There are 200 poems to explore in this collection—poems about love, and war; songs of the sea; tales of magic and adventure; rhythmic rhapsodies; nonsense verse; descriptions of the world (and the creatures in it), and of the seasons, and the soul.

Many of the poems here will be familiar to you already. We have ransacked the common treasure hoard of “classics”, collecting those best-known, and best-loved masterpieces that have long stood the test of time. But we have also explored further beneath the mountain, and unearthed some rarer gems.

You may enter the collection through the front door if you wish; the very first poem provides a key. But do not feel compelled to proceed directly forward. Those readers who best explore a collection of verse, do so as though in possession of map which, while appearing to guide their footsteps, is revealed on closer inspection to be a perfect and absolute blank.

This book is organized thematically, with 10 poems for each of the following 20 themes:

1) Magic and Wonder

2) Animalia: Mammals

3) Animalia: Birds

4) Animalia: Creep, Crawl, and Fly

5) Love and Friendship

6) War and Conflict

7) The Natural World

8) Life and Inspiration

9) Sadness and Remembrance

10) Journeys and Adventures

11) Tales and Songs

12) Songs of the Sea

13) Reflecting on Things

14) Humour and Curiosities

15) Nonsense

16) Miniatures

17) Stars, Moon, and Night

18) Sleep, Dreams, and Lullabies

19) The Year Round; Spring and Summer

20) The Year Round; Autumn and Winter

Included are masterpieces by Christina Rossetti, Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Emily Dickinson, Robert Burns, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Sara Teasdale, William Blake, Byron, Robert Frost and many other outstanding poets. Please view the preview of this book for a full listing.

At Elsinore Books we pride ourselves on creating beautiful e-books, and devote great attention to formatting, and ease of navigation. This book contains a cleanly-styled contents page that permits easy movement between the poems.

This book is part of the Best of Poetry series, which also includes:

The Best of Poetry: Thoughts that Breathe and Words that Burn

The Best of Poetry: Shakespeare, Muse of Fire