Sherry at Semicolon is going to do a top 100 classic poems list, beginning in April, which is National Poetry Month, and wants readers to submit their ten favorite works of poetry, long or short, by March 26. (Thanks to Cindy for the link.)
I've decided to participate, but I'm still narrowing down my favorites and ranking them. GK Chesterton's The Ballad of the White Horse is #1 and John Donne's "The Sunne Rising" is #2, but I'm still shuffling the others around. Here's how it stands today:
1. GK Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse (pub. 1911)
2. John Donne, "The Sunne Rising" (pub. posthumously 1635)
3. Robert Louis Stevenson, "Escape at Bedtime" (1883)
4. Edgar Allan Poe, "Eldorado" (1849)
5. Richard Lovelace, "To Lucasta: On Going to the Wars" (1649)
6. William Wordsworth, "The world is too much with us" (1807)
7. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King, (1859 - 1885)
8. George MacDonald, "The Wind and the Moon" (1883)
9. Gerard Manley Hopkins, "The Windhover" (1877)
10. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "The Eagle" (1851)
Since I've already got one Tennyson on the list, I think I might drop #10 for something a little more highbrow, like a sonnet by Shakespeare or Sidney, to help balance out the children's poems. ;-)
What do y'all think? Any favorites you'd like to share?
