Top 100 Most Famous Poems In English Literature- It’s important to note down the most important English poems for the competitive examination. This post is helpful for all the students who are preparing for UGC NET, PGT English, TGT English, BA, MA, and other TET examination.
BA English Important Poems- English literature has been one of the leading courses in Indian education. We have a course like BA in English and M.A in English.
Here you will get a list of important English poems for BA students, It is also helpful for M.A students. Get Top 100 English literature poems for the UPSC examination.
Top 100 Most Famous Poems In English Literature
- The Raven
by Edgar Allan Poe
“Once upon a midnight dreary,
While I pondered, weak and weary,”
- Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
“I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: ‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone”
- The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost
“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both”
- Annabel Lee
by Edgar Allan Poe
“It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,”
- Invictus
by William Ernest Henley
“Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,”
Top 100 Most Famous Poems In English Literature
- Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Robert Frost
“Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.”
- O Captain! My Captain!
by Walt Whitman
“O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,”
- Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost
“Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;”
- No Man is an Island
by John Donne
“No man is an island,
Entire of itself,”
- Because I could not stop for Death
by Emily Dickinson
“Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;”
- The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
by T. S. Eliot
“Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky”
Top 100 Most Famous Poems In English Literature
- I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
by William Wordsworth
“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,”
- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.”
- Paul Revere’s Ride
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,”
Top 100 Most Famous Poems In English Literature
- If—
by Rudyard Kipling
“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,”
- Kubla Khan
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:”
- In Flanders Fields
by John McCrae
“In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,”
- Hope is the thing with feathers
by Emily Dickinson
“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,”
- Endymion
by John Keats
“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never”
Top 100 Most Famous Poems In English Literature
- Old Ironsides
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,”
- Sonnet 43: How Do I Love Thee?
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height ”
- Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day
by William Shakespeare
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:”
- She Walks in Beauty
by George Gordon, Lord Byron
“She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;”
- Dover Beach
by Matthew Arnold
“The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair”
- The Charge of the Light Brigade
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,”
- Thanatopsis
by William Cullen Bryant
“To him who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks”
- Ode on a Grecian Urn
by John Keats
“Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,”
- Fire and Ice
by Robert Frost
“Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.”
- The Lady of Shalott
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,”
- John Barleycorn
by Robert Burns
“There was three kings into the east,
Three kings both great and high,”
- The New Colossus
by Emma Lazarus
“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;”
- The World is Too Much With Us
by William Wordsworth
“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—”
- Mending Wall
by Robert Frost
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,”
- Ode to a Nightingale
by John Keats
“My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,”
- We Wear the Mask
by Paul Laurence Dunbar
“We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—”
- A Dream Within a Dream
by Edgar Allan Poe
“Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,”
- The Tyger
by William Blake
“Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;”
- I heard a Fly buzz when I died
by Emily Dickinson
“I heard a Fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form”
- Ode to the West Wind
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
“O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead”
- The Passionate Shepherd To His Love
by Christopher Marlowe
“Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,”
- The Cremation of Sam McGee
by Robert Service
“There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;”
- Acquainted with the Night
by Robert Frost
“I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.”
- To My Dear and Loving Husband
by Anne Bradstreet
“If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, than thee;”
- Crossing the Bar
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!”
- I felt a funeral in my brain
by Emily Dickinson
“I felt a funeral in my brain
And mourners, to and fro,”
- A Noiseless Patient Spider
by Walt Whitman
“A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,”
- When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be
by John Keats
“When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,”
- A Psalm of Life
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!”
- Holy Sonnet 10: Death, be not proud
by John Donne
“Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;”
- Ulysses
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,”
- A Red, Red Rose
by Robert Burns
“O my Luve is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;”
- Much madness is divinest sense
by Emily Dickinson
“Much Madness is divinest Sense
To a discerning eye;”
- Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
by Thomas Gray
“The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,”
- The Soldier
by Rupert Brooke
“If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field”
- A Poison Tree
by William Blake
“I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.”
- To a Mouse
by Robert Burns
“Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!”
- Success is counted sweetest
by Emily Dickinson
“Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.”
- Birches
by Robert Frost
“When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,”
- When I consider how my light is spent
by John Milton
“When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,”
- Snow-Bound
by John Greenleaf Whittier
“The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,”
- My life had stood — a loaded gun
by Emily Dickinson
“My life had stood — a loaded gun —
In Corners — till a Day”
- To Autumn
by John Keats
“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;”
- I Have a Rendezvous with Death
by Alan Seeger
“I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade”
- Auguries of Innocence
by William Blake
“To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,”
- Horatius at the Bridge
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
“Lars Porsena of Clusium,
By the Nine Gods he swore”
- Abou Ben Adhem
by Leigh Hunt
“Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,”
- Tell all the truth but tell it slant
by Emily Dickinson
“Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies”
- The Village Blacksmith
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;”
- Trees
by Joyce Kilmer
“I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.”
- Frost at Midnight
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“The frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry”
- All the world’s a stage
by William Shakespeare
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;”
- A bird came down the walk
by Emily Dickinson
“A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;”
- Pioneers! O Pioneers!
by Walt Whitman
“Come, my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready;”
- Alone
by Edgar Allan Poe
“From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen”
- I’m nobody! Who are you?
by Emily Dickinson
“I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?”
- The Chambered Nautilus
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
“This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main,—”
- Concord Hymn
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
“By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,”
- Remember
by Christina Rossetti
“Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;”
- Sea Fever
by John Masefield
“I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;”
- Fog
by Carl Sandburg
“The fog comes
on little cat feet.”
- When We Two Parted
by George Gordon, Lord Byron
“When we two parted
In silence and tears,”
- There is no frigate like a book
by Emily Dickinson
“There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,”
- In Memoriam A.H.H.
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:”
- The Arrow and the Song
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;”
- The Eagle
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,”
- Casabianca
by Felicia Hemans
“The boy stood on the burning deck,
Whence all but him had fled;”
- I taste a liquor never brewed
by Emily Dickinson
“I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;”
- I like to see it lap the miles
by Emily Dickinson
“I like to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up,”
- If I can stop one heart from breaking
by Emily Dickinson
“If I can stop one heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain;”
- Break, Break, Break
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O sea!”
- Wild nights — Wild nights!
by Emily Dickinson
“Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,”
- There is another sky
by Emily Dickinson
“There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,”
- Bright Star
by John Keats
“Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,”
- The First Snowfall
by James Russell Lowell
“The snow had begun in the gloaming,
And busily all the night”
- Locksley Hall
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet ‘t is early morn:
Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn.”
- Evening Star
by Edgar Allan Poe
“’Twas noontide of summer,
And mid-time of night;”
- A Late Walk
by Robert Frost
“When I go up through the mowing field,
The headless aftermath,”
- Ae Fond Kiss
by Robert Burns
“Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, and then forever!”
- My Shadow
by Robert Louis Stevenson
“I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.”
- Maud Muller
by John Greenleaf Whittier
“Maud Muller, on a summer’s day,
Raked the meadow sweet with hay.”
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