Poems which deserve to be read by all at least once in their life

Here are poems I think someone has to read and at least once in their life:

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe,
The Wild Swans at Coole by William Butler Yeats,
If by Joseph Rudyard Kipling,
The Arrival of the Bee Box by Sylvia Plath,
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by Thomas Stearns Eliot,

Also,

William Shakespeare's Sonnet XVIII with
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet XLIII

and

The Lamb by William Blake with
The Tyger by William Blake


What do you think? Do you Agree or Disagree?
Would you like to make other suggestions?

Masnavi by Rumi

Thanks for the references of poems. I will have to check these out.
Cat

I would add Paradise Lost by Milton

'Epipsychidion' and 'Ode to the West Wind' by Shelley
'An Arundel Tomb' by Philip Larkin
'The Good Morrow', 'A Fever' and 'Hymn to God my God' by John Donne
'They Flee from Me' by Sir Thomas Wyatt
'Leave me, O love...' by Sir Philip Sidney

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Originally Posted by Saladin

Masnavi by Rumi

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I have never heard of Rumi. I'll check him out, thanks :)

'If' by Rudyard Kipling

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Originally Posted by Cat_Brenners

Thanks for the references of poems. I will have to check these out.
Cat

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It's no problem. The others which are added on by other members are worth looking at too. Milton's Paradise Lost is quite worth while to read. If you read it and like it, you should then read Frankenstein as a reccomendation.

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Originally Posted by bree

I would add Paradise Lost by Milton

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Yeah that's a good one. Can't believe I missed that. Thanks :)

Oh and if you don't mind me asking, have you read the whole 12 books yourself?

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Originally Posted by Pecksie

'Epipsychidion' and 'Ode to the West Wind' by Shelley
'An Arundel Tomb' by Philip Larkin
'The Good Morrow', 'A Fever' and 'Hymn to God my God' by John Donne
'They Flee from Me' by Sir Thomas Wyatt
'Leave me, O love...' by Sir Philip Sidney

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Thank You. I have heard of the poets but not these specific poems. I shall look them up.

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Originally Posted by dramasnot6

'If' by Rudyard Kipling

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Hahahah it's on the list ;)

"Romance" by Edgar Allan Poe

"Sailing To Byzantium" and "Byzantium" both by Yeats.
"Ash Wednesday" and "The Waste Land" both by T.S. Eiot
"Ode To A Grecan Urn" and "Ode to a Nightingale" both by Keats
In Memoriam by Tennyson
"Sunday Morning" and "Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour" both by Wallace Stevens

And lots and lots and lots others. But how's that for now.

A list of very basic, accessible yet essential poems:

Sonnet 116 by Shakespeare
The Sunne Rising and Batter My Heart by John Donne
An Essay on Man and The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope
Tyger (William Blake)
Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Coleridge)
Tintern Abbey, The Daffodils, The Solitary Reaper and the Lucy Poems by Wordsworth
She Walks in Beauty by Byron
Lines on an Indian Air, Adonais, Ode to the West Wind by Shelley
To Autumn, Ode to the Nightingale, To... (Had I man's fair form...), Isabella or the Pot of Basil by John Keats
The Lady of Shallot, Charge of the Light Brigade and Sweet and Low by Tennyson
My Last Duchess by Robert Browning
The Raven and Annabelle Lee by Poe
Sailing to Byzantium, The Wild Swans at Coole, When You are Old, The Second Coming by W B Yeats
Dover Beach by Mathew Arnold
If by Rudyard Kipling
The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, Gerontion, Journey of the Magi by T S Eliot
In the Station of a Metro by Ezra Pound
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, The Road Not Taken, Desert Places, Birches by Robert Frost
The Emperor of Ice Cream by Wallace Stevens

Let's read these first and then we will discuss Pushkin, Lautreamont and Baudelair etc!

There are literally thousands - I'll add though, Hart Crane's Voyages sequence.
The Four Quartets - Eliot
Birches - Frost
The Wild Swans at Coole - Yeats
The Snow man - Stevens

Amongst thousands of others - virtually all the Norton anthology, even the minor poets.

I'll add these, though some may have already been identified:

The Ballad of Reading Gaol - Oscar Wilde
John Barleycorn & To a Mouse- Robbie Burns
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, Elegy XIX - John Donne

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Originally Posted by JBI

The Snow man - Stevens

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Reminds me of Frost's 'Dessert Places':

Dessert Places

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it—it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less—
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars—on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

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Originally Posted by JBI

There are literally thousands - I'll add though, Hart Crane's Voyages sequence.
The Four Quartets - Eliot
Birches - Frost
The Wild Swans at Coole - Yeats
The Snow man - Stevens

Amongst thousands of others - virtually all the Norton anthology, even the minor poets.

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Solid picks JBI. I could have picked them all myself.

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Originally Posted by monicaroxanne

Here are poems I think someone has to read and at least once in their life:

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe,
The Wild Swans at Coole by William Butler Yeats,
If by Joseph Rudyard Kipling,
The Arrival of the Bee Box by Sylvia Plath,
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by Thomas Stearns Eliot,

Also,

William Shakespeare's Sonnet XVIII with
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet XLIII

and

The Lamb by William Blake with
The Tyger by William Blake


What do you think? Do you Agree or Disagree?
Would you like to make other suggestions?

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William Blake never gets old in my book. :-)

The Ecstacy, The Flea, Satire 3, The Sun Rising and A hymn to God, my God, in my sickness - all by John Donne.
The Mental Traveller - William Blake
The Double Vision of Michael Robartes - Wb Yeats
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - TS Elliot
Almost everything by John Milton, absolutely everything by William Shakespeare and a handful of poems by Emily Dickinson.
When Lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd - Walt Whitman

Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same


He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would birds' song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came.

Robert Frost

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Originally Posted by jon1jt

Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same


He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would birds' song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came.

Robert Frost

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Think it would be to vast a misreading to declare this poem border-line Elegiac, or flat out Elegiac?

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Originally Posted by jon1jt

Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same


He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would birds' song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came.

Robert Frost

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I didn't know that poem --- it's very, very good :)

Dylan Thomas "Do not go gentle into that goodnight" Reduces me to tears every time I read it, since it was written as his father was dying.

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Originally Posted by monicaroxanne

Yeah that's a good one. Can't believe I missed that. Thanks :)

Oh and if you don't mind me asking, have you read the whole 12 books yourself?

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Yes have read all 12 books. I had to study 4 of them and enjoyed it so much that I read them all