The Wondering Minstrels · By Theme

A Brief History of Poetry · Australia and New Zealand · Beasts that Eat People · Bertie Wooster's Favourites · Bright College Days · Brueghel's Hunters in the Snow · Canada · Cats · Catullus and his Imitators · Christmas and New Year · Computers · Cricket · Dreams · Drink and Tobacco · Elephants · Epigrams · Flight · Friendship and Loss · Hate Rhymes · Hippopotamuses · Immortal Narrative Poems · Laments · Mathematics · Mining Disasters · Monsters · Named Verse Forms · Noses · Old Favourites · Parodies and the Parodied · Poems about Poetry · Poems and Rock Music · Poems at Work · Poems by Fictional Characters · Poems by Prose Writers · Poems in the Movies · Poems to Posterity · Poems Worth Memorising · Poets on Poets · Red · Rock Lyrics · Rome and the Romans · Scientists on Science · Scotland · Songs about Urban Life · Songs of Myself · Songs of the City · Summer Heat · The Mediterranean · The Moon · The Open Road · The Pleasures of Strong Rhythm · The Poet Cranky · The Sea · The Silk Road · The Supernatural and the Macabre · The Trojan War · Thirteen Ways of Looking · Triple Rhymes · Valentine's Day · Walt Whitman · War

• A Brief History of Poetry (5 · 2000)
  • The Seafarer — Anonymous
  • The Knight's Portrait — Geoffrey Chaucer
  • from The Faerie Queen — Edmund Spenser
  • A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning — John Donne
  • from An Essay on Man — Alexander Pope
• Australia and New Zealand (5 · 2000)
  • Clancy of the Overflow — A B "Banjo" Paterson
  • The Great Grey Plain — Henry Lawson
  • The Death Of The Bird — A D Hope
  • Mort aux Chats — Peter Porter
  • At a Fishing Settlement — Alistair Campbell
• Beasts that Eat People (3 · 2005)
  • It's Dark in Here — Shel Silverstein
  • The Lion and Albert — Marriott Edgar
  • The Tale of Custard the Dragon — Ogden Nash
• Bertie Wooster's Favourites (6 · 2001)
  • The Blessed Damozel — Dante Gabriel Rossetti
  • The Wreck of the Hesperus — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  • The Destruction of Sennacherib — George Gordon, Lord Byron
  • Loch Lomond — Lady John Scott
  • The Dream of Eugene Aram — Thomas Hood
  • The Day is Done — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• Bright College Days (8 · 2006)
  • Baccalaureate — Archibald MacLeish
  • Before an Examination (Campus Sonnets: 1) — Stephen Vincent Benét
  • A School Song — Rudyard Kipling
  • Bright College Days — Tom Lehrer
  • The Vulture and the Husbandman — Arthur Clement Hilton
  • Myfanwy at Oxford — John Betjeman
  • I'm Going To Say It Now — Phil Ochs
  • I Asked No Other Thing — Emily Dickinson
• Brueghel's Hunters in the Snow (4 · 2000)
  • Winter Landscape — John Berryman
  • Brueghel's Winter — Walter de la Mare
  • Hunters in the Snow — William Carlos Williams
  • Hunters in the Snow: Brueghel — Joseph Langland
• Canada (8 · 2001)
  • The Law of the Yukon — Robert Service
  • National Identity — F R Scott
  • Northwest Passage — Stan Rogers
  • To a Millionaire — Archibald Lampman
  • Postcard — Margaret Atwood
  • Sea-Gulls — E J Pratt
  • The Social Plan — Stephen Leacock
  • The Mysterious Naked Man — Alden Nowlan
• Cats (10 · 2000–2002)
  • Mort aux Chats — Peter Porter
  • Growltiger's Last Stand — T S Eliot
  • To Mrs. Reynolds' Cat — John Keats
  • The Cat and the Moon — William Butler Yeats
  • Poem — William Carlos Williams
  • On A Night of Snow — Elizabeth Coatsworth
  • Jubilate Agno — Christopher Smart
  • Cat — Jibanananda Das
  • Cat — J R R Tolkien
  • Cats — A S J Tessimond
• Catullus and his Imitators (6 · 2004)
  • Song Five — Gaius Valerius Catullus
  • From Catullus V — Sir Walter Raleigh
  • Come, My Celia — Ben Jonson
  • My Sweetest Lesbia — Thomas Campion
  • From A Letter From Lesbia — Dorothy Parker
  • The Scholars — William Butler Yeats
• Christmas and New Year (19 · 1999–2007)
  • The Second Coming — William Butler Yeats
  • The Journey of the Magi — T S Eliot
  • The Noble Nature — Ben Jonson
  • God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen — Trad
  • The January Man — Dave Goulder
  • Ring Out, Wild Bells — Alfred, Lord Tennyson
  • The Kerry Christmas Carol — Sigerson Clifford
  • Chapter Heading — Ernest Hemingway
  • Song at the Year's Turning — R S Thomas
  • River — Joni Mitchell
  • Christmas Oratio — W H Auden
  • The Cherry Tree Carol — Traditional
  • Little Tree — e e cummings
  • Auld Lang Syne — Robert Burns
  • The Huron Carol — St Jean de Brébeuf
  • Tangmalangaloo — John O'Brien
  • Flying at Night — Ted Kooser
  • The Year — Ella Wheeler Wilcox
  • The Boy Who Laughed at Santa Claus — Ogden Nash
• Computers (4 · 2004)
  • Electronically Yours — Gerald Jonas
  • Telnet Song — Guy L Steele, Jr
  • Hemingway Never Did This — Charles Bukowski
  • the trash can — Charles Bukowski
• Cricket (6 · 2001)
  • Vitaï Lampada — Sir Henry Newbolt
  • Ballad of a Homeless Bat — John Kendall
  • Grand Rapids Cricket Club — Julia A Moore
  • Brahma — Andrew Lang
  • The cricket sang — Emily Dickinson
  • Verity — Drummond Allison
• Dreams (10 · 2000–2003)
  • Reverie of Mahomed Akram at the Tamarind Tank — Laurence Hope
  • The Dong with a Luminous Nose — Edward Lear
  • The Slave's Dream — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  • To Walter de la Mare — T S Eliot
  • The Rider at the Gate — John Masefield
  • The Dream — George Gordon, Lord Byron
  • Dream-Pedlary — Thomas Lovell Beddoes
  • A Dream at Night — Mei Yao Ch'en
  • The Pardon — Richard Wilbur
  • Untitled — Matsuo Basho
• Drink and Tobacco (9 · 2005–2006)
  • A Pot Of Tea — Robert Service
  • I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed — Emily Dickinson
  • Untitled — Dorothy Parker
  • The Deluge — G K Chesterton
  • Prohibition — Franklin P Adams
  • Tobacco is a Dirty Weed — Graham Lee Hemminger
  • Away With Rum — Theodore Bikel
  • Tobacco Is Like Love — Tobias Hume
  • Tobacco's But an Indian Weed — Traditional
• Elephants (3 · 2003)
  • Mmenson — Edward Kamau Braithwaite
  • The Blind Men and the Elephant — John Godfrey Saxe
  • Elephants Are Different to Different People — Carl Sandburg
• Epigrams (5 · 2001)
  • Dreams — Robert Herrick
  • Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog Which I Gave to His Royal Highness — Alexander Pope
  • Reflections on Ice-Breaking — Ogden Nash
  • On Problems — Piet Hein
  • Epitaph on Charles II — John Wilmot
• Flight (11 · 2006)
  • Impressions of a Pilot — Gary Claude Stoker
  • A Newer Kingdom — Anonymous
  • from Midsummer — Derek Walcott
  • I Need Air — Alan Lerner
  • The Swing — Robert Louis Stevenson
  • l(a — e e cummings
  • The Dead Wingman — Randall Jarrell
  • The International Terminal — Les Murray
  • Day Flight — Jack Davis
  • The Day Flies Off Without Me — John Stammers
  • Topography — Sharon Olds
• Friendship and Loss (5 · 2002)
  • Sometimes it Happens — Brian Patten
  • Death of a Friendship — Harry Guest
  • The Floor and the Ceiling — William Jay Smith
  • A Poison Tree — William Blake
  • The Two Friends — Norman MacCaig
• Hate Rhymes (4 · 2001)
  • I Wish My Tongue were a Quiver — Louis Alexander MacKay
  • I Do Not Love Thee, Dr Fell — Tom Brown
  • Frustration — Dorothy Parker
  • The Mad Philosopher — Ambrose Bierce
• Hippopotamuses (6 · 2001–2004)
  • The Hippopotamus — Oliver Herford
  • Recipe for a Hippopotamus Sandwich — Shel Silverstein
  • The Hippopotamus — T S Eliot
  • On the Death of Smet-Smet, the Hippopotamus-Goddess — Rupert Brooke
  • The Hippopotamus — Ogden Nash
  • I Had a Hippopotamus — Patrick Barrington
• Immortal Narrative Poems (5 · 2002–2003)
  • The Green Eye of the Yellow God — J Milton Hayes
  • Waltzing Matilda — A B "Banjo" Paterson
  • The Shooting of Dan McGrew — Robert Service
  • Gunga Din — Rudyard Kipling
  • Jim Bludso of the Prairie Belle — John Hay
• Laments (3 · 1999)
  • Lament for Boromir — J R R Tolkien
  • Pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth — William Shakespeare
  • In Memory of W. B. Yeats — W H Auden
• Mathematics (8 · 2000–2003)
  • Geometry — Rita Dove
  • The Mouse's Tale — Lewis Carroll
  • Hall and Knight — E V Rieu
  • Euclid Alone Has Looked On Beauty Bare — Edna St Vincent Millay
  • Mathematical Problem — Bhaskaracharya
  • Math Is Beautiful and So Are You — Becky Dennison Sakellariou
  • Mathematicians at Work — Judith Saunders
  • Lobachevsky — Tom Lehrer
• Mining Disasters (3 · 2003)
  • Miners — Wilfred Owen
  • Ballad of Spring Hill (Spring Hill Disaster) — Peggy Seeger
  • The Explosion — Philip Larkin
• Monsters (4 · 2001)
  • The Kraken — Alfred, Lord Tennyson
  • Grendel — Anonymous
  • The Diatonic Dittymunch — Jack Prelutsky
  • Leviathan — Anonymous
• Named Verse Forms (6 · 2001)
  • The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina — Miller Williams
  • I will put Chaos into fourteen lines — Edna St Vincent Millay
  • To a Fat Lady Seen From the Train — Frances Cornford
  • Miss Charlotte Brown, Librarian, Goes Mad — Felix Jung
  • Haiku — Yosa Buson
  • The Limerick Packs Laughs Anatomical — Anonymous
• Noses (3 · 2000)
  • The Sniffle — Ogden Nash
  • Twenty Ways to Insult a Nose — Edmond Rostand
  • The Dong with a Luminous Nose — Edward Lear
• Old Favourites (3 · 1999)
  • Abou Ben Adhem — James Leigh Hunt
  • Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening — Robert Frost
  • O Captain! My Captain! — Walt Whitman
• Parodies and the Parodied (7 · 1999–2000)
  • The Raven — Edgar Allan Poe
  • The Major General's Song — W S Gilbert
  • Casey At The Bat — Ernest Lawrence Thayer
  • The Cantelope — Bayard Taylor
  • She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways — William Wordsworth
  • There Was an Old Man with a Beard — Edward Lear
  • Heraclitus — William Johnson Cory
• Poems about Poetry (6 · 1999)
  • By-the-Way — Patrick MacGill
  • Poetry for Supper — R S Thomas
  • Ars Poetica — Archibald MacLeish
  • dear Captain Poetry — bpNichol
  • Young Poets — Nicanor Parra
  • Sonnet with a Different Letter at the End of Every Line — George Starbuck
• Poems and Rock Music (3 · 1999)
  • Jerusalem — William Blake
  • To Whom It May Concern — Adrian Mitchell
  • Kubla Khan — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Poems at Work (8 · 2000)
  • The Former Miner Returns from His First Day as a Service Worker (at a McDonald's somewhere in Appalachia) — Mark Defoe
  • Back From Vacation — John Updike
  • Last Poems: XI — A E Housman
  • Office Friendships — Gavin Ewart
  • You Will Be Hearing From Us Shortly — U A Fanthorpe
  • Will Consider Situation — Ogden Nash
  • Executive — John Betjeman
  • Toads — Philip Larkin
• Poems by Fictional Characters (3 · 1999)
  • Cottleston Pie — A A Milne
  • Eärendil was a mariner — J R R Tolkien
  • Nostalgia - Now Threepence Off — Adrian Mitchell
• Poems by Prose Writers (10 · 1999–2003)
  • Missed — P G Wodehouse
  • The Guards Came Through — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  • Sorrows of Werther — William Makepeace Thackeray
  • Dedication — Salman Rushdie
  • Tricks with Mirrors — Margaret Atwood
  • It Isn't Time That's Passing — Ruskin Bond
  • Untitled — Tanith Lee
  • Christmas Eve — Bill Watterson
  • Ask to Embla, XIII — A S Byatt
  • An Old Sicilian Song — Dario Fo
• Poems in the Movies (9 · 2003)
  • The Ballad Of William Bloat — Raymond Calvert
  • My Lost Youth — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  • Wallace (extract) — Blind Harry
  • The Good-morrow — John Donne
  • Annabel Lee — Edgar Allan Poe
  • The Ballad of Yukon Jake — Edward E Paramore Jr
  • Splendour in the Grass — William Wordsworth
  • Not Waving But Drowning — Stevie Smith
  • Cherrylog Road — James Dickey
• Poems to Posterity (5 · 2003)
  • To A Poet A Thousand Years Hence — James Elroy Flecker
  • To My Wife - With A Copy Of My Poems — Oscar Wilde
  • Here Dead We Lie — A E Housman
  • Learn by Heart This Poem of Mine — George Faludy
  • The Gardener (LXXXV) — Rabindranath Tagore
• Poems Worth Memorising (15 · 2005)
  • Curly-locks — Traditional
  • Why so Pale and Wan? — John Suckling
  • The Bread-Knife Ballad — Robert Service
  • When in Disgrace with Fortune and Men's Eyes (Sonnet XXIX) — William Shakespeare
  • Patriotism — Sir Walter Scott
  • You, Andrew Marvell — Archibald MacLeish
  • Excerpts from a Father's Wisdom — A K Ramanujan
  • Learning — Judith Viorst
  • nobody loses all the time — e e cummings
  • Tithonus — Alfred, Lord Tennyson
  • The Pilgrim — John Bunyan
  • The Bells of Heaven — Ralph Hodgson
  • Do not Stand at my Grave and Weep — Mary Frye
  • The Chambered Nautilus — Oliver Wendell Holmes
  • Carmen XLVI — Gaius Valerius Catullus
• Poets on Poets (4 · 1999)
  • On Shakespear — John Milton
  • London, 1802 — William Wordsworth
  • The Lost Leader — Robert Browning
  • With a Book — Ambrose Bierce
• Red (3 · 1999)
  • Red Hanrahan's Song About Ireland — William Butler Yeats
  • A Red, Red Rose — Robert Burns
  • The Red Wheelbarrow — William Carlos Williams
• Rock Lyrics (9 · 1999–2001)
  • Mr.Tambourine Man — Bob Dylan
  • The Soul Cages — Gordon Matthew 'Sting' Sumner
  • Suzanne — Leonard Cohen
  • A Poem on the Underground Wall — Paul Simon
  • Reasons For Waiting — Ian Anderson
  • I Come and Stand at Every Door — Nazim Hikmet
  • Conquistador — Keith Reid
  • Joan of Arc — Leonard Cohen
  • Indiscipline — King Crimson
• Rome and the Romans (9 · 2000–2001)
  • Horatius — Thomas Babbington Macaulay
  • Roman Wall Blues — W H Auden
  • A Pict Song — Rudyard Kipling
  • The Fall of Rome — W H Auden
  • Lay of Ancient Rome — Thomas Ybarra
  • Night Is On The Downland — John Masefield
  • On Wenlock Edge The Wood's In Trouble — A E Housman
  • On His Queerness — Christopher Isherwood
  • A Likeness — Willa Sibert Cather
• Scientists on Science (7 · 2001)
  • The Perils of Modern Living — Harold P Furth
  • Big Whorls Have Little Whorls — Lewis F Richardson
  • V.B. Nimble, V.B. Quick — John Updike
  • In the Microscope — Miroslav Holub
  • A mosquito was heard to complain — Dr D D Perrin
  • The Word of God — Catherine Faber
  • Rigid Body Sings — James Maxwell
• Scotland (3 · 1999)
  • Bagpipe Music — Louis MacNeice
  • John Anderson My Jo — Robert Burns
  • Requiem — Robert Louis Stevenson
• Songs about Urban Life (4 · 2001)
  • Synchronicity II — Gordon Matthew 'Sting' Sumner
  • Town Called Malice — Paul Weller
  • Fast Food — Richard Thompson
  • Mother's Little Helper — Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
• Songs of Myself (3 · 1999)
  • I am Raftery the poet — Anthony Raftery
  • Hoochie Coochie Man — Willie Dixon
  • I am Taliesin. I sing perfect metre — Anonymous
• Songs of the City (3 · 2000)
  • Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 — William Wordsworth
  • Central Park at Dusk — Sara Teasdale
  • Rhapsody on a Windy Night — T S Eliot
• Summer Heat (4 · 2006)
  • Pagett, M.P. — Rudyard Kipling
  • Rain in Summer — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  • Mad Dogs and Englishmen — Noel Coward
  • Borderland — Henry Lawson
• The Mediterranean (4 · 1999)
  • Tarantella — Hilaire Belloc
  • Footsteps — Constantine Cavafy
  • The Pobble Who Has No Toes — Edward Lear
  • The Cool Web — Robert Graves
• The Moon (4 · 2001)
  • Full Moon and Little Frieda — Ted Hughes
  • Hymn to Diana — Ben Jonson
  • Silver — Walter de la Mare
  • Above the Dock — T E Hulme
• The Open Road (4 · 2000)
  • There is a pleasure in the pathless woods — George Gordon, Lord Byron
  • The Chilterns — Rupert Brooke
  • The Gipsy Girl — Ralph Hodgson
  • The Roman Road — Thomas Hardy
• The Pleasures of Strong Rhythm (6 · 2000)
  • Bees — Norman Rowland Gale
  • The Modern Hiawatha — George A Strong
  • Chant for Dark Hours — Dorothy Parker
  • The Metre Columbian — Anonymous
  • The King's Breakfast — A A Milne
  • Butterfly — S Thomas Ansell
• The Poet Cranky (6 · 2004)
  • The Curse — J M Synge
  • On Those that Hated the 'Playboy of the Western World', 1907 — William Butler Yeats
  • The Bloody Orkneys — Hamish Blair
  • Slough — John Betjeman
  • An Ethical Grook — Piet Hein
  • Thief — Robert Graves
• The Sea (12 · 1999–2002)
  • Sea Fever — John Masefield
  • The Sea and the Hills — Rudyard Kipling
  • Break, break, break — Alfred, Lord Tennyson
  • On the Beach at Night — Walt Whitman
  • Once by the Pacific — Robert Frost
  • A Grave — Marianne Moore
  • Prayer — Carol Ann Duffy
  • The Idea of Order at Key West — Wallace Stevens
  • The Lotos-Eaters — Alfred, Lord Tennyson
  • Sea Calm — Langston Hughes
  • Seascape — Stephen Spender
  • A Sea Dirge — Lewis Carroll
• The Silk Road (7 · 2000)
  • About Tu Fu — Li Po
  • Lament for Zenocrate — Christopher Marlowe
  • The Golden Road to Samarkand — James Elroy Flecker
  • The Tavern — Jalaluddin Rumi
  • The Persian Version — Robert Graves
  • The Gates of Damascus — James Elroy Flecker
  • In Harbor — Constantine Cavafy
• The Supernatural and the Macabre (4 · 2000–2002)
  • The Hag — Robert Herrick
  • Overheard on a Salmarsh — Harold Monro
  • The Last Man — Thomas Lovell Beddoes
  • Porphyria's Lover — Robert Browning
• The Trojan War (2 · 2000)
  • Helen — H D
  • Leda and the Swan — William Butler Yeats
• Thirteen Ways of Looking (4 · 2000)
  • Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird — Wallace Stevens
  • Thirteen Blackbirds Looking at a Man — R S Thomas
  • Ten Ways to Avoid Lending Your Wheelbarrow to Anybody — Adrian Mitchell
  • Twenty Ways to Insult a Nose — Edmond Rostand
• Triple Rhymes (2 · 2002)
  • The Soldiers of our Queen — W S Gilbert
  • Thais — Newman Levy
• Valentine's Day (10 · 2000–2005)
  • To Celia — Ben Jonson
  • The Passionate Shepherd to His Love — Christopher Marlowe
  • A blade of grass — Brian Patten
  • The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd — Sir Walter Raleigh
  • The Bait — John Donne
  • The Connoisseuse of Slugs — Sharon Olds
  • Second Honeymoon — Tony Scanlon
  • As Well as They Can — A D Hope
  • At Funchal (Island of Madeira) — Tomas Transtromer
  • Resignation — Nikki Giovanni
• Walt Whitman (4 · 1999)
  • A Supermarket in California — Allen Ginsberg
  • Whitman — Alfred Kreymborg
  • I Hear America Singing — Walt Whitman
  • Walt Whitman — Edwin Arlington Robinson
• War (10 · 2002–2003)
  • What the Bullet sang — Bret Harte
  • Pigtail — Tadeusz Ròzewicz
  • The Hand That Signed The Paper — Dylan Thomas
  • Range Finding — Robert Frost
  • The Last Laugh — Wilfred Owen
  • Epitaph on a tyrant — W H Auden
  • On Being Asked for a War Poem — William Butler Yeats
  • Causa Belli — Andrew Motion
  • War Song of the Saracens — James Elroy Flecker
  • The Young British Soldier — Rudyard Kipling