Les plus beaux poèmes
en anglais ont marqué l’histoire et la littérature. Il faut dire que la langue de Shakespeare est réellement
poétique et nous invite à découvrir des styles très différents, mais toujours
raffinés. La poésie anglaise est reconnue à
travers le monde entier, car les plus beaux
poèmes en anglais sont d’une richesse incroyable. Découvrez donc les plus beaux poèmes en anglais possédant la
plus grande réputation.

Robert Frost - The
Road Not Taken

Parmi les plus beaux
poèmes en anglais que l’on connait, on ne peut que citer Robert Frost et son célèbre The
Road Not Taken. Il s’agit d’un poème
philosophique aborde la question des choix que tout le monde doit faire
dans sa vie. Il est d’ailleurs très utilisé à titre d’exemples dans les cours
de philosophie des universités américaines. De plus, ce poème anglais a été utilisé de nombreuses fois comme références
dans des films d’anthologie, comme par exemple « Dead Poets Society».

Le poème en anglais

Voici l’un des plus beaux
poèmes en anglais de Robert Frost :

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Rudyard Kipling – If

Les poèmes en anglais
sont réellement d’une beauté et d’un raffinement saisissant. On ne peut pas
parler des plus beaux poèmes en anglais
sans citer Rudyard Kipling et son célèbre If.
Ce poème a été écrit en 1895 mais n’a été publié qu’en 1910. Il parle de la vertu Britannique au cœur de l’ère Victorienne et est devenu très vite
célèbre. D’ailleurs deux de ses vers (le 11 et le 12) sont utilisés lors de
l’entrée des joueurs du court central de
Wimbledon. Il fait donc partie des plus beaux poèmes en anglais que vous vous devez de connaître.

Le poème en anglais

Voici donc l’un des plus beaux poèmes en anglais écrit par Rudyard Kipling, qui porte le nom
d’If.

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt
you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream-and not make dreams your
master;

If you can think-and not make thoughts your
aim,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to,
broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your
virtue,

Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt
you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And-which is more-you’ll be a Man, my son!

John Keats - Ode to a
nightingale

On ne peut pas parler des plus beaux poèmes en anglais sans citer John Keats et son magnifique Ode to a nightingale. Ode à un Rossignol a été écrite en mai
1819 et fait partie de la série des six « Odes de 1819 ». Elle a été publiée
pour la première fois dans les Annales
des Beaux-arts au mois de juillet 1920. Ce poème explore les secrets de la
nature, du passage mais surtout de la mortalité, loin de l’optimisme d’autres poèmes en anglais réputés. Cette ode
magnifiquement écrite fait donc assurément partir des plus beaux poèmes en anglais.

Le poème en anglais

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

        
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

        
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

        
But being too happy in thine happiness,—

               
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees

                        In some melodious plot

         Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

               
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been

        
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country green,

        
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!

O for a beaker full of the warm South,

        
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

               
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

                        And purple-stained
mouth;

        
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

               
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

        
What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

        
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

        
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

               
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

                        And leaden-eyed
despairs,

        
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

               
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

        
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

        
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

Already with thee! tender is the night,

        
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,

               
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;

                        But here there is no
light,

        
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

               
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

        
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet

        
Wherewith the seasonable month endows

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree
wild;

        
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

               
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;

                        And mid-May's eldest
child,

        
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

               
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

        
I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

        
To take into the air my quiet breath;

               
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

        
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

               
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

                        In such an ecstasy!

        
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—

                   To thy high requiem become a
sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

        
No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard

         In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

        
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

               
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

                        The same that oft-times
hath

        
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam

               
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

        
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

        
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

        
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

               
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep

                        In the next
valley-glades:

        
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

               
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

D’autres poèmes en anglais tout aussi exceptionnels

Bien d’autres beaux
poèmes en anglais peuvent être cités. Comme, par exemple, Edgar Allan Poe et son célèbre Annabel
Lee. Ou encore, Maya Angelou
et son poème Still I rise, Emily Dickinson et son poème I’m
nobody! Who are you ?. Il ne vous reste plus qu’à vous laisser porter
par la beauté de ces vers.