Fellow Dopers: what poems, in your esteemed estimation, are the most famous in the English language?
If* by Rudyard Kipling is one of my favorites and very well known.
The Tyger by William Blake
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…”
Good point Ethilrist. I’m not looking for “folk” poems. I’m hoping to see stuff along the lines of what Gangster Octopus posted.
“Invictus” by William Ernest Henley would qualify, I think.
“The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe, surely.
Probably “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, and Emily Dickinson’s “Death,” also known as “Because I Could Not Stop for Death.”
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.”
Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. 18.
Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge.
Seconds for “The Road not Taken” and “The Raven”.
I have always thought that Shel Silverstein’s “Sick” should qualify for Great Literature.
But for those who like to seem more intelligent, I’ll add Walt Whitman’s “O Captain, My Captain,” and my personal favorite, Poe’s “Annabel Lee”.
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.
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.
According to wikipedia, If has been reprinted in more anthologies than any other poem.
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.
I’d add Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade”
Kipling’s “Gunga Din”
Shelley’s “Ozymandias”
And David Gates set it to music.
14th Century[ul][li]Canterbury Tales[/li][li]Sir Gawain and the Green Knight[/li][li]Piers Plowman[/ul][/li]
16th Century:[ul][li]Faerie Queene[/li][li]Shakespeare’s** Sonnets ** (most especially 18 and 29)[/li][li]Heero and Leander[/li][/ul]
17th Century:
[ul][li]Paradise Lost“To His Coy Mistress”[/li][li]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)[/li][/ul]
18th-Century[ul][li]Blakes’s **Songs of Innocence ** and Songs of Experience[/li][li]The Rape of the Lock[/li][li]“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”[/li][li]“Auld Lang Syne”[/li][/ul]
19th-Century:
[ul][li]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[/li][li]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…”[/li][li]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?[/ul][/li]
20th-Century:
[ul][li]So much depends[/li] On hating
William Carlos Williams’
“Red Wheelbarrow.”
[li]For good, much-anthologized, traditional poets, the anti-war poetry of Wilfred Owen “Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori.”[/li][li]Canada’s most famous poem is probably “In Flanders’ Fields.”[/li][li]The Beat poets are certainly up there, though specific examples slip my mind for some reason.[/li][li]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.[/li][/ul]
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.
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 . . . ")
Good point. “Howl” would surely be the most famous.
Good stuff everybody. Keep 'em coming if you got 'em.
Hamish are you looking for extra credit? 
Excellent list.