List of long poems in English
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This is a list of English poems over 1000 lines. This list includes poems that are generally identified as part of the long poem genre, being considerable in length, and with that length enhancing the poems' meaning or thematic weight. This alphabetical list is incomplete, as the label of long poem is selectively and inconsistently applied in literary academia.
| Poet | Poem | Year published | Length | Verse form |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Algerton, Frank C. | Columbia: an Epic Poem on the Late Civil War between the Northern and Southern States of North America | 1893 | heroic couplet | |
| Ammons, A. R. | Sphere: The Form of a Motion | 1973 | ||
| Ammons, A. R. | Tape for the Turn of the Year | |||
| Ashbery, John | Flow Chart | 1991 | ||
| Atherstone, Edwin | The Fall of Nineveh | 1828-1868 | blank verse | |
| Atherstone, Edwin | Israel in Egypt | 1861 | c. 20,000 | blank verse |
| Auden, W.H. | The Age of Anxiety | 1944-46 | c. 2,500 | |
| Aurobindo, Sri | Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol | 1951 | c. 24,000 lines | blank verse |
| Anonymous | Beowulf | 8th-11th Century | 3,182 lines | alliterative metre |
| Benét, Stephen Vincent | John Brown's Body | 1930 | c. 15,000 lines | various |
| Blackmore, Richard | Eliza | 1705 | c. 8,000 lines | heroic couplet |
| Blackmore, Richard | Redemption | 1722 | ||
| Bowles, William Lisle | The Spirit of Discovery; or, the Conquest of Ocean | 1804 | blank verse | |
| Branch, Anna Hempstead | Nimrod | 1910 | blank verse | |
| Browning, Elizabeth Barrett | Aurora Leigh | 1856 | 10,938 lines | blank verse |
| Browning, Robert | Sordello | 1840 | heroic couplet | |
| Browning, Robert | The Ring and the Book | 1868-69 | c. 21,000 lines | blank verse |
| Bryant, John Delavau | Redemption, a Poem | 1857 | blank verse | |
| Bulmer, Agnes | Messiah's Kingdom | 1833 | c. 14,000 lines | heroic couplet |
| Byron, Lord | Don Juan | 1824 | 15,920 lines | ottava rima |
| Byron, Lord | Childe Harold's Pilgrimage | 1812-18 | 4,455 lines | Spenserian stanza |
| Chaucer, Geoffrey | Troilus and Criseyde | c. 1380 | 8,239 lines | Rhyme royal |
| Clough, Arthur Hugh | The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich | 1848 | c. 1,870 | hexameter |
| Cowper, William | The Task | 1785 | blank verse | |
| Crane, Hart | The Bridge | 1930 | ||
| Anonymous | Cursor Mundi | c. 1300 | ||
| H.D. | Helen in Egypt | |||
| H.D. | Trilogy | 1944-46 | ||
| Davenant, William | Gondibert | 1651 | ||
| Dickey, James | The Zodiac | 1976 | ||
| Dorn, Edward | Gunslinger | 1989 | ||
| Drayton, Michael | The Barons' Wars | 1603 | ottava rima | |
| Drummond, William Hamilton | The Battle of Trafalgar | 1806 | heroic couplet | |
| Duncan, Robert | The Structure of Rime | |||
| Duncan, Robert | Passages | |||
| Drayton, Michael | Poly-Olbion | 1612; 1622 | 15,000 lines | alexandrine |
| Emerson, Claudia | Pinion | |||
| Fitchett, John | King Alfred | 1841 | c. 131,000 lines[1] | blank verse |
| Glover, Richard | Leonidas | 1737 | blank verse | |
| Gower, John | Confessio Amantis | c. 1390 | 33,000 | rhymed couplets |
| Grahn, Judy | The Chronicle of Queens | |||
| Greening, John | Fotheringhay | 1995 | ||
| Greening, John | Gascoigne's Egg | 2000 | ||
| Greening, John | Omm Sety | 2001 | ||
| Greening, John | The Silence | 2019 | ||
| Howe, Susan | The Liberties | |||
| Hughes, Langston | Montage of a Dream Deferred | |||
| Jones, David | The Anathemata | |||
| Jones, David | In Parenthesis | 1937 | ||
| Kaye, John Brayshaw | Trial of Christ in Seven Stages | 1909 | blank verse | |
| Kaye, John Brayshaw | Vashti | 1894 | blank verse | |
| Keats, John | Endymion | 1818 | c. 4,100 | heroic couplet |
| Langland, William | Piers Plowman | c. 1370-90 | c. 7,300 lines | alliterative metre |
| Lawrance, William Vicars | The Story of Judeth | 1889 | heroic couplet | |
| Layamon | Brut | c. 1190-1215 | 16, 095 | alliterative verse |
| Lydgate, John | The Fall of the Princes | 1431-1439 | 36,365 lines | rhyme royal |
| Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth | Evangeline | 1847 | 1396 lines | hexameter |
| Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth | The Song of Hiawatha | 1855 | 5,414 lines | octosyllable |
| Masefield, John | Dauber | 1912 | rhyme royal | |
| Meek, Alexander Beaufort | The Red Eagle. A Poem of the South | 1855 | ||
| Melville, Herman | Clarel | 1876 | 18,000 lines | |
| Miles, Sibella Elizabeth | The Wanderer of Scandinavia, or Sweden Delivered | 1826 | Spenserian stanza | |
| Milton, John | Paradise Lost | 1667 | 10,565 lines | blank verse |
| Milton, John | Paradise Regained | 1671 | 2,070 lines | blank verse |
| Milton, John | Samson Agonistes | 1671 | 1,758 lines | blank verse |
| Moon, George Washington | Elijah the Prophet | 1866 | blank verse | |
| Morris, William | The Earthly Paradise | 1868-1870 | various | |
| Morris, William | The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs | 1876 | 10,000+ lines | alliterative verse |
| Ogilvie, John | Britannia | 1801 | blank verse | |
| Olson, Charles | Maximus Poems | |||
| Anonymous | Pearl | 14th century | 1212 | alliterative verse |
| Peterson, Joseph G. | Inside the Whale | 2011 | ||
| Pound, Ezra | Cantos | 1915-62 | free verse | |
| Robinson, Edwin Arlington | Merlin | 1917 | c. 2,560 lines | blank verse |
| Seymer, John Gunning | The Fall of Saul | 1839 | blank verse | |
| Shelley, Percy Bysshe | Queen Mab | 1813 | 2,289 lines | |
| Shelley, Percy Bysshe | The Revolt of Islam | 1817 | 4,818 lines | Spenserian stanza |
| Anonymous | Sir Gawain and the Green Knight | 14th century | 2,530 | alliterative verse |
| Southey, Robert | Joan of Arc | 1796 | ||
| Southey, Robert | Thalaba the Destroyer | 1801 | ||
| Southey, Robert | Madoc | 1805 | ||
| Southey, Robert | Roderick the Last of the Goths | 1814 | ||
| Spenser, Edmund | The Faerie Queene[2] | 1590, 1596 | 34,928 lines | Spenserian stanza |
| Stanford, Frank | The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You | 1977 | 15,283 lines | |
| Stein, Gertrude | Stanzas in Meditation | 1956 | ||
| Swinburne, Algernon Charles | Tristram of Lyonesse | 1882 | 4,488 lines | heroic couplet |
| Thomson, James | The Castle of Indolence | 1748 | Spenserian stanza | |
| Thomson, James | The Seasons | 1730 | blank verse | |
| Tighe, Mary | Psyche, or the Legend of Love[3] | 1805 | 3,348 lines | Spenserian stanza |
| Tolkien, J. R. R. | The Lay of Leithian | 1985 | 4,223 lines | rhyming couplets |
| Tolkien, J. R. R. | The Lay of the Children of Húrin | 1985 | 2,276 lines | alliterative verse |
| Tolson, Melvin B. | Harlem Gallery | 1965 | ||
| Townsend, George | Armageddon | 1815 | blank verse | |
| Walcott, Derek | Omeros | 1990 | c. 8,000 | terza rima, free verse |
| Whitman, Walt | Song of Myself | 1881 | 1346 lines | |
| Williams, Saul | , said the shotgun to the head | |||
| Williams, William Carlos | Paterson | 1946-58 | ||
| Wordsworth, William | The Prelude | 1850 | blank verse | |
| Zukofsky, Louis | "A" |