100 Poems to Read Before University

As I’ve mentioned before, students considering an English Literature program at university should at least be familiar with Homer’s The Odyssey, several great Shakespeare plays, and The Bible. Of course, professors will assume a far greater familiarity with English literature so I recommend to my students that they at least read the following poems before departing high school. Some are childhood favourites, others are much more challenging. Nevertheless, it is from this list that my Grade 12 class selects a work for their upcoming poetry seminars.

I’m sure I’ve overlooked many. What would you cut? What would you add?

1. Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold
2. This is a Photograph of Me, Margaret Atwood
3. David, Earle Birney
4. The Chimney Sweep, William Blake
5. The Lamb, William Blake
6. The Shepherd, William Blake
7. The Tyger, William Blake
8. The Swing, George Bowering
9. Five Ways to Kill a Man, Edwin Brock
10. We Real Cool, Gwendolyn Brooks
11. How Do I Love Thee, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
12. My Last Duchess, Robert Browning
13. Pippa’s Song, Robert Browning
14. Porphyria’s Lover, Robert Browning
15. My Heart’s in the Highlands, Robert Burns
16. O My Luve’s Like a Red, Red Rose, Robert Burns
17. To a Mouse, Robert Burns
18. She Walks in Beauty, George Gordon, Lord Byron
19. So, we’ll go no more a roving, George Gordon, Lord Byron
20. Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll
21. The Walrus and the Carpenter, Lewis Carroll
22. A Kite is a Victim, Leonard Cohen
23. Kubla Khan, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
24. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
25. Lilacs, Michael Crummey
26. If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking, Emily Dickinson
27. No Man Is an Island, John Donne
28. maggie and milly and molly and may, e.e. cummings
29. next to of course god america i, e.e. cummings
30. The Hollow Men, T.S. Eliot
31. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot
32. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Edward Fitzgerald
33. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost
34. The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost
35. The Fairies, Rose Fyleman
36. Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Thomas Gray
37. The Darkling Thrush, Thomas Hardy
38. God’s Grandeur, Gerald Manley Hopkins
39. Summer Night, Langston Hughes
40. The Song My Paddle Sings, E. Pauline Johnson
41. La Belle Dame Sans Merci, John Keats
42. Ode on a Grecian Urn, John Keats
43. Ode to a Nightingale, John Keats
44. On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer, John Keats
45. If — , Rudyard Kipling
46. Temagami, Archibald Lampman
47. Piano, D.H. Lawrence
48. The Jumblies, Edward Lear
49. The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, Edward Lear
50. Shooting the Sun, Amy Lowell
51. A Day in June, James Russell Lowell
52. High Flight, John Gillespie Magee
53. To His Coy Mistress, Andrew Marvell
54. Sea-Fever, John Masefield
55. In Flanders Fields, John McCrae
56. When Dawn Comes to the City, Claude McKay
57. On His Blindness, John Milton
58. The Highwayman, Alfred Noyes
59. Anthem for Doomed Youth, Wilfred Owen
60. Dulce Et Decorum Est, Wilfred Owen
61. Crossing the Water, Sylvia Plath
62. Annabel Lee, Edgar Allan Poe
63. The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe
64. Ode on Solitude, Alexander Pope
65. Towards the Last Spike, E.J. Pratt
66. The Shark, E.J. Pratt
67. Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers, Adrienne Rich
68. The Clearing, Sir Charles G.D. Roberts
69. The Solitary Woodsman, Sir Charles G.D. Roberts
70. Song, Christina Rossetti
71. Who Has Seen the Wind?, Christina Rossetti
72. Fog, Carl Sandburg
73. Laurentian Shield, F.R. Scott
74. W.L.M.K., F.R. Scott
75. The Cremation of Sam McGee, Robert Service
76. The Shooting of Dan McGrew, Robert Service
77. Shall I Compare Thee (Sonnet 18), William Shakespeare
78. Ode to the West Wind, Percy Bysshe Shelley
79. Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley
80. Crossing the Bar, Alfred, Lord Tennyson
81. The Charge of the Light Brigade, Alfred, Lord Tennyson
82. The Eagle, Alfred, Lord Tennyson
83. The Lady of Shalott, Alfred, Lord Tennyson
84. Ulysses, Alfred, Lord Tennyson
85. Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, Dylan Thomas
86. Fern Hill, Dylan Thomas
87. Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun, Walt Whitman
88. I Hear America Singing, Walt Whitman
89. O Captain! My Captain!, Walt Whitman
90. When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer, Walt Whitman
91. The Red Wheelbarrow, William Carlos Williams
92. Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, William Wordsworth
93. Composed upon Westminster Bridge, William Wordsworth
94. She dwelt among the untrodden ways, William Wordsworth
95. The Daffodils, William Wordsworth
96. The Solitary Reaper, William Wordsworth
97. Sailing to Byzantium, William Butler Yeats
98. Song of the Wandering Aengus, William Butler Yeats
99. The Lake Isle of Innisfree, William Butler Yeats
100. Fear of the Landscape, Ian Young