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Poetry Explained. Classic poetry with explanatory annotations

How it Works

Detailed Annotations

Detailed Annotations

Word definitions are one click away with our comprehensive in-text annotations.

Modern Translations

Modern Translations

Read classic poems alongside carefully crafted modern translations that break down meaning and enhance comprehension.

Cultural & Historical Context

Cultural & Historical Context

We help you get the most out of our poems by providing all the important cultural and historical context.

Recent Poems

To Sleep

O soft embalmer of the still midnight, Shutting, with careful fingers and benign, Our…
John Keats

Bright star, would I were as steadfast as thou art

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art— Not in lone splendour hung aloft the…
John Keats

In drear nighted December

In drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy tree, Thy branches ne’er remember Their g…
John Keats

On the Grasshopper and Cricket

The Poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And…
John Keats

On Leaving Some Friends at an Early Hour

Give me a golden pen, and let me lean On heaped up flowers, in regions clear, and far…
John Keats

Song: "I had a dove and the sweet dove died"

I had a dove and the sweet dove died; And I have thought it died of grieving: O, what…
John Keats
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Featured Poems

John William Waterhouse A Song of Springtime scaled

To Daffodils

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see You haste away so soon; As ye…
Robert Herrick
gather ye rosebuds while ye may scaled

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old time is still a-flying;…
Robert Herrick
home again 1884 Frederick McCubbin

Jenny Kiss'd Me

Jenny kissed me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat…
Leigh Hunt
Paul Sandby Bridgenorth Shropshire Google Art Project scaled

A Shropshire Lad, XL "Into my heart an air that kills"

Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows:…
A. E. Housman
Andrea Mantegna 022

Gethsemane

The Garden called Gethsemane In Picardy it was, And there th…
Rudyard Kipling
Waterhouse John William Saint Cecilia 1895 scaled

To Music

Begin to charm, and, as thou strok’st mine ears With thy enc…
Robert Herrick
John Everett Millais 1829 1896 The Boyhood of Raleigh N01691 National Gallery

Even Such is Time

Even such is time, which takes in trust Our youth, our joys,…
Sir Walter Raleigh
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© 2026 Poetry Explained. All rights reserved

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