Recommendations

10 Classic Poems about Evening Everyone Should Read

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By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

From sunsets to twilight and dusky moments, poets have often focused on that time of day when the light is fading, and mused upon the significance of it. Below are ten of the best evening poems, anti-aubades (aubades, from the French for dawn, are poems about the other end of the day), whether literal or metaphorical evenings.

The finest poems about the evening often consider both the literal evening and the broader significance of such a time of day. So, as the light is fading, let us begin …

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10 of the Best ‘Seize the Day’ Poems in English

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By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Carpe diem: seize the day. The Roman poet Horace said it first and said it best, as with so many things. Yet many English poets have put their distinctive stamp on the carpe diem motif, exhorting us to seize the day, to make the most of life, to ‘gather ye rosebuds while ye may’, in Robert Herrick’s well-known phrase, or to ‘Stop and consider! Life is but a day’, as Keats has it in ‘Sleep and Poetry’.

Below we’ve gathered together ten of our favourite ‘carpe diem’ poems in English, all of which warn us about the brevity of life and encourage us to get on with it while we still can.

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10 Very Short Renaissance Poems Everyone Should Read

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By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Below is our pick of some of the finest very short poems from the Renaissance. We’ve had to exclude several favourites, such as Tichborne’s Elegy and the anonymous song ‘Weep you no more sad fountaines’, since they are just a little too long for our self-imposed 14-line limit – but we had to draw the line somewhere, and the length of a traditional sonnet seems appropriate, given that that verse form flourished during the Renaissance.

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10 of the Best Poems about London

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By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Poetry is perhaps more readily associated with the natural world and the countryside than the world of smog and streets, shops and tower blocks, that we call the city. But throughout the history of English literature, famous poets have been drawn to the city of London as a subject for poetry – and so below we have chosen ten of the best poems about London, from the Middle Ages to the modern age. What do you think are the finest London poems?

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