Very interesting assertion that these would be the most familiar opening lines of any poem in the 20th century.
Even if one only read English poems, as the author did, how about
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both
Even if one only read English poems, as the author did, how about
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both
“Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table”
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, [. . .]
Or is that not a well known poem, because I think it is.
"Do not gentle into that good night"
or
"To begin at the beginning
It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobbled streets silent and the hunched, courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat- bobbing sea"