本书以诗歌的种类、诗歌的成分、诗歌的主题为主线，分四大部分：第一部分为总导入；第二部分为诗歌的种类；第三部分为诗歌的成分；第四部分为诗歌的主题。分类清楚，主题突出。范围广阔，不只包括英美诗歌，还包括了世界各国著名的诗歌。文字简明。
- 前辅文
- Part One Introduction
- Chapter One Brief Introduction to British and American Poetry
- Chapter Two What Is Poetry
- Chapter Three How to Read a Poem
- Chapter Four How to Evaluate a Poem
- Chapter Five Themes of a Poem
- Part Two Elements of Poetry
- Chapter One Voice: Speaker and Tone
- John Donne: The Flea
- Robert Frost: Stopping by Woods On a Snowy Evening
- William Blake: The Lamb
- Theodore Roethke: My Papa’s Waltz
- Robert Hayden: Those Winter Sundays
- Chapter Two Diction
- John Milton: Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint
- William Blake: London
- William Wordsworth: I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Crossing the Bar
- Chapter Three Imagery
- Robert Browning: Meeting at Night
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Break, Break, Break
- Ezra Pound: In a Station of the Metro
- Seamus Heaney: The Play Way
- Chapter Four Figures of Speech
- Section One Simile, Metaphor
- Robert Burns: A Red, Red Rose
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson: The Eagle: A Fragment
- Sylvia Plath: Metaphors
- Section Two Metonymy, Synecdoche
- Andrew Marvell: To His Coy Mistress
- Percy Bysshe Shelley: Ozymandias
- Section Three Personification, Apostrophe
- William Wordsworth: London, 1
- John Keats: To Autumn
- Sylvia Plath: Mirror
- Section Four Irony
- William Blake: The Chimney Sweeper
- Stephen Crane: The War Is Kind
- Section Five Paradox
- Richard Lovelace: To Lucasta, Going to the War
- William Wordsworth: She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways
- Thomas Hardy: Hap
- Chapter Five Symbolism and Allegory
- William Blake: The Sick Rose
- Thomas Stearns Eliot: The Boston Evening Transcript
- Emily Dickinson: I Heard a Fly Buzz—When I Died
- William Butler Yeats: The Second Coming
- Chapter Six Syntax
- Thomas Hardy: The Man He Killed
- William Butler Yeats: An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
- Chapter Seven Sound: Rhyme, Alliteration and Assonance
- Emily Dickinson: The Soul Selects Her Own Society
- Wystan Hugh Auden: That Night When Joy Began
- Chapter Eight Rhythm and Meter
- Robert Herrick: An Ode for Him
- Edna St. Vincent Millay: God’s World
- Part Three Types of Poetry
- Chapter One Narrative Poetry
- Section One Epic
- John Milton: Paradise Lost
- Section Two Ballad
- Anonymous: Get Up and Bar the Door
- John Keats: La Belle Dame Sans Merci
- Section Three Romance
- Anonymous: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- Chapter Two Lyric Poetry
- Section One Sonnet
- William Shakespeare: Sonnet
- William Wordsworth: The World Is Too Much with Us
- John Keats: On the Grasshopper and the Cricket
- Section Two Ode
- Percy Bysshe Shelley: Ode to the West Wind
- John Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn
- Section Three Song
- John Donne: Song
- Ben Jonson: Song: To Celia
- Robert Burns: Auld Lang Syne
- Section Four Elegy
- John Milton: Lycidas
- Thomas Gray: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
- Percy Busshe Shelley: Adonais
- Section Five Dirge
- William Shakespeare: Full Fathom Five
- Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Dirge
- Section Six Aubade
- John Donne: The Sun Rising
- Robert Browning: Parting at Morning
- Section Seven Pastoral
- Christopher Marlowe: The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
- William Wordsworth: Michael: A Pastoral Poem
- Chapter Three Dramatic Poetry
- Robert Browning: My Last Duchess
- Percy Bysshes Shelley: Prometheus Unbound
- Chapter Four Other Types of Poetry
- Section One Descriptive Poetry
- James Thomson: The Seasons
- William Wordsworth: Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
- Section Two Reflective Poetry
- William Cowper: The Task: The Stricken Deer
- Section Three Didactic Poetry
- Alexander Pope: An Essay on Criticism
- Section Four Satirical Poetry
- Percy Bysshe Shelley: England in 1
- Erenst Jones: The Song of the Lower Classes
- A Glossary of Poetic Terms
- List of Poets
- Bibliography
