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The 111 Greatest Long Poems

This selection of works is based on the continuing research carried out for the Greatest Literature of All Time list with additional research into sources concerning epics and other kinds of extended poetry.

A rule of thumb for the long poems listed here, contrasted with the verse on the Greatest Short Poems list, is that these generally are not read or appreciated in single sittings—usually having more than 2,500 words. These long poems tend to present multiple moods and themes, with more elaborate or complex narratives than found in short poetry.

We also differentiate what we call long poems, which can run to book length, from collections of shorter poems that are noted in their own list. However, the categories can overlap and subjective judgments are sometimes needed.

Latest update: January 28, 2025

BCE
c.2100–1200
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Gilgamesh
by Anonymous, Babylon
Epic poem, also known as The Epic of Gilgamesh or He Who Saw the Deep

It's maybe not the oldest story in the world, as The Epic of Gilgamesh is sometimes called. There had been other stories floating around the ancient world before the various versions of Gilgamesh, and who knows.... CritiqueQuotesTranslationsBuy

c.2100–2000
 
Descent of Inanna into the Underworld
Anonymous, Sumer
Epic poem, also known as Descent of Ishtar into the Underworld or Angalta
c.750
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Iliad
by Homer, Greece
Epic poem

Many notable literary figures have acclaimed the Iliad as a transporting work of art. I don't entirely get it. Even after having read several different translations of the epic poem. I suspect any.... CritiqueQuotesTextTranslationsBuy

 
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The Odyssey
by Homer, Greece
Epic poem

This one has it all. The Odyssey is not only a great romantic, adventure epic, but it's terribly realistic in its depiction of human nature and a brilliantly crafted narrative. Authors today could learn from.... CritiqueQuotesTranslationsBuy

c.700
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Theogony
by Hesiod, Greece
Poem

The greatest thing about Hesiod's Theogony is that it's short. It was important to the ancient world for other reasons as well, but this does not translate into a particularly rich experience for modern readers. Unless they're.... CritiqueQuotesBuy

 
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Works and Days
by Hesiod, Greece
Poem

Works and Days is so different from Theogony that many scholars think it couldn't have been composed by the same author. Which sounds like welcome news for anyone who yawned through Theogony and now faces the.... CritiqueQuotesBuy

c.600 BCE–200 CE
 
Ramayana
by Valmiki, India
Poem
c.400 BCE–400 CE
 
Mahabharata
by Vyasa Vyasa, India
Poem
c.270–240
 
Aetia
by Callimachus, Greece
Poem
c.250
 
Song of Songs
Anonymous, Niddle East
Poem
 
 
Voyage of the Argonauts
by Apollonius of Rhodes, Greece
Epic poem
c.50
 
On the Nature of Things
by Lucretius, Rome
Epic poem
29
 
Georgics
by Virgil, Rome
Poem
19
 
The Art of Poetry
by Horace, Rome
Poem
c.29-19
 
Aeneid
by Virgil, Rome
Epic poem
c. 10
 
Art of Love
by Ovid, Rome
Poem in three books
CE
c.8
 
The Book of Days
by Ovid, Rome
Poem in six books, also known as On the Roman Calendar
c.8
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Metamorphoses
by Ovid, Rome
Poem

My first reaction to Ovid's Metamorphoses was mystification. This was one of the great books of Western culture. Ovid was said to be wickedly delightful to read compared to other ancients. And I was reading.... CritiqueQuotesTranslationsBuy

92
 
Thebaid
by Statius, Rome
Epic poem
c.500
 
Hero and Leander
by Musaeus Grammaticus, Greece
Poem
 
 
The Tale of an Anklet
by Iḷaṅkõ Aṭikaḷ, India
Epic poem
61–65
 
Pharsalia
by Lucan, Rome
Epic poem, also known as On the Civil War
c.79
 
Argonautica
by Valerius Flaccus, Rome
Epic poem
c.700
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Beowulf
by Anonymous, England
Epic poem

It wasn't called Beowulf until 1805 and was not printed till 1815, more than a millennium after its appearance in manuscript. But to early Anglo-Saxons, the slaying of the monster Grendel and Grendel's.... CritiqueQuotesTextTranslationsAt the moviesBuy

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977–1010
 
The Book of Kings
by Ferdowsi, Persia
Epic poem, originally Shahnameh
c.1000–1300
 
The Poetic Edda
Anonymous, Iceland
Epic poem
c.1100
 
The Song of Roland
Anonymous, France
Poem, originally La chanson de Roland
c.1177–1181
 
Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart
Chrétien de Troyes, France
Epic poem, originally Lancelot, le Chevalier de la Charrette
c.1140
 
The Poem of the Cid
Anonymous, Spain
Epic poem, originally El Cantar de mio Cid
c.1140-1150
 
King Rother
Anonymous, Germany
Epic poem
c.1200
 
Nibelungenlied
Anonymous, Germany
Epic poem, also known as The Song of the Nibelungs, originally Der Nibelunge nôt
1210
 
Tristan und Isolde
by Gottfied von Strassburg, Germany
Epic poem
1230–1275
 
The Romance of the Rose
by Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meun, France
Epic poem, originally Le Roman de la rose
c.1250
 
Mathnawi
by Rumi, Persia
Poem
1280
 
The Owl and the Nightingale
by Anonymous, England
Poem
1307
 
The Divine Comedy
by Alighieri Dante, Italy
Epic poem
1330–1343
 
The Book of Good Love
by Juan Ruiz, Spain
Long poem
1362
 
The Vision of Piers the Ploughman
by William Langland, England
Poem, also known as Piers Plowman
c.1380
 
Pearl
Anonymous, England
Poem
c.1382–1386
 
Troilus and Cressida
by Geoffrey Chaucer, England
Poem
1387
 
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Anonymous, England
Poem
1483–1495
 
Orlando Innamorato
by Matteo Maria Boiardo, Italy
Poem

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1501
 
Judita
by Marko Marulić, Croatia
Poem
1516–1532
 
Orlando Furioso
by Ludovico Ariosto, Italy
Epic poem
1569–1589
 
The Araucaniad
by Alonso Ercilla, Spain
Poem
1572
 
Franciade
by Pierre de Ronsard, France
Epic poem
 
 
The Lusiads
by Luís de Camões, Portugal
Poem, originally Os Lusíadas
1589
 
The Faerie Queene
by Edmund Spenser, England
Poem
1591
 
Astrophel and Stella
by Philip Sidney, England
Poem
1613
 
Solitudes
by Luis de Góngora, Spain
Poem, originally Soledads
1616
 
Les Tragiques
by Agrippa D'Aubigné, France
Epic poem
1667
 
Paradise Lost
by John Milton, England
Poem
1671
 
Samson Agonistes
by John Milton, England
Poem
1711
 
An Essay on Criticism
by Alexander Pope, England
Poem
1712–1714
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The Rape of the Lock
by Alexander Pope, England
Mock epic poem

I'm not sure why The Rape of the Lock is Alexander Pope's most famous poem. I understand why it might have been popular in its day. It satirizes an incident that was infamous in a certain aristocratic crowd.... CritiqueQuotesBuy

1723
 
La Henriade
by Voltaire, France
Epic poem
1728–1742
 
The Dunciad
by Alexander Pope, England
Epic poem
1785
 
The Task
by William Cowper, England
Poem
c. 1792
 
The Epic of Manas
Anonymous, Kyrgys
Poem
1798
 
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, England
Poem

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1805
 
The Lay of the Last Minstrel
by Walter Scott, Scotland
Poem, also known as Lover of the Country
1810
 
The Lady of the Lake
by Walter Scott, Scotland
Epic poem
1812–1818
 
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
by George Gordon Byron, England
Poem
1818
 
Endymion
by John Keats, England
Poem
1819–1824
 
Don Juan
by George Gordon Byron, England
Epic poem
1820
 
Prometheus Unbound
by Percy Bysshe Shelley, England
Poem
 
 
Ruslan and Ludmila
by Alexander Pushkin, Russia
Epic poem
1822
 
The Vision of Judgment
by George Gordon Byron, England
Poem
1823
 
The Fountain of Bakhchisaray
by Alexander Pushkin, Russia
Poem
1824
 
Julian and Maddalo
by Percy Bysshe Shelley, England
Poem
1834
 
Master Thaddeus
by Adam Mickiewicz, Poland
Poem
1835–1849
 
Kalevala
by Elias Lönnrot, Poland
Epic poem
1836
 
May
by Karel Hynek Mácha, Czech
Poem
1837
 
The Bronze Horseman
by Alexander Pushkin, Russia
Epic poem
1842
 
Horatius
by Thomas Babington Macauley, England
Poem
 
 
Demon
by Mikhail Lermontov, Russia
Poem
1844
 
GErmany. A Winter's Tale
by Heinrich Heine, Germany
Epic poem, originally Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen
1847
 
Evangeline
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, United States
Epic poem
1850
 
Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day
by Robert Browning, England
Poem
 
 
In Memoriam A.H.H.
by Alfred Lord Tennyson, England
Poem
 
 
The Prelude or, Growth of a Poet's Mind
by William Wordsworth, England
Poem
1853–1862
 
Kalev's Son
by Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald, Estonia
Poem
1855
 
The Song of Hiawatha
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, United States
Epic poem
1856
 
Aurora Leigh
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, England
Poem
1862
 
Goblin Market
by Christina Rossetti, England
Poem
1868–1869
 
The Ring and the Book
by Robert Browning, England
Poem
 
 
The Songs of Maldoror
by Comte de Lautréamont, France
Poem
1870–1881
 
The House of Life
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, England
Poem
1872–1879
 
Martín Fierro
by José Hernández, Argentina
Poem
1873
 
A Season in Hell
by Arthur Rimbaud, France
Poem
1876
 
The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs
by William Morris, England
Epic prose narrative, also known as Saga of the Völsungs
1896
 
The Fruits of the Earth
by André Gide, France
Poem
1897
 
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
by Oscar Wilde, Ireland
Poem

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1914
 
Platero and I
by Juan Ramón Jiménez, Spain, Prose poem
1915
 
A Cloud in Trousers
by Vladimir Mayakovsky, Russia
Poem, originally Oblako v shtanakh
1918
 
The Twelve
by Alexander Blok, Russia
Poem
1922
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The Waste Land
by T.S. Eliot, England
Poem

Eliot's masterwork? The poetic masterpiece of the twentieth century? Here's the problem I have with that: I don't like reading The Waste Land. It's hard. Lines in foreign languages. References to classical literature.... CritiqueQuotesBuy

1930
 
The Bridge
by Hart Crane, United States
Poem
1940–1942
 
Four Quartets
by T.S. Eliot, England
Poem
1944
 
Arcanum 17
by André Breton, France
Poem
1947
 
The Heights of Macchu Piccu
by Pablo Neruda, Chile
Poem
 
 
The Age of Anxiety
by W.H. Auden, England
Poem
1956
 
Aniara
by Harry Martinson, Sweden
Epic poem
 
 
Howl
by Allen Ginsberg, United States
Poem
1957
 
Sunstone
by Octavio Paz, Mexico
Poem
1961
 
Kaddish
by Allen Ginsberg, United States
Poem
1966
 
Song of Lawino
by Okot p'Bitek, Uganda
Poem
1973
 
Moscow–Petushki
by Venedikt Yerofeyev, Russia
Prose poem, also known as Moscow to the End of the Line, Moscow Stations or Moscow Circles
1976–1980
 
The Changing Light at Sandover
by James Merrill, United States
Poem
1990
 
Omeros
by Derek Walcott, St. Lucia
Epic poem
2014
 
Citizen: An American Lyric
by Claudia Rankine, United States
Long poem

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