Poetic First Lines:  Answers

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow/ creeps in this petty pace

MacBeth, Wm. Shakespeare

Wake! For the sun who scattered into flight/
The stars before him from the field of night

The Rubaiyat, Omar Khayyam
(translated by Edward Fitzgerald)

As kingfishers catch fire,/ Dragon flies draw flame

Sonnet of that title, Gerard Manley Hopkins

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought/
I summon up remembrance of things past

Sonnet XXX, Wm. Shakespeare

The sea is calm tonight,/ The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold

He did not wear his scarlet cap/ For blood and wine are red

Ballad of Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde

Out of the night that covers me,/ Black as the Pit from pole to pole

Invictus, William Ernest Henley

To be or not to be,/ That is the question

Hamlet, Wm. Shakespeare

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan

Man, Alexander Pope

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth./
And the earth was without form and void

Genesis, The Bible

Go and catch a falling star,/ Get with child a mandrake root

Song, John Donne

With thee conversing I forget all time,/ All seasons and their change

Paradise Lost, John Milton

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day/
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea

Elegy, Thomas Gray

Sweet Auburn! Loveliest village of the plain/
There health and plenty cheered the laboring swain

The Deserted Village, Oliver Goldsmith

Tiger! Tiger, burning bright/ In the forests of the night

The Tiger, William Blake

Flow gently, sweet Afton! Among thy green braes,/
Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise

Sweet Afton, Robert Burns

My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky

My heart leaps up when I behold, William Wordsworth

Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the west,/
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best

Marmion, Lochinvar, Sir Walter Scott

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/ A stately pleasure dome decree

Kubla Kahn, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

'Tis the last rose of summer/ Left blooming alone

'Tis the Last Rose of Summer, Thomas Moore

Jenny kiss'd me when we met,/ Jumping from the chair she sat in

Rondeau, Leigh Hunt

I met a traveller from an antique land/
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley

I remember, I remember,/ The house where I was born

I Remember, I Remember, Thomas Hood

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,/
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled

Concord Hymn, Ralph Waldo Emerson

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways./
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

How Do I Love Thee, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Between the dark and the daylight,/
When the night is beginning to lower

The Children's Hour, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Blessings on thee, little man,/ Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!

The Barefoot Boy, John Greenleaf Whittier

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,/
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore

The Raven, Edgar Allen Poe

Half a league, half a league,/ Half a league onward

The Charge of the Light Brigade, Alfred Lord Tennyson

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea/
In a beautiful pea-green boat

The Owl and the Pussy-cat, Edward Lear

That's my last duchess painted on the wall,/
Looking as if she were alive. I call

My Last Duchess, Robert Browning

O Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done,/
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won

O Captain! My Captain! Walt Whitman

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/ Did gyre and gimble in the wabe

Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll

When I was one-and-twenty/ I heard a wise man say

When I Was One-and-Twenty, A. E. Housman

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea,/
There's a Burma girl a-settin', an' I know she thinks o' me

Mandalay, Rudyard Kipling

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,/
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons

Miniver Cheevy, Edwin Arlington Robinson

Whose woods these are I think I know./
His house is in the village though

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost