WJEC GCE AS English Language and Literature Poetry (2015 onwards)

For those that are studying WJEC GCE AS English Language and Literature Poetry (2015 onwards), here is a list of all poems from their syllabus analyzed. These are the poems that apply to teaching from 2015, and for award from 2017. If you are struggling to understand any of the terms used in our analysis, explore our literary term glossary.

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 too, feel free to contact us.

We also welcome comments on all of our poetry analyses and articles. We aim to have all poems analyzed and will add links when they are completed.

Component 1

Section A: Poetry pre-1900

1. Geoffrey Chaucer: The Merchant’s Prologue and Tale (Cambridge):
   • Prologue ^{[PDF Guide]}
   • 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]}
2. John Donne: Selected Poems (Penguin Classics)
3. John Milton: Paradise Lost Book IX (Oxford)
4. John Keats: Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) (for assessment in summer 2020 and 2021 only)
5. William Blake: Poems selected by Patti Smith (Vintage) (for assessment from summer 2022 onwards)
6. Christina Rossetti: Selected Poems (Penguin Classics)

Section B: Poetry post-1900 (open book, clean copy)

• Thomas Hardy: Poems selected by Tom Paulin (Faber). Prescribed sections:
  • Poems of the Past and Present
  • Poems of 1912-13
  • Moments of Vision
• T S Eliot: Selected Poems (Faber). Prescribed sections:
  • Prufrock and Other Observations
  • The Waste Land ^{[PDF Guide]}
  • The Hollow Men ^{[PDF Guide]}
  • Ariel
• D H Lawrence: Selected Poems (Penguin Classics, edited by James Fenton). Prescribed sections:
  • Love Poems and Others
  • Amores
  • New Poems
  • Birds
  • Beasts and Flowers
  • Last
• Gillian Clarke: Making the Beds for the Dead (Carcanet) (for assessment in summer 2020 and 2021 only)
• W. B. Yeats: Poems selected by Seamus Heaney (Faber). Prescribed sections:
  • In the Seven Woods ^{[PDF Guide]}
  • The Green Helmet and Other Poems
  • Responsibilities
  • The Wild Swans at Coole
  • Michael Robartes and the Dancer
  • The Tower
• Dannie Abse: Welsh Retrospective (Seren) (for assessment from summer 2022 onwards)
• Ted Hughes: Poems selected by Simon Armitage (Faber) (Prescribed section: all poems up to and including ‘Rain’ on page 68)
• Sylvia Plath: Poems selected by Ted Hughes (Faber)
• Philip Larkin: The Whitsun Weddings (Faber)
• Carol Ann Duffy: Mean Time (Picador)
• Seamus Heaney: Field Work (Faber)
• Owen Sheers: Skirrid Hill (Seren)

Prescribed poems for study – Component 1, Section A part (i)

Poetry pre-1900 John Donne, Selected Poems, (Penguin Classics)

• The Good Morrow ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Song (‘Go and catch a falling star’) ^{[PDF Guide]}
• The Sun Rising ^{[PDF Guide]}
• The Canonization ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Song (‘Sweetest love, I do not go’) ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Air and Angels ^{[PDF Guide]}
• The Anniversary ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Twickenham Garden ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Love’s Exchange ^{[PDF Guide]}
• A Valediction of Weeping ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Love’s Alchemy ^{[PDF Guide]}
• The Flea ^{[PDF Guide]}
• A Nocturnal upon St Lucy’s Day, Being the Shortest Day ^{[PDF Guide]}
• The Apparition ^{[PDF Guide]}
• A Valediction Forbidding Mourning ^{[PDF Guide]}
• The Ecstasy ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Love’s Deity ^{[PDF Guide]}
• The Funeral ^{[PDF Guide]}
• The Blossom ^{[PDF Guide]}
• The Relic ^{[PDF Guide]}
• The Dissolution (still analyzing)
• Farewell to Love ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Elegy III: Change (still analyzing)
• Elegy V: His Picture ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Elegy VII: The Comparison (still analyzing)
• Elegy: The Autumnal ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Elegy: To His Mistress Going to Bed ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Holy Sonnet III (‘Oh might those sighs and tears’) ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Holy Sonnet V (‘I am a little world’) ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Holy Sonnet VI (‘This is my play’s last scene’) ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Holy Sonnet IX (‘If poisonous minerals’) ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Holy Sonnet X (‘Death be not proud’) ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Holy Sonnet XI (‘Spit in my face, you Jews’) ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Holy Sonnet XIII (‘What if this present’) ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Holy Sonnet XIV (‘Batter my heart’) ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Holy Sonnet XVII (‘Since she, whom I loved’) ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Holy Sonnet XIX (‘O, to vex me’) ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward ^{[PDF Guide]}
• Hymn to God my God, in my Sickness ^{[PDF Guide]}
• A Hymn to God the Father ^{[PDF Guide]}

John Keats, Selected Poems, (Penguin Classics) (For assessment to 2021 only)

1. Imitation of Spenser ^{[PDF Guide]}
2. On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer ^{[PDF Guide]}
3. On the Sea ^{[PDF Guide]}
4. On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again ^{[PDF Guide]}
5. ‘When I have fears that I may cease to be’ ^{[PDF Guide]}
6. Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil (still analyzing)
7. On Visiting the Tomb of Burns ^{[PDF Guide]}
8. The Eve of St Agnes ^{[PDF Guide]}
9. La Belle Dame sans Merci. A Ballad ^{[PDF Guide]}
10. To Sleep ^{[PDF Guide]}
11. Ode to Psyche ^{[PDF Guide]}
12. Ode on a Grecian Urn ^{[PDF Guide]}
13. Ode to a Nightingale ^{[PDF Guide]}
14. Ode on Melancholy ^{[PDF Guide]}
15. ‘Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art’ ^{[PDF Guide]}
16. To Autumn ^{[PDF Guide]}

William Blake, Poems selected by Patti Smith (Vintage) (For assessment from 2022)

1. To Spring ^{[PDF Guide]}
2. To Summer ^{[PDF Guide]}
3. To Autumn ^{[PDF Guide]}
4. To Winter ^{[PDF Guide]}
5. Song: How sweet I roam’d from field to field ^{[PDF Guide]}
6. Mary (still analyzing)
7. The Crystal Cabinet ^{[PDF Guide]}
8. from Proverbs of Hell (still analyzing)
9. Introduction (to the Songs of Innocence) ^{[PDF Guide]}
10. The Shepherd ^{[PDF Guide]}
11. The Ecchoing Green ^{[PDF Guide]}
12. The Lamb ^{[PDF Guide]}
13. The Little Black Boy ^{[PDF Guide]}
14. The Blossom ^{[PDF Guide]}
15. The Chimney Sweeper: A little black thing among the snow ^{[PDF Guide]}
16. The Little Boy Lost ^{[PDF Guide]}
17. The Little Boy Found ^{[PDF Guide]}
18. Laughing Song ^{[PDF Guide]}
19. A Cradle Song ^{[PDF Guide]}
20. The Divine Image ^{[PDF Guide]}
21. Holy Thursday ^{[PDF Guide]}
22. Night ^{[PDF Guide]}
23. Spring ^{[PDF Guide]}
24. Infant Joy ^{[PDF Guide]}
25. A Dream ^{[PDF Guide]}
26. On Another’s Sorrow ^{[PDF Guide]}
27. Earth’s Answer ^{[PDF Guide]}
28. The Clod and The Pebble ^{[PDF Guide]}
29. Holy Thursday ^{[PDF Guide]}
30. The Little Girl Lost ^{[PDF Guide]}
31. The Little Girl Found ^{[PDF Guide]}
32. The Chimney Sweeper: When my mother died ^{[PDF Guide]}
33. Nurse’s Song ^{[PDF Guide]}
34. The Sick Rose ^{[PDF Guide]}
35. The Fly ^{[PDF Guide]}
36. The Angel ^{[PDF Guide]}
37. The Tyger ^{[PDF Guide]}
38. My Pretty Rose Tree ^{[PDF Guide]}
39. Ah! Sun-flower ^{[PDF Guide]}
40. The Lilly ^{[PDF Guide]}
41. The Garden of Love ^{[PDF Guide]}
42. The Little Vagabond ^{[PDF Guide]}
43. London ^{[PDF Guide]}
44. The Human Abstract ^{[PDF Guide]}
45. Infant Sorrow ^{[PDF Guide]}
46. A Poison Tree ^{[PDF Guide]}
47. A Little Boy Lost ^{[PDF Guide]}
48. A Little Girl Lost (still analyzing)
49. To Tirzah ^{[PDF Guide]}
50. The Schoolboy ^{[PDF Guide]}
51. The Voice of the Ancient Bard ^{[PDF Guide]}

Christina Rossetti, Selected Poems (Penguin Classics)

1. Have you forgotten? ^{[PDF Guide]}
2. Sweet Death ^{[PDF Guide]}
3. Remember ^{[PDF Guide]}
4. From the Antique ^{[PDF Guide]}
5. Echo ^{[PDF Guide]}
6. A Triad ^{[PDF Guide]}
7. ‘Whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive’ ^{[PDF Guide]}
8. An Apple-Gathering ^{[PDF Guide]}
9. Up-Hill ^{[PDF Guide]}
10. Goblin Market ^{[PDF Guide]}
11. ‘No, Thank You, John’ ^{[PDF Guide]}
12. ‘Out of the Deep’ ^{[PDF Guide]}
13. The Queen of Hearts ^{[PDF Guide]}
14. Twice ^{[PDF Guide]}
15. Memory ^{[PDF Guide]}
16. Amor Mundi ^{[PDF Guide]}
17. A Daughter of Eve ^{[PDF Guide]}
18. A Smile and a Sigh ^{[PDF Guide]}
19. Autumn Violets ^{[PDF Guide]}
20. ‘They Desire a Better Country’ ^{[PDF Guide]}
21. Confluents ^{[PDF Guide]}
22. The Key-Note ^{[PDF Guide]}
23. De Profundis ^{[PDF Guide]}
24. The Thread of Life ^{[PDF Guide]}
25. A Castle-Builder’s World ^{[PDF Guide]}
26. The Greatest of these is Charity ^{[PDF Guide]}
27. ‘Standing afar off for the fear of her torment’ ^{[PDF Guide]}
28. Vigil of St Bartholomew ^{[PDF Guide]}
29. ‘Who hath despised the day of small things?’ ^{[PDF Guide]}
30. Tune me, O Lord, into one harmony ^{[PDF Guide]}