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 | data-sort-type="number" | 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 | ||
Sphere: The Form of a Motion | 1973 | ||||
Tape for the Turn of the Year | 1965 | ||||
Flow Chart | 1991 | ||||
The Fall of Nineveh | 1828-1868 | blank verse | |||
Israel in Egypt | 1861 | blank verse | |||
The Age of Anxiety | 1944-46 | ||||
1951 | lines | blank verse | |||
Anonymous | Beowulf | 3,182 lines | alliterative verse | ||
John Brown's Body | 1930 | lines | various | ||
Eliza | 1705 | lines | heroic couplet | ||
Redemption | 1722 | ||||
The Spirit of Discovery; or, the Conquest of Ocean | 1804 | blank verse | |||
Nimrod | 1910 | blank verse | |||
Aurora Leigh | 1856 | 10,938 lines | blank verse | ||
Sordello | 1840 | heroic couplet | |||
The Ring and the Book | 1868-69 | lines | blank verse | ||
Fifine at the Fair | 1872 | 2,530 lines | alexandrine couplets | ||
Redemption, a Poem | 1857 | blank verse | |||
Messiah's Kingdom | 1833 | lines | heroic couplet | ||
Don Juan | 1824 | 15,920 lines | ottava rima | ||
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage | 1812-18 | 4,455 lines | Spenserian stanza | ||
Troilus and Criseyde | 8,239 lines | rhyme royal | |||
The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich | 1848 | hexameter | |||
The Task | 1785 | blank verse | |||
The Bridge | 1930 | ||||
Anonymous | Cursor Mundi | lines, depending on manuscript | primarily eight-syllable couplets | ||
Helen in Egypt | 1961 | ||||
Trilogy | 1944-46 | ||||
Gondibert | 1651 | 6,940 lines | decasyllabic quatrains | ||
The Zodiac | 1976 | ||||
Gunslinger | 1989 | ||||
The Barons' Wars | 1603 | 3,624 lines | ottava rima | ||
The Battle of Trafalgar | 1806 | heroic couplet | |||
The Structure of Rime | 1960 | ||||
Passages | 1968 | ||||
Poly-Olbion | 1612; 1622 | 15,000 lines | alexandrine | ||
The Hind and the Panther | 1687 | 2,569 lines | heroic couplet | ||
Pinion | 2002 | ||||
King Alfred | 1841 | lines[1] | blank verse | ||
Cleanness | 1,813 lines | alliterative verse | |||
Pearl | 1212 lines | alliterative verse | |||
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight | 2,530 lines | alliterative verse | |||
Anonymous | Generides | 6696 lines | rhyme royal | ||
Leonidas | 1737 | blank verse | |||
Gower, John | Confessio Amantis | 33,000 lines | rhymed couplets | ||
Fotheringhay | 1995 | ||||
Gascoigne's Egg | 2000 | ||||
Omm Sety | 2001 | ||||
The Silence | 2019 | ||||
Regiment of Princes | 1410–1413 | 5,464 lines | Seven-line decasyllabic rhymed stanzas | ||
The Liberties | 1980 | ||||
Montage of a Dream Deferred | 1951 | ||||
The Anathemata | 1952 | ||||
In Parenthesis | 1937 | ||||
Trial of Christ in Seven Stages | 1909 | blank verse | |||
Vashti | 1894 | blank verse | |||
Endymion | 1818 | heroic couplet | |||
Anonymous | King Alisaunder | 4,000 lines | octosyllabic couplets | ||
Anonymous | King Horn | 1,650 lines | rhyming couplets with occasional alliterative metre | ||
Piers Plowman | lines | alliterative metre | |||
Anonymous | Laud Troy Book | 18,664 lines | tetrameter couplets | ||
The Story of Judeth | 1889 | heroic couplet | |||
Brut | lines[2] | alliterative verse with rhyme | |||
The Fall of the Princes | 1431-1439 | 36,365 lines | rhyme royal | ||
Troy Book | 1412–20 | 30,117 lines | ten-syllable couplets | ||
Evangeline | 1847 | 1396 lines | hexameter | ||
The Song of Hiawatha | 1855 | 5,414 lines | octosyllable | ||
Handlyng Synne | lines | four-stress rhyme royal | |||
Dauber | 1912 | rhyme royal | |||
The Red Eagle. A Poem of the South | 1855 | ||||
Clarel | 1876 | 18,000 lines | irregularly rhymed iambic tetrameter | ||
The Wanderer of Scandinavia, or Sweden Delivered | 1826 | Spenserian stanza | |||
Paradise Lost | 1667 | 10,565 lines | blank verse | ||
Paradise Regained | 1671 | 2,070 lines | blank verse | ||
Samson Agonistes | 1671 | 1,758 lines | blank verse | ||
Elijah the Prophet | 1866 | blank verse | |||
The Earthly Paradise | 1868-1870 | various | |||
The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs | 1876 | 10,000+ lines | alliterative verse | ||
Britannia | 1801 | blank verse | |||
Maximus Poems | 1953–1975 | ||||
Ormulum | 1150–1180 | 18,956 lines | unrhymed strict heptameter | ||
Inside the Whale | 2011 | ||||
Cantos | 1915-62 | free verse | |||
Anonymous | lines | octosyllabic couplets | |||
Merlin | 1917 | lines | blank verse | ||
Seymer, John Gunning | The Fall of Saul | 1839 | blank verse | ||
The Rape of Lucrece | 1594 | 1,855 lines | rhyme royal | ||
Queen Mab | 1813 | 2,289 lines | |||
The Revolt of Islam | 1817 | 4,818 lines | Spenserian stanza | ||
Joan of Arc | 1796 | ||||
Thalaba the Destroyer | 1801 | ||||
Madoc | 1805 | ||||
Roderick the Last of the Goths | 1814 | ||||
The Faerie Queene[3] | 1590, 1596 | 34,928 lines | Spenserian stanza | ||
The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You | 1977 | 15,283 lines | |||
Stanzas in Meditation | 1956 | ||||
Tristram of Lyonesse | 1882 | 4,488 lines | heroic couplet | ||
The Castle of Indolence | 1748 | 1,422 lines | Spenserian stanza | ||
The Seasons | 1730 | 5,405 lines | blank verse | ||
Psyche, or the Legend of Love[4] | 1805 | 3,348 lines | Spenserian stanza | ||
The Lay of Leithian | 1985 | 4,223 lines | rhyming couplets | ||
The Lay of the Children of Húrin | 1985 | 2,276 lines | alliterative verse | ||
Harlem Gallery | 1965 | ||||
Armageddon | 1815 | blank verse | |||
Omeros | 1990 | terza rima, free verse | |||
Song of Myself | 1881 | 1346 lines | |||
, said the shotgun to the head | 2006 | ||||
Paterson | 1946-58 | ||||
The Prelude | 1850 | blank verse | |||
"A" | 1928-78 | free verse |