Ten Famous Poems
Ten poems everyone has heard of, in one place: Kipling's "If—", Wordsworth's daffodils, Shelley's "Ozymandias", Henley's "Invictus", Blake's "The Tyger", Poe's "Annabel Lee", two by Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How Do I Love Thee?" and Byron's "She Walks in Beauty". By various poets (1798–1910). A public-domain classic.
🎧 New: every story can be read aloud. Tap Listen to try it.
How it begins If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; / If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, / But make allowance for their doubting too; / If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, / Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, / Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, / And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;If you can dream--and not make dreams your master; / If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim, / If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / And treat those two impostors just the same; / If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken / Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, / Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, / And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools; Keep reading →About this story
Ten poems everyone has heard of, in one place: Kipling’s ‘If—’, Wordsworth’s daffodils, Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’, Henley’s ‘Invictus’, Blake’s ‘The Tyger’, Poe’s ‘Annabel Lee’, two by Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘How Do I Love Thee?’ and Byron’s ‘She Walks in Beauty’.
The poems were written between 1798 and 1910, and they are some of the most quoted and memorised in English. They are good for reading aloud, and for finding out which poet you want to read more of.
- Themes
- Courage, nature, time and power, love
- Good for
- A first collection of famous poems; reading aloud
- Worth noticing
- Which poems you already know without having read them.
Chapters
- 1If— (Rudyard Kipling)2 min · 16 Oct
- 2I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud (William Wordsworth)1 min · 16 Oct
- 3Ozymandias (Percy Bysshe Shelley)1 min · 16 Oct
- 4Invictus (William Ernest Henley)1 min · 16 Oct
- 5The Tyger (William Blake)1 min · 16 Oct
- 6Annabel Lee (Edgar Allan Poe)2 min · 16 Oct
- 7Crossing the Bar (Alfred Tennyson)1 min · 16 Oct
- 8The Charge of the Light Brigade (Alfred Tennyson)2 min · 16 Oct
- 9How Do I Love Thee? (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)1 min · 16 Oct
- 10She Walks in Beauty (Lord Byron)1 min · 16 Oct