Best Lyric Poetry from Around the World

Best Lyric Poetry
From Around the World




  1. Hymn to Inanna (Sumer, 3,500-1,750 BCE)  
  2. Epic of Gilgamesh (Mesopotamia, c. 2,100-900 BCE)  
  3. Pyramid Text of Theti (Egypt, c. 2333 BCE) 
  4. Rig Veda (India, 1,700-1,000 BCE)
  5. Psalm 23 (Israel, c. 1000-300 BCE)  
  6. Classic of Poetry (China, 840-620 BCE)
  7. Iliad (Greece, c. 750 BCE)
  8. Odyssey by Homer (Greece, c. 725-675 BCE)
  9. Equal to the Gods by Sappho (Greece, 6th c. BCE)
  10. Song of Songs (Hebrew, c. 300 BCE
  11. Dhammapada (India, 3rd c. BCE) 
  12. Daodejing (China, 3rd c. BCE)
  13. Elegies of Chu (China, 2nd-1st c. BCE)
  14. Lesbia's Pet Sparrow by Catullus (Rome, c. 84 – c. 54 BCE)
  15. Carpe Diem by Horace (Rome, 65-8 BCE)
  16. Metamorphoses by Ovid (Rome, 8 CE) 
  17. Epigrams by Martial (Rome, 1st c. CE)
  18. Nineteen Old Poems (China, 2nd c. CE)
  19. Drinking Wine by Tao Yuanming (China, 365-427 CE)
  20. Quatrains (jueju) from the Tang Dynasty (China, 618-907) 
  21. Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (Japan, c. 653–c. 710)
  22. Manyoshu (Japan, 759)
  23. Wang Wei (China, 699-761)
  24. Li Bai (China, 701-762)
  25. Du Fu (China, 712-770)
  26. Hanshan (China, 8th c.)
  27. Bai Juyi (China, 772-846)
  28. Kokin Wakashu (Japan, 905)
  29. Su Shi (China, 1037-1101)
  30. From Quatrains by Omar Khayyam (Persia. 1048-1131) 
  31. Li Qingzhao (China, 1084-1155)
  32. Ten Poems by Saigyo (Japan, 1118-1190)
  33. Lu You (China, 1125-1209)
  34. Under the Linden Tree by Walther von der Vogelweide (Germany, c. 1170 – c. 1230)
  35. Fujiwara no Teika (Japan, 1162-1241)
  36. Petrarca (Italy, 1374)
  37. The Season Has Removed Its Coat by Charles of Orléans (France, 1391-1465)
  38. Francois Villon (France, 1431-1463)
  39. Ikkyu (1394-1481)
  40. Sogi (Japan, 1421–1502)
  41. Do Not Blame Me, Ladies, by Louise Labé (France, c. 1522-1566)
  42. Ode to Cassandra, by Pierre de Ronsard (France, 1545)
  43. William Shakespeare, Sonnet 127 (England, 1609)
  44. John Donne, The Flea (England, 1633) 
  45. Robert Herrick, Delight in Disorder (England, 1591-1674)
  46. The Lion in Love, by Jean de La Fontaine (France, 1621-1695)
  47. Autumn by Basho (Japan, 1644-1694) 
  48. In the Old Pond by Buson (Japan, 1716-1784)
  49. Eleven Poems by Ryokan (1758-1831)
  50. How Beautiful by Kobayashi Issa (Japan, 1763-1827) 
  51. A Hymn to the Moon by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (England, 1758)
  52. The Bureaucrat’s Baby Boy, Author unnamed (Japan, 1765)
  53. Wanderer's Night Song by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Germany, 1776, 1780)
  54. London by William Blake (England, 1794)
  55. Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth (England, 1798)
  56. On Seeing the Elgin Marbles by John Keats (England, 1817)
  57. Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley (England, 1818)
  58. Work Without Hope by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1825)
  59. I Am Lost to the World by Friedrich Rückert (Germany, 1834)
  60. The Hermit by Joseph von Eichendorff (Germany, 1837)
  61. Night Thoughts by Heinrich Heine (Germany, 1843)
  62. Die Stadt by Theodor Storm (German, 1852)
  63. O Soul, Remember This  by Eduard Mörike (Germany, 1852)
  64. From The Chimeras by Gerard de Nerval (France, 1856)
  65. Lethe by Charles Baudelaire 1857)
  66. Woman and Cat by Paul Verlaine (France, 1866)
  67. The Ruined Maid by Thomas Hardy (England, 1866)
  68. The Suicide by Piet Paaltens (The Netherlands, 1867)
  69. Le Mal by Arthur Rimbaud (France, 1871)
  70. Silent Noon by Dante Gabriel Rosetti (England, 1871)
  71. Symphony in Yellow by Oscar Wilde (England, 1881)
  72. Tristesse d'été by Stéphane Mallarmé (France, 1887)
  73. From Poems by Emily Dickinson(United States, 1891?)
  74. A Noiseless Patient Spider by Walt Whitman(United States, 1891
  75. Sickbed Snowfall by Masaoka Shiki (Japan, 1896)
  76. Around my Old Dwelling... by J.H. Leopold (The Netherlands, 1897)
  77. From Tangled Hair by Yosano Akiko (Japan, 1901)
  78. From A Handful of Sand by Ishikawa Takuboku (Japan, 1910)
  79. Le pont Mirabeau by Apollinaire (France, 1912)
  80. From Stèles by Victor Segalen (France, 1912)
  81. Night by A.A. Blok (Russia, 1912)
  82. And Could You? by Vladimir Mayakovsky (Russia, 1913)
  83. The Gardener by Rabindranath Tagore (India, 1913)
  84. Grodek by Georg Trakl (Austria-Hungary, 1914)
  85. The Taxi by Amy Lowell (United States, 1914)
  86. The Garden by Ezra Pound (United States, 1916)
  87. Birches by Robert Frost (1916)
  88. Sheltered Garden by H.D. (1916, United States) 
  89. Morning at the Window by T.S. Eliot (United States, 1917)
  90. Portrait of a Lady by William Carlos Williams (United States, 1920)
  91. spring omnipotent goddess Thou by e.e. cummings (United States, 1920)
  92. Leda and the Swan by William Butler Yeats (Ireland, 1923)
  93. Two Under the Trees by Takamura Kotaro (Japan, 1923)
  94. The Blue Cat by Hagiwara Sakutaro (Japan, 1923)
  95. Landscape by Jan Jacob Slauerhoff (The Netherlands, 1928)
  96. Memories of Holland by Hendrik Marsman (The Netherlands, 1936)
  97. Ten Free-verse Haiku by Santoka (Japan, 1940)



Photo: Raphael , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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