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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Poems about making art, and about poetry itself.

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

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

Poems about separation from others and the inner life it creates.

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

Kings, empires and pride, and their fall.

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

Delight and celebration, often found in simple things.