Explaining the Explanation

I chose the entries in my Top Ten the following way:

-- Each one had to be a book-length poem, and complete. So, The Canterbury Tales and Don Juan, for instance, were out. Each one could be a book of shorter poems in series, though. So, Shake-speare's Sonnets and Idylls of the King were in.

-- Each one had to be a significant part of the development of the English long-poem, but they could stand up as individual works, also.

-- Each one had to have some kind of link, thematically. Idylls matches up with Paradise Lost pretty well in that area. Others seem like more of a stretch. I'll have more to say about this later.

-- And each is a book you could finish with a feeling of satisfaction, or at least accomplishment. More to say about that later, too.

I have asterisked two poems, because I have not read them all the way through or I "read at" them piecemeal so long ago I need to do a more thorough job now. So, I may end up being wrong about those entries, and they may change.