Famous Recommended Poetry - Top 20 List!There are so many poems to choose from it is difficult to know where to make a start! We have therefore devised a Top 20 List of our favourite poems. It was an extremely difficult task and obviously our choice, in the end, was based on personal preferences! We hope that the list will provide our readers with as much pleasure that these famous verses have given to us. A good knowledge of these famous verses will provide all students and children with a good grounding of the subject. Each poet has a different style of writing making expert use of the English language. We have been asked on many occasions which is our favourite poem. Impossible! Writing styles, subject matter and even childhood memories influence choices, so we gave up and endeavoured to, at least, compile a list of our top twenty famous and favourite poems! The first line of the famous verse has been included to jog the memory! Please refer to the Index for the Top 20 list! We can, however give examples of some moving verses from a selection of sad poems. The first one we have chosen is O Death Rock Me Asleep a little-known poignant poem by the tragic Queen Anne Boleyn who composed the poem just before her execution on the orders of King Henry VIII of England. She was only 29 years old and she was innocent of all the crimes she was accused of: O Death Rock Me Asleep a sad and poignant poem by Anne Boleyn just before her execution Death, rock me asleep, Bring me to quiet rest, Let pass my weary guiltless ghost Out of my careful breast. Toll on, thou passing bell; Ring out my doleful knell; Let thy sound my death tell. Death doth draw nigh; There is no remedy.
My pains who can express? Alas, they are so strong; My dolour will not suffer strength My life for to prolong. Toll on, thou passing bell; Ring out my doleful knell; Let thy sound my death tell. Death doth draw nigh; There is no remedy.
Alone in prison strong I wait my destiny. Woe worth this cruel hap that I Should taste this misery! Toll on, thou passing bell; Ring out my doleful knell; Let thy sound my death tell. Death doth draw nigh; There is no remedy.
Farewell, my pleasures past, Welcome, my present pain! I feel my torments so increase That life cannot remain. Cease now, thou passing bell; Rung is my doleful knell; For the sound my death doth tell. Death doth draw nigh; There is no remedy. The House with Nobody in it a poem by Joyce Kilmer
Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black. I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.
I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things; That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings. I know this house isn't haunted, and I wish it were, I do; For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.
This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass, And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass. It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied; But what it needs the most of all is some people living inside.
If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade. I'd buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be And I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free.
Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door, Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store. But there's nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone For the lack of something within it that it has never known.
But a house that has done what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life, That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife, A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and held up his stumbling feet, Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.
So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back, Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart, For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart. |