25 Famous Poems: The Best Poems of All Time, by Theme

Famous poems are the ones people still quote, learn at school and read aloud at weddings and funerals, long after the poet has gone. Here are 25 of the most famous poems in English, by 22 poets, grouped by theme: love, nature, life and time, death and grief, hope and courage, and funny classics for kids. Each one comes with the poet, the year, the full text or its best-known passage, and two sentences on why it matters.

All 25 were published before 1931, so they are in the public domain in the US, and every text was checked word for word against Project Gutenberg, Wikisource or poets.org. Famous modern poems still in copyright, such as Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise", are listed by title near the end.

On this page:

• The 25 most famous poems at a glance
• Famous poems about love
• Classic nature and autumn poems
• Famous poems about life and time
• Famous poems about death and grief
• Poems of hope and courage
• Funny famous poems and classics for kids
• Famous modern poems (still in copyright)
• How to choose a famous poem to read aloud

The 25 most famous poems at a glance

#	Poem	Poet	Year	Theme
1	Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?")	William Shakespeare	1609	Love
2	She Walks in Beauty	Lord Byron	1815	Love
3	A Red, Red Rose	Robert Burns	1794	Love
4	Annabel Lee	Edgar Allan Poe	1849	Love
5	I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud	William Wordsworth	1807	Nature
6	To Autumn	John Keats	1820	Nature
7	The Tyger	William Blake	1794	Nature
8	The Lake Isle of Innisfree	W. B. Yeats	1890	Nature
9	The Road Not Taken	Robert Frost	1915	Life and time
10	To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time	Robert Herrick	1648	Life and time
11	The Negro Speaks of Rivers	Langston Hughes	1921	Life and time
12	The Second Coming	W. B. Yeats	1920	Life and time
13	Death, be not proud	John Donne	1633	Death and grief
14	O Captain! My Captain!	Walt Whitman	1865	Death and grief
15	The Raven	Edgar Allan Poe	1845	Death and grief
16	Crossing the Bar	Alfred, Lord Tennyson	1889	Death and grief
17	In Flanders Fields	John McCrae	1915	Death and grief
18	Hope is the thing with feathers	Emily Dickinson	1891	Hope and courage
19	Invictus	William Ernest Henley	1888	Hope and courage
20	If—	Rudyard Kipling	1910	Hope and courage
21	Mother to Son	Langston Hughes	1922	Hope and courage
22	Jabberwocky	Lewis Carroll	1871	Humour and kids
23	The Owl and the Pussy-Cat	Edward Lear	1871	Humour and kids
24	Casey at the Bat	Ernest Lawrence Thayer	1888	Humour and kids
25	Who Has Seen the Wind?	Christina Rossetti	1872	Humour and kids

Years are first publication dates.

Famous poems about love

These are some of the best love poems of all time, from a Shakespeare sonnet to a Scottish song.

1. Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?")

William Shakespeare, 1609. Full text.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Shakespeare compares someone to a summer's day and finds them lovelier, because summer fades. The closing couplet adds the twist: their beauty will last as long as the poem is read.

2. She Walks in Beauty

Lord Byron, 1815. First stanza.

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

Byron wrote it in June 1814 and published it in Hebrew Melodies (1815). It praises a woman in whom "dark and bright" meet in balance, and traces her beauty to a calm mind and a good heart.

3. A Red, Red Rose

Robert Burns, 1794. First two stanzas.

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 bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

First printed as a song in 1794, it says what every lover wants to say with plain images: a rose, a tune, the seas running dry. Bob Dylan has cited it as the most influential poem in his life.

4. Annabel Lee

Edgar Allan Poe, 1849. First stanza.

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

Published shortly after Poe's death in 1849, it tells of a young love so strong that the angels envied it. Its rocking rhythm and the repeated "kingdom by the sea" make it easy to learn by heart.

Two more famous love poems, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How Do I Love Thee?" and Shakespeare's "Sonnet 116", are printed in full with line-by-line meanings on our sonnet examples page.

Write your own love poem, free

Classic nature and autumn poems

Four famous nature poems: daffodils, autumn fruit, a tiger in the dark and an island in a lake.

5. I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

William Wordsworth, 1807. First stanza, from the revised 1815 text.

I wandered lonely as a Cloud
That floats on high o'er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden Daffodils;
Beside the Lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

It begins with a lonely walk and a sudden crowd of daffodils. The point comes at the end: later, lying on his couch, the memory flashes "upon that inward eye" and makes him happy again.

6. To Autumn

John Keats, 1820. Opening lines.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

Written on 19 September 1819, its three stanzas move from ripe fruit to the harvest to the sounds of an autumn evening. It is the famous autumn poem to read first, because it praises the season instead of wishing for spring.

7. The Tyger

William Blake, 1794. First stanza.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

From Songs of Experience, it asks one question in many forms: what kind of maker could create something so beautiful and so frightening? Its line "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" links it to "The Lamb" in Blake's Songs of Innocence.

8. The Lake Isle of Innisfree

W. B. Yeats, 1890. Full text.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Yeats was 25 when it was published: a city dweller's daydream of a cabin, bean rows and peace on a small island. The last line, hearing the lake "in the deep heart's core" on a grey pavement, is homesickness in eight words.

Famous poems about life and time

9. The Road Not Taken

Robert Frost, 1915. Last stanza.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

It is often read as advice to take the unusual path, but the second stanza says both roads were worn "really about the same". The ending is what the speaker imagines saying years later "with a sigh", so it is about how we tell the story of our choices; read it in full on our Robert Frost poems page.

10. To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

Robert Herrick, 1648. First stanza.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

From Herrick's Hesperides, it is the classic "seize the day" poem in English: enjoy your youth, because flowers and time do not wait. Its first line has become a saying.

11. The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Langston Hughes, 1921. Full text.

I've known rivers:

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Hughes wrote it at 17, crossing the Mississippi on his way to visit his father in Mexico, and The Crisis published it in June 1921. In ten lines it carries Black history from the Euphrates and the Nile to the Mississippi in one calm, proud voice.

12. The Second Coming

W. B. Yeats, 1920. First stanza.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Yeats wrote it in 1919, the year after the First World War ended, and The Dial printed it in November 1920. Its phrases became famous book titles, including Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

Famous poems about death and grief

Five famous poems about death, from a defiant sonnet to a war elegy. For gentler, newer verses about loss, see our poems about death.

13. Death, be not proud (Holy Sonnet 10)

John Donne, 1633. First four lines, in the spelling of the first edition.

Death be not proud, though some have callèd thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

Published in 1633, two years after Donne died, this sonnet tells Death it has nothing to be proud of. Death is only a short sleep before "wee wake eternally", so the last line turns the threat around: "death, thou shalt die."

14. O Captain! My Captain!

Walt Whitman, 1865. First stanza.

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Whitman's elegy for Abraham Lincoln, who is never named, pictures a captain who dies just as his ship comes home from the Civil War. It is one of the very few Whitman poems with rhyme and a steady beat; find more on our Walt Whitman poems page.

15. The Raven

Edgar Allan Poe, 1845. First stanza.

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."

First printed in the New York Evening Mirror in January 1845, this tale of a grieving man and a raven that answers every question with "Nevermore" made Poe a household name almost overnight. If you want Edgar Allan Poe's most famous poems, start with this one and "Annabel Lee" above.

16. Crossing the Bar

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1889. Full text.

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

Written near the end of Tennyson's long life, it pictures death as a ship sailing calmly out over the sandbar of a harbour to meet its "Pilot". Shortly before he died, Tennyson asked his son to put it at the end of all editions of his poems.

17. In Flanders Fields

John McCrae, 1915. Full text.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

McCrae, a Canadian army doctor, wrote it in May 1915 after the funeral of his friend Alexis Helmer near Ypres, and Punch published it on 8 December 1915. Its poppies growing between the graves helped make the red poppy one of the world's best-known symbols of remembrance.

Poems of hope and courage

Four poems people turn to when life gets hard, including a famous poem about mothers.

18. Hope is the thing with feathers

Emily Dickinson, 1891. Full text, as printed in Poems, Second Series.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Printed five years after Dickinson died, it pictures hope as a small bird that sings through every storm and never "asked a crumb of me". For "Because I could not stop for Death" and more, see our Emily Dickinson poems.

19. Invictus

William Ernest Henley, 1888. Last two stanzas.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Henley wrote it in 1875 and published it in 1888, and its Latin title means "unconquered". The last two lines have become a motto for anyone who refuses to be beaten by bad luck.

20. If—

Rudyard Kipling, 1910. Last stanza.

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!

Written as a father's advice to his son, "If—" was first published in Rewards and Fairies (1910). In a 1995 BBC poll it was voted the UK's favourite poem, though Kipling himself grumbled that it had been "anthologised to weariness".

21. Mother to Son

Langston Hughes, 1922. Full text.

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare;
But all the time
I'se been a'climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark,
Where there ain't been no light.
So boy, don't you turn back;
Don't you sit down on the steps,
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard;
Don't you fall now—
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

First published in The Crisis in December 1922, it is a mother telling her son that life has been no "crystal stair", but she keeps climbing and so must he. For poems to give your own mother, see our poems for mom.

Funny famous poems and classics for kids

These famous poems for kids are made to be read aloud, and adults love them too.

22. Jabberwocky

Lewis Carroll, 1871. First stanza.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Carroll's poem from Through the Looking-Glass (1871) is full of made-up words, yet anyone can follow the story of a young hero who slays a monster. Even Alice says it fills her head with ideas, "only I don't exactly know what they are!", and our Jabberwocky page explains every strange word.

23. The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

Edward Lear, 1871. Opening lines.

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat:
They took some honey, and plenty of money
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.

In Lear's nonsense love story, the pair sail away, buy a ring from a pig and are married by a turkey. It is silly and musical, which is why it works so well read aloud to small children.

24. Casey at the Bat

Ernest Lawrence Thayer, 1888. Last stanza.

Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has struck out.

Thayer published it in the San Francisco Examiner on 3 June 1888 under the pen name "Phin", and the actor DeWolf Hopper made it famous by reciting it on the vaudeville stage. The joke is in the build-up: a whole poem of swagger, and then mighty Casey strikes out.

25. Who Has Seen the Wind?

Christina Rossetti, 1872. Full text.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you.
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I.
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.

From Sing-Song, Rossetti's book of verse for children, it explains a big idea simply: you cannot see the wind, only what it does. It is a good first poem for a young child to learn by heart.

Famous modern poems (still in copyright)

These are just as famous, but they are still in copyright, so we list them without their words. Each can be read in the book named.

• "Harlem", Langston Hughes, 1951, from Montage of a Dream Deferred
• "Do not go gentle into that good night", Dylan Thomas, 1952, from In Country Sleep, and Other Poems. It is a villanelle, a form explained in our villanelle guide.
• "Daddy", Sylvia Plath, written 1962, from Ariel (1965)
• "Still I Rise", Maya Angelou, 1978, from And Still I Rise. Read about it in our guide to Maya Angelou poems.

How to choose a famous poem to read aloud

Match the poem to the moment:

• Weddings: "A Red, Red Rose", "She Walks in Beauty" or Sonnet 18.
• Funerals and memorials: "Crossing the Bar" is calm and hopeful; "Hope is the thing with feathers" is short enough for a nervous reader.
• Remembrance and Veterans Day: "In Flanders Fields" takes under a minute.
• Graduations: poets.org lists "If—", "Invictus" and "The Road Not Taken" among its graduation poems.
• Class or bedtime: "Who Has Seen the Wind?" for the youngest, "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat" and "Jabberwocky" for anyone who likes silly sounds.

When you read aloud, follow the punctuation, not the line endings: pause at commas and full stops, and run on where a sentence carries over. Practise twice, go slower than feels natural, and look up for the last line.

If you want a poem in the style of these classics but with your own names and memories in it, our free AI poem generator can give you a first draft to shape and edit.

Try a sonnet like Shakespeare's, free

FAQs

What is the most famous poem of all time?

Nobody can count every reader, so there is no single answer. In English, strong candidates include Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, Poe's "The Raven", Frost's "The Road Not Taken" and Kipling's "If—", which was voted the UK's favourite poem in a 1995 BBC poll. All four are on this page.

What is Langston Hughes's most famous poem?

Two of his most famous poems, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (1921) and "Mother to Son" (1922), are printed in full above. "Harlem" (1951), about what happens to a dream that is put off, is just as well known, but it is still in copyright.

What are some famous short poems?

Rossetti's "Who Has Seen the Wind?" has eight lines. Dickinson's "Hope is the thing with feathers" and Yeats's "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" have twelve each, and Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 has fourteen.

Can I print these poems for a wedding, funeral or class?

Yes, in the United States. All 25 were first published before 1931, so they are in the public domain there and free to print in programs, cards and handouts. Copyright rules differ in other countries, where some of these poets' works are still protected.