what is the most beautiful english poem?

Question

please mention the poet.

Answer 1

Most beautiful? Now that's an old question from a new angle.

Well, the most awesome is William Blake's "Tyger, tyger, burning bright."

The most quotable is William Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 (or maybe 29).

The most memorable is Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

The most intricate and significant is John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn."

The most thoughtful is William Wordsworth's "Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey."

The most aesthetically pleasing (esp. for us senior citizens) is William Butler Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium": An aged man is but a paltry thing, / A tattered coat upon a stick, unless / Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing / For every tatter in its mortal dress . . . .

The most inspiring is T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets.

The most comforting is Emily Dickinson's "Because I could not stop for death . . . ."

The most touching is Gerard Manley Hopkins' "Spring and Fall: To a Young Child": Margaret, are you grieving / Over goldengrove unleaving?

The most outageous is Allen Ginsberg's "Howl."

One could go on and on . . . .

Choosing one is tooo difficult.

But the most beautiful?

I think, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan."

It is awesome, quotable, memorable, intricate and significant, thoughtful, aesthetically pleasing, inspiring, comforting, touching, and in its own way outrageous.

But it is also beautiful.

Beautiful in the way it sounds when you recite it:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

Its imagery throughout the poem is beautiful to picture in your mind.

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

The role played by the imagination in constructing the poem (as well as Xanadu itself) and in experiencing it is beautiful:

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

Even the danger and ugliness introduced into the poem speaks of the sublime:

A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced . . . .

The music that it evokes in one's mind is beautiful, sensual, and mystical:

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.

And its statement of the theme, the ultimage role of the poet and his rejection by society, is embodied in beautiful imagery in the concluding lines:

Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Ah, yes. Poetry just doesn't get any more beautiful than that, now does it?

Answer 2

THEY SOFTLY WALK By Hugh Robert Orr They are not gone who pass Beyond the clasp of hand, Out from the stone embrace. They are but come so close We need not grope with hands, Nor look to see, nor try To catch the sound of feet. They have put off their shoes Softly to walk by day Within our thoughts, to tread At night our dream - led paths Of sleep. They are not lost who find The sunset gate, the goal Of all their faithful years. Not lost are they who reach The summit of their climb, The peak above the clouds And storms. They are not lost Who find the light of sun And stars and God. They are not dead who live In hearts they leave behind. In those whom they have blessed They live a life again, And shall live through the years Eternal life, and grow Each day more beautiful As time declares their good, Forgets the rest, and proves Their immortality.

Answer 3

William Shakespeare's Sonnet 116

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:
O, 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's 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 bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man.

Answer 4

I don't think there is a singular beautiful poem out there, though I do believe there are those which stand out. This is one of my selected few:

To the River --
by: Edgar Allen Poe

Fair river! in thy bright, clear flow
Of crystal, wandering water,
Thou art an emblem of the glow
Of beauty- the unhidden heart-
The playful maziness of art
In old Alberto's daughter;

But when within thy wave she looks-
Which glistens then, and trembles-
Why, then, the prettiest of brooks
Her worshipper resembles;
For in his heart, as in thy stream,
Her image deeply lies-
His heart which trembles at the beam
Of her soul-searching eyes.

You would never think that Poe could ever have such beauty in him; just show’s that it’s not always right to judge a book by its cover. ;>

Answer 5

He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread upon my dreams.

by WB Yeats

I love this because this is how my husband proposed... he got on one knee and read me this poem.

Answer 6

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
by Christopher Marlowe

Come live with me and be my Love,
And we wiil all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys,dales and fields
Or woods or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed thier flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
and a thousand fragrant posies;
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair-lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold.

A belt of straw and ivy-buds
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my Love.

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning;
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my Love.

Answer 7

There are many but I think the following:
THe waste land. T.S. Eliot
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes. Shekespeare
The second coming (W.B. Yeats)

Answer 8

I like The Raven by Edgar Allan poe.