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The Harley Lyrics is the name of a collection of poems in a manuscript of the early 14th century at the British Library. Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford, bought it in 1723 from the library of the Archdeacon of Canterbury, and therefore it bears his name today: the well-known MS Harley 2253. It is so famous, because it is the earliest preserved collection of lyrics comprising more than half of the secular lyrics from before the 15th century.

The date of composition and of the manuscript, however, is not secure. The political songs on certain historical events give us a range between 1264 (Battle of Lewes) to 1314 (Battle of Bannockburn). The handwriting suggests a scribe between 1314 and 1325. The dialect associates the manuscript, with a West Midland provenance, probably from Hereford or Leominster.

The manuscript contains miscellaneous texts, such as Latin religious pieces in prose and verse and Anglo-Norman saints' lives, fabliaux and short poems. The Middle English poems comprise secular lyrics, such as lovesongs (carols, pastourelles, reverdies), most of which were written under the influence of courtly love, and political songs, and there are religious lyrics, such as complaints, prayers and lovesongs to the Virgin.

In form the poems vary from monorhymed stanzas to quatrains with alternate rhymes or tail-rhymes, some poems have envois and show French and Provençal influence, some use alliteration and end-rhymes.