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The Nation's Favourite Poems
The Nation's Favourite Love Poems
A selection of 100 popular love poems, based on a nation-wide poll. They include John Donne's "The Good-Morrow", Shakespeare's sonnet "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?", Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress", and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How Do I Love Thee?".
192 pages, Paperback
First published October 2, 1997
22 people are currently reading
208 people want to read
About the author
Daisy Goodwin
32 books2,240 followersDAISY GOODWIN, a Harkness scholar who attended Columbia University’s film school after earning a degree in history at Cambridge University, is a leading television producer in the U.K. Her poetry anthologies, including 101 Poems That Could Save Your Life, have introduced many new readers to the pleasures of poetry, and she was Chair of the judging panel of the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction. That was the year she published her first novel the American Heiress ( My Last Duchess in UK) , followed by The Fortune Hunter and now Victoria. She has also created VICTORIA the PBS/ITV series which starts in January. She has three dogs, two dogs, and one husband.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
August 7, 2013
My (soppy) parents and I are wont to snatch this from the shelf and read something out loud at random. Most of them are quite good = )
June 20, 2020
Some of the poems are brilliant classics, of course, but somehow this collection was overall rather disappointing. Perhaps it is the thematic division into subcollections titled Love's Beginning, Celebration and Adoration, Love in Absence, Love Fulfilled, In Warning of Love, Love Lost and Love Remembered. Perhaps it was just the uneven sentiments the reader faces when reading linearly (a fault of my own, therefore).
My favourites:
W.B. Yeats, He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, for the immortal line:
"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
John Updike, Dea Ex Machina, for its mechanistic aspects:
"Her supple shoulders call to mind
A set of bevelled gears;
Her lower jaw has been aligned
To hinge behind her ears."
Wendy Cope, Flower, for the aching sweetness of what could have been but was not:
"You thought
I might not want flowers.
It made me smile and hug you then.
Now I can only smile.
But, Look, the flowers you nearly brought
Have lasted all this while."
Christopher Marlowe, section from Doctor Faustus, for its classical appeal:
"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?
And burt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss:
Her lips suck forth my soul, see where it flies!"
W.H. Auden, Lullaby, for its skirting of the implied:
"Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;"
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116, for its recognisable line that still baffles:
"Love's not Time's fool,"
Edward Lear, The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, for its charm and sweetness:
"The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat."
Ted Hughes, Lovesong, for its psychological acuity:
"In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage
In the morning they wore each other's face."
Emily Dickinson, He Fumbles at Your Spirit, for its lovely open ending:
"When Winds take Forest in their Paws
The Universe - is still-"
William Blake, Never Seek to Tell They Love, for its wise message:
"Never seek to tell they love,
Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind does move
Silently, invisibly."
W.B. Yeats, When You Are Old, for the timeless romanticism it captures:
"When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;"
My favourites:
W.B. Yeats, He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, for the immortal line:
"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
John Updike, Dea Ex Machina, for its mechanistic aspects:
"Her supple shoulders call to mind
A set of bevelled gears;
Her lower jaw has been aligned
To hinge behind her ears."
Wendy Cope, Flower, for the aching sweetness of what could have been but was not:
"You thought
I might not want flowers.
It made me smile and hug you then.
Now I can only smile.
But, Look, the flowers you nearly brought
Have lasted all this while."
Christopher Marlowe, section from Doctor Faustus, for its classical appeal:
"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?
And burt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss:
Her lips suck forth my soul, see where it flies!"
W.H. Auden, Lullaby, for its skirting of the implied:
"Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;"
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116, for its recognisable line that still baffles:
"Love's not Time's fool,"
Edward Lear, The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, for its charm and sweetness:
"The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat."
Ted Hughes, Lovesong, for its psychological acuity:
"In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage
In the morning they wore each other's face."
Emily Dickinson, He Fumbles at Your Spirit, for its lovely open ending:
"When Winds take Forest in their Paws
The Universe - is still-"
William Blake, Never Seek to Tell They Love, for its wise message:
"Never seek to tell they love,
Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind does move
Silently, invisibly."
W.B. Yeats, When You Are Old, for the timeless romanticism it captures:
"When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;"
October 14, 2009
The BBC had a vote in 1997/98, and this collection was the result. So these are mostly old sentimental favourites, Donne, Keats and Clare, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Spenser and Tennyson; twentieth century favourites too, Auden and Wendy Cope and Seamus Heaney and Carol Ann Duffy. Many of them are familiar, all worth reading and rereading and thinking about.
Here's one I like from the section Celebration and Adoration.
Edwin Muir (1887-1959) The Confirmation
Yes, yours, my love, is the right human face.
I in my mind had waited for this long,
Seeing the false and searching for the true,
Then found you as a traveller finds a place
Of welcome suddenly amid the wrong
Valleys and rocks and twisting roads. But you,
What shall I call you? A fountain in a waste,
A well of water in a country dry,
Or anything that's honest and good, an eye
That makes the whole world bright. Your open heart,
Simple with giving, gives the primal deed,
The first good world, the blossom, the blowing seed,
The hearth, the steadfast land, the wandering sea.
Not beautiful or rare in every part.
But like yourself, as they were meant to be.
And an old favourite of mine, from Love Lost and Love Remembered
Leigh Hunt 1784-1859 Jenny Kissed Me
Jenny kiss'd me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say i'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss'd me.
I shall be rereading this collection for years to come.
Here's one I like from the section Celebration and Adoration.
Edwin Muir (1887-1959) The Confirmation
Yes, yours, my love, is the right human face.
I in my mind had waited for this long,
Seeing the false and searching for the true,
Then found you as a traveller finds a place
Of welcome suddenly amid the wrong
Valleys and rocks and twisting roads. But you,
What shall I call you? A fountain in a waste,
A well of water in a country dry,
Or anything that's honest and good, an eye
That makes the whole world bright. Your open heart,
Simple with giving, gives the primal deed,
The first good world, the blossom, the blowing seed,
The hearth, the steadfast land, the wandering sea.
Not beautiful or rare in every part.
But like yourself, as they were meant to be.
And an old favourite of mine, from Love Lost and Love Remembered
Leigh Hunt 1784-1859 Jenny Kissed Me
Jenny kiss'd me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say i'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss'd me.
I shall be rereading this collection for years to come.
March 4, 2022
Too good to not read in one go (with tea and wee breaks). Thank you, Daisy Goodwin, for putting this together.
I collect books of love poetry but it's taken me years to truly appreciate the pre-20th century stuff - with the modern syllabus I learnt at school, and my own impatience when reading and teaching myself, it's only through repeated exposure to Donne, Marvell, Shakespeare et al that I can truly appreciate them - Rossetti and Browning more recent and more accessible but no less wonderful - and now they're my standout favourites. By a mile! So patience pays off. Patience, and repeated exposure. Older English style and vocabulary and imagery is another language, really.
This is a lovely collection with all the best you'd expect. Just wonderful.
I collect books of love poetry but it's taken me years to truly appreciate the pre-20th century stuff - with the modern syllabus I learnt at school, and my own impatience when reading and teaching myself, it's only through repeated exposure to Donne, Marvell, Shakespeare et al that I can truly appreciate them - Rossetti and Browning more recent and more accessible but no less wonderful - and now they're my standout favourites. By a mile! So patience pays off. Patience, and repeated exposure. Older English style and vocabulary and imagery is another language, really.
This is a lovely collection with all the best you'd expect. Just wonderful.
August 23, 2018
One or two of these are more like hate poems.... but it's a good collection from a wide range of time. Hate the cover photo though.
April 11, 2023
I love love!
June 26, 2016
an old favourite.
September 1, 2016
Finally finished it - only read it as part of my Pop Sugar Reading Challenge and I had to read a book of poems. Really not my thing - I must be too much of a pleb!
October 13, 2023
i love love
August 17, 2022
To call this volume The Nation’s Favourite Love Poems is a little misleading, as in fact the poems were not voted on, and the book was released, as I understand it, ahead of a poll on the subject. The results of a survey are included in the volume, and the most popular poem is by a woman, Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
As the introduction explains, the previous poll of the nation’s favourite poems yielded surprisingly few love poems. This is curious given the popularity of love songs, and the universality of the subject matter.
Perhaps the difficulty is that love songs express their sentiments in a more simple and general language that allows the listener to identify with the feelings. The love poem is often too idealised, and most of us, alas, do not experience the heightened emotions expressed by the words. We are too earthbound for these sentiments.
Daisy Goodwin’s compilation is an interesting one, and certainly contains quite a few of the popular and well-known poems, as well as a few lesser-known works that are emphatically not the nation’s favourites. She wisely excludes song lyrics, though the introduction suggests that this is rather against her personal wishes.
The poems can be humorous, or tragic. They span many centuries, and there is no favouring of modern over classic poems, that unfortunate trend in most areas of list compilation. Some of the poems are about new love, and some about enduring love.
Interestingly the final section is about lost love, and this is one of the longer sections. It seems that the glow of love fades in time, and this unhappily is the universal experience too. We identify more with lost love, and indeed all love ends in loss, if only by death.
What makes us love when it can only come to a sad end one day? Perhaps it is mere biology if we wish to be scientific about it. Perhaps it is the need for company and fear of being alone if we wish to be gloomy. Perhaps it is the simple recognition of being alive, if we wish to be existentialist. If someone acknowledges us, then we exist.
Or we could just take the romantic escape route and say that it is the sublime feeling of love that makes it worthwhile, no matter how it ends.
In that sense the exaggerated beauty of the poetry here makes it appealing, even if the ideas are a little too celestial for most of us earth-bound humans. In the end, the poet is aiming for eternity – not necessarily heaven, but keeping their love alive in a poem that will endure. Some of them are more in love with the exercise of writing a fetching poem than they were with the muse who inspired it.
As the introduction explains, the previous poll of the nation’s favourite poems yielded surprisingly few love poems. This is curious given the popularity of love songs, and the universality of the subject matter.
Perhaps the difficulty is that love songs express their sentiments in a more simple and general language that allows the listener to identify with the feelings. The love poem is often too idealised, and most of us, alas, do not experience the heightened emotions expressed by the words. We are too earthbound for these sentiments.
Daisy Goodwin’s compilation is an interesting one, and certainly contains quite a few of the popular and well-known poems, as well as a few lesser-known works that are emphatically not the nation’s favourites. She wisely excludes song lyrics, though the introduction suggests that this is rather against her personal wishes.
The poems can be humorous, or tragic. They span many centuries, and there is no favouring of modern over classic poems, that unfortunate trend in most areas of list compilation. Some of the poems are about new love, and some about enduring love.
Interestingly the final section is about lost love, and this is one of the longer sections. It seems that the glow of love fades in time, and this unhappily is the universal experience too. We identify more with lost love, and indeed all love ends in loss, if only by death.
What makes us love when it can only come to a sad end one day? Perhaps it is mere biology if we wish to be scientific about it. Perhaps it is the need for company and fear of being alone if we wish to be gloomy. Perhaps it is the simple recognition of being alive, if we wish to be existentialist. If someone acknowledges us, then we exist.
Or we could just take the romantic escape route and say that it is the sublime feeling of love that makes it worthwhile, no matter how it ends.
In that sense the exaggerated beauty of the poetry here makes it appealing, even if the ideas are a little too celestial for most of us earth-bound humans. In the end, the poet is aiming for eternity – not necessarily heaven, but keeping their love alive in a poem that will endure. Some of them are more in love with the exercise of writing a fetching poem than they were with the muse who inspired it.
December 30, 2021
Great range of lovely poems. I really enjoyed reading them with some I was already aware of and some that were introduced to me in this book. Recommend to anyone who want to read more poetry especially classic poetry of which there are many in this book.
February 20, 2022
3.5/5
I bought this book from the charity shop and the previous owner had marked their favourite poems, which I thought was really cute. An extra .5 for the poems ‘coat’ by Vicki Feaver and ‘After the lunch’ by Wendy Cope.
I bought this book from the charity shop and the previous owner had marked their favourite poems, which I thought was really cute. An extra .5 for the poems ‘coat’ by Vicki Feaver and ‘After the lunch’ by Wendy Cope.
April 29, 2022
3.5 stars. Very nice collection based on surveys done in the late 90s. Because of the time, there’s a lot of old ones and it’s predominantly men. I would love to see the collection of poems that a survey done today would bring together.
January 30, 2023
Stole this from the bookshelf at my mum's house. Loved it. I'm quite new to poetry, and this has been my favourite poetry book so far. This introduced me to lots of new poets and has definitely got the ball rolling for finding other things I'd like to read.
November 27, 2019
A good selection of love poems, ranging from 1600s (?) to the contemporary.
December 13, 2021
There’s too many old writers and not enough modern poems here. Some are dreadful. Others are dull but there are 25/30 that are beautiful.
Recommend but there are better collections
Recommend but there are better collections
October 8, 2023
Has some really cute poems in it, some i dont understand but it makes sense by the date of some of them. LOVEEE ❤️💗❤️💗
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November 27, 2024
“…
Her supple shoulders call to mind
A set of beloved gears;
Her lower jaw has been aligned,
To hinge behind her ears
…”
a very lovely collection
Her supple shoulders call to mind
A set of beloved gears;
Her lower jaw has been aligned,
To hinge behind her ears
…”
a very lovely collection
September 27, 2025
Found this on a bookshelf at home, a lovely collection of different takes on love. Some definitely made me laugh. I particularly liked Wendy Cope’s writing style.
April 23, 2016
I work in a high school and part of my job is helping the GCSE students prepare themselves for their exams. Due to my specialism – English Language/Literature – I often try and get them prepared for the two unseen pieces of poetry that they will have to analyse. At 16, I hated poetry. I loathed it. As I got older and as I kept furthering my English education I began to appreciate it. Not all poems, mind, but I have certainly enjoyed teaching it.
Teaching poetry analysis is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle that has multiple pieces that fit the same slot. It is difficult, it is variable and it is never wrong. Interpretation is personal and that scares some people because what if there are wrong…but as I just stated – you are never wrong with interpretation.
Anecdotes aside, I picked up The Nation’s Favourite Love Poems by Daisy Goodwin because it was recommended to me on Amazon and I knew that we had a copy in the school library. I wanted to see if there were any poems that my student and I could analyse. There were tons (as you would expect with an anthology of poetry), however, there were very few that I liked.
Don’t get me wrong, I am sure they are all really good accomplished pieces but for me there was only a handful of ones that I enjoyed reading; they included: Warming Her Pearls by Carol Ann Duffy, Valentine by John Fuller, Lullaby by WH Auden, The First Day by Christina Rosetti, Unfortunate Coincidence by Dorothy Parker, and Twelve Songs by WH Auden.
Actually, that looks like a lot.
In all fairness, I wasn’t expecting to like all the poems in the collection and I do think that I would benefit from further studying of the poems but I did like The Nation’s Favourite Love Poems. I will be picking up more anthologies to develop my liking for poetry.
The Nation’s Favourite Love Poems by Daisy Goodwin is available now.
Teaching poetry analysis is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle that has multiple pieces that fit the same slot. It is difficult, it is variable and it is never wrong. Interpretation is personal and that scares some people because what if there are wrong…but as I just stated – you are never wrong with interpretation.
Anecdotes aside, I picked up The Nation’s Favourite Love Poems by Daisy Goodwin because it was recommended to me on Amazon and I knew that we had a copy in the school library. I wanted to see if there were any poems that my student and I could analyse. There were tons (as you would expect with an anthology of poetry), however, there were very few that I liked.
Don’t get me wrong, I am sure they are all really good accomplished pieces but for me there was only a handful of ones that I enjoyed reading; they included: Warming Her Pearls by Carol Ann Duffy, Valentine by John Fuller, Lullaby by WH Auden, The First Day by Christina Rosetti, Unfortunate Coincidence by Dorothy Parker, and Twelve Songs by WH Auden.
Actually, that looks like a lot.
In all fairness, I wasn’t expecting to like all the poems in the collection and I do think that I would benefit from further studying of the poems but I did like The Nation’s Favourite Love Poems. I will be picking up more anthologies to develop my liking for poetry.
The Nation’s Favourite Love Poems by Daisy Goodwin is available now.
April 20, 2017
Nice anthology which stays on my shelf for me to dip into when I'm in the right mood. Every so often I read it right through.
May 12, 2016
An excellent selection of poems, most of them quite well known. This anthology was put together following a poll in 1997 to find the UK's favourite love poems. I'm not keen on the turquoise book cover but other than that this is a wonderful little book that has been very well edited.
It's quite small and it has a handy ribbon bookmark (which I keep to my favourite poem.). It's extremely easy to navigate. There is a list of the ten most popular poems at the beginning of the book, then the contents pages (listing poems by theme, giving the author and title), an Introduction by the editor, then 128 pages of poems plus an Index of poets names and an Index of first lines. There are six themes and the poems are ordered by these themes, for example Love's Beginnings or In Warning of Love.
Much thought has gone into the presentation, it's quite romantic and has a slight old fashioned feel to it. To and from are already printed on the very first page with space for names to be added, so it would make a nice gift; particularly for a wedding.
It's quite small and it has a handy ribbon bookmark (which I keep to my favourite poem.). It's extremely easy to navigate. There is a list of the ten most popular poems at the beginning of the book, then the contents pages (listing poems by theme, giving the author and title), an Introduction by the editor, then 128 pages of poems plus an Index of poets names and an Index of first lines. There are six themes and the poems are ordered by these themes, for example Love's Beginnings or In Warning of Love.
Much thought has gone into the presentation, it's quite romantic and has a slight old fashioned feel to it. To and from are already printed on the very first page with space for names to be added, so it would make a nice gift; particularly for a wedding.
November 4, 2008
This is my favourite... at present...
Remember
Christina Rossetti
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Beautiful.
Remember
Christina Rossetti
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Beautiful.
November 5, 2014
It's difficult to rate a collection when they vary so much. Some of my favourite poems are in this anthology, and some that I've never heard of before. I will have to pick out a few to study very soon, anyway, so it'll be useful for that.
December 22, 2010
This book was given to me and my wife as a wedding present in 2000. I have read it through, and dipped into it many times. I don't think she has ever touched it!
December 5, 2012
l absolutely loved this book and have re-read several of my favourite poems.
December 24, 2015
A selection of poetry arranged in themes - I enjoyed reading this compilation and I would think that there is something here for everyone.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews