50 of the Greatest Poets

Poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Edgar Allan Poe
Criteria: It is with respect to the myriad forms and subject matter that exist in poetry that these poets were chosen. Their lasting impact, influence and originality, as well as initial and lasting popularity were considered.

Plus examples of their greatest poems.


List Begun: 2022-12-30
Greatest Poets
1. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 1772-1834
   • The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
   • Kubla Khan
   • Frost at Midnight

2. Edgar Allan Poe: 1809-1849
   • The Raven
   • Annabel Lee
   • A Dream Within a Dream

3. Robert Frost: 1874-1963
   • Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
   • The Road Not Taken
   • Nothing Gold Can Stay

4. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: 18078-1882
   • Wreck of the Hesperus
   • Paul Revere's Ride
   • The Song of Hiawatha

5. William Shakespeare: 1564- 1616
   • Sonnet 18
   • Sonnet 71
   • Sonnet 116

6. William Wordsworth: 1770-1850
   • I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
   • Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey
   • The World is Too Much With Us

7. Maya Angelou: 1928- 2014
   • Still I Rise
   • I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
   • Touched by an Angel

8. Rudyard Kipling: 1865- 1936
   • If
   • The Way Through the Woods

9. William Blake: 1757- 1827
   • The Tyger
   • Loves Secret

10 Emily Dickinson: 1830-1886
   • Because I Could Not Stop for Death
   • I'm Nobody! Who are You?
   • How Far is It to Heaven?

11. Geoffrey Chaucer: 1340's-1400
   • The Canterbury Tales
   • Troilus and Criseyde

12. John Donne: 1572-1631
   • Death Be Not Proud
   • For Whom the Bell Tolls
   • The Flea

13. Alfred Noyes: 1880- 1958
   • The Highwayman
   • The Moon is Up

14. Dylan Thomas: 1914-1953
   • Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
   • I See the Boys of Summer

15. Elizabeth Barrett Browning: 1806-1861
   • How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)
   • The Cry of the Children

16. Alfred Lord Tennyson: 1809- 1892
   • In Memoriam
   • The Lady of Shallot
   • The Charge of the Light Brigade
   • Idylls of the King

17. Lord Byron : 1788- 1824
   • She Walks in Beauty
   • The Dream

18. Christina Rossetti: 1830-1894
   • When I am Dead My Dearest
   • The Goblin Market
   • Remember

19. Robert Service: 1874- 1958
   • The Cremation of Sam McGee
   • It is Later Than You Think

20. Rumi : 1207-1273
   • Because I Cannot Sleep
   • The Guest House
   • All Through Eternity

21. Lauren Ferlinghetti: 1919-2021
   • Constantly Risking Absurdity
   • Bird with Two Right Wings

22. Mary Oliver: 1935-2019
   • The Swan
   • When Death Comes
   • The Journey

23. Walt Whitman: 1819- 1892
   • O Captian! My Captain!
   • Song of Myself
   • I Sing the Body Electric

24. Emma Lazarus: 1849- 1887
   • The New Colossus
   • A Masque of Venice

25. Homer: 8th Century BC
   • The Iliad
   • The Odyssey

26. Edmund Spencer: 1552-1599
   • The Faerie Queene
   • One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Strand

27. Lewis Carroll: 1832-1898
   • The Walrus and the Carpenter
   • The Hunting of the Snark
   • The Jabberwocky

28. Robert Browning: 1812-1889
   • My Last Duchess
   • Fra Lippo Lippi
   • Love Among the Ruins

29. John Keats: 1795-1821
   • Ode to a Nightingale
   • Ode on a Grecian Urn

30. Amanda Gorman: 1998-
   • The Hill We Climb
   • Earthrise
   • The Miracle of Morning

31. Shel Siverstein: 1930-1999
   • Where the Sidewalk Ends
   • A Boy Named Sue

32. Langston Hughes: 1901-1967
   • Dream Deferred
   • Mother to Son
   • I, Too

33. Carl Sandburg: 1878-1967
   • The Fog
   • Chicago

34. Sherman Alexie: 1966-
   • Grief Calls Us to the Things of this World
   • Good Hair
   • Terminal Nostalgia

35. Rod McKuen: 1933-2015
   • The Need
   • A Cat Named Sloopy

36. Anne Bradstreet: 1612-1672
   • To My Dear and Loving Husband
   • For Deliverance From a Fever

37. John Greenleaf Whittier: 1807- 1892
   • Barbara Fritchie
   • Ichabod

38. Percy Bysshe Shelley: 1792-1822
   • To a Skylark
   • Ozymandias

39. William Butler Yeats: 1865- 1939
   • When You Are Old
   • All Souls Night

40. Matsuo Basho: 1644-1694
   • A Caterpillar
   • The Old Pond
   • From Time to Time

41. Thomas Moore: 1779-1852
   • Drink to Her
   • Enigma

42. Robert Burns: 1759-1796
   • To A Mouse
   • A Red
   • Red Rose
   • Tam o'Shanter

43. Ralph Waldo Emerson: 1803- 1882
   • Give All to Love
   • Concord Hymn

44. Andrew Marvell: 1621-1678
   • To HIs Coy Mistress
   • A Dialogue Between the Soul and Body
   • The Death of Cromwell

45. Omar Khayyam: 1048- 1131
   • The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
   • Now the New Year

46. James Kavanaugh: 1928-2009
   • There are Men too Gentle to Live Among Wolves
   • Will You Be My Friend?

47. Theodore Roethke: 1908-1963
   • The Waking
   • The Bat
   • The Sloth

48. Wendell Berry: 1934-
   • The Peace of Wild Things
   • I Go Among Trees and Sit Still
   • How to Be a Poet

49. Pablo Neruda: 1904-1973
   • I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You
   • Always

50. Anne Sexton: 1928-1974
   • Her Kind
   • Mercy Street



poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge





poet Edgar Allen Poe
Edgar Allan Poe





author Robert Frost
Robert Frost





poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow





poet William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare





poet William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth





poet Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou





poet Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson