Classic poems offer us wisdom, reflection, and comfort from some of the greatest minds and most sensitive hearts of the past. They may be old, but their universal themes and the timeless language of the heart that they speak make them ever-new, just as relevant to us as to their original audience. In fact, if anything, they grow better with time, like a fine wine, aged, and more precious because it’s rarer.
These poems are not so frequently found on people’s shelves as they once were. They may die out if we are not careful. Let’s preserve them for our own sakes and the sake of future generations.
The poems in this list have become like old friends in my life, permanent presences that I can return to again and again for reflection, delight, and solace. I hope they may do the same for you, just as they have for many generations before us. These poems have become a part of the life of our civilization as a whole, part of our heritage, our trust deposited to us from the past. They have helped shape the West.
‘To Lucasta, Going to the Wars’ by Richard Lovelace
Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind, To war and arms I fly.
True, a new mistress now I chase, The first foe in the field; And with a stronger faith embrace A sword, a horse, a shield.
Yet this inconstancy is such As you too shall adore; I could not love thee, Dear, so much, Loved I not Honor more.
As William Harmon tells us in “The Classic Hundred Poems: All Time Favorites,” this poem was probably addressed to Richard Lovelace’s fiancée. Lovelace was a Royalist supporter of King Charles I in the English Civil Wars (1642–1651), fighting and eventually being imprisoned for the king. He demonstrated a strong sense of loyalty, honor, and commitment to his principles, as this poem reveals.The poem is, of course, the lover’s defense of himself when his beloved complains of his choice to leave her and go to war. It’s an archetypal conversation that has, no doubt, occurred in every age and every corner of the world. War has separated many couples.
But here, the poet finds a brilliant means of consoling his beloved and explaining to her why he must go. His chasing of a new mistress—the enemy—is, of course, a figure of speech. His embracing of weaponry contrasts with the embrace of his beloved, which he now forsakes. But the final stanza gives justification for this “inconstancy”: It is precisely because the speaker of the poem has a sense of honor that he is able to love his fiancée so well. His sense of honor enlarges his heart, so to speak, so that he can love his lady better than he otherwise would.
‘The Eagle’ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls.
This brief yet vivid image from Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, catches and holds our attention as firmly as the eagle’s talons are about to hold its prey. It’s a moment of great drama and motion that captures the essence of what an eagle is in a mere six lines of poetry. Its terseness enhances its power. The greatest poems are able to take something—almost anything—from the world around us and capture something elusive and mysterious: the nature of that thing.‘How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways’ 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 every day’s Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. 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.
Even if you’ve never read much poetry, you’ve probably heard the opening line of Browning’s beloved sonnet. It has become almost a cliché, which is a pity because the poem deserves much more attention than we generally give to clichés.
The poem, which is in the form of an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet, uses simple language that depicts the earnest, genuine feelings of the speaker. There is no guile here, no clever or unusual comparisons or compliments, no ornate similes or conceits as we might expect from a love poem by John Donne or even, sometimes, William Shakespeare. We have here the expressions of a noble and loving soul, the ideas crystallized, as it were, in the heart’s limpid depths, in all simplicity.
The language of the poem suggests both humble, everyday realities and profound, idealized, eternal, and supernatural truths, bringing the two realms—the temporal and eternal, the earthly and heavenly, the real and the ideal—into union, as many of the best poems do. “Every day’s / most quiet need, by sun and candle-light” brings to mind daily life lived alongside the beloved, and how the beloved becomes as crucial to the speaker as daily necessities. At the same time, the love expands far beyond the simplicities of everyday life, “to the depth and breadth and height / My soul can reach” in its yearning for “the ends of being and ideal grace.” This spiritual language sets up the “turn” of the final lines, where the poem rises to a new level as the speaker looks ahead to an afterlife that, with God’s help, will perfect and immortalize this quiet yet profound love here below.
