Top 100 Irish Poems Of All Time, Ranked (Read Every One In Full)

Ireland’s favourite poem, as voted by Irish Times readers, is The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W. B. Yeats. The top five are all Yeats, Heaney and Kavanagh: He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, Mid-Term Break, The Song of Wandering Aengus and On Raglan Road. Yeats has 25 poems in the 100, Patrick Kavanagh 12 and Seamus Heaney 10. Every poem below links to the full text on this site, with notes.

Love Irish poems? Well, thanks to the Irish Times, I have a list of Ireland’s top 100 Irish poems for you today.

Every week I will be picking a random Irish poem and writing a little bit about it, along with the Irish poem itself.

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Ireland’s Top 100 Favourite Irish Poems

Poems 1 to 10

Yeats owns this top ten with six places, and Patrick Kavanagh takes three. The one outsider is Seamus Heaney’s Mid-Term Break, about the death of his four-year-old brother, which generations of Irish students have met in the classroom. If you need a wedding reading, He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven is short, lovely and very hard to get wrong.

Poems 11 to 20

This is the most mixed ten on the list, with Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village from 1770 beside Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol, written after his release from prison. Kavanagh’s In Memory of My Mother is a gentle choice for a funeral, and A Christmas Childhood earns a reading every December. Digging opens Heaney’s first collection and is a classroom staple.

Poems 21 to 30

The Easter Rising casts a long shadow here. Plunkett and Pearse were both executed after it, and Ledwidge’s poem at 24 mourns Thomas MacDonagh, shot in the same week. The surprise is Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire, Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill’s 18th-century keen for her husband, killed in 1773. The Second Coming, written in 1919, is still the poem people reach for when things fall apart.

Poems 31 to 40

Eight poets share these ten places, so nobody runs away with this group. Heaney’s Clearances, a sequence of sonnets in memory of his mother, is one of the best funeral readings on the whole list, while Kavanagh’s poem from the Grand Canal asks for nothing grander than a bench by the water. Derek Mahon’s A Disused Shed in Co Wexford is the one to read twice.

Poems 41 to 50

This is where the Irish language shows its strength, with four poems in Irish, including two by the blind poet Antoine Ó Raifteirí and Brian Merriman’s bawdy Cúirt an Mheán Oíche. The surprise entry is Flann O’Brien’s The Workman’s Friend, a comic verse from At Swim-Two-Birds, sitting happily beside Yeats and Heaney. Blackberry-Picking is a school favourite for good reason.

Poems 51 to 60

Yeats has four here, but the quiet gem is James Joyce’s Ecce Puer, written in 1932 when the birth of his grandson came just weeks after the death of his father. Eavan Boland’s Night Feed, a mother feeding her baby at dawn, is one for new parents. For grief, Paul Muldoon’s Incantata is a long and dazzling elegy for the artist Mary Farl Powers.

Poems 61 to 70

The surprise here is Pangur Bán, a ninth-century poem in which an Irish monk compares his work with his white cat hunting mice. Nothing else on the list is older, and cat owners will know the feeling. Irish history is well served too, with Requiem for the Croppies on 1798, Mangan’s Dark Rosaleen and Pearse’s mountain woman keening her son.

Poems 71 to 80

Tom Kettle wrote To My Daughter Betty at the Somme days before he was killed in September 1916, and it is one of the most moving poems on the list. Under Ben Bulben gives Yeats the last word on his own grave at Drumcliff, ending with the epitaph carved on his headstone. Follower, Heaney on his father ploughing, suits Father’s Day nicely.

Poems 81 to 90

A Cradle Song, by Padraic Colum
A Drover, by Padraic Colum
Woodman, by Patrick Deeley (no page on this site yet)
Christmas Day, by Paul Durcan
Going Home to Mayo, by Paul Durcan
Death of an Irishwoman, by Michael Hartnett
Postscript, by Seamus Heaney
Station Island, by Seamus Heaney
Father and Son, by F.R. Higgins
For Rita With Love, by Pat Ingoldsby

Heaney’s Postscript, a drive along the Flaggy Shore in County Clare, is one of his best-loved poems and short enough to learn by heart. Pat Ingoldsby’s For Rita With Love is the surprise, a plain-spoken love poem from a man who sold his books on the streets of Dublin. Paul Durcan gets two in a row here.

Poems 91 to 100

Yeats finishes strongly with three in a row, and A Prayer for My Daughter makes a thoughtful reading at a christening. The one to seek out is An Bonnán Buí, in which Cathal Buí Mac Giolla Ghunna mourns a bittern that died of thirst and uses it to defend his own drinking. John Montague’s All Legendary Obstacles, a love poem set in the California rain, rounds off the hundred.

The top 100 Irish poems by poet

Three poets account for nearly half the list. If you want to read one poet properly, start here, and see my guide to the 10 best Irish poets for who they were.

Padraic Colum (4)

Austin Clarke (3)

Louis MacNeice (3)

Snow (no. 39)
Autumn Journal (no. 62)
Dublin (no. 63)

Joseph Mary Plunkett (2)

I See His Blood upon the Rose (no. 22)
The Splendour of God (no. 75)

Francis Ledwidge (2)

Thomas McDonagh (no. 24)
June (no. 38)

Thomas Kinsella (2)

Another September (no. 35)
Mirror in February (no. 42)

Seán Ó Ríordáin (2)

Cúl an Tí (no. 55)
Oíche Nollag na mBan (no. 95)

Thomas Moore (2)

The Meeting of the Waters (no. 65)
‘Tis the last rose of summer (no. 93)

F.R. Higgins (2)

Padraig Ó Conaire, Gaelic Storyteller (no. 72)
Father and Son (no. 89)

Paul Durcan (2)

Christmas Day (no. 84)
Going Home to Mayo (no. 85)

Antoine Ó Raifteirí (2)

Mise Raifteirí an File (no. 41)
Anois Teacht an Earraigh (no. 50)

One poem each

The Deserted Village (Oliver Goldsmith, no. 15) · The Ballad of Reading Gaol (Oscar Wilde, no. 16) · Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire (Eibhlin Dubh Ni Chonaill, no. 27) · A Disused Shed in Co Wexford (Derek Mahon, no. 37) · Cúirt an Mheán Oíche (Brian Merriman, no. 43) · Cill Chais (Aodhagán Ó Rathaille, no. 44) · The Workman’s Friend (Flann O’Brien, no. 49) · Ecce Puer (James Joyce, no. 53) · Incantata (Paul Muldoon, no. 54) · Night Feed (Eavan Boland, no. 58) · Dark Rosaleen (James Clarence Mangan, no. 64) · The Fairies (William Allingham, no. 69) · Pangur Bán (Anonymous, 9th century, no. 70) · To My Darling Daughter Betty (Tom Kettle, no. 73) · Sheep and Lambs (Katharine Tynan, no. 76) · Valparaiso (Padraig de Brun, no. 80) · Death of an Irishwoman (Michael Hartnett, no. 86) · For Rita With Love (Pat Ingoldsby, no. 90) · An Bonnan Bui (Cathal Bui Mac Giolla Ghunna, no. 92) · An tEarrach Thiar (Máirtín Ó Direáin, no. 94) · All Legendary Obstacles (John Montague, no. 100) · Woodman (Patrick Deeley, no. 83, not available online)

Looking for something specific? Try my 12 Irish love poems, St Patrick’s Day poems or the full Irish poetry section.

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What did you think of this list of Irish poems?

I had a fantastic time putting the list together. Irish poems teach you a lot of things, especially Irish poems about life that seem to resonate with everyday people, including me. Some of the above poems are poems in Irish as well as English. But for each of them, I have included a translation. And many poems are old Irish poems that date back hundreds of years.

If you loved these poems, then you will love my list of Irish love poems as well; check it out here.

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Cynthia and David Jenkins

Saturday 5th of November 2022

Excellent selection of precious poems; may I suggest you explore the work of Bernard O’Donoghue of East Cork. With thanks and appreciation, David

Maureen Ferriter

Saturday 13th of February 2021

I was in a very small, wee pub in Ballyferriter and an Irishman closed the doors and songs were sung. And then a man started to recite a poem and we all were very quiet. The first words were,”‘Twas a small hotel in a Dublin”...the repeated stanza that I recall was “Are you the Michael Farrely’” I’d love to get the words to that poem. Does anyone know of it? Maureen Ferriter ‘ ‘

autumnaljourney

Saturday 28th of November 2020

I know "On Raglan Road" by Patrick Kavanagh. It's also a beautiful song found on the album "Tears of Stone."

Top 100 Irish Poems Ranked, With an Analysis of Each Poem

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