100+ MLA Poem Citation Examples: Perfect Copywriting Guide for Students & Writers

“I wandered lonely as a cloud” (Wordsworth 1).

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood” (Frost 1).

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (Shakespeare 1).

“Because I could not stop for Death” (Dickinson 1).

“Tyger Tyger, burning bright” (Blake 1).

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan” (Coleridge 1).

“Let us go then, you and I” (Eliot 1).

“Do not go gentle into that good night” (Thomas 1).

“I, being born a woman and distressed” (Millay 1).

“The apparition of these faces in the crowd” (Pound 1).

“My love is like a red, red rose” (Burns 1).

“Hope is the thing with feathers” (Dickinson 1).

“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; / I know the voices dying with a dying fall” (Eliot 50-51).

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep” (Frost 13-14).

“She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies” (Byron 1-2).

“When old age shall this generation waste, / Thou shalt remain” (Keats 46-47).

“If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you” (Kipling 1-2).

“I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. / Whatever I see I swallow immediately” (Plath 1-2).

“Water, water, every where, / Nor any drop to drink” (Coleridge 120-121).

“I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. / I too am not a bit tamed” (Whitman 52-53).

“Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds” (Shakespeare 2-3).

“Nothing gold can stay. / So Eden sank to grief” (Frost 8-9).

“And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep” (Frost 15-16).

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself, / And what I assume you shall assume” (Whitman 1-2).

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
   Beside the springs of Dove,
A maid whom there were none to praise
   And very few to love. (Wordsworth 1–4)

Whose woods these are I think I know.
   His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
   To watch his woods fill up with snow. (Frost 1–4)

It was many and many a year ago,
   In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
   By the name of Annabel Lee. (Poe 1–4)

I am monarch of all I survey;
   My right there is none to dispute;
From the center all round to the sea,
   I am lord of the fowl and brute. (Campbell 1–4)

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
   The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
   While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring. (Whitman 1–4)

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
   Round and round they went;
There’s never been a man who caught it,
   For there’s always another beyond. (Dunbar 1–4)

The sun descending in the west;
   The evening star does shine;
The birds are silent in their nest,
   And I must seek for mine. (Blake 1–4)

Break, break, break,
   On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
   The thoughts that arise in me. (Tennyson 1–4)

I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –
   The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air –
   Between the Heaves of Storm – (Dickinson 1–4)

We real cool. We left school. / We lurk late. We strike straight. / We sing sin. We thin gin. / We jazz June. We die soon. (Brooks 1–4)

I rise, I rise, I rise.
   Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
   Up from a past that’s rooted in pain (Angelou 9–12)

God’s Grandeur: The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
   It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
   Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? (Hopkins 1–4)

“I have eaten / the plums that were in the icebox” (Williams 1–2).

“And sorry I could not travel both / And be one traveler” (Frost 2–3).

“I am large, I contain multitudes” (Whitman 51).

“What is this flesh I purchased with my money? / Blood stain upon the marriage garment” (Eliot 23–24).

“Light flows through me like blood, / pouring through arteries of glass” (Levertov 10–11).

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, / starving hysterical naked” (Ginsberg 1–2).

“I could not tell them I was not afraid / of falling apart” (Rich 34–35).

“The river is moving / The black boat floats on the river” (Creeley 1–2).

“I live at the hinge of despair / yet carry a key” (Clifton 15–16).

“I, too, sing America. / I am the darker brother” (Hughes 1–2).

“The truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind” (Dickinson 1–2).

“I shape myself anew each morning / like clay under a potter’s hand” (Oliver 7–8).

“‘What are you doing?’ said the man, / ‘Standing alone in the rain?’” (Lowell 12–13).

“‘Come in,’ I said, ‘though the night is cold’” (Frost 1).

“‘Who are you?’ she asked, ‘and where do you come from?’ / ‘I am a ghost,’ he said, ‘returning home’” (Bishop 20–21).

“‘I am Lazarus, come from the dead, / Come back to tell you all’” (Eliot 72–73).

“‘Mother,’ I whispered, ‘is it true you’ve gone?’” (Plath 5).

“‘Do not weep,’ the angel said, / ‘for I bring glad tidings’” (Rossetti 10–11).

“‘Where are you going?’ he called after her, / ‘Don’t leave me in the dark!’” (Walcott 34–35).

“‘I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,’ / she said, ‘but time wore her down’” (Roethke 1–2).

“‘Get out,’ she screamed, ‘this is not your home!’” (Sexton 8).

“‘Why so pale and wan, fond lover?’ / ‘I have been reading Shakespeare,’ he said” (Donne 1–2).

“‘Tell me,’ the child asked, ‘do stars have names?’” (Nye 3).

“‘You’re late,’ she said, ‘the moon has risen’” (Merwin 6).

“. . . as if to breathe were life” (Shelley 4).

“...not with a bang but a whimper” (Eliot 98).

“...in the middle of the journey of our life” (Dante 1).

“...the force that drives the green fuse” (Thomas 1).

“...a handful of dust” (Eliot 30).

“...full of passionate intensity” (Yeats 11).

“...the road not taken” (Frost 19).

“...the darling buds of May” (Shakespeare 4).

“...the thousand natural shocks” (Shakespeare 60).

“...slouches towards Bethlehem” (Yeats 22).

“...the still point of the turning world” (Eliot 55).

“...the long deferral” (Williams 12).

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. (Keats 1–4)

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. (Keats 61–64)

I do not know what it is about you that closes
   And opens; if it is light or air I do not know—
How can I turn from disaster? Is it you?
   Do you shut me, O你在吗 (Rich 1–4)

I cannot reach you. There is a shadow between us.
   As I stand here I am stopped
Everywhere, in every direction. (Rich 20–22)

I sing the body electric,
   The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, (Whitman 1–3)

The smoke of the world rises, the cries of labor,
   The song of the artisan, the chant of the worker—
All enter into me and become part of my soul. (Whitman 15–17)

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
   The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
   And leaves the world to darkness and to me. (Gray 1–4)

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
   And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Saved where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
   And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds. (Gray 5–8)

I think continually of those who were truly great.
   Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history,
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns,
   Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that they might sing along the ways they went. (Spender 1–5)

And who, long ago, left the vivid air signed
   With their honor. (Spender 10–11)

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
   Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
   And no birds sing. (Keats 1–4)

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
   So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
   And the harvest's done. (Keats 5–8)

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.
   Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers
in it after all, a place for the genuine. (Williams 1–3)

When they become so derivative as to become unintelligible,
   The same may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what we cannot understand. (Williams 8–10)

I met a traveler from an antique land,
   Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
   Half sunk, a shattered visage lies…” (Shelley 1–4)

And on the pedestal these words appear:
   “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” (Shelley 10–12)

The Love that moves the sun and the other stars (Dante 145)

Midway upon the journey of our life
   I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost. (Dante 1–3)

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
   Haunting the black air, brat of hell—
My skin bright as a Nazi lampshade, (Plath 1–3)

I turn and burn. Do not think I underestimate your most lethal,
   My enemy. You do not do, you do not do (Plath 20–21)

Let us go then, you and I,
   When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table; (Eliot 1–3)

And indeed there will be time
   To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” (Eliot 23–24)

I rise, I rise, I rise.
   Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
   Up from a past that’s rooted in pain (Angelou 9–12)

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide, / Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. (Angelou 33–34)

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate” (Shakespeare ABAB 1–2).

“Whose woods these are I think I know, / His house is in the village though” (Frost AABA 1–2).

“Because I could not stop for Death – / He kindly stopped for me –” (Dickinson ABCB 1–2).

“Tyger Tyger, burning bright, / In the forests of the night” (Blake AABB 1–2).

“I wandered lonely as a cloud / That floats on high o'er vales and hills” (Wordsworth ABAB 1–2).

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary” (Poe AAAA 1).

“Mark but this flea, and mark in this, / How little that which thou deny'st me is” (Donne AABB 1–2).

“O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, / The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won” (Whitman AABC 1–2).

“The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, / The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea” (Gray ABAB 1–2).

“I, being born a woman and distressed, / Wanton in spirit I confessed” (Millay ABBA 1–2).

“Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds” (Shakespeare ABAB 2–3).

“I think continually of those who were truly great” (Spender XAXA 1).

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” (Tolstoy 1).

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” (Dickens 1).

“Call me Ishmael” (Melville 1).

“In the beginning was the Word” (John 1.1).

“April is the cruellest month” (Eliot 1).

“I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me” (Ellison 3).

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins” (Nabokov 1).

“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream” (Hemingway 1).

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife” (Austen 1).

“When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken” (Lee 1).

“In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing” (Maclean 1).

“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel” (Gibson 1).

The speaker reflects on solitude by comparing himself to a drifting cloud (Wordsworth 1).

The poet suggests that death is a gentle journey rather than an end (Dickinson 1).

Nature is described as both beautiful and intimidating in the speaker’s mind (Frost 13).

The narrator chooses a less-traveled path, symbolizing individuality (Frost 19).

Time and mortality are contrasted with enduring artistic beauty (Keats 46).

Hope is portrayed as a constant, quiet presence in difficult times (Dickinson 1).

The city is depicted as emotionally draining and spiritually empty (Eliot 50).

The speaker embraces complexity and contradiction within identity (Whitman 51).

Love persists despite change and imperfection (Shakespeare 2).

The poet conveys resilience through repeated affirmations of rising (Angelou 9).

Human progress fails to honor divine brilliance in nature (Hopkins 4).

Memory and loss shape personal identity across generations (Rilke 1).