Skip to content
Storgy

The Poem Index — Vol. I

Poems& their analyses

Every entry is a fully indexed poem — full text where the work is in the public domain, plus a summary, line-by-line gloss, themes, form, and meter. Sourced from Project Gutenberg, Wikidata, and Poets.org.

Indexed poems
~2,700
Cataloged poets
261
Centuries spanned
30 (since 900 BCE)

Where to begin

01Renaissance

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Sonnet 18

by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare's most-quoted sonnet — fourteen lines that turn the volta of English love poetry. The reference point every later sonnet has answered to.

Read & analyze
02Romantic canon

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

OZYMANDIAS.

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Shelley's sonnet on the inevitable decline of empire. Bends the Petrarchan form to make the poem visually decay alongside its subject.

Read & analyze
03American 19c

Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me;

Because I Could Not Stop for Death

by Emily Dickinson

Dickinson's allegorical carriage ride — the single most-taught American poem on death. A masterclass in hymn meter and slant rhyme.

Read & analyze

Jump alphabetically

Showing 50 of 2414 poems · Letter: All
‹ Prev
  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 49
Showing 1–50 of 2414 indexed entries