Great Sonnets

One of the most powerfully moving and evocative forms of poetry, the sonnet has been popular for more than 450 years. Unlike many other poetic genres, the sonnet has never gone out of fashion and its popularity today remains unabated.

This collection contains a rich selection of over 170 English and American sonnets by more than 70 poets, from the Renaissance to the 20th century. Included are great sonnets by the greatest poets. All have been carefully chosen for distinction in style or substance or both.

Included are such masterpieces of the form as: "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?" by Shakespeare; "Death Be Not Proud" by Donne; "On His Blindness" by Milton; "The World Is Too Much with Us" by Wordsworth; "Ozymandias" by Shelley; "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer" by Keats; "How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways" by E. Browning; "Acquainted with the Night" by Frost; "Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare" by Millay; and poems by Spenser, Sidney, Burns, Blake, Byron, Longfellow, Tennyson, Poe, Swinburne, Wilde, E. A. Robinson, Dunbar, MacLeish, and many more.

In this inexpensive treasury, lovers of poetry can study and savor the ways in which a host of great poets used the versatile sonnet form to express everything from the "light conceits of love" to the most profound meditations.

Includes two selections from the Common Core State Standards Initiative: "The New Colossus" and "Ozymandias."