La lecture est essentielle pour apprendre une nouvelle langue. Les étudiants en anglais devraient toujours lire des œuvres de fiction et non-fiction pour enrichir leur vocabulaire, apprendre des expressions idiomatiques et améliorer leur grammaire.
Dans cet article, nous listons dix excellents poèmes anglais que les étudiants devraient lire en apprenant l’anglais, pour les débutants, intermédiaires et avancés. La progression des poèmes va du langage et des concepts simples aux structures et images plus complexes.
Tous offrent une bonne diversité de styles, de thèmes et de défis linguistiques. Ils vous donneront largement l’occasion d’améliorer votre compréhension et votre maîtrise globale de la langue à différents niveaux de difficulté.
Poème 1 : « The Swing » de Robert Louis Stevenson (1891)
« How do you like to go up in a swing, / Up in the air so blue? »
C’est un poème joyeux, touchant et rythmé sur la balançoire. Il parle d’un adorable petit garçon qui profite de se balancer. Avec son chien à ses côtés, il croit pouvoir voler. Et qui sait, sur sa balançoire, il a peut-être raison.
How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
River and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside—
Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown—
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!
Poème 2 : « The Tyger » de William Blake (1794)
« Tyger! Tyger! burning bright, In the forests of the night. »
C’est un poème à la fois répétitif et rythmique sur un tigre mystérieux. Dès sa petite enfance, Blake parlait d’avoir des visions. Une grande partie du contenu du poème a une forte imagerie.
Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat. What dread hand? & what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain, In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp. Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears And water'd heaven with their tears: Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Tyger Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Poème 3 : « I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud » de William Wordsworth (1802)
« I wandered lonely as a cloud, That floats on high o’er vales and hills, / When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils ».
Ce que j’apprécie particulièrement, c’est que ce poème lyrique décrit si magnifiquement la nature. C’est l’un de ses plus populaires, inspiré par une promenade avec sa sœur Dorothy, lorsqu’ils ont vu une « longue ceinture » de jonquilles dans le Lake District.
Son ton réflexif peut vous aider à développer votre capacité à être descriptif avec votre vocabulaire, surtout vos adjectifs avec des expressions comme ‘golden daffodils’, ‘milky way’, ‘sprightly dance’ et ‘pensive mood’.
I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed — and gazed — but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.
Poème 4 : « If » de Rudyard Kipling (1895)
« If you can keep your head when all about you, / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you. »
Ce poème est écrit sous forme de conseil paternel au fils du poète, John. Il a un message moral transmis d’un ton direct et simple mais motivant. Il sera très efficace pour vous aider à apprendre les phrases conditionnelles (celles qui commencent typiquement par le mot ‘if’ ou ‘unless’).
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!
Poème 5 : « Jabberwocky » de Lewis Carroll (1872)
C’est un poème amusant, voire absurde, sur le meurtre d’une créature nommée « the Jabberwock ».
Il vous aidera à comprendre comment créer des mots avec un vocabulaire original et inhabituel avec des néologismes (nouveaux mots) comme ‘chortle’, un type de rire qui est un mélange de ‘chuckle’ et ‘snort’. Cependant, ne vous inquiétez pas trop d’apprendre le vocabulaire proposé dans ce poème. Des mots comme « jubjub », « frumious », « mimsy », « vorpal » et « galumphing » sont juste colorés et imaginatifs mais ne sont pas dans le dictionnaire.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Poème 6 : « Ozymandias » de Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818)
J’adore « I met a traveller from an antique land » car c’est un vers d’ouverture époustouflant.
Pour moi, c’est un poème qui fait réfléchir, un sonnet (14 vers) sur le déclin inévitable des dirigeants puissants. Shelley était l’une des grandes figures du romantisme anglais et utilise ici des outils littéraires avancés comme l’allitération avec des expressions comme ‘boundless and bare’, ‘lone and level’ et ‘sands stretch’.
I met a traveller 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, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Poème 7 : « Sonnet 18 » de William Shakespeare (1609)
« Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate ».
C’est peut-être le plus connu des 154 sonnets de Shakespeare. Dans ce poème, le locuteur se demande s’il doit comparer le Fair Youth à un jour d’été, mais note qu’il a des qualités qui surpassent un jour d’été, ce qui est l’un des thèmes du poème. Ici, il expose la forme poétique du sonnet avec ses métaphores et ses comparaisons.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date; Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Poème 8 : « Paradise Lost » Livre 1 de John Milton (1667)
Ce poème épique s’ouvre sur ces vers : « Of Man’s First Disobedience, and the Fruit / Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste Brought Death into the World, and all our woe. » Et ainsi, il informe le lecteur de toute l’intrigue qu’il va raconter. Le commandement de Milton est pour cette Muse de « Sing », d’instruire, d’inspirer et de le soutenir dans sa composition, conçue dans le but d’affirmer « th’ Eternal Providence » et de justifier « the wayes of God to Men ».
C’est un poème épique extraordinaire traitant de toutes sortes de grands thèmes impliquant à la fois le bien et le mal ainsi que le libre arbitre. Il utilise une gamme de complexités, en particulier des formes linguistiques archaïques.
OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste Brought Death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed, In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth Rose out of Chaos: or if Sion Hill Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flow'd Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song, That with no middle flight intends to soar Above th' Aonian Mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime. And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss And mad'st it pregnant: What in me is dark Illumin, what is low raise and support; That to the highth of this great Argument I may assert Eternal Providence, And justifie the wayes of God to men. (...)
Le poème complet peut être lu ici.
Poème 9 : « Ode to a Nightingale » de John Keats (1819)
« My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains, / My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk » sont les vers d’ouverture directs et vivants.
Composé à Hampstead, Londres : c’est un poème romantique complexe traitant de la mortalité, de la beauté et de la nature.
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.
(...)
Le poème complet peut être trouvé ici.
Poème 10 : « The Waste Land » – Extrait : « The Burial of the Dead » – de T.S. Eliot (1922)
« April is the cruellest month, breeding, / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain ».
Connu pour sa difficulté, ce poème est difficile à saisir, rempli de références culturelles obliques, de structures fragmentées ainsi que d’un symbolisme riche.
April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the archduke's, My cousin's, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
Le poème complet peut être lu ici.
Conclusion
Ces dix poèmes anglais recommandés pour les étudiants ne sont qu’une toute petite sélection de l’énorme quantité de belle poésie créée par les poètes anglophones au fil des siècles.
Espérons qu’ils vous inspireront à plonger plus profondément dans les subtilités, l’imagerie saisissante et le sens profond produits par les plus étonnants magiciens de la langue anglaise que l’histoire nous a donnés.
