The Greatest Short Poems
This selection is based on the continuing research carried out for The Greatest Literature of All Time and further research into poetry acclaimed by the world's readers, writers, critics and scholars.
Poetry comes in all shapes, styles and sizes. Here, though we are looking at what may be considered short poems—that generally run under 2,500 words and can be read and appreciated in one sitting. They usually present single moods or themes with compact, cohesive storylines.
You may also be interested in The Greatest Long Poems or The Greatest Poetry Collections.
The 333 greatest short poems
Latest update: February 8, 2026
c.2030 BCE
"A Love Song of Shu-Suen"
Anonymous, Sumer
Poem, also known as "Bridegroom, Spend the Night in Our House Till Dawn" or "Istanbul 2461"
c.600 BCE
"Ode to Anactoria"
by Sappho, Greece
"Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite"
Anonymous, Greece
c.250 BCE
"Hymn to Apollo"
by Callimachus, Greece
c.60 BCE
"Let us live, my Lesbia"
by Catullus, Rome
Poem
c.740 CE
"Deer Park"
by Wang Wei, China
"Drifting on the Lake"
by Wang Wei, China
"A Farewell"
by Wang Wei, China
c.750
"Jade Stairs Lament"
by Li Bai, China
"Quiet Night Thought"
by Li Bai, China
"Waking from Drunkenness on a Spring Day"
by Li Bai, China
c.1260
"The Guest House"
by Rumi, Persia
Poem, adapted from a passage in
Masnavi
c.1130
"A Quatrain in Summer"
by Li Qingzhao, China
c.1535
"They Flee from Me That Sometimes Did Me Seek"
by Thomas Wyatt, England
1599
"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"
by Christopher Marlowe, England
"All the World's a Stage"
1600
"Adieu, Farewell Earth's Bliss"
by Walter Raleigh, England
"The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd"
by Walter Raleigh, England
c.1600
"Lord Randall"
Anonymous, Scotland
1603
"On My First Son"
by Ben Jonson, England
1609
"Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds"
Poem, also known as Sonnet 116 or "True Love"
"My Mistress's Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun"
Poem, also known as Sonnet 129
"Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?"
Poem, also known as Sonnet 18
"That Time of Year Thou Mayst in Me Behold"
Poem, also known as Sonnet 73
"The Expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame"
Poem, also known as Sonnet 129
"When, in Disgrace with Fortune and Men's Eyes"
Poem, also known as Sonnet 29
"When to the Sessions of Sweet Silent Thought"
1616
"To Celia"
by Ben Jonson, England
1624
"No Man Is an Island"
by John Donne, England
1633
"Batter My Heart, Three Personed God"
by John Donne, England
"Death, Be Not Proud"
by John Donne, England
"Go and Catch a Falling Star"
by John Donne, England
"Good-Morrow, The"
by John Donne, England
"A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning"
by John Donne, England
"Love"
by George Herbert, England
1639
"Why So Pale and Wan, Fond Lover?"
by John Suckling, England
1645
"Go, Lovely Rose"
by Edmund Haller, England
1648
"To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time"
by Richard Lovelace, England
1649
"Upon Julia's Clothes"
by Robert Herrick, England
"To Lucas, Going to the Wars"
by Richard Lovelace, England
1650
"Delight in Disorder"
by Robert Herrick, England
"The Retreat"
by Henry Vaughan, Wales
1656
"The TWA Sisters"
Anonymous, England
1673
"When I Consider How My Light is Spent"
by John Milton, France
Poem, also known as "On His Blindness"
1675
"Lord Thomas and Fair Anne"
Anonymous, England
1678
"To My Dear and Loving Husband"
by Anne Bradstreet, United States
c.1680
"The Fox and the Crow"
by Jean de La Fontaine, France
"Foolish Men"
by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Mexico
1681
"To His Coy Mistress"
by Andrew Marvell, England
1686
"An Old Pond"
by Matsuo Bashō, Japan
1747
"Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes"
by Thomas Gray, England
1749
"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"
by Thomas Gray, England
1765
"Sir Patrick Pens"
Anonymous, Scotland
1773
"Phyllis Wheatley"
by On Being Brought from Africa, United States
1782
"Erlkönig"
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany
1786
"Ode to Joy"
by Friedrich Schiller, Germany
1788
"Auld Lang Syne"
by Robert Burns, Scotland
1789
"The Lamb"
by William Blake, England
1794
"London"
by William Blake, England
"A Poison Tree"
by William Blake, England
"The Tyger"
by William Blake, England
1795
"A Man's a Man for a' That"
1798
"Frost at Midnight"
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Scotland
Poem
1800
"Michael"
by William Wordsworth, England
Poem
"A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal"
by William Wordsworth, England
Poem
"The Life Path"
by Friedrich Hölderlin, Germany
1805
"The Last Rose of Summer"
by Thomas More, Ireland
1805
"The Palace of Pleasure"
by Leigh Hunt, England
1807
"Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802"
by William Wordsworth, England
"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"
by William Wordsworth, England
"Ode: Intimations of Mortality"
by William Wordsworth, England
"Character of the Happy Warrior"
by William Wordsworth, England
"The World Is Too Much with Us"
by William Wordsworth, England
1808
"And did those feet in ancient time"
by William Blake, England
1814
"She Walks in Beauty"
by George Gordon Byron, England
1816
"Kubla Khan"
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, England
"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"
by John Keats, England
"To a Waterfowl"
by William Cullen Bryant, United States
1817
"Thanatopsis"
by William Cullen Bryant, United States
1818
"Ozymandias"
by Percy Bysshe Shelley, England
1819
"Ode on a Grecian Urn"
by John Keats, England
"Ode to a Nightingale"
by John Keats, England
"Love's Philosophy"
by Percy Bysshe Shelley, England
"The Infinite"
by Giacomo Leopardi, Italy
1820
"To Autumn"
by John Keats, England
"The Cloud"
by Percy Bysshe Shelley, England
"Ode to the West Wind"
by Percy Bysshe Shelley, England
"To a Skylark"
by Percy Bysshe Shelley, England
"La Belle Dame Sans Mercie"
by John Keats, England
"The Lake"
by Alphonse de Lamartine, France
1825
"To ***"
by Alexander Pushkin, Russia
1829
"The Spider and the Fly"
by Mary Howitt, England
1830
"So, we'll go no more a-roving"
by George Gordon Byron, England
"Old Ironsides"
by Oliver Wendell Holmes, United States
1832–1842
"The Lady of Shalott"
by Alfred Lord Tennyson, England
1834
"Abou Ben Adhem"
by Leigh Hunt, England
"The Rhodora"
by Ralph Waldo Emerson, United States
1835
"The Hermit"
by Joseph von Eichendorff, Germany
1837
"Borodino"
by Mikhail Lermontov, Russia
"Death of the Poet"
by Mikhail Lermontov, Russia
1838
"Jenny Kiss's Me"
by Leigh Hunt, England
"A Psalm of Life"
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, United States
"Concord Hymn"
by Ralph Waldo Emerson, United States
1842
"My Last Duchess"
by Robert Browning, England
" Break, Break, Break"
by Alfred Lord Tennyson, England
"Locksley Hall"
by Alfred Lord Tennyson, England
"Ulysses"
by Alfred Lord Tennyson, England
1844
"Night Thoughts"
by Heinrich Heine, Germany
1845
"Meeting at Night"
by Robert Browning, England
"Sweetheart, let’s see if the rose"
by Pierre de Ronsard, France
1847
"The First Snowfall"
by James Russell Lowell, United States
1848
"Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth"
by Arthur Hugh Clough, England
"When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be"
by John Keats, England
1849
"A Dream Within a Dream"
1850
"How Do I Love Thee?"
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, England
"The Blessed Damozel"
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, England
1853
"The Scholar Tipsy"
by MatthewcArnold, England
1854
"The Charge of the Light Brigade"
by Alfred Lord Tennyson, England
1855
"Evelyn Hope"
by Robert Browning, England
"I Sing the Body Electric"
by Walt Whitman, United States
"Song of Myself"
by Walt Whitman, United States
1856
"Tomorrow, at Dawn"
by Victor Hugo, France
"Poet and Citizen"
by Nikolai Nebraska, Russia
"The Snow-Storm"
by Ralph Waldo Emerson, United States
"Maud Muller"
by John Green leaf Whittier, United States
1857
"The Song of Exile"
by Galveston Dis, Brazil
1858
"The Chambered Nautilus"
by Oliver Wendell Holmes, United States
"The Deacon's Masterpiece"
by Oliver Wendell Holmes, United States
1860
"Paul Revere's Ride"
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, United States
"The Children's Hour"
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, United States
1861
"The Albatross"
by Charles Baudelaire, France
1862
"Remember"
by Christina Rossetti, England
1863
"Auguries of Innocence"
by William Blake, England
"Sudden Light"
by Christina Rossetti, England
1864
"Success is counted sweetest"
by Emily Dickinson, United States
1865
"O Captain! My Captain!"
by Walt Whitman, United States
1866
"You Will Not Grasp Her with Your Mind"
by Fyodor Butchery, Russia
1867
"Dover Beach"
by Matthew Arnold, England
1869
"Clair de Lune"
by Paul Verlaine, France
"A Noiseless Patient Spider"
by Walt Whitman, United States
1870
"The Owl and the Pussy-Cat"
by Edward Lear, England
"The Sleeper in the Valley"
by Arthur Rimbaud, France
1871
"Jabberwocky"
by Lewis Carroll, England
"The Drunken Boat"
by Arthur Rimbaud, France
1873
"Red Cotton Night-Cap Country "
by Robert Browning, England
1874
"The Afternoon of a Faun"
by Stephan Mallarmé, France
1881
"Acquiescent"
by Oscar Wilde, Ireland
1883
"The New Colossus"
by Emma Lazarus, United States
"Solitude"
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, United States
1887
"To Be Born a Man"
by Adela Audiogram, Bolivia
"Low Tide on Grand Pr"
by Bliss Carmen, Canada
"Requiem"
by Robert Louis Stevenson, Scotland
1888
"Convicts"
by William Ernest Henley, England
1889
"Crossing the Bar"
by Alfred Lord Tennyson, England
1890
"London Snow"
by Robert Bridges, England
"Ungava Din"
by Rudyard Kipling, England
"The Lake Isle of Innis free"
by W.B. Yeats, Ireland
"Because I could not stop for Death"
by Emily Dickinson, United States
1891
"A Sincere Man Am I"
by José Marti, Cuba
"'Hope' Is the Thing with Feathers"
by Emily Dickinson, United States
"I'm Nobody! Who Are You?"
by Emily Dickinson, United States
"A Narrow Fellow in the Grass"
by Emily Dickinson, United States
1892
"Vitia Lambada"
by Henry New bolt, England
1896
"Vitae Sum ma Breves"
by Ernest Dawson, England
"Non Sum Quails Erma Bone Sub Reno Cynamon"
by Ernest Dawson, England
"To an Athlete, Dying Young"
by A.E. Housman, England
"I Heard a Fly Buzz—When I Died"
by Emily Dickinson, United States
"We Wear the Mask"
by Paul Lawrence Dunbar, United States
1897
"Recessional"
by Rudyard Kipling, England
"Richard Cory"
by Edwin Arlington Robinson, United States
1899
"Heda Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven"
by W.B. Yeats, Ireland
"The Man with the Hoe"
by Edwin Markham, United States
1900
"The Darkling Thrush"
Poem
1904
"Waiting for the Barbarians"
by Constantine Cavalry, Greece
1905
"The Girl Was Singing In a Church Choir"
by Alexander Bloch, Russia
1906
"The Highwayman"
by Alfred Noyes,
1907
"The Cremation of Sam McGee"
by Robert W. Service, Canada
"The Shooting of Dan McGraw"
by Robert W. Service, Canada
1908
"Torso of an Archaic Apollo"
by Rainer Maria Rilke, Germany
1909
"My Country"
by Ricardo Miro, Panama
1910
"If—"
by Rudyard Kipling, England
"Miniver Chevy"
by Edwin Arlington Robinson, United States
1911
"The Little Car"
by Guillaume Apollinaire, France
1911
"Dusky Veil Shades Her Hands Clenching"
by Anna Akhmatova, Russia
1912
"The Listeners"
by Walter de la Mare, England
"Renascence"
by Edna St. Vincent Millay, United States
1913
"Zone"
by Guillaume Apollinaire, France
"These My Poems, Written So Early"
by Marina Svetlana, Russia
"Trees"
by Joyce Filmer, United States
"Sacred Emily"
by Gertrude Stein, United States
1914
"Grokked"
by Georg Trail, Austria
"For the Fallen"
by Laurence Pinyon, England
"Listen"
by Vladimir Mayakovsky, Russia
"Mending Wall"
by Robert Frost, United States
Poem
"The Death of the Hired Man"
by Robert Frost, United States
"Chicago"
by Carl Sandburg, United States
1915
"In Flanders Fields"
by John McCrae, Canada
"The Soldier"
by Rupert Brooke, England
"The Dead"
by Rupert Brooke, England
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
Poem
Who the heck is J. Alfred Prufrock? The answer is: nobody important. Which is itself important. After you finish reading J. Alfred Prufrock's "love song", you may realize the name means very little. T.S. Eliot could have.... Critique • Quotes • Text • Buy the book
"The Pool"
by Hilda Doolittle, United States
"The Road Not Taken"
by Robert Frost, United States
"Anne Rutledge"
by Edgar Lee Masters, United States
"The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter"
by Ezra Pound, United States
1916
"Sea-Fever"
by John Masefield, England
"Cargoes"
by John Masefield, England
"Fog"
by Carl Sandburg, United States
"I Have a Rendezvous with Death"
by Alan Seeger, United States
"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
by Wallace Stevens, United States
1918
"Suicide in the Trenches"
by Siegfried Sassoon, England
"God's Grandeur"
by Gerard Manley Hopkins, England
"Pied Beauty"
by Gerard Manley Hopkins, England
"Spring and Fall"
by Gerard Manley Hopkins, England
"The Windhover"
by Gerard Manley Hopkins, England
"The Fish"
by Marianne Moore, United States
"There Will Come Soft Rains"
by Sara Teasdale, United States
1919
"An Irish Airman Foresees His Death"
by W.B. Yeats, Ireland
"Black Messengers"
by César Vallejo, Peru
"If We Must Die"
by Claude McKay, United States
1920
"Anthem for Doomed Youth"
by Wilfred Owen, England
"Dulce et Decorum Est"
by Wilfred Owen, England
"The Second Coming"
by W.B. Yeats, Ireland
"First Fig"
by Edna St. Vincent Millay, United States
"Mr. Flood's Party"
by Edwin Arlington Robinson, United States
1922
"Mother to Son"
by Langston Hughes, United States
"The Emperor of Ice Cream"
by Wallace Stevens, United States
1923
"Snake"
by D.H. Lawrence, England
"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
by Robert Frost, United States
"Fire and Ice"
by Robert Frost, United States
"The Red Wheelbarrow"
by William Carlos Williams, United States
1924
"Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines"
by Pablo Neruda, Chile
"Letter to a Woman"
by Sergei Esen in, Russia
1925
"The Hollow Men"
Poem
All the important elements of Eliot's longer, more difficult poem The Waste Land are in "The Hollow Men". The view of this world as insubstantial, a realm for the living dead. The attempts to revive religious concepts, to offer.... Critique • Quotes • Buy the book
"The Weary Blues"
by Langston Hughes, United States
1926
"Voyages"
by Hart Crane, United States
1928
"Sailing to Byzantium"
by W.B. Yeats, Ireland
1930
"In the Middle of the Road"
by Carlos Drummond De Andra, Brazil
1932
"Bavarian Gentians"
by D.H. Lawrence, England
1934
"Immortality"
by Clare Harkner, United States
"This Is Just to Say"
by William Carlos Williams, United States
"The Idea of Order at Key West"
by Wallace Stevens, United States
1935
"Words from Confinement"
by Cesare Paves, Italy
"Proletarian Portrait"
by William Carlos Williams, United States
"To a Poor Old Woman"
by William Carlos Williams, United States
1936
"Funeral Blues"
by W.H. Auden, England
1938
"To Those Born After"
by Bertolt Brecht, Germany
1939
"Musée des Beaux Arts"
by W.H. Auden, England
1940
"David"
by Earle Birney, Canada
"Song of Negroes in Cuba"
by Federico García Lorca, Cuba
1942
"Liberty"
by Paul Eluard, France
1944
"Day and Night"
by Dorothy Livesay, Canada
1945
"Family Portrait"
by Carlos Drummond De Andrade, Brazil
"Autumn Leaves"
by Jacques Prévert, France
"The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner"
by Randall Jarrell, United States
"Elegy Just in Case"
by John Ciardi, United States
1945–1962
"Middle Passage"
by Robert Hayden, United States
1946
"Fern Hill"
by Dylan Thomas, Wales
1947
"The Key of Water"
by Octavio Paz, Mexico
"Directive"
by Robert Frost, United States
1948
"If You Forget Me"
by Pablo Neruda, Chile
"Death Fugue"
by Paul Celan, Romania
1950
"Death will come and will have your eyes"
by Cesare Pavese, Italy
1951
"Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night"
by Dylan Thomas, Wales
1952
"I carry your heart with me"
by e.e. cummings, United States
1953
"Deferred Time"
by Ingeborg Bachmann, Austria
"The Waking"
by Theodore Roethke, United States
1954
"The Birth of Tragedy"
by Irving Layton, Canada
"Meditations in an Emergency"
by Frank O'Hara, United States
1956
"A Ballad of Going Down to the Store"
by Miron Białoszewski, Poland
1957
"Elegy of Fortinbras"
by Zbigniew Herberti, Poland
1958
"Junkman's Obbligato"
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, United States
1959
"I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You"
by Pablo Neruda, Chile
"We Real Cool"
by Gwendolyn Brooks, United States
"Memories of West Street and Lepke"
by Robert Lowell, United States
c.1960
"Zito the Magician"
by Miroslav Holub, Czechoslovakia
1961
"Babi Yar"
by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Russia
1962
"Warning"
by Jenny Joseph, England
"Those Winter Sundays"
by Robert Hayden, United States
1965
"Daddy"
by Sylvia Plath, United States
"Lady Lazarus"
by Sylvia Plath, United States
1966
"Digging"
by Seamus Heaney, Northern Ireland
"The Express"
by Stephen Spender, England
"Tracks"
by Tomas Tranströmer, Sweden
1967
"Pièta"
by Wisława Szymborska, Poland
"Face the Animal"
by Jean Follain, France
1968
"The Poor"
by Roberto Sosa, Honduras
1969
"Draft of a Modern Love Poem"
by Tadeusz Różewicz, Poland
1970
"Don’t Leave the Room"
by Joseph Brodsky, Russia
1972
"Under a Certain Little Star"
by Wisława Szymborska, Poland
1973
"Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)"
by Nikki Giovanni, United States
"Diving into the Wreck"
by Adrienne Rich, United States
1974
"This Be the Verse"
by Philip Larkin, England
1975
"Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror"
by John Ashbery, United States
1976
"In Praise of My Sister"
by Wisława Szymborska, Poland
"One Art"
by Elizabeth Bishop, United States
1977
"Calderoniana"
by Efraín Huerta, Mexico
"And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name"
by John Ashbery, United States
1978
"Death of a Lady's Man"
"Still I Rise"
by Maya Angelou, United States
"Power"
by Audre Lorde, United States
1980
"Homage to My Hips"
by Lucille Clifton, United States
1981
"The Colonel"
by Carolyn Forché, United States
1982
"Heroics"
by Julia Alvarez, United States
1983
"A Smile to Remember"
by Charles Bukowski, United States
1985
"Mock Orange"
by Louise Glück, United States
1986
"Love After Love"
by Derek Walcott, St. Lucia
1987
"To Live in the Borderlands"
by Gloria Anzaldua, United States
"Ancestor"
by Jimmy Santiago Baco, United States
1989
"From the Bridge"
by Claribel Alegría, Nicaragua
1992
"The Man with the Night Sweats"
by Thom Gunn, United States
1994
"Blood"
by Carmen Boullosa, Mexico
1995
"In the Secular Night"
by Margaret Atwood, Canada
2003
"Rain"
by Claribel Alegria, Nicaragua
"Errata"
by Kevin Young, United States
2004
"The Ministry of Pain"
by Dubravka Ugrešić, Croatia
Poem, originally
Ministarstvo boli
2005
"Text"
by Carol Ann Duffy, Scotland
2008
"Rain"
by Don Paterson, Scotland
2010
"The Golden Shovel"
by Terrance Hayes, United States
2011
"Moving"
by Luis Chaves, Costa Rica
"Home"
by Warsan Shire, Costa England
2012
"Balas Chonas"
by Cherríe Morago, United States
2013
"Rape Joke"
by Patricia Lockwood, United States
Poem
2021
"The Hill We Climb"
by Amanda Gorman, United States
Poem