Most Famous (English language) Poems

[CapnPitt]

Fellow Dopers: what poems, in your esteemed estimation, are the most famous in the English language?

[Gangster Octopus]

If[/b] by Rudyard Kipling is one of my favorites and very well known.

[i]The Tyger by William Blake

[Ethilrist]

By most famous poem, you probably mean ones that most people know all the way through?

That lets out "There once was a man from Nantucket..."

[CapnPitt]

Good point Ethilrist. I'm not looking for "folk" poems. I'm hoping to see stuff along the lines of what Gangster Octopus posted.

[Saltire]

"Invictus" (http://www.bestclips.com/poem-invictus.html) by William Ernest Henley would qualify, I think.

"The Raven" (http://www.comnet.ca/~forrest/raven.html) by Edgar Allen Poe, surely.

[Zahava424]

Probably "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost, and Emily Dickinson's "Death," also known as "Because I Could Not Stop for Death."

[Tracy Lord]

Several of Shakespeare's sonnets, most notably 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"), 116 ("Let me not to the marriage of true minds...."), and 130 ("My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun").

Byron's "She Walks In Beauty" must be up there, too, and Yeats' "The Second Coming."

[Theodore Striker]

Shakespeare's Sonnet No. 18.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge.

Seconds for "The Road not Taken" and "The Raven".

[Draelin]

I have always thought that Shel Silverstein's "Sick" (http://www.alphabet-soup.net/dir6/sick.html) should qualify for Great Literature.

But for those who like to seem more intelligent, I'll add Walt Whitman's "O Captain, My Captain," (http://www.bartleby.com/142/193.html) and my personal favorite, Poe's "Annabel Lee". (http://eserver.org/books/poe/annabel_lee.html)

[missbunny]

One I bet the poem that most people have seen, even if they don't recall seeing it, or heard spoken out loud without knowing where it came from, is The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus. (The poem on the Statue of Liberty.)

Otherwise most famous, meaning the most people are familiar with it or have heard it even if they don't know the whole thing or don't know who wrote it:

Shakespeare, Sonnet 18 (Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day)
William Blake: The Tyger
Edgar Allan Poe: The Raven
Robert Frost: both The Road Not Taken and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Max Ehrmann: Desiderata
That horrible "footsteps of Jesus" poem. Sigh. (That's a poem, isn't it?)

Maybes (certain parts are well known but probably not the poem as a whole):
John Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn
John Donne: Death Be Not Proud
Dylan Thomas: Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

This doesn't count nursery rhymes, which are probably known far and away ahead of any "real" poetry. Especially that Humpty Dumpty one.

[missbunny]

Correction: it's called "Footprints in the Sand," not "Footsteps of Jesus."

I bet every child at Vacation Bible School has decoupaged "Footprints" onto a piece of scrap wood. Maybe it's "famous" by that criteria.

[Gangster Octopus]

According to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If%97), If has been reprinted in more anthologies than any other poem.

[stately plump buck mulligan]

Eliot's "The Waste Land"

Coleridge's "Kubla Khan"

Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est"

... are three that just hobbled off the top of my head. I know that there are way more famous and way more obvious ones lurking in there.

[Biffy the Elephant Shrew]

I'd add Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade"

Kipling's "Gunga Din"

Shelley's "Ozymandias"

[roger thornhill]

According to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If%97), If has been reprinted in more anthologies than any other poem.And David Gates set it to music.

[Hamish]

14th Century Canterbury Tales
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Piers Plowman

16th Century: Faerie Queene
Shakespeare's Sonnets (most especially 18 and 29)
Heero and Leander


17th Century:
Paradise Lost "To His Coy Mistress"
Anything by John Donne ("The Canonization," "Batter my heart three-personed God," "For whom the Bell Tolls," "Death be not proud" -- too lazy to look up the official names for these poems)


18th-Century Blakes's Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
The Rape of the Lock
"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"
"Auld Lang Syne"


19th-Century:
Anything by the Lake Poets (Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc...) except Bob Southey. Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" is much-anthologized for his short stuff, and his most famous long poem (though I don't know why) is The Prelude
Byron's Don Juan is very famous, though almost no one's read it. For stuff people have read of his, probably "She walks in beauty..."
Anything by Rudyard Kipling, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson... the list goes on. Did people write anything but poetry and long, long novels in the 19th-Century? Did they write shopping lists in iambic pentameter?

20th-Century:
So much depends
On hating
William Carlos Williams'
"Red Wheelbarrow."
For good, much-anthologized, traditional poets, the anti-war poetry of Wilfred Owen "Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori."
Canada's most famous poem is probably "In Flanders' Fields."
The Beat poets are certainly up there, though specific examples slip my mind for some reason.
Stuff produced since the Sixties is largely forgotten or ignored -- music seems to have displaced poetry. That's a shame, because it's not all bad stuff written by university students who think that poetry is just their thoughts with line breaks. There's some beautiful and powerful stuff out there.

[pulykamell]

"Invictus" (http://www.bestclips.com/poem-invictus.html) by William Ernest Henley would qualify, I think.


Hmmm...I majored in English, with a strong concentration in poetry, and I have never come across that poem.

Of the canonical poets, here are my nominations:
William's Blake's "The Tyger"
Carroll's "Jabberwocky"
Here in Chicago, Carl Sandburg's "Chicago."
Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18" (Shall I compare thee to a summer's day...)
Poe's "The Raven"
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Sonnet 43" (How do I love thee? Let me count the ways)
Eliot's "The Wasteland"
Frost's "The Road not Taken"

other Amerocentric suggestions:

Francis Scott Key's "Star-Spangled Banner"
Ernest Thayer's "Casey at the Bat"

If I had to guess, I would think that Poe's "The Raven" would be the most recognizable to most English speakers. I think Browning would put up good competition, as well, along with any of a number of Shakespearian works.

[missbunny]

Lots of good ones here.

Since the Challenger, I bet a lot more people are familiar with John Magee Jr.'s High Flight ("I have slipped the surly bonds of earth . . . ")

[Biffy the Elephant Shrew]

The Beat poets are certainly up there, though specific examples slip my mind for some reason.
Good point. "Howl" would surely be the most famous.

[CapnPitt]

Good stuff everybody. Keep 'em coming if you got 'em.

Hamish are you looking for extra credit? ;) Excellent list.

[Hamish]

Hamish are you looking for extra credit? ;) Excellent list.

Well, I'm goofing off from the 15-page essay I have due on Monday (on gender, sexuality, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), and the essays I have to mark for next Friday (for the Canadian Literature Survery course I'm TA-ing), so I figured I'd feel less guilty if I goofed off on something in my field :D

I can't think opf a single famous poem the 15th Century produced. Nor can I think of anything between Beowulf and Piers Plowman (I can think of a few little-known examples, but nothing famous).

[h.sapiens]

The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning

[Only Mostly Dead]

Eliot's "Wasteland" mentioned twice, but my vote on him would go to "Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock". His most famous line from a poem from neither of those, but the end of "The Hollow Men": "This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper."

Pretty much anything else I'd suggest has been mentioned. Including things I would have never thought of if my memory hadn't been jogged.

[HazelNutCoffee]

Eliot's "Wasteland" mentioned twice, but my vote on him would go to "Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock". His most famous line from a poem from neither of those, but the end of "The Hollow Men": "This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper."

I dunno... I'd say his most famous line from a poem would be "April is the cruelest month" from The Waste-Land. (Although my personal favorite is from Prufrock: I have measured out my life in coffee spoons)

[Sternvogel]

Maybe they're not being taught as much today, but Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Paul Revere's Ride (http://eserver.org/poetry/paul-revere.html), Village Blacksmith (http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/longf02.html), and ]Song of Hiawatha (http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/hiawatha.html) are certainly familiar to Americans of my parents' generation.

Whenever a sports figure meets an untimely demise, somebody will trot out A.E. Housman's To an Athlete Dying Young (http://www.amherst.edu/~rjyanco/literature/alfrededwardhousman/poems/ashropshirelad/toanathletedyingyoung.html).

[Cunctator]

The opening lines of Felicia Hemans' Casabianca would be among some of the best known, even if the rest of the poem isn't:

The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled.

[HazelNutCoffee]

Just remembered: Robert Burns, "Auld Lang Syne". Definitely one of the most well-known poems in English.

Some of his lines from his other poems are often quoted as well: "For the best-laid schemes o' mice an' men/Gang aft' agley" and "Tae see oorsels as ithers sees us" are two lines that come to mind.

[Alessan]

Two oft-quoted (at least in SF literature) poems no-one has mentioned yet:

Ulysses - Tennyson.

The Second Coming - Yeats.

[ouryL]

I never saw a purple cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one.

-- Gelett Burgess

[Aankh]

The Highwayman (http://www.cs.pdx.edu/~trent/ochs/lyrics/highwayman-orig.html) - Alfred Noyes.

Jabberwocky (http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/jabber/jabberwocky.html) - Lewis Carroll.

The Brook (http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~bharathi/poetry/atb.htm) - Alfred Lord Tennyson.

[h.sapiens]

I never saw a purple cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one.

-- Gelett Burgess
Also:

Candy is dandy,
But liquor is quicker.

-Ogden Nash

[Chronos]

Eliot's "Wasteland" mentioned twice, but my vote on him would go to "Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock". His most famous line from a poem from neither of those, but the end of "The Hollow Men": "This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper."Agreed. I memorized "The Hollow Men", just for the sake of those last lines. I'd also agree that "Prufrock" is better known than "Wasteland", in terms of the poem itself, at least, though more folks have probably heard of the latter title. The Practical Cats poems are also pretty well known, but that's mostly due to the musical forms of them, so I'm not sure if they count.

I also note that nobody yet has nominated "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time", by Robert Herrick (that's the one that starts with "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may").

One should also mention Marlowe's "The passionate shepherd to his love", and Raleigh's "The nymph's reply to the shepherd".

Also Joyce Kilmer's "Trees" (I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree).

And e. e. cummings' "in Just-" (spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful)

As well as many already nominated, of course.

[HazelNutCoffee]

I also note that nobody yet has nominated "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time", by Robert Herrick (that's the one that starts with "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may").


This reminded me (for some weird reason): Donne's "The Flea" also seems like a pretty well-known English poem.

Er, how about Yeat's "Lake Isle of Innisfree"?

[Tracy Lord]

Two oft-quoted (at least in SF literature) poems no-one has mentioned yet:

Ulysses - Tennyson.

The Second Coming - Yeats.

*cough Post 7 cough*

[Zsofia]

I don't think anybody has mentioned "I wandered lonely as a cloud"

I was going to say "Dulce et decorum est" for the 20th century, but somebody beat me to it.

How about the William Carlos Williams one about the plums?

I know somebody's mentioned "The Second Coming", but I'll point out that when you can make jokes about it in general company ("Stop slouching!" - the mother of the beast) it's obviously culturally internalized.

[Chronos]

This reminded me (for some weird reason): Donne's "The Flea" also seems like a pretty well-known English poem.There sure are an awful lot of poems with the theme "What the hell, let's you and me just go off and screw", aren't there?

[Rhiannon8404]

The Tiger (http://www.bartleby.com/101/489.html) by William Blake is my all time favorite English language poem.

Followed closely by The Owl and the Pussycat (http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ns/pussy.html) by Edward Lear

And of course there's always Wordsworth's Daffodils (http://www.bartleby.com/101/530.html)

All of these I have memorized.

[Lisa-go-Blind]

I don't think anyone's mentioned Edna St. Vincent Millay's [url=http://www.web-books.com/classics/Poetry/Anthology/Millay/FirstFig.htm]"First Fig"[/b] yet. Almost everyone knows the first line of this at least ("My candle burns at both end"), and many can probably recite the entire thing, even if they don't know the poem's title.

[Miss Purl McKnittington]

"The Lady of Shalott (http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem2159.html)" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (I always spell it Shallot, too. This is bad. Professors stop respecting you when start writing about Tennyson's famous poem, "The Lady of Vaguely Onion-ish Vegetables.")

"Charge of the Light Brigade (http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem2116.html)" by Tennyson

"Ulysses (http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem2191.html)" by Tennyson

"The Blessed Damozel (http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem1763.html)" by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

"the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls (http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem603.html)" by ee cummings

"Musée des Beaux Arts" By W.H. Auden

"Funeral Blues" by W.H. Auden

"Requiem (http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem2022.html)" by Robert Louis Stevenson, if only for the last lines: "Home is the sailor, home from the sea, / And the hunter home from the hill."

"Dr. Fell (http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem3224.html)" by Tom Brown

How about the William Carlos Williams one about the plums?

Do you mean "This is Just to Say (http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/274.html)?" There's something wonderful about the simplicity of those little Williams' poems.

[Kolak of Twilo]

I never saw a purple cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one.

-- Gelett Burgess

Oh Ouryl, I luuuvvvvv you.

[Kolak of Twilo]

e.e. cummings - "nobody loses all the time (http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=6588&poem=26671). it always makes me smile.

i'm
serious.

go read it
if
you
don't
believe me.

The greatest poem written in English in the 20th century is The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html) by T.S. Eliot. I know. Hyperbolic statement on my part. Still, it is amazing.

[roger thornhill]

Not the most famous poem, not even Wordsworth's best known sonnet, but I like it:

The world is too much with us

The World is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn,—
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Great title - goes a bit downhill after that, I fear.

[Rilchiam]

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

---Carl Sandburg