Top 10 (and more) Best Poems Ever Written

Best Poems of All Time

My Top 10 Favorite Classic Poems (Inspirational Poems)

1. Desiderata - by Max Ehrmann
2. If - by Rudyard Kipling
3. Let These Be Your Desires - by Khalil Gibran
4. Auguries of Innocence - by William Blake
5. Ode to Autumn - by John Keats
6. Death - by John Donne
7. Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night - by Dylan Thomas
8. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening - Robert Frost
9. Oh Captain! My Captain! - by Walt Whitman
10. Invictus - by William Ernest Henley

I have 2 more Favorite Poems...

1. Youth - by Theodore Roosevelt
2. The Rainbow - by Susan Jane Hobbs

My Top 5 Favorite Love Poems (Poems about Love)

1. She Walks in Beauty - by Lord Byron
2. Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day (Sonnet 18) - by William Shakespeare
3. How Do I Love Thee - by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
4. Love Is Not Love Which Alters When It Alteration Finds (Sonnet 116) - by William Shakespeare
5. Love's Philosophy - by Percy Bysshe Shelley

The best poems ever :) - amae
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Poetry: She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron

She Walks in Beauty (by Lord Byron)

She walks in beauty, 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.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace,
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face,
Where thoughts serenely sweet express.
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent.
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent.
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

~ Lord Byron
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Poetry: Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare

Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day

Sonnet 18 (by William Shakespeare)

Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short to date.
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd.
And every fair from fair sometimes declines
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd.
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Now shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see.
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

~ William Shakespeare

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Poetry: How Do I Love Thee by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Sonnet:
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
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight.
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace,
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! - And if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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Poetry: Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare

Love Is Not Love which Alters When It Alteration Finds
Sonnet 116 (by William Shakespeare)

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Oh, no! It is an ever fixed mark
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken.
It is the star to every wandering bark
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love is not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But it bears out, even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

~William Shakespeare

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Poetry: Love's Philosophy by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Love's Philosophy (by Percy Bysshe Shelley)

The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean.
The winds of heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion.
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle; -
Why I not with thine?

See! The mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another.
No sister flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother.
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea; -
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

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