Classic poems and quotes, with their sources
Classic poems and real quotes, each one linked to the book it comes from.
Photo: Giuseppe Famiani, Unsplash
Looking for a poem to read at a funeral, a line for a wedding card, or a few words for a friend's birthday? Quotes and Poems is a small, independent collection of classic poems and quotations. Every classic piece shows who wrote it, where it first appeared and when, with a link to a free public-domain copy, so you can check the words yourself. Our own short poems are always labelled as ours.
Find a poem for...
- A funeral or memorial short, gentle poems for a mother, father or friend, including Christina Rossetti's "Remember" and Robert Louis Stevenson's "Requiem".
- Love and weddings Shakespeare's sonnets, Robert Burns, Lord Byron and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How do I love thee?".
- A birthday card verses for mum, a friend or a partner, plus Rossetti's "A Birthday".
- Nature and the seasons the sea, autumn, spring blossom, rain and the moon.
- Short poems poems you can read in a minute, or learn by heart.
Poem of the day
"Hope is the thing with feathers" - Emily Dickinson, Poems, Second Series, 1891
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
First two of three stanzas. Source: Project Gutenberg, Poems by Emily Dickinson, Series Two (1891 text), where it is printed under the title "Hope".
What it's about: Dickinson pictures hope as a small bird that lives inside us and keeps singing in the worst weather, without ever asking for anything in return. The whole poem is twelve lines long - a good choice for a card, a classroom or a quiet moment. Read the final stanza on our short poems page.
Quotes with sources: author, work and year
Plenty of "famous quotes" online were never said by the person they are credited to. We only use lines we have found in a public-domain copy of the original work. Three examples:
"Hope springs eternal in the human breast"
- Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, Epistle I (1733-34)
"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever"
- John Keats, Endymion, Book I (1818)
"'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all."
- Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam (1850), section XXVII
See all of them, sorted by theme, on our quotes page and our page of quotes about life, patience and kindness.
Poets A-Z
Our poets list runs from William Blake to William Wordsworth: Robert Burns, Lord Byron, Emily Dickinson, John Keats, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Milton, Alexander Pope, Christina Rossetti, William Shakespeare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alfred Tennyson and more. Each poet page gives dates, best-known poems and short plain-English notes. Browse them on Poets A-Z.
Types of poems explained
What makes a sonnet a sonnet? How is an ode different from a ballad? Our guide to types of poems explains sonnets, ballads, odes, limericks, free verse, elegies and haiku in plain English, each with a public-domain example.
Our sourcing promise
- Public domain only. We publish a classic poem only if its author died before 1955 and it was first published before 1931. That keeps it out of copyright in the UK, the EU and the US.
- Author, work and year on everything. Every classic poem and quote shows who wrote it, where it first appeared and when, with a link to a free copy of the text.
- Copied from the source. Lines are taken from scanned or transcribed editions (Project Gutenberg, Wikisource, archive.org), never from quote websites.
- Our own poems are labelled. Short original poems written for this site carry the label "Original - Quotes and Poems". They are never mixed into a list of classics without it.
- What we leave out. Song lyrics, poems still in copyright, and quotes we cannot find in the original text.
Here are two of ours, so you know what the label looks like:
Bookmark
I left a ribbon on the page
where you stopped reading, years ago.
I've never moved it.
Some places you keep for someone.Original - Quotes and Poems
First Frost
The lawn turned silver overnight.
We walked on it before we knew
we'd leave the first marks of the day:
one line of me, one line of you.Original - Quotes and Poems
FAQ
Are the poems on this site free to use?
Yes. Every classic poem here is in the public domain: the author died before 1955 and the poem was first published before 1931. Please credit the poet. Our own original poems are marked "Original - Quotes and Poems" and you may copy them into personal cards. See our terms of use.
Who wrote the poems on this site?
Two kinds of writer: classic poets, whose poems always show author, work and year, and our own small editorial team, whose short poems are always labelled "Original - Quotes and Poems". We do not publish reader submissions. More on the about page.
Is this the old quotesandpoems.com?
No. Quotes and Poems is not the former quotesandpoems.com. It is an independent collection of public-domain poems and original writing, started in 2026. More on the about page.
Not the former quotesandpoems.com - an independent collection of public-domain poems and original writing.