Fifty Shades of Fathers: 50 of the best poems about dads

Our own lives are possible because of fathers. It may be as limited as a procreational act and we never see them again. But more hopefully these are kind, caring and protective relationships that are central to our lives helping us to explore and achieve the people we want to be. From the childhood dependency of early years to sometimes troublesome teens to independence thereafter they help guide, advise, cajole and share their lives with those they most love.

Our classic poets who range in stature from William Blake to William Wordsworth and Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Anne Bradstreet fill their verse with their own unique take on just what a father is. What he should be and what he can be. These poems give us both an insight into the role of the father in previous generations and the mirror of how some things do not change.

Beyond the nurture and the genetics one fact remains a constant, these relationships go both ways; we need them and they need us. But for many that can remain unsaid. Those words can mean much and should be often thought and sometimes said.

1 - Fifty Shades of August - An Introduction

2 - Stanzas For the First of August by James Monroe Whitfield

3 - Hymn For the First of August by John Pierpoint

4 - An Hymn to the Morning by Phyllis Wheatley

5 - Sonnet XLII To GWC August 1st 1846 by Christopher Pearse Cranch

6 - An August Evening, 1865 by Carolyn Clive

7 - As Kingfishers Catch Fire by Gerard Manley Hopkins

8 - The 4th of August by Laurence Binyon

9 - August Afternoon by Laurence Binyon

10 - To Mrs Jane Forster, on Her Birthday, August 4th 1724 by Henry Baker

11 - Composed Near Calais, August 7th 1802 by William Wordsworth

12 - Grant at Rest August 8th 1885 by James Whitcomb Riley

13 - I H B Died August 11th 1898 by William Winter

14 - August 1865 by Carolyn Clive

15 - August 19th 1830 by Henry Alford

16 - August 1914 by Isaac Rosenberg

17 - August the 22nd 1830 by Henry Alford

18 - Calais August 1802 by William Wordsworth

19 - Memorials of a Tour in Scotland August 1803 by William Wordsworth

20 - Lines Written in August by Thomas Babbington Macaulay

21 - The Winds Tidings in August 1870 by Augusta Davies Webster

22 - Love and Death by Ernest Radford

23 - August by Algernon Charles Swinburne

24 - At Sundown by Daniel Sheehan

25 - August by James Whitcomb Riley

26 - After Sunset by William Allingham

27 - In the Fields by Charlotte Mew

28 - Evening by Paul Laurence Dunbar

29 - A Summer Evening Churchyard by Percy Bsysshe Shelley

30 - August Moonrise by Sara Teasdale

31 - An August Night by Radclyffe Hall

32 - Moonlight Summer Moonlight by Emily Jane Bronte

33 - From Piccadilly In August by John Freeman

34 - An August Midnight by Thomas Hardy

35 - The Summer Rain by Henry David Thoreau

36 - Snake by D H Lawrence

37 - Sonnet LIII, August by Christopher Pearse Cranch

38 - The Awakening River by Katherine Mansfield

39 - Seashore by Tagore

40 - The Mocking Bird by Timothy Thomas Fortune

41 - Indian Summer by Henry Van Dyke

42 - Indian Summer by Sara Teasdale

43 - An Indian Summer Day on the Prairie by Vachel Lindsay

44 - Summer Song by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

45 - A Draught of Sunshine by John Keats

46 - The Rose Has Flushed Red by Hafiz

47 - The Rose Has Left the Garden by Richard Le Gallienne

48 - Tis the Last Rose of Summer by Thomas Moore

49 - Summer is Ended by Christina Rossetti

50 - Fair Summer Droops From Summer's Last Will and Testament by Thomas Nashe

51 - L' Envoi (An Extract) by Rudyard Kipling