Poems to Read Again and Again: A Selection of the Famous and Familiar

Through the years, these famous and familiar poems have captured the imagination, heart, and soul of readers who have often committed them to memory. It may be a complete poem, a stanza or a single memorable line that makes these poems famous and familiar.

Here you will find the familiar sonnets of Shakespeare and beloved poems from Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Re-read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride,” and enjoy the “The Raven” by Edgar Alan Poe,” “Gunga Din” by Rudyard Kipling and “The Tyger” by William Blake.

There are poems to share and read aloud with family and friends: Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees,” Clement Moore’s “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussy Cat,” Robert Service’s “The Shooting of Dan McGrew,” and that greatest sports poem of all times, “Casey at the Bat.” Here are poems that became memorable hymns such as Julia Ward Howe’s “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and Katherine Lee Bates’s “America the Beautiful,” and modern masters such as e.e.cummings, Robert Frost, Dylan Thomas, Langston Hughes, and Margaret Atwood.” The common thread that binds these poems together is that they have withstood the test of time. Here are over 250 poems that you will truly want to read and enjoy, again and again.

Sarah Anne Stuart is the editor of Treasured Stories of Christmas, A Yuletide Treasury of Poems, Carols and Songs, For You With Love, and For Mother With Love.