Library: Poetry by Credo Reference: British Poetry

Notable Poems

Charge of the Light Brigade, by Lord Alfred Tennyson
From The Bloomsbury Dictionary of English Literature
A famous poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson about the episode in the battle of Balaclava (1854) in the Crimean War, between the British and the French on one side and the Russians on the other. The charge was of great heroism, but was an act of folly based on a misunderstood order.
How do I Love Thee?, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
The Ballad of Reading Gaol, by Oscar Wilde
From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.
The Lake Isle of Innisfree, by W. B. Yeats
From Brewer's Dictionary of Irish Phrase and Fable
One of the smallest islands in Lough Gill, County Sligo. It is known around the world from one of W.B. YEATS's most popular poems, ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’, from his collection The Rose (1893): "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, / And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles mad.

British Poets

Sir John Betjeman (1906- 1984): Topic Page
Poet, broadcaster, and writer on architecture, born in London, UK. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, but left university without a degree. He began to write for the Architectural Review and became general editor of the Shell Guides (1934).
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 - 1861): Topic Page
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was widely regarded as England's greatest woman poet. Although her poetry has now fallen into disfavour, it shows individuality of style and rich imagination.
Robert Browning (1812 - 1889): Topic Page
English poet. His remarkably broad and sound education was primarily the work of his artistic and scholarly parents—in particular his father, a London bank clerk of independent means.
Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928): Topic Page
English novelist and poet, b. near Dorchester, one of the great English writers of the 19th cent. The son of a stonemason, he derived a love of music from his father and a devotion to literature from his mother.
Seamus Heaney (1939 - ): Topic Page
Irish poet, b. Londonderry (now Derry), Northern Ireland. Heaney may be the finest poet writing in English today. In his early works, such as Death of a Naturalist (1966) and Door into the Dark (1969), Heaney is a lyrical nature poet.
Ted Hughes (1930 - 1998): Topic Page
Poet, born in Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire, N England, UK. He studied at Cambridge, where he read English for two years, then switched to archaeology and anthropology for his final year.
Louis MacNeice (1907 - 1963): Topic Page
Northern Irish poet, born in Belfast. He is noted for his low-key, socially committed but politically uncommitted verse.
Christina Rossetti (1830 - 1894)
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
English poet; sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Publication of some of her poems in her brother William's magazine the Germ was her only contribution to Pre-Raphaelite activities. She was a devout Anglican and lived the last 15 years of her life as a recluse in her home.
Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809 - 1892): Topic Page
English poet. He was poet laureate 1850-92. His verse has a majestic, musical quality, and few poets have surpassed his precision and delicacy of language.
Dylan Thomas (1914 - 1953): Topic Page
Welsh poet, b. Swansea. An extraordinarily individualistic writer, Thomas is ranked among the great 20th-century poets. He grew up in Swansea, the son of a teacher, but left school at 17 to become a journalist and moved to London two years later.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900): Topic Page
Irish writer. With his flamboyant style and quotable conversation, he dazzled London society and, on his lecture tour in 1882, the USA. He published his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, in 1891.
William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939): Topic Page
Born in Dublin, he spent two-thirds of his life out of Ireland. His father, John B. Yeats, was a lawyer turned painter, and in 1867 the family followed him to London, moving to the recently developed Bedford Park estate in Chiswick in 1879.