This compact anthology contains many of the best works of 59 poets writing in English—from the complex rhyme schemes of Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser and lovely sonnets of the preeminent English poet and playwright William Shakespeare to William Blake's visionary works and John Keats' profound insights into the nature of beauty, art, and mortality.

Here also are beloved poems by Christopher Marlowe, John Donne, William Wordsworth, Robert Browning, Christina Rossetti, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Burns, William Butler Yeats, Rupert Brooke, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and 43 other great English, Irish, and Scottish writers.

In addition to a concise introduction, this volume provides brief commentaries on the poets represented. The result is a carefully selected anthology that will be studied and treasured by students and poetry lovers alike.