Series: The Great Poets

One of the highly praised Lakeland poets, alongside his friend William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a founder of the Romantic movement in England. His work—still popular today—includes such classics as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as the beautiful early poem Frost at Midnight: 'Or if the secret ministry of frost, Shall hang them...

From the highly controversial Leaves of Grass, with its overt sexual imagery and delight of sensual pleasures, to the iconic Captain, oh my captain immortalised in the film Dead Poets Society, this short collection is the ideal introduction to the poetry of Walt Whitman. One of the greats, he was celebrated both during his lifetime and ever since - he...

'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways' Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a poet of passion, wit and conscience. She was also a woman who wrote to speak the truth about everything she knew - and she knew just what it was like to be a thinking woman in a society that wanted women to be weak. The...

Another world must be unfurled, Another language known Best known – and beloved – for her highly popular novels including Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen was also an accomplished, and often witty, poet: I am going to have my dinner, after which I shan't be thinner This collection, which also includes poems by the poets...

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams is one of the most well-known and repeated lines of poetry ever written. Less haunting, but still so relevant: Life is a long preparation for something that never happens. W. B. Yeats was one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. Winner of a Nobel prize, he was also a political...

If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. From The Soldier to Anthem for Doomed Youth, Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen are two of the best-loved poets from the heroic lost generation of the First World War. Brooke's work was well-known before the war, with the...

The best-loved, bestselling poem ever published - a poem that embraces the theme 'seize the moment' 'One thing is certain, that Life flies; One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies' The epic, beautiful poem Rubaiyat is widely attributed to Omar Khayyam. As much a philosopher as a poet, he was a Persian astronomer, who praised the beauties of...

American poet Emily Dickinson is revered around the world and influenced many feminist artists and writers. Her work is some of the best known and most quoted or adapted: 'Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all' - Emily Dickinson Dickinson received a very good...

The Brontë sisters' lives and works have become modern-day cultural touchstones. Emily Brontë, best known for her novel Wuthering Heights, began writing poetry first and, before her untimely death, wrote some of the most touching and emotive poems which often reflected the landscape of her Yorkshire home. Charlotte Brontë, whose novel Jane Eyre has had numerous TV and film adaptations,...

Oh would some power the gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us! Robert Burns Robert Burns, poet and lyricist, also known as Rabbie Burns, is widely regarded as the National Poet of Scotland. Much of his work has become part of everyday modern language: The best laid schemes o' mice and men... To see her is to...

‘To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour’ - William Blake William Blake was a poet and artist. Born in Soho in the eighteenth century, the son of a shopkeeper, he is now acclaimed as a radical left-field...

Tennyson was one of the true great Victorian poets—much of his work is known throughout the world: 'Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die' 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all' His genius is expressed through the precision and delicacy of the language of his lyrical poems. Some of...