The Best Poems of All Time

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 

In the forests of the night; 

What immortal hand or eye, 

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

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Because I could not stop for Death –

He kindly stopped for me –

The Carriage held but just Ourselves –

And Immortality.

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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of being and ideal grace.

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Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

      The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

      The frumious Bandersnatch!

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The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

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Technically Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám was published by Edward Fitzgerald when he translated Khayyám’s poems in 1859, but Khayyám actually wrote them in the 12th century. It’s a full book of quatrains that is still in print today.

This is the most famous part of Whitman’s most famous work, his book-length Leaves of Grass.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

Read the rest here.

   Theirs not to make reply,

   Theirs not to reason why,

   Theirs but to do and die.

   Into the valley of Death

   Rode the six hundred.

Read the rest here.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because part of it is inscribed on the Statue of Liberty.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Read the rest here.

Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”

            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

Read the rest here.

Why should the world be over-wise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

       We wear the mask.

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Bit my pretty red heart in two.

I was ten when they buried you.   

At twenty I tried to die

And get back, back, back to you.

Read the rest here.

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

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Here is the first poem from my favorite era, producing many of the best poems of all time: The Harlem Renaissance.

Our dark fathers gave us

The gift of shedding sorrow

In a song.

Read the rest in Legacy: Women Poets of the Harlem Renaissance by Nikki Grimes.

these hips have never been enslaved,   

they go where they want to go

they do what they want to do.

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This poem that kicked off the Beat Generation is recognizable by its very first line:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,

starving hysterical naked,

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if each day a flower

climbs up to your lips to seek me,

ah my love, ah my own,

in me all that fire is repeated,

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Would have the drums talk war and send   

his warriors to burn the sleeping villages   

and kill the sick and old and lead the young   

in coffles to our factories.

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It is not the moon, I tell you.

It is these flowers

lighting the yard.

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I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.

   Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers that there is in

   it after all, a place for the genuine.

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The difference between poetry and rhetoric

is being ready to kill

yourself

instead of your children.

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Color mahogany.

Color mahogany center.

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

Loveliness extreme.

Extra gaiters.

Loveliness extreme.

Read the rest here.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Read the rest here.

Why, beautiful still finger, are you black?

And why are you pointing upwards?

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The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,

As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,

Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam

In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.

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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.

Read the rest here.

Sometimes, what makes one of the best poems of all time is being quoted on inspirational posters everywhere.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

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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,

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  April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Read the rest here.

(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

Read the rest here.

            We real cool. We   

            Left school. We

            Lurk late.

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The school-bell is a call to battle,

every step to class, a step into the firing-line.

Here is the target, fine skin at the temple,

cheek still rounded from being fifteen.

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My oldest daughter is nefertiti

    the tears from my birth pains

    created the nile

I am a beautiful woman

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Terrance Hayes invented an entire form with a big nod to We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks. Just look at those end words!

When I am so small Da’s sock covers my arm, we

cruise at twilight until we find the place the real

men lean, bloodshot and translucent with cool.

His smile is a gold-plated incantation as we

Read the rest here.

Combine the old poetic form of the ghazal with modern hip-hop. That’s how you create one of the best poems of all time.

Gotta love us brown girls, munching on fat, swinging blue hips,

decked out in shells and splashes, Lawdie, bringing them woo hips.

Read the rest here.

A tiny brown triangle on the finger tip

Promises to explore distant lands on a trip

Lying back slowly to relax and be easy

Drinking clear fluids not to feel queasy

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This is the poem that made Patricia Lockwood internet famous for a minute back in 2013. It’s also excellent.

The rape joke is that you were 19 years old.

The rape joke is that he was your boyfriend.

The rape joke it wore a goatee. A goatee.

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Amanda Gorman read this poem at President Joe Biden’s inauguration and launched herself into the zeitgeist. It’s a brilliant poem from a brilliant poet.

But in all the bridges we’ve made,

that is the promise to glade,

the hill we climb.