1843 in poetry

Events

• April 4 – William Wordsworth accepts the office of Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom on being assured that it is regarded as a purely honorific position.

  Works published

United Kingdom">English poetry">United Kingdom

• R. S. Hawker, Reeds Shaken with the Wind
• Thomas Hood, "The Song of the Shirt", a poem
• Richard Henry Horne, Orion: An epic poem

  United States">American poetry">United States

• William Ellery Channing, Poems, published at the expense of the author's friend Samuel Gray Ward; the volume is admired by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau but condemned by Edgar Allan Poe in "Our Amateur Poets", an essay in Graham's
• Thomas Dunn English, "Ben Bolt", a popular ballad written for the New York Mirror and later set to music numerous times
• William Lloyd Garrison, Sonnets
• James Russell Lowell, Miscellaneous Poems
• Cornelius Mathews, Poems on Man in His Various Aspects under the American Republic
• William Gilmore Simms, Donna Florida, a verse tale; Charleston
• James Gates Percival, The Dream of a Day
• John Pierpont, The Anti-Slavery Poems of John Pierpont
• Elizabeth Oakes Smith, The Sinless Child and Other Poems, acclaimed by critics, including Edgar Allan Poe
• John Greenleaf Whittier, Lays of My Home and Other Poems, regional poetry, including "The Merrimack", "The Funeral Tree of the Sokokis", "The Ballad of Cassandra Southwick" and "Massachusetts to Virginia"
• Nathaniel Parker Willis:
• * The Sacred Poems
• * Poems of Passion
• * The Lady Jane and Other Poems

  Other

• Hilario Ascasubi, El gaucho Jacinto Cielo con doce números, Argentina
• Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Bouquets et prières, France
• Christian Winther, Til Een ; see also revised edition 1849; Denmark
• Gonçalves Dias, "Canção do exílio", Brazil
• Mikhail Lermontov, "Valerik", Russia, posthumously in the anthology Dawn
• Betty Paoli, Nach dem Gewitter, Austria

  Births

• February 24 – Violet Fane, pen name of Lady Mary Currie, née Mary Montgomerie Lamb, English novelist, poet and essayist
• May 3 – Edward Dowden, Irish-born poet and critic
• August 19 – Charles Montagu Doughty, English poet, writer and traveller
• December 7 – Helena Nyblom, née Roed, Danish-born poet and writer of fairy tales
• December 21 – Thomas Bracken, Irish-born New Zealander
• December 24 – Lydia Koidula, born Lydia Jannsen, Estonian
• Undated – Dimitrios Paparrigopoulos, Greek

  Deaths

• January 11 – Francis Scott Key, American lawyer, author, and amateur poet who wrote the words to the United States' national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner"
• March 21 – Robert Southey, English Poet Laureate
• June 6 – Friedrich Hölderlin, German lyric poet
• July 9 – Washington Allston, 63, American poet and painter
• December 11 - Casimir Delavigne, French poet and dramatist