Other poems you might read are: "The Forsaken Merman," Matthew Arnold; "The Cloud," Shelley; "Kubla Khan," Coleridge; "The Burial of Moses," Mrs. Alexander; and "The Recessional," Kipling. "The Forest of Wild Thyme," Alfred Noyes, contains much in the way of music.
After you have studied these—and they will give you a good start—search for yourself. To make your own discoveries in literature is a valuable part of your training.
Anthologies are Valuable Text-Books
The student will find it very helpful to have at hand one or two small volumes of selected poems by various authors. Such anthologies often give, in a compact form, some of the choicest of the writers' verses; and this saves the novice's time in wading through some work that may be indifferent in search of the best. Moreover, a little volume can be slipped into the pocket, and will provide reading for odd moments.
Do not content yourself with a mere reading of the poems. Try to decide wherein lies the charm (or the reverse) of each. Explain, if you can, why, for instance, the following, by Swinburne:—
"Yea, surely the sea like a harper laid hand on the shore as a lyre,"
appeals to one more than Longfellow's lines:—
"The night is calm and cloudless,
And still as still can be,
And the stars come forth to listen
To the music of the sea."
Compare poems by various writers dealing with somewhat similar themes; note wherein the difference lies both in thought and workmanship. Mrs. Browning's "Sonnets from the Portuguese" could be studied side by side with Christina Rossetti's "Monna Innominata"; Longfellow's "The Herons of Elmwood" with Bryant's "Lines to a Waterfowl"; Christina Rossetti's "The Prince's Progress" with Tennyson's "The Day Dream."
Such exercises will enlarge your ideas as well as your vocabulary; they will help to give you facility in expressing yourself, and also that genuine polish which is the result of close familiarity with good writing.