execution	Tichborne, Chidiock	18	Facing death
On My First Son	Jonson, Ben	16	Mourning & Loss
Orange, The	Cope, Wendy	12	Being in love
Oxen, The	Hardy, Thomas	16	Faith
Passionate Shepherd to his Love, The	Marlowe, Christopher	24	Love / Persuasion
Pied Beauty	Hopkins, Gerard	11	Religion
Poison Tree, A	Blake, William	16	Vengeance
Psalm of Life, A	Longfellow, H. W.	28	Inspirational
Red, Red Rose, A	Burns, Robert	16	Scottish
Road Not Taken, The	Frost, Robert	20	Choices
Second Coming, The	Yeats, WB	22	Things fall apart
She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways	Wordsworth, William	12	Death / love
She Walks in Beauty	Lord Byron	18	Love / Worship
Soldier, The	Brooke, Rupert	14	War / Patriotism
Sorrows of Werther	Thackeray, William	16	Dry Humor/Death
Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening	Frost, Robert	16	Nature / Death?
Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever, A	Keats, John	13	Beauty
To An Athlete Dying Young	Housman, A. E.	28	Fame and Death
To Celia	Jonson, Ben	16	Love
Unknown Citizen, The	Auden, W. H.	30	Bureaucracy
We Wear the Mask	Dunbar, Paul	15	Image & Honesty
What We Might Be, What We Are	Kennedy, X. J.	16	Foolish / Love
When I Was One-and-Twenty	Housman, A.E.	16	Love / Youth / Irony
When You Are Old	Yeats, W.B.	12	Beauty / age

BACK to Poetry Unit