Remember how dry and boring required books were in school? You probably never wanted to read those books ever again, but I encourage you to give it a try. You’ll probably get a lot more out of these classic poems now than you did as a student, whether you were the All Star or slacker. Here are a few classic poems you’ll probably appreciate now to celebrate World Poetry Day:
“From Sonnet 18” by Shakespeare
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:”
“From The Iliad” by Homer
“Generations of men are like the leaves. In winter, winds blow them down to earth, but then, when spring season comes again, the budding wood grows more. And so with men: one generation grows, another dies away.”
“From Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”
“Because I could not stop for death” by Emily Dickinson
“Because I could not stop for Death– He kindly stopped for me– The Carriage held but just Ourselves– And Immortality. We slowly drove–He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility”
“From Home Thoughts from the Sea” by Robert Browning
“Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay; Bluish, ‘mid the burning water, full in lace Trafalgar lay;”
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