Famous Poems by First Lines

These are the most famous short poems (as opposed to book-length poetry) by number of Wikipedia languages. Can you name title and author from the first two (in some cases four) lines?

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Last updated: June 22, 2024

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First submitted	September 27, 2022
Times taken	396
Average score	20.6%
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Text	Poem	Author
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—	The Raven	Edgar Allan Poe
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe	Jabberwocky	Lewis Carroll
Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Kommunist.	First they came …	Martin Niemöller
_ ______ / velut luna statu variabilis, / semper crescis	O Fortuna	(unknown)
____ _______ / ____ _______ sujalāṃ suphalāṃ / malayajaśītalām	Vande Mataram	Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
En la mondon venis nova sento, tra la mondo iras forta voko	La Espero	L. L. Zamenhof
April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing	The Waste Land	T. S. Eliot
Hljóðs bið ek allar / helgar kindir, meiri ok minni / mögu Heimdallar	Völuspá / Poetic Edda	(unknown)
It is an ______ _______, And he stoppeth one of three.	The Rime of the Ancient Mariner	Samuel Taylor Coleridge
_ you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you	If—	Rudyard Kipling
Iro wa nioedo / Chirinuru o Wa ga yo tare zo / Tsune naran	Iroha	(unknown)
Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī. Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.	Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den	Yuen Ren Chao
Take up __ ____ ___'_ _____— Send forth the best ye breed—	The White Man's Burden	Rudyard Kipling
It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea	Annabel Lee	Edgar Allan Poe
Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind? Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind	Erlkönig	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
_ _______ _____, the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row	In Flanders Fields	John McCrae
In Xanadu did ____ ____ A stately pleasure-dome decree	Kubla Khan	Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone	Ozymandias	Percy Bysshe Shelley
‎Na beregu pustynnykh voln Stoyal on, dum velikikh poln	The Bronze Horseman (Mednyy vsadnik)	Alexander Pushkin
Girey sidel, potupya vzor; Yantar' v ustakh yego dymilsya	The Fountain of Bakhchisaray (Bakhchisarayskiy fontan)	Alexander Pushkin
Hat der alte Hexenmeister sich doch einmal wegbegeben!	The Sorcerer's Apprentice (Der Zauberlehrling)	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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