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
Gilgamesh
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.... Critique • Quotes • Translations • Buy
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
Iliad
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.... Critique • Quotes • Text • Translations • Buy
The Odyssey
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.... Critique • Quotes • Translations • Buy
c.700
Theogony
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.... Critique • Quotes • Buy
Works and Days
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.... Critique • Quotes • Buy
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
Poem in three books
CE
c.8
The Book of Days
Poem in six books, also known as On the Roman Calendar
c.8
Metamorphoses
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.... Critique • Quotes • Translations • Buy
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
Beowulf
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.... Critique • Quotes • Text • Translations • At the movies • Buy
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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
Poem
1712–1714
The Rape of the Lock
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.... Critique • Quotes • Buy
1723
La Henriade
by Voltaire, France
Epic poem
1728–1742
The Dunciad
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
The Waste Land
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.... Critique • Quotes • Buy
1930
The Bridge
by Hart Crane, United States
Poem
1940–1942
Four Quartets
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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