Poems by Theme

Fields, woods, weather and wild creatures, and what poets find in them: comfort, awe, indifference or a mirror of the mind.

Desire, devotion, courtship and heartbreak, from Shakespeare's sonnets to Dickinson's wild nights.

Grief, dying and what comes after: elegies, farewells and poems that argue with death itself.

Belief, prayer and doubt, from the Metaphysical poets' arguments with God to Victorian crises of faith.

Poems that stare at the shortness of life and ask what, if anything, outlasts it.

Battle, sacrifice and the cost of conflict, from heroic charges to the trenches of 1914 to 1918.

Poems written out of loss, working through mourning toward acceptance or refusing it.

Clocks, seasons and the passing of years, and poets' attempts to stop or outlast them.

Classic poems about christmas, each in full with a summary and analysis.

The past recalled and reshaped, and the way remembering changes what it touches.

Wanting, longing and temptation, spoken, hidden or refused.

The energy, confidence and brevity of being young.

Endurance and quiet optimism: poems about holding on when things are hard.

Classic poems about immortality, each in full with a summary and analysis.

Innocence, play and the view from the start of life, often seen from far away.

Who we are and how we are seen: the self, its masks and its voice.

Poems about making art, and about poetry itself.

The mind's power to create and transform, a central belief of the Romantics.

Being alone, whether as loneliness or as the peace a poet goes looking for.

What beauty is, why it fades, and whether art can keep it alive.

Classic poems about aging, each in full with a summary and analysis.

Classic poems about american poetry, each in full with a summary and analysis.

What goes missing: people, youth, places and certainties, and how poems hold on to them.

Classic poems about shakespeare analysis, each in full with a summary and analysis.