1896 in poetry

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

— closing lines of Rudyard Kipling's If—, first published this year

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).

Events

 * William Morris publishes the Kelmscott Press edition of Chaucer's works

Australia

 * John Le Gay Brereton:
 * Perdita, A Sonnet Record
 * The Song of Brotherhood and Other Verses
 * Edward Dyson, Rhymes from the Mines
 * Henry Lawson:
 * In the Days When the World was Wide and Other Verses
 * "The Teams"
 * Banjo Paterson:
 * The Man from Snowy River
 * "Mulga Bill's Bicycle"

Canada

 * Bliss Carman, with Richard Hovey, More Songs from Vagabondia, Canadian author published in the United States
 * Duncan Campbell Scott, In the Village of Viger, Canada
 * Charles G.D. Roberts, The Book of the Native
 * Charles Sangster, * Our Norland. Toronto: Copp Clark, n.d.[1896].
 * Francis Sherman, Matins. Boston: Copeland and Day.
 * Francis Sherman, In Memorabilia Mortis. Boston: Copeland and Day.

United Kingdom
 To an Athlete Dying Young by A. E. Housman Smart lad, to slip betimes away From fields where glory does not stay And early though the laurel grows It withers quicker than the rose. Eyes the shady night has shut Cannot see the record cut, And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears: -- Lines 9-16


 * Hilaire Belloc:
 * The Bad Child's Book of Beasts
 * Verses and Sonnets
 * Laurence Binyon, First Book of London Visions (see also Second Book of London Visions 1899)
 * Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, publishing under the pen name "Anodos", Fancy's Following (see also Fancy's Guerdon 1897)
 * Ernest Christopher Dowson, Verses, including "Non Sum Qualis Eram"
 * A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, including "To an Athlete Dying Young", "Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now" and "When I Was One-and-Twenty"
 * Laurence Houseman, Green Arras
 * Rudyard Kipling, The Seven Seas
 * Alice Meynell, Other Poems
 * Henry Newbolt, "Drake's Drum", published in the St. John's Gazette (first published in book form in Admirals All, and Other Verses 1897)
 * John Cowper Powys, Odes, and Other Poems
 * Christina Rossetti, New Poems, edited by W. M. Rossetti
 * Robert Louis Stevenson, Songs of Travel, and Other Verses
 * Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Tale of Balen
 * William Watson, The Purple East

United States

 * Thomas Bailey Aldrich:
 * Judith and Holofernes
 * Later Lyrics
 * Bliss Carman, with Richard Hovey, More Songs from Vagabondia, Canadian author published in the United States
 * Emily Dickinson, Poems: Third Series
 * Paul Laurence Dunbar, Lyrics of Lowly Life
 * Lizette Woodworth Reese, A Quiet Road
 * Edwin Arlington Robinson, The Torrent and theNight Before

Works published in other languages

 * Nérée Beauchemin, Les floraisons matutinales; the author's first published collection; French language; Trois-Rivières, Canada
 * José Santos Chocano, Azahares, Peru
 * Narasinghrao, Hridayaveena containing khandakavyas, garbis, and poems about nature and women (Indian, writing in Gujarati)
 * Tekkan Yosano, Tozai namboku ("East-west, north-south"), tanka poetry, Japan

Awards and honors

 * Alfred Austin made Poet Laureate

Births
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * February 26 – Andrei Zhdanov (died 1948), a Soviet official who persecuted poets, writers and artists under the Zhdanov doctrine
 * August 27 – Kenji Miyazawa 宮沢 賢治 (died 1933), Japanese, early Shōwa period poet and author of children's literature (surname: Miyazawa)
 * October 30 – Kostas Karyotakis (died 1928), Greek
 * December 1 – Teiko Tomita (died 1990), Japanese-born American poet who wrote in Japanese
 * date not known – Walter D'Arcy Creswell (died 1960), New Zealand

Deaths
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * January 8 — Paul Verlaine, 52
 * Mathilde Blind
 * Henry Cuyler Bunner
 * Thomas Edward Brown
 * Alexander McLachlan
 * William Morris
 * Coventry Patmore