Poets have often written about the days of chivalry, giving us gripping narrative poems about noble knights and brave kings, or romantic lyrics about knights saving damsels … or being brought under seductive women’s spells. Below, we introduce ten of the very best poems about chivalry, knights, and noble deeds […]
Poets have written about houses, palaces, museums, towers, churches, and much else besides. Below, we introduce ten of our favourite poems about buildings and structures of various kinds. From sacred spaces to haunted houses, these buildings feature in some of the finest poems on the subject – but are there […]
Matthew Arnold (1822-88) was a fine Victorian poet and critic who also wrote the classic poem ‘Dover Beach’. ‘The Forsaken Merman’ is a less famous poem than that, but it’s an interesting narrative poem about – you guessed it – a merman (or ‘male mermaid’) who is forsaken by his […]
‘Now fades the last long streak of snow’: this canto, Canto CXV from Alfred, Lord Tennyson‘s long elegy In Memoriam A. H. H. (1850) – written in memory of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam – offers a bittersweet take on the arrival of spring. What grows in the speaker’s breast […]
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) is not now principally known for his poetry (indeed, it might be said that he is still less famous for his writings than he is for … having been Oscar Wilde), and his one enduringly famous poem is ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’. However, early in his […]