Free summaries
Poetry — page 2
335 public-domain poetry books, summarised. Page 2 of 7.
Poems
G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
Poetry is often a quiet art, but here it rings with the clamor of trumpets, the clash of iron, and the sudden, startling intimacy of a human voice speaking against the void. These verses act as a defiant manifesto for the common heart, finding the extraordinary in the mundane and the divine in the dust of the road.
In Flanders Fields, and Other Poems
John McCrae
Quiet reflections on duty, mortality, and lost youth transform the harrowing realities of war into an enduring testament of sacrifice and remembrance.
The Poems of Henry Van Dyke
Henry Van Dyke
Through nature's changing light, quiet human devotions, and the weight of moral duty, these poems construct a sanctuary of serene faith and steadfast affection.
The Poems of Henry Kendall: With Biographical Note by Bertram Stevens
Henry Kendall
Verdant rain forests, blinding desert plains, and solitary mountain tracks frame a deeply personal journey through grief, faith, and the wild Australian landscape.
The New Poetry: An Anthology
Unknown
A bold declaration of a literary renaissance, this collection captures the fractured, vibrant heartbeat of early twentieth-century verse, stripping away Victorian artifice to reveal the raw, immediate power of the modern imagination.
The Home Book of Verse
Burton Egbert Stevenson
This expansive collection gathers the voices of poets across centuries, crafting a vast landscape of human experience that ranges from the innocence of the nursery to the sharp edges of satire.
Collected Poems: Volume One
Alfred Noyes
This collection captures the turn of the century’s fascination with romantic adventure, the weight of history, and the persistent, haunting beauty of the natural world. It invites readers to step into a rhythmic, often melancholic atmosphere where the lines between the physical landscape and the spiritual realm…
The Botanic Garden, a Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: the Economy of Vegetation
Erasmus Darwin
This ambitious work enlists the Muses to explain the natural world, blending rigorous scientific inquiry with classical mythology to map the hidden lives of plants and the elements that sustain them.
Dramatic Romances
Robert Browning
This collection of verse captures the interior lives of men and women caught at the height of their passions, turning the historical past into a mirror for the human heart. It is a masterful study of human motivation, rendered with a keen ear for the rhythm of thought and the urgency of the moment.
Responsibilities, and other poems
W. B. (William Butler) Yeats
In the wake of a changing Ireland, a poet confronts the weight of his own legacy, finding that the heavy cloak of tradition must be discarded for the clarity of a naked, singular voice.
Poems Teachers Ask For: Selected by readers of "Normal Instructor-Primary Plans"
Various
A shared memory of recitations, schoolrooms, and shared values lives within these pages.
A Cyclopædia of Sacred Poetical Quotations: Consisting of Choice Passages from the Sacred Poetry of All Ages and Countries, Classified and Arranged, for Facility of Reference, Under Subject Headings
Unknown
Spiritual expression finds its highest art when religious thought meets poetic craft, elevating everyday devotion into timeless, soul-stirring literature.
The Sonnets of Michael Angelo Buonarroti and Tommaso Campanella
Tommaso Campanella
Passion and torment echo through every line, revealing two fierce Italian minds bound by verse, faith, and the long shadow of mortality.
The Golden Threshold
Sarojini Naidu
The world is a tapestry of vivid, fleeting beauty and profound human sorrow, captured in verses that shimmer like sunlight on a lotus stream. These poems serve as a bridge between the soul’s deepest longings and the vibrant pulse of daily life.
Poems
Julia C. R. (Julia Caroline Ripley) Dorr
A collection of nineteenth-century verse that captures the quiet dignity of domestic life, the sharp ache of wartime loss, and the eternal, reaching hope for reunion beyond the veil of death.
The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2
Edward Young
The grave and the great are the twin poles of this collection, where the promise of eternity clashes with the vanity of worldly ambition. These verses navigate the uneasy border between a soul’s final reckoning and a citizen’s duty to the state.
Browning and the Dramatic Monologue
S. S. (Samuel Silas) Curry
The dramatic monologue is a delicate, precise instrument of human revelation, requiring an artist who can breathe life into silent, implied conversations. This study offers a rigorous guide to mastering the nuances of this distinctive literary form.
The Beginnings of Poetry
Francis Barton Gummere
Rhythmic speech, born from the collective labor and play of the earliest human groups, serves as the true foundation of all poetic art.
Sonnets and madrigals of Michelangelo Buonarroti
Michelangelo Buonarroti
The stone-cutter’s art becomes the language of the soul in these verses, where the struggle to release beauty from marble mirrors the poet’s own attempt to find God within a world of transitory grace.
Wisconsin in Story and Song;: Selections from the Prose and Poetry of Badger State Writers
Unknown
A collection of literary voices captures the spirit of a state, tracing the arc of life from the rugged frontier to the halls of academia. It is a portrait of a landscape defined by both its natural beauty and the industry of its people.
A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul
George MacDonald
To cry out from the depths of weariness is not to lose faith, but to discover where true strength resides.
Daily Strength for Daily Needs
Mary Wilder Tileston
A year of quiet daily readings gathers centuries of wisdom to steady the heart against routine burdens, small trials, and unexpected griefs.
Yorkshire Dialect Poems (1673-1915) and traditional poems
F. W. (Frederic William) Moorman
Across three centuries of verse and oral tradition, local speech transforms daily labor, rural folklore, and working-class defiance into an enduring literary legacy.
The Hymns of Prudentius
Prudentius
HOOK This collection of Latin hymns offers a rare, intimate window into the fourth-century mind as it bridges the divide between the fading grandeur of Rome and the rising light of the Christian faith.
Colors of Life: Poems and Songs and Sonnets
Max Eastman
A collection of verse that favors the raw, immediate pulse of individual experience over the rigid demands of political or social dogma. It captures a restless, observant mind navigating the transition from early-century idealism to the harsh realities of a changing world.
Songs of Kabir
Kabir
The divine is not found in distant temples, but within the breath of the seeker. This collection of lyrical songs invites the reader to look inward and discover the reality of the soul’s communion with God.
Cathay
Ezra Pound
This collection of translated verse captures the transient beauty of human connection and the quiet, recurring ache of separation. It is an exploration of lives defined by distance, duty, and the inexorable passage of time.
More Translations from the Chinese
Arthur Waley
A voice of quiet intimacy opens these classical translations, where silk robes sweep across banquet floors and solitary scholars sip wine beneath the mountain moon.
It can be done
Unknown
Stepping onto a path of daily endurance, a person faces the temptation to surrender when obstacles loom large. Victory belongs to those who meet every setback with quiet resolve and press forward regardless.
The Shih King, or, Book of Poetry: From the Sacred Books of the East Volume 3
James Legge
Sacred ritual, ancient statecraft, and raw human emotion converge in this foundational anthology of early Chinese verse, where the voices of kings and commoners alike capture the spiritual and political heartbeat of a rising civilization.
Essays in criticism
Matthew Arnold
HOOK A series of thoughtful, measured reflections on literature and the spirit of inquiry, championing the pursuit of perfection and the necessity of an open, flexible mind.
In the Days When the World Was Wide, and Other Verses
Henry Lawson
This collection captures the hard, sun-scorched pulse of colonial Australia, where the landscape is vast, the work is brutal, and mateship is the only currency that retains its value. It is a portrait of a frontier etched in dust, sweat, and the stubborn persistence of those who survived it.
Birds, Beasts and Flowers: Poems by D. H. Lawrence
D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
This collection of poetry captures the restless, sensory intensity of a traveler caught between the crumbling structures of European history and the raw, unmapped vitality of the American landscape. It is a work of visceral observation, where the natural world serves as both a mirror for human desire and a reproach…
The Epic of Saul
William Cleaver Wilkinson
This epic poem traces the spiritual transformation of the man who would become the Apostle Paul, following him from his days as a zealous Pharisee to his conversion on the road to Damascus. It offers a meditative, verse-based exploration of one of history’s most profound shifts in conviction.
Ballads of a Bohemian
Robert W. (Robert William) Service
A struggling artist starves cheerfully in the garrets and cafes of Montparnasse, only to be cast from his romantic ideal into the gory carnage of the Western Front.
Poems
Lionel Johnson
A delicate, haunted quiet pervades these verses, where classical learning and intense religious devotion collide with the aching solitude of late-nineteenth-century life.
Readings from Latin Verse
Curtis C. (Curtis Clark) Bushnell
A curated gallery of Roman verse opens a direct channel to antiquity, moving from civic duty to private grief and from classical thunder to medieval faith.
The Wild Knight and Other Poems
G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
A fierce delight in the physical world fights against modern cynicism, insisting that the ordinary dirt, weeds, and noise of human life are charged with holy mystery.
A Lute of Jade
L. (Launcelot) Cranmer-Byng
A delicate bridge spanning centuries of song, these verses carry the quiet sorrows of parted lovers, the ghost-haunted ruins of fallen empires, and the serene joy of wine shared beneath a autumn moon.
New Poems
Francis Thompson
In the quiet, walled spaces of the soul, earthly love and divine hunger tangle until pain becomes the only true measure of grace.
Sonnets from the Crimea
Adam Mickiewicz
A vast steppe swallows the traveler, where grass falls like foam and only the stars offer a path toward home.
The poetical works of George MacDonald in two volumes
George MacDonald
HOOK This collection captures the vast, restless spirit of a nineteenth-century mystic, blending ethereal wonder with the rugged, grounded vernacular of the Scottish landscape.
Modern Poets and Poetry of Spain
José Zorrilla
A bridge between the nineteenth-century Spanish literary revival and an English-speaking audience, this work offers a curated window into a period of profound cultural evolution. It captures the transition from traditional, imitation-heavy verse to a vibrant, uniquely national voice.
Main Street, and Other Poems
Joyce Kilmer
The ordinary world holds hidden, sacred resonances for those with the eyes to see them. This collection finds the infinite within the domestic, the spiritual within the battlefield, and the eternal within the everyday.
A Study of Poetry
Bliss Perry
Poetry is not merely the decoration of ideas, but the transformation of human experience into a rhythmic, resonant language that captures what we feel but cannot say. Understanding the mechanics of this transformation deepens our appreciation of the art itself.
The Star-Treader, and other poems
Clark Ashton Smith
The stars are not merely points of light, but witnesses to a cosmic, entropic theater where gods, planets, and poets alike are consumed by an indifferent, encroaching void. This collection of verse acts as a bridge between the intimate fragility of human experience and the cold, vast expanses of an unfeeling universe.
Hymns for Christian Devotion: Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination
E. H. (Edwin Hubbell) Chapin
A comprehensive collection of devotional poetry designed to expand worship into every sphere of daily life, public reform, and social duty.
The Odes of Anacreon
Thomas Moore
To surrender to a bowl of wine, a crown of roses, and the sudden, sweet ambush of love is to discover that joy outlives every empire.