Fifty Shades of August: 50 of the best poems about the month of August

Written by William Wordsworth, Henry David Thoreau, Thomas Nashe and 8 more

Narrated by Richard Mitchley, Ghizela Rowe and Shyama Perera

The eighth month of the Gregorian calendar brings summer to a close, at least on our calendars. Nature will continue with her wise and infinite ways regardless of our need to keep a count of where we expect her to be.

Summer with its heat, its holidays has a lung-bursting capacity to energise our thoughts, our ambitions and our contentment.

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

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Copyright Group
• Release date: Jan 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781839678929

William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 at Cockermouth, in the English Lake District, the son of a lawyer. He was one of five children and developed a close bond with his only sister, Dorothy, whom he lived with for most of his life. At the age of seventeen, shortly after the deaths of his parents, Wordsworth went to St John’s College, Cambridge, and after graduating visited Revolutionary France. Upon returning to England he published his first poem and devoted himself wholly to writing. He became great friends with other Romantic poets and collaborated with Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Lyrical Ballads. In 1843, he succeeded Robert Southey as Poet Laureate and died in the year ‘Prelude’ was finally published, 1850.