<P> Towards the end of the century, English poets began to take an interest in French symbolism and Victorian poetry entered a decadent fin - de-siecle phase . Two groups of poets emerged, the Yellow Book poets who adhered to the tenets of Aestheticism, including Algernon Charles Swinburne, Oscar Wilde and Arthur Symons and the Rhymers' Club group that included Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson and William Butler Yeats . </P> <P> Comic verse abounded in the Victorian era . Magazines such as Punch and Fun magazine teemed with humorous invention and were aimed at a well - educated readership . The most famous collection of Victorian comic verse is the Bab Ballads . </P> <P> The Victorian era continued into the early years of the 20th century and two figures emerged as the leading representative of the poetry of the old era to act as a bridge into the new . These were Yeats and Thomas Hardy . Yeats, although not a modernist, was to learn a lot from the new poetic movements that sprang up around him and adapted his writing to the new circumstances . Hardy was, in terms of technique at least, a more traditional figure and was to be a reference point for various anti-modernist reactions, especially from the 1950s onwards . </P> <P> A.E. Housman (1859--1936) was poet who was born in the Victorian era and who first published in the 1890s, but who only really became known in the 20th century . Housman is best known for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad (1896). This collection was turned down by several publishers so that Housman published it himself, and the work only became popular when "the advent of war, first in the Boer War and then in World War I, gave the book widespread appeal due to its nostalgic depiction of brave English soldiers". The poems' wistful evocation of doomed youth in the English countryside, in spare language and distinctive imagery, appealed strongly to late Victorian and Edwardian taste, and the fact that several early 20th - century composers set it to music helped its popularity . Housman published a further highly successful collection Last Poems in 1922 while a third volume, More Poems, was published posthumously in 1936 . </P>

Two main styles of english poetry in the seventeenth century