For those who are studying for the Leaving Certificate English Examination, students must do the study texts from the lists prescribed in 3) (from the PDF linked):
- Higher Level
- A selection from the poetry of eight poets is prescribed for Higher Level.
- Students will be expected to have studied at least six poems by each poet.
- Ordinary Level
- A total of 36 poems is prescribed for Ordinary Level.
Since Poem Analysis has the largest database of poetry analysis on the internet, you can find below every poem analyzed from the course, all with downloadable offline PDF Guides. If the poem has not yet been analyzed (denoted by no link and PDF Guide link), we are working very hard to get it analyzed as soon as possible. Please feel free to skip to the poem most relevant to you, and if you want a poem that you cannot find on the site to be analyzed, feel free to contact us.
Poets prescribed for higher level 2025
Eavan Boland [PDF Guide]
- The War Horse [PDF Guide]
- Child of Our Time [PDF Guide]
- The Famine Road [PDF Guide]
- The Shadow Doll [PDF Guide]
- White Hawthorn in the West of Ireland [PDF Guide]
- Outside History [PDF Guide]
- The Black Lace Fan my Mother Gave Me [PDF Guide]
- This Moment [PDF Guide]
- The Pomegranate [PDF Guide]
- Love [PDF Guide]
Emily Dickinson [PDF Guide]
- “Hope” is the thing with feathers [PDF Guide]
- There’s a certain Slant of light [PDF Guide]
- I felt a Funeral, in my Brain [PDF Guide]
- A Bird came down the Walk [PDF Guide]
- I Heard a Fly Buzz – when I died [PDF Guide]
- The Soul has Bandaged moments [PDF Guide]
- I could bring You Jewels – had I a mind to [PDF Guide]
- A narrow Fellow in the Grass [PDF Guide]
- I taste a liquor never brewed [PDF Guide]
- After great pain, a formal feeling comes [PDF Guide]
T.S. Eliot [PDF Guide]
- The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock [PDF Guide]
- Preludes [PDF Guide]
- Aunt Helen [PDF Guide]
- From The Waste Land II – A Game of Chess (still analyzing)
- Journey of the Magi [PDF Guide]
- From Landscapes III Usk (still analyzing)
- From Landscapes IV Rannoch by Glencoe (still analyzing)
- From The Four Quartets East Coker IV (still analyzing)
Gerard Manley Hopkins [PDF Guide]
- God’s Grandeur [PDF Guide]
- Spring [PDF Guide]
- As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame [PDF Guide]
- The Windhover [PDF Guide]
- Pied Beauty [PDF Guide]
- Felix Randal [PDF Guide]
- Inversnaid [PDF Guide]
- I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day [PDF Guide]
- No worst there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief [PDF Guide]
- Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend [PDF Guide]
Patrick Kavanagh [PDF Guide]
- Inniskeen Road July Evening [PDF Guide]
- Shancoduff [PDF Guide]
- From The Great Hunger Section I (still analyzing)
- Advent (still analyzing)
- A Christmas Childhood [PDF Guide]
- Epic [PDF Guide]
- Canal Bank Walk [PDF Guide]
- Lines Written on a Seat on the Grand Canal [PDF Guide]
- The Hospital [PDF Guide]
- On Raglan Road [PDF Guide]
Derek Mahon
- Grandfather [PDF Guide]
- Day Trip to Donegal [PDF Guide]
- Ecclesiastes [PDF Guide]
- After the Titanic [PDF Guide]
- As It Should Be [PDF Guide]
- A Disused Shed in Co Wexford (still analyzing)
- Rathlin [PDF Guide]
- The Chinese Restaurant in Portrush [PDF Guide]
- Kinsale [PDF Guide]
Sylvia Plath [PDF Guide]
- Black Rook in Rainy Weather [PDF Guide]
- The Times Are Tidy [PDF Guide]
- Morning Song [PDF Guide]
- Finisterre [PDF Guide]
- Mirror [PDF Guide]
- Pheasant [PDF Guide]
- Elm [PDF Guide]
- Poppies in July [PDF Guide]
- The Arrival of the Bee Box [PDF Guide]
- Child [PDF Guide]
Tracy K. Smith [PDF Guide]
- Joy Elegy 1 (still analyzing)
- Dominion over the beasts of the Earth (still analyzing)
- The Searchers (still analyzing)
- Letter to a Photojournalist Going In [PDF Guide]
- The Universe is a House Party (still analyzing)
- The Museum of Obsolescence [PDF Guide]
- Don’t you wonder sometimes (still analyzing)
- It’s Not [PDF Guide]
- The Universe as Primal Scream [PDF Guide]
- The Greatest Personal Privation [PDF Guide]
- I am 60 odd years of age from I will tell you the truth about this I will tell you all about it (still analyzing)
- Ghazal [PDF Guide]
Ordinary Level Poets and Poems (Leaving Certificate 2025 – Ireland)
Eavan Boland [PDF Guide]
Austin Clarke
Samuel Taylor Coleridge [PDF Guide]
Emily Dickinson [PDF Guide]
Helen Dunmore
T.S. Eliot [PDF Guide]
Nikki Giovanni [PDF Guide]
Lauren Haldeman
- Instead of Dying (still analyzing)
Gerard Manley Hopkins [PDF Guide]
Ted Hughes [PDF Guide]
Patrick Kavanagh [PDF Guide]
Colm Keegan
Liz Lochhead [PDF Guide]
- Revelation (still analyzing)
Derek Mahon
Sinéad Morrissey
- Genetics (still analyzing)
Felicia Olusanya
Sylvia Plath [PDF Guide]
Edwin Arlington Robinson [PDF Guide]
- Reuben Bright (still analyzing)
William Shakespeare [PDF Guide]
Tim Seibles
- Commercial Break Roadrunner Uneasy (still analyzing)
Tracy K. Smith [PDF Guide]
- It’s Not (still analyzing)
- The Greatest Personal Privation (still analyzing)
- The Searchers (still analyzing)
Elizabeth Smither
- On the Euthanasia of a Pet Dog (still analyzing)
Jessica Traynor
James Wright [PDF Guide]
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island Minnesota [PDF Guide]
