Reverend Walter Stanley Senior (10 May 1876 – 23 February 1938) was an English scholar, poet and member of the Church Missionary Society.

He was the author of a work titled Pisgah or The Choice, which won the triennial prize poem on a sacred subject in the University of Oxford, 1914.

When the then principal of Trinity, A. G. Fraser, was looking for talent in the English Universities which he could enlist into service at Trinity College, Kandy, he came across Senior, who formed one of a brilliant set of men, including Dr. Kenneth Saunders from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, N. P. Campbell, a Balliol man, who was recognised as a great scientist, and J. P. R. Gibson, later principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge.

Senior's interest in educational work prompted him to accept the post of the first registrar of the University College and lecturer in Classics, but the material aspects of office and security had no appeal whatever to a man of his fine sensibilities.

Having spent the greater part of his life in the service of Sri Lanka, his comparatively early death was due to rigorous tropical conditions undermining a not very robust frame.

In a letter to a friend, written a few months before his death, he said: “The idea has come to me that I should like my ashes, for I contemplate cremation rather than burial, to be interred in St. Andrew’s Churchyard, Haputale.” His gravestone at St Andrew's is a testament to his life, bearing the plain legend He Loved Ceylon preceded by the opening lines from his poem, Lanka from Pidurutalagala: Here I stand in spirit, as in body once I stood Long years ago, in love with all the land, This peerless land of beauty's plenitude.

Senior was a fine classical scholar with a remarkable gift for conveying his own enthusiasm for the best in literature to those who were privileged to be his students.