About

Just the Poems publishes one page per topic or occasion. Each page shows public-domain poems on that subject in full, with their source, where their topic comes from, and a few figures that anyone can count.

This site does not interpret poems. It carries no commentary, no summaries and no opinions. Every poem is quoted literally from a public-domain edition, and every figure is a count that can be checked against the sources listed on the Attributions page.

How poems are ranked

Which poems appear on a page, and in what order, is not decided here. It comes from what others have recorded about each poem.

Where a poem's topic comes from

A poem appears on the page for a topic when a third party, or the poet, has placed it under that topic. There are four sources, and one is enough:

1. Anthology section. The editor of one of the anthologies listed on the Attributions page put the poem in a section about the topic: a section called "Nativity" counts for Christmas.
2. Library subject. The Project Gutenberg catalogue files the whole book under a subject of the form "Cats -- Poetry": every poem in that book counts for cats.
3. Title. The title the poet gave the poem contains the topic or a word from a fixed list of synonyms: "To My Mother" counts for mothers. A poem without a title is matched by its first line instead.
4. Wikidata. The Wikidata entry for the poem gives the topic as its main subject.

Words are matched whole: "Catholic" does not count for cats. Under each poem, "Filed under" lists every source that places it on the page you are reading. A poem can appear on several pages, one for each topic its sources give it, with the same text and the same source on all of them.

What is left out

No artificial intelligence assigns topics, and words inside a poem are never used to decide its topic: a poem is not about the sea because the sea appears in it.

How the ranking works

Poems on a page are ranked by four counts. Each count only decides between poems that are level on the one before it.

1. Wikipedias: the number of Wikipedia language editions with an article about the poem.
2. Anthologies: the number of anthologies listed on the Attributions page that include the poem. An anthology published in several volumes or books counts once.
3. Poet's Wikipedias: the number of Wikipedia language editions with an article about the poet.
4. Title, in alphabetical order. Poems with the same title are ranked by their first line.

The first three figures are shown under the title of every poem, in this order, and a 0 is shown as 0. A poem or poet that cannot be matched to a single Wikidata entry counts 0 Wikipedias, and so does a poem credited to "Anonymous" in Poet's Wikipedias.

30 poems per page

A topic or occasion gets a page only when its sources give it at least 10 poems that can be published. A page shows at most 30 of them: the first 30 in this order. When a topic has more than 30, the line at the top of the page gives both figures. There are no further pages.

Where the data comes from

Poems are taken from public-domain anthologies, from poetry books that the Project Gutenberg catalogue files under a subject of the form "X -- Poetry", and from the collected works of the 100 poets writing in English, who died before 1946, with articles in the largest number of Wikipedia language editions. Library subjects come from the Project Gutenberg catalogue. Main subjects, poets' years of death and the links from each poem and poet to Wikipedia come from Wikidata. All of them are listed on the Attributions page.

The text of each poem is taken from one edition, the same on every page. The Source line under the poem names that edition and, when the edition prints them, its volume, its editor and the year of that edition. That year belongs to the edition, not to the poem: the sources do not reliably record when a poem was written, so this site does not state it.

The figures at the foot of each page count the poems shown on it. Poems credited to "Anonymous", "Traditional" or an unnamed author are not counted as poets. The centuries are the centuries in which the poets died: poems by anonymous or traditional authors, by poets with no recorded year of death, and by poets who died before AD 1 are not counted there, and the heading says how many poems it covers. Related pages are other topics and occasions with poems shown on both pages; the figure shows how many.

A poem is published only when its poet died before 1946 and the poem was first published before 1931, and a translation only when the translator is named and also died before 1946. Every anthology used was first published before 1931. Poems containing words from a list of offensive terms are reviewed, and left out when in doubt.