Cambridge International AS & A Level Literature in English 9695 (2024-26) Poems Analyzed

For those that are studying the Cambridge International AS & A Level Literature (English) (9695) for the years 2023-26, there is a list of poems for which the student must study in preparation for answering a question about any one of them, taken from the syllabus.

Since Poem Analysis has the largest database of poetry analysis on the internet, you can find below every poem analyzed from the course, which, in total, is 45 poems for 2021-23 (if it has not yet been analyzed, 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 to be analyzed that you cannot find on the site, feel free to request a poem.

It is also worth noting that this is a live document – the syllabus can be changed by the board, and it is always worth checking the official website of Cambridge International. We do our absolute best to make sure the information below is accurate and correct. However, if you do see any anomalies, please feel free to contact us.

What poems apply to the course depends on the year:

Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise

(Paper 1, Section B Poetry for 2024, 2025, and 2026)

1. A Kind of Love, Some Say ^{[PDF Guide]}
2. Country Lover ^{[PDF Guide]}
3. Remembrance ^{[PDF Guide]}
4. Where We Belong, A Duet ^{[PDF Guide]}
5. Phenomenal Woman ^{[PDF Guide]}
6. Men ^{[PDF Guide]}
7. Refusal ^{[PDF Guide]}
8. Just For A Time ^{[PDF Guide]}
9. Junkie Monkey Reel ^{[PDF Guide]}
10. The Lesson ^{[PDF Guide]}
11. California Prodigal ^{[PDF Guide]}
12. My Arkansas ^{[PDF Guide]}
13. Through the Inner City to the Suburbs ^{[PDF Guide]}
14. Lady Luncheon Club ^{[PDF Guide]}
15. Momma Welfare Roll ^{[PDF Guide]}
16. The Singer Will Not Sing ^{[PDF Guide]}
17. Willie ^{[PDF Guide]}
18. To Beat the Child Was Bad Enough ^{[PDF Guide]}
19. Woman Work ^{[PDF Guide]}
20. One More Round ^{[PDF Guide]}
21. The Traveler ^{[PDF Guide]}
22. Kin ^{[PDF Guide]}
23. The Memory ^{[PDF Guide]}
24. Still I Rise ^{[PDF Guide]}
25. Ain’t That Bad?
26. Life Doesn’t Frighten Me ^{[PDF Guide]}
27. Bump d’Bump ^{[PDF Guide]}
28. On Aging ^{[PDF Guide]}
29. In Retrospect ^{[PDF Guide]}
30. Just Like Job ^{[PDF Guide]}
31. Call Letters: Mrs. V.B. ^{[PDF Guide]}
32. Thank you, Lord ^{[PDF Guide]}

William Blake: Selected Poems from Songs of Innocence and of Experience

(Paper 1, Section B Poetry for 2024, 2025, and 2026)

1. Introduction (Songs of Innocence) ^{[PDF Guide]}
2. The Shepherd ^{[PDF Guide]}
3. The Lamb ^{[PDF Guide]}
4. The Little Black Boy ^{[PDF Guide]}
5. The Chimney Sweeper (“When my mother died..) ^{[PDF Guide]}
6. The Little Boy Lost ^{[PDF Guide]}
7. The Little Boy Found ^{[PDF Guide]}
8. A Cradle Song ^{[PDF Guide]}
9. The Divine Image ^{[PDF Guide]}
10. Holy Thursday (Songs of Innocence) ^{[PDF Guide]}
11. Spring ^{[PDF Guide]}
12. Nurse’s Song ^{[PDF Guide]}
13. A Dream ^{[PDF Guide]}
14. On Anothers Sorrow ^{[PDF Guide]}
15. Introduction (Songs of Experience) ^{[PDF Guide]}
16. Earth’s Answer ^{[PDF Guide]}
17. Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience) ^{[PDF Guide]}
18. The Little Girl Lost ^{[PDF Guide]}
19. The Little Girl Found ^{[PDF Guide]}
20. The Chimney Sweeper (“A little…) ^{[PDF Guide]}
21. The Fly ^{[PDF Guide]}
22. The Angel ^{[PDF Guide]}
23. The Tyger ^{[PDF Guide]}
24. My Pretty Rose Tree ^{[PDF Guide]}
25. The Little Vagabond ^{[PDF Guide]}
26. London ^{[PDF Guide]}
27. The Human Abstract ^{[PDF Guide]}
28. A Poison Tree ^{[PDF Guide]}
29. A Little Boy Lost ^{[PDF Guide]}
30. The Schoolboy ^{[PDF Guide]}

Songs of Ourselves: The Cambridge Assessment International Education Anthology (2024 and 2025)

Volume 2 (ISBN 9781108462280) (Paper 1, Section B Poetry for 2024 and 2025)

1. The Clod and the Pebble by William Blake ^{[PDF Guide]}
2. Passion by Kathleen Raine ^{[PDF Guide]}
3. Winter Song by Elizabeth Tollet ^{[PDF Guide]}
4. Love (III) by George Herbert ^{[PDF Guide]}
5. She was a Phantom of Delight by William Wordsworth ^{[PDF Guide]}
6. Surplus Value by David C. Ward ^{[PDF Guide]}
7. Father Returning Home by Dilip Chitre ^{[PDF Guide]}
8. In the Park by Gwen Harwood ^{[PDF Guide]}
9. The Lost Woman… by Patricia Beer ^{[PDF Guide]}
10. Stabat Mater by Sam Hunt ^{[PDF Guide]}
11. Australia 1970 by Judith Wright ^{[PDF Guide]}
12. Description of Spring by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey ^{[PDF Guide]}
13. The Spring by Thomas Carew ^{[PDF Guide]}
14. The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy ^{[PDF Guide]}
15. Eel Tail by Alice Oswald ^{[PDF Guide]}
16. The Buck in the Snow by Edna St Vincent Millay ^{[PDF Guide]}
17. The Storm-Wind by William Barnes ^{[PDF Guide]}
18. The Sea and the Hills by Rudyard Kipling ^{[PDF Guide]}
19. Blessing by Imtiaz Dharker ^{[PDF Guide]}
20. The Stars Go Over the Lonely Ocean by Robinson Jeffers ^{[PDF Guide]}
21. The Road by Nancy Fotheringham Cato ^{[PDF Guide]}
22. Who in One Lifetime by Muriel Rukeyser ^{[PDF Guide]}
23. The Hour is Come by Louisa Lawson ^{[PDF Guide]}
24. an afternoon nap by Arthur Yap ^{[PDF Guide]}
25. from The Complaints of Poverty by Nicholas James ^{[PDF Guide]}
26. A Long Journey by Musaemura Zimunya ^{[PDF Guide]}
27. I Hear an Army… by James Joyce ^{[PDF Guide]}
28. Growing Old by Matthew Arnold ^{[PDF Guide]}
29. from Fears in Solitude by Samuel Taylor Coleridge ^{[PDF Guide]}
30. Renouncement by Alice Meynell ^{[PDF Guide]}

John Donne: Selected Poems

(Paper 4, Section A Poetry for 2024 and 2025)

1. A Nocturnal upon S. Lucy’s Day, being the shortest day ^{[PDF Guide]}
2. A Valediction: forbidding Mourning ^{[PDF Guide]}
3. Air and Angels ^{[PDF Guide]}
4. Break of Day ^{[PDF Guide]}
5. Elegy 5: His Picture ^{[PDF Guide]}
6. Elegy 7 ^{[PDF Guide]}
7. Elegy 9: The Autumnal ^{[PDF Guide]}
8. Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going to Bed ^{[PDF Guide]}
9. Holy Sonnets: Divine Meditations 2 ^{[PDF Guide]}
10. Holy Sonnets: Divine Meditations 4 ^{[PDF Guide]}
11. Holy Sonnets: Divine Meditations 6 ^{[PDF Guide]}
12. Holy Sonnets: Divine Meditations 7 ^{[PDF Guide]}
13. Holy Sonnets: Divine Meditations 9 ^{[PDF Guide]}
14. Holy Sonnets: Divine Meditations 10 ^{[PDF Guide]}
15. Holy Sonnets: Divine Meditations 14 ^{[PDF Guide]}
16. Holy Sonnets: Divine Meditations 17 ^{[PDF Guide]}
17. Love’s Growth ^{[PDF Guide]}
18. Song: Go catch a falling star ^{[PDF Guide]}
19. Song: Sweetest love, I do not go ^{[PDF Guide]}
20. The Anniversary ^{[PDF Guide]}
21. The Apparition ^{[PDF Guide]}
22. The Bait ^{[PDF Guide]}
23. The Canonization ^{[PDF Guide]}
24. The Dream ^{[PDF Guide]}
25. The Ecstasy ^{[PDF Guide]}
26. The Expiration ^{[PDF Guide]}
27. The Flea ^{[PDF Guide]}
28. The Good Morrow ^{[PDF Guide]}
29. The Relic ^{[PDF Guide]}
30. The Sun Rising ^{[PDF Guide]}
31. The Undertaking ^{[PDF Guide]}
32. Twickenham Garden ^{[PDF Guide]}

Walt Whitman: Selected Poems from Leaves of Grass (1891–1892)

(Paper 4, Section A Poetry for 2024, 2025 and 2026)

1. A Noiseless Patient Spider ^{[PDF Guide]}
2. As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life ^{[PDF Guide]}
3. Beat! Beat! Drums! ^{[PDF Guide]}
4. How Solemn as One by One (still analyzing)
5. I Hear America Singing ^{[PDF Guide]}
6. I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing ^{[PDF Guide]}
7. I Sing the Body Electric ^{[PDF Guide]}
8. In Paths Untrodden ^{[PDF Guide]}

Sujata Bhatt: Selected Poems from Point No Point

(Paper 4, Section B Poetry for 2024)

1. 29 April 1989 ^{[PDF Guide]}
2. 3 November 1984 ^{[PDF Guide]}
3. A Different History ^{[PDF Guide]}
4. A Story for Pearse (still analyzing)
5. Angels’ Wings (still analyzing)
6. Counting Sheep White Blood Cells ^{[PDF Guide]}
7. Eurydice Speaks
8. For Nanabhai Bhatt ^{[PDF Guide]}
9. Garlic in War and Peace ^{[PDF Guide]}
10. Genealogy
11. Go to Ahmedabad ^{[PDF Guide]}
12. Iris ^{[PDF Guide]}
13. Marie Curie to Her Husband
14. Nanabhai Bhatt in Prison (still analyzing)
15. Oranges and Lemons ^{[PDF Guide]}
16. Orpheus Confesses to Eurydice ^{[PDF Guide]}
17. Rooms by the Sea
18. Sujata: The First Disciple of Buddha ^{[PDF Guide]}
19. The Echoes in Poona (still analyzing)
20. The Langur Coloured Night
21. The Need to Recall the Journey ^{[PDF Guide]}
22. The One Who Goes Away ^{[PDF Guide]}
23. The Peacock ^{[PDF Guide]}
24. The Stare ^{[PDF Guide]}
25. The Stinking Rose ^{[PDF Guide]}
26. The Writer ^{[PDF Guide]}
27. Walking Across the Brooklyn Bridge, July 1990 ^{[PDF Guide]}
28. We are Adrift ^{[PDF Guide]}
29. What Happened to the Elephant? ^{[PDF Guide]}

Louise Glück: Selected Poems from The Wild Iris

(Paper 4, Section B Poetry for 2024, 2025 and 2026)

1. The Wild Iris ^{[PDF Guide]}
2. Matins (“The sun shines; by the mailbox, leaves…”) ^{[PDF Guide]}
3. Matins (“Unreachable father, when we were first…”) ^{[PDF Guide]}
4. Trillium ^{[PDF Guide]}
5. Lamium ^{[PDF Guide]}
6. Clear Morning (still analyzing)
7. End of Winter (still analyzing)
8. Matins (“Forgive me if I say I love you: the powerful…”) ^{[PDF Guide]}
9. Retreating Wind (still analyzing)
10. The Garden (still analyzing)
11. The Hawthorn Tree (still analyzing)
12. Love in Moonlight ^{[PDF Guide]}
13. Witchgrass (still analyzing)
14. Matins (“What is my heart to you”) ^{[PDF Guide]}
15. Matins (“Not the sun merely but the earth”) ^{[PDF Guide]}
16. Heaven and Earth ^{[PDF Guide]}
17. The Doorway (still analyzing)
18. Midsummer (still analyzing)
19. Vespers (“In your extended absence, you permit me”) ^{[PDF Guide]}
20. End of Summer ^{[PDF Guide]}
21. Vespers (“Even as you appeared to Moses, because”) ^{[PDF Guide]}
22. Vespers (“You thought we didn’t know. But we knew once…”) (still analyzing)
23. Early Darkness ^{[PDF Guide]}
24. The White Rose ^{[PDF Guide]}
25. Presque Isle ^{[PDF Guide]}
26. Retreating Light ^{[PDF Guide]}
27. Vespers (“Your voice is gone now; I hardly hear you…”) ^{[PDF Guide]}
28. Lullaby ^{[PDF Guide]}
29. September Twilight ^{[PDF Guide]}
30. The White Lilies ^{[PDF Guide]}

Gabriel Okara: Selected Poems from Collected Poems (2016)

(Paper 4, Section B Poetry for 2025 and 2026)

1. The Call of the River Nun ^{[PDF Guide]}
2. Once Upon a Time ^{[PDF Guide]}
3. Pianos and Drums ^{[PDF Guide]}
4. Spirit of the Wind ^{[PDF Guide]}
5. New Year’s Eve Midnight ^{[PDF Guide]}
6. You Laughed and Laughed and Laughed ^{[PDF Guide]}
7. The Fisherman’s Invocation ^{[PDF Guide]}
   1. Introit: Cast your net to the rightside ^{[PDF Guide]}
   2. The Invocation: See the sun in my hands ^{[PDF Guide]}
   3. The Child-Front: The child-Front has come ^{[PDF Guide]}
   4. Birth Dance of the Child-Front: Let’s dance with feet ^{[PDF Guide]}
   5. The End: The celebration is now ended ^{[PDF Guide]}
8. I Am Only a Name ^{[PDF Guide]}
9. Suddenly the Air Cracks ^{[PDF Guide]}
10. Metaphor of a War ^{[PDF Guide]}
11. Lady and Her Wig ^{[PDF Guide]}
12. Welcome Home ^{[PDF Guide]}
13. The Dreamer ^{[PDF Guide]}
14. Bent Double with Weight ^{[PDF Guide]}
15. Complex Matter ^{[PDF Guide]}
16. Beauty Beyond Words ^{[PDF Guide]}
17. Morbidity ^{[PDF Guide]}
18. We Live to Kill and Kill to Live ^{[PDF Guide]}
19. Ovation Seeker ^{[PDF Guide]}
20. Mass Transit Buses ^{[PDF Guide]}
21. Contractors ^{[PDF Guide]}
22. Rural Dweller ^{[PDF Guide]}
23. Rise and Shine ^{[PDF Guide]}
24. A Boy’s Dream ^{[PDF Guide]}
25. Babydom Wisdom ^{[PDF Guide]}
26. Waiting for a Coming ^{[PDF Guide]}
27. Salt of the Earth ^{[PDF Guide]}

Sylvia Plath: Selected Poems from Ariel (1965)

(Paper 1, Section B Poetry for 2026)

1. Morning Song ^{[PDF Guide]}
2. Sheep in Fog ^{[PDF Guide]}
3. The Applicant ^{[PDF Guide]}
4. Lady Lazarus ^{[PDF Guide]}
5. Tulips ^{[PDF Guide]}
6. Cut ^{[PDF Guide]}
7. Elm ^{[PDF Guide]}
8. Poppies in October ^{[PDF Guide]}
9. Ariel ^{[PDF Guide]}
10. Death & Co. ^{[PDF Guide]}
11. Getting There
12. Medusa ^{[PDF Guide]}
13. The Moon and the Yew Tree ^{[PDF Guide]}
14. A Birthday Present ^{[PDF Guide]}
15. Letter in November ^{[PDF Guide]}
16. The Rival ^{[PDF Guide]}
17. Daddy ^{[PDF Guide]}
18. You’re ^{[PDF Guide]}
19. Fever 103° ^{[PDF Guide]}
20. Stings ^{[PDF Guide]}
21. Little Fugue (still analyzing)
22. Years ^{[PDF Guide]}
23. The Munich Mannequins ^{[PDF Guide]}
24. Paralytic (still analyzing)
25. Balloons ^{[PDF Guide]}
26. Poppies in July ^{[PDF Guide]}
27. Kindness ^{[PDF Guide]}
28. Edge ^{[PDF Guide]}

Songs of Ourselves: The Cambridge Assessment International Education Anthology (2026)

Volume 2 (ISBN 9781108462280) (Paper 1, Section B Poetry for 2026)

1. Last Sonnet by John Keats
2. The Bargain by Sir Philip Sidney (still analyzing)
3. To My Dear and Loving Husband by Anne Bradstreet ^{[PDF Guide]}
4. Tiger in the Menagerie by Emma Jones ^{[PDF Guide]}
5. Lion Heart by Amanda Chong ^{[PDF Guide]}
6. Heart and Mind by Edith Sitwell ^{[PDF Guide]}
7. In Praise of Creation by Elizabeth Jennings ^{[PDF Guide]}
8. Upon a Wasp Chilled with Cold by Edward Taylor ^{[PDF Guide]}
9. ‘Blessed by the Indifference…’ (from The Flowers of Crete) by Christopher Reid ^{[PDF Guide]}
10. The Poplar-Field by William Cowper ^{[PDF Guide]}
11. Afternoon with Irish Cows by Billy Collins ^{[PDF Guide]}
12. London Snow by Robert Bridges ^{[PDF Guide]}
13. Excelsior by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ^{[PDF Guide]}
14. The Border Builder by Carol Rumens ^{[PDF Guide]}
15. The Migrant by A L Hendriks ^{[PDF Guide]}
16. The White House by Claude McKay ^{[PDF Guide]}
17. The Song of the Shirt by Thomas Hood ^{[PDF Guide]}
18. To a Millionaire by A R D Fairburn ^{[PDF Guide]}
19. Amoretti, Sonnet 86 by Edmund Spenser ^{[PDF Guide]}
20. Homecoming by Lenrie Peters ^{[PDF Guide]}
21. I Years had been from Home by Emily Dickinson ^{[PDF Guide]}
22. The Exequy by Henry King ^{[PDF Guide]}
23. Old Man by James Henry (still analyzing)
24. Very Old Man by James Henry ^{[PDF Guide]}
25. Late Wisdom by George Crabbe ^{[PDF Guide]}
26. ‘I Have a Rendezvous with Death’ by Alan Seeger ^{[PDF Guide]}
27. Song by Alun Lewis ^{[PDF Guide]}
28. The Dead Knight by John Masefield ^{[PDF Guide]}
29. From the Coptic by Stevie Smith ^{[PDF Guide]}
30. I Dream of You… by Christina Rossetti ^{[PDF Guide]}
31. Sleep by Kenneth Slessor ^{[PDF Guide]}

Natasha Trethewey: Nature Guard

(Paper 4, Section B Poetry for 2024, 2025, and 2026)

• Theories of Time and Space ^{[PDF Guide]}
• The Southern Crescent (still analyzing)
• Genus Narcissus ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Graveyard Blues (still analyzing)
• What the Body Can Say (still analyzing)
• Photograph: Ice Storm 1971 ^{[PDF Guide]}
• What is Evidence ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Letter Home ^{[PDF Guide]}
• After Your Death (still analyzing)
• Myth ^{[PDF Guide]}
• At Dusk ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Pilgrimage ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Scenes from a Documentary History of Mississippi (still analyzing)
• Native Guard (still analyzing)
• Again, the Fields ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Pastoral ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Miscegenation (still analyzing)
• My Mother Dreams Another Country ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Southern History ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Blond ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Southern Gothic ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Incident ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Providence ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Monument ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Elegy for the Native Guards ^{[PDF Guide]}
• South​​ ^{[PDF Guide]}

William Shakespeare: Selected Sonnets

(Paper 4, Section B Poetry for 2026)

• Sonnet 2: “When forty winters shall besiege thy brow” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 12: “When I do count the clock that tells the time” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 16: “But wherefore do not you a mightier way” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 17: “Who will believe my verse in time to come” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 23: “As an unperfect actor on the stage” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 29: “When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 54: “O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 55: “Not marble nor the gilded monuments” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 60: “Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 63: “Against my love shall be as I am now” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 65: “Since brass nor stone nor earth nor boundless sea” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 71: “No longer mourn for me when I am dead” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 75: “So are you to my thoughts as food to life” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 76: “Why is my verse so barren of new pride?” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 81: “Or I shall live your epitaph to make” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 84: “Who is it that says most which can say more” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 94: “They that have power to hurt and will do none” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 97: “How like a winter hath my absence been” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 104: “To me fair friend you never can be old” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 115: “Those lines that I before have writ do lie;” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 116: “Let me not to the marriage of true minds” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 123: “No Time thou shalt not boast that I do change.” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 124: “If my dear love were but the child of state” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 127: “In the old age black was not counted fair” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 129: “Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 130: “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 138: “When my love swears that she is made of truth” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 141: “In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 144: “Two loves I have of comfort and despair” ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Sonnet 147: “My love is as a fever longing still” ^{[PDF Guide]}

Geoffrey Chaucer

(Paper 4, Section B Poetry for 2026)

• The Wife of Bath’s Prologue (still analyzing)
• The Wife of Bath’s Tale (still analyzing)

(Paper 4, Section A Poetry for 2024 and 2025)

• The Merchant’s Prologue ^{[PDF Guide]}
• The Merchant’s Tale:
  • Part I ^{[PDF Guide]}
  • Part II ^{[PDF Guide]}
  • Part III ^{[PDF Guide]}
  • Part IV ^{[PDF Guide]}
  • Part V ^{[PDF Guide]}
  • Part VI ^{[PDF Guide]}
  • Part VII ^{[PDF Guide]}
  • Part VIII
  • Part IX