Fifty Shades of London: 50 of the best poems about London

This vast and teeming metropolis that many of us call home sits astride a small river on a small island anchored off the north-west shores of Europe. Yet its very name ‘London’ is famed, admired and known worldwide. Its growth from hamlet, town, fortification, city and centre of Empire is one of rich reward. Within its ever-changing borders that are forever moving outwards are gems of architecture across cultures, times and influences that exist in very few other places. Its diaspora of peoples and cultures overlap, thrive, compete and influence this leviathan of a world city.
1 - Fifty Shades of London - An Introduction

2 - A Ballad of London by Richard Le Gallienne

3 - London by Joanna Baillie

4 - Dear Old London by Eugene Field

5 - The London Bobby by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

6 - London Types - Bus Driver by William Ernest Henley

7 - The Cockney Soul by Henry Lawson

8 - London Roses by Willa Silbert Cather

9 - Behind the Scenes. Empire by Arthur Symons

10 - A London Fete by Coventry Patmore

11 - London Hast Thou Accursed Me by Henry Howard

12 - London by William Blake

13 - A London Thoroughfare. 2 AM by Amy Lowell

14 - Impression de Nuit (London) by Lord Alfred Douglas

15 - London, My Beautiful by F S Flint

16 - London in July by Amy Levy

17 - A London Plane Tree by Amy Levy

18 - In a London Square by Arthur Hugh Clough

19 - London I by Julian Bell

20 - London Poets by Amy Levy

21 - Chatterton in Holborn by Ernest Rhys

22 - West London by Matthew Arnold

23 - Ballade of the 'Cheshire Cheese' in Fleet Street by T W Rolleston

24 - Hyde Park At Night Before the War; Clerks by D H Lawrence

25 - London After The Great Fire 1666 by John Dryden

26 - His Tears To Thamesis by Robert Herrick

27 - The Thames At Mortlake by Ben Jonson

28 - Composed Upon Westminster Bridge by William Wordsworth

29 - London Interior by Harold Munro

30 - Compensation by Arthur Conan Doyle

31 - In A London Drawingroom by George Eliot

32 - Freedom in a Suburb by Ernest Radford

33 - Death In A London Lodging by Richard Le Gallienne

34 - In Westminster Abbey, October 12th 1892 by John Todhunter

35 - On the Tombs At Westminster Abbey by Francis Beaumont

36 - Scenes In London I - Piccadilly by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

37 - Scenes In London II - Oxford Street by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

38 - Scenes In London III - The Savoyard In Grosvenor Squeare by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

39 - London Snow by Robert Seymour Bridges

40 - From Piccadilly in August by John Freeman

41 - Piccadily Circus At Night; Street Walkers by D. H. Lawrence

42 - Letter From Town; on a Grey Morning in March by D H Lawrence

43 - The Call to London by Radclyffe Hall

44 - The Foggy Dew by Katharine Tynan

45 - The Little London Girl by Kate Greenaway

46 - Farewell to London in the Year 1715 by Alexander Pope

47 - Written in London on the 19th March 1796 by Matilda Betham

48 - On My Leaving London, June the 29th by Sarah Fyge-Egerton

49 - His Return to London by Robert Herrick

50 - A Satire Against the Citizens of London by Henry Howard

51 - London, A Poem, In Imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal by Samuel Johnson