The greatest poems of all time written by modern and famous poets in american literature and english poetry. This selection includes popular poems such as The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe, The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost and Daddy by Sylvia Plath. These modern and classical poems about love, nature, death, family and friendship, celebrate and represent the famous poems ever written perfect to read and recite in competitions for children and adults in schools and colleges. Each poem is followed by a brief analysis so you can find exactly what suits your search.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise; Continue Reading
– Part I
It is an ancient mariner
And he stoppeth one of three.
–“By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stoppest thou me? Continue Reading
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred. Continue Reading
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert… near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: Continue Reading
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
Written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1845, the Raven is considered as one of the most popular and inspirational english language’s poems. Much of this was Poe’s own doing, as he performed it quite frequently, and wrote many essays and commentaries on it in the press. It has cemented itself in the modern era, and has been the subject of many portrayals, from Vincent Price in the 1960s to the Simpson’s rendition in the 1990s. One of the keys to its incredible appeal is its brilliant rhyme pattern and rhythm. While the language may be somewhat difficult to understand or relate to, people keep returning to it for Poe’s enchanting classical meter.
THE POEM
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door—
“‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
The free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
O my Luve’s like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in june;
O my Luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune:
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry: