1850 in poetry

''I hold it true, whate'er befall;

''I feel it when I sorrow most;

'' 'Tis better to have loved and lost

''Than never to have loved at all.

* * *

''Who trusted God was love indeed

''And love Creation's final law

''Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw

''With ravine, shriek'd against his creed

&mdash; From Cantos 27 and 56, In Memoriam A.H.H., by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, published this year Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).

Events

 * Alfred, Lord Tennyson becomes Poet Laureate after Samuel Rogers turns down the post, saying he was too old for it.
 * Golden Age of Russian Poetry, begun in about 1800 ends at about this time
 * Young Germany (Junges Deutschland) a loose group of German writers from about 1830, stops flourishing at about this time

United Kingdom

 * William Allingham, Poems
 * Philip James Bailey, The Angel World, and Other Poems
 * Thomas Lovell Beddoes, published anonymously, Death's Jest-Book; or, The Fool's Tragedy (posthumous)
 * Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Poems including Sonnets from the Portuguese (first printed separately in Boston 1866; see also Poems 1844, 1853, 1856)
 * Robert Browning, Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day
 * Sydney Dobell, writing under the pen name "Sydney Yendys", The Roman
 * Dora Greenwell, Stories That Might Be True, with Other Poems
 * Leigh Hunt, The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt, in three volumes
 * Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Blessed Damozel in The Gem
 * John Ruskin, Poems
 * Robert Southey, Southey's Common-place Book: Third/Fourth Series, poems and prose, edited by John Wood Warner (see also first and second series 1849)
 * Alfred Tennyson:
 * In Memoriam A.H.H., in memory of Tennyson's friend, Arthur Hallam
 * "Ring Out, Wild Bells"
 * William Wordsworth, The Prelude; or, Growth of a Poet's Mind; published several months after his death; originally intended to form the introduction to The Recluse, for which The Excursion (1814) formed the second part; though The Prelude failed to arouse great interest at the time, it was later generally recognised as his masterpiece (second edition 1851; see also "Events" for 1798, 1799, 1806, 1820, The Recluse 1888)

United States

 * Washington Allston, Lectures on Art and Poems, (scholarship)
 * George Copway, The Ojibway Conquest (the author also published this year the nonfiction work, Traditional History of the Ojibway Nation)
 * Richard Henry Dana, Sr., Poems and Prose Writings, in two volumes, Volume 1 contains poems, both new and previously published in 1827, New York: Baker and Scribner
 * Sylvester Judd, Philo, An Evangeliad
 * Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Seaside and the Fireside
 * Edgar Allan Poe, The Works of the Late Edgar Alan Poe: With a Memoir by Rufus Wilmot Griswold and Notices of His Life and Genius by N. P. Willis and J. R. Lowell, published in four volumes from this year to 1854 including "The Poetic Principle", an essay; criticism (published posthumously; died 1849)
 * John Godfrey Saxe, Humorous and Satirical Poems
 * William Gilmore Simms, The City of the Silent
 * John Greenleaf Whittier:
 * Poems, Boston: Benjamin B. Mussey & Co.
 * Songs of Labor and Other Poems

Works published in other languages

 * James Huston, editor, Le répertoire national, anthology of French Canadian poetry in four volumes, published from 1848 to this year; including poetry by Joseph Mermet ("Les Boucheries: fêtes rurales du Canada"), Isidore Bédard ("Sol canadien, terre chérie]]), François-Xavier Garneau, Napoléon Aubin, François-Magloire Derome and Pierre Chauveau

Births
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * January 15 – Mihai Eminescu, Romanian
 * February 20 – Nérée Beauchemin (died 1931), Canadian poet and physician
 * June 27 – Ivan Vazov, Bulgarian
 * July 18 – Rose Hartwick Thorpe, American
 * August 1 – William Larminie, American
 * September 2 – Eugene Field, American
 * November 5 – Ella Wheeler Wilcox, American
 * November 13 – Robert Louis Stevenson, Scots novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer
 * December 13 – William Chapman (died 1917), Canadian poet, journalist and bureaucrat
 * December 25 – Isabella Valancy Crawford (died 1887), Irish-born Canadian poet
 * Also:
 * Vitthal Bhagwani Lembhe (died 1920), Indian, Marathi-language poet
 * Savitagauri Pandya (died 1925), Indian, Gujarati-language woman poet
 * Vishvanatha Dev Varma, (died 1920), Indian, Sanskrit-language poet
 * Albery A. Whitmann, American

Deaths
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * January 20 – Adam Oehlenschlager (born 1779), Danish
 * January 20 – Philip Pendleton Cooke (born 1816), American lawyer and poet
 * April 7 – William Lisle Bowles (UK)
 * April 23 – William Wordsworth (UK)
 * May 23 – Margaret Fuller, American
 * May 31 – Giuseppe Giusti (Tuscan)
 * August 22 – Nikolaus Lenau, Australian
 * Also:
 * Manoah Bodman