homer (c. 8th century bce) - ancient greece

sappho (c. 630 bce) - ancient greece

virgil (70 bce) - ancient rome

ovid (43 bce) - ancient rome

dante alighieri (1265) - italy

rumi (1207) - persia

li bai (701) - china

du fu (712) - china

basho (1644) - japan

kūkai (774) - japan

saadi (c. 1210) - persia

geoffrey chaucer (c. 1343) - england

francesco petrarca (petrarch) (1304) - italy

william shakespeare (1564) - england

john donne (1572) - england

sor juana inés de la cruz (1648) - mexico

alexander pope (1688) - england

jean de la fontaine (1621) - france

johann wolfgang von goethe (1749) - germany

william wordsworth (1770) - england

samuel taylor coleridge (1772) - england

friedrich schiller (1759) - germany

lord byron (1788) - england

percy bysshe shelley (1792) - england

john keats (1795) - england

henry david thoreau (1817) - united states

edgar allan poe (1809) - united states

walt whitman (1819) - united states

emily dickinson (1830) - united states

charles baudelaire (1821) - france

paul verlaine (1844) - france

stephane mallarmé (1842) - france

rainer maria rilke (1875) - austria-hungary/germany

rabindranath tagore (1861) - india

william butler yeats (1865) - ireland

t. s. eliot (1888) - united states/england

anna akhmatova (1889) - russia

pablo neruda (1904) - chile

federico garcía lorca (1898) - spain

langston hughes (1902) - united states

allen ginsberg (1926) - united states

jack kerouac (1922) - united states

lawrence ferlinghetti (1919) - united states

charles bukowski (1920) - united states

wislawa szymborska (1923) - poland

czeslaw milosz (1911) - poland

jorge luis borges (1899) - argentina

seamus heaney (1939) - ireland

octavio paz (1914) - mexico