- Boy Blue's Book of Beasts (children's poetry, 1957)
- Poems Children Want to Hear (anthology, 1959)
- Laughing Time (children's poetry, 1967)
- Celebrations and Songs About Animals (1969)
- Billy the Great (children's biography, 1974)
- Laughing Time #2 (children's poetry, 1978)
- Laughing Time #3 (children's poetry, 1984)
- Laughing Time #4 (children's poetry, 1997)
- William Jay Smith's Book of Stories and Poems (selected writings, 2008)
Translations
- The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins
- Modern Poetry from Spain and Latin America
- Selected Verse of Eugenio Montale
- Giacomo Leopardi
- José-Maria De Heredia and Paul Verlaine