25 Short Poems You Can Memorize in Under a Minute đź•’✨
1. Emily Dickinson
“Hope” is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—
2. Robert Frost
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
3. William Blake
To see a World in a Grain of Sand,
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.
4. Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or does it explode?
5. Matsuo BashĹŤ (Haiku)
An old silent pond—
A frog jumps into the pond,
Splash! Silence again.
6. Sara Teasdale
I make the most of all that comes,
And the least of all that goes.
7. Ezra Pound
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
8. William Shakespeare (Sonnet 18)
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
9. Edna St. Vincent Millay
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light.
10. Haiku (Issa)
O snail,
Climb Mount Fuji,
But slowly, slowly!
11. Ogden Nash
Candy
Is dandy,
But liquor
Is quicker.
12. Walt Whitman
I sound my barbaric yawp
Over the roofs of the world.
13. Carl Sandburg
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
14. Emily Brontë
No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere.
15. Emily Dickinson
Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
16. Haiku (Buson)
A summer river being crossed
how pleasing
with sandals in my hands!
17. Christina Rossetti
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
18. Robert Herrick
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying.
19. Haiku (BashĹŤ)
Winter solitude—
in a world of one color
the sound of wind.
20. A.E. Housman
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough.
21. Emily Dickinson
Tell all the truth but tell it slant—
Success in Circuit lies.
22. John Donne
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
23. Rupi Kaur
you might not have been my first love
but you were the love that made
all the other loves
irrelevant.
24. Robert Burns
O my Luve’s like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June.
25. Haiku (Shiki)
After the storm
the empty sky is filled
with autumn voices.
