50 Famous Poems and Authors from the Quote Flashcards
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
. . . Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
“The Charge of the Light Brigade” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
. . . In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
. . . I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
. . . I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot
Had we but world enough and time,
. . . But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
. . . The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
“To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone
. . . He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
“Funeral Blues” by W.H. Auden
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
. . . Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” by Thomas Gray
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
. . . If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
. . . 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!
“If” by Rudyard Kipling
____________________! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
“O Captain! My Captain!” by Walt Whitman
The time has come,’ the ________ said,
To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
Of cabbages — and kings —
“The Walrus and the Carpenter” by Lewis Carroll
Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
. . . The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
“To a Mouse” by Robert Burns
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But ___________________?
“A Dream Within a Dream” by Edgar Allan Poe
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
. . . If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.
“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” by Christopher Marlowe
_________________________
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
, , , Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
“Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll
The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day;
The score stood four to two with but one inning more to play.
. . . Oh, somewhere in this favored 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.
“Casey at the Bat” by Ernest Lawrence Thayer
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage
A truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
“Auguries of Innocence” by William Blake
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery;
. . . Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
“Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
“Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
“Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
. . . Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
“A Poison Tree” by William Blake
“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.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
“The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
, , , And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!
“The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost
_______________________; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
. . . I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
“The World is Too Much With Us” by William Wordsworth
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.
“Concord Hymn” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
_____________________
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of victory
As he defeated – dying –
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!
“Success is counted sweetest” by Emily Dickinson
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 ____________;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my ____________—
“Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
. . . Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
. . . Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
. . . Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
“A Psalm of Life” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
O my Luve is like ___________
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.
So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.
“A Red, Red Rose” by Robert Burns
Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
. . . “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats
_______________________,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
. . . I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
“Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep” by Mary Elizabeth Frye
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
. . . But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger!
“Frost at Midnight” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
_________, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
. . . Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
“The Tyger” by William Blake
______________________________
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.
. . . So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (Sonnet 18) by William Shakespeare
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
. . . The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
. . . And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
“The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats
. . . you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
. . . We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
“Ulysses” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
_______________, 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 mellow’d to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
“She Walks in Beauty” by Lord Byron
That’s ____________ painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive.
. . . She had
A heart—how shall I say?— too soon made glad,
“My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . .
My name is ___________, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
______________________ –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
“Because I could not stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson
___________, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
“Death, be not proud” (Sonnet X) by John Donne
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
. . . He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.”
. . . Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
“Mending Wall” by Robert Frost
In Xanadu did ___________
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
“Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
. . . Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
“Crossing the Bar” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
. . . That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.”
“When I consider how my light is spent” (Sonnet 19) by John Milton
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
“Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
. . . 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.
“Invictus” by William Ernest Henley
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
. . . If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
___________________
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
“I’m Nobody! Who are you?” by Emily Dickinson
