Best poems
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If Only I Were Santa Claus
© Edgar Albert Guest
If only I were Santa Claus and you were still a boy,
I'd find the chimney to your heart and fill it full of joy ;
Song (Love)
© Aphra Behn
When full brute Appetite is fed,
And choakd the Glutton lies and dead;
Thou new Spirits dost dispense,
And fine'st the gross Delights of Sense.
Sordello: Book the Sixth
© Robert Browning
The thought of Eglamor's least like a thought,
And yet a false one, was, "Man shrinks to nought
How We Beat The Favourite
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
A Lay of the Loamshire Hunt Cup
"Aye, squire," said Stevens, "they back him at evens;
The race is all over, bar shouting, they say;
The Clown ought to beat her; Dick Neville is sweeter
Than ever - he swears he can win all the way.
To My Eldest Brother, With The British Army In Portugal
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
Does memory's pencil oft, in mellowing hue,
Dear social scenes, departed joys renew;
In softer tints delighting to retrace,
Each tender image and each well-known face?
Yes! wanderer, yes! thy spirit flies to those,
Whose love unalter'd, warm and faithful glows!
An Essay on Man: Epistle 1
© Alexander Pope
To Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke
Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things
Rencontre
© Henry Van Dyke
Oh, was I born too soon, my dear, or were you born too late,
That I am going out the door while you come in the gate?
The White Maiden And The Indian Girl
© Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
Child of the Woods, bred in leafy dell,
See the palace home in which I dwell,
With its lofty walls and casements wide,
And objects of beauty on every side;
Now, tell me, dost thou not think it bliss
To dwell in a home as bright as this?
Enlisted Today
© Anonymous
I know the sun shines, and the lilacs are blowing,
And the summer sends kisses by beautiful May -
Grass From The Battle-Field
© Sydney Thompson Dobell
Small sheaf
Of withered grass, that hast not yet revealed
Thy story, lo! I see thee once more green
And growing on the battle-field,
On that last day that ever thou didst grow!
Crowds
© Charles Baudelaire
It is not given to every man to take a bath of multitude; enjoying a crowd is an art; and only he can relish a debauch of vitality at the expense of the human species, on whom, in his cradle, a fairy has bestowed the love of masks and masquerading, the hate of home, and the passion for roaming.
Multitude, solitude: identical terms, and interchangeable by the active and fertile poet. The man who is unable to people his solitude is equally unable to be alone in a bustling crowd.
Fand, A Feerie Act I
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Eithne's Spinning Song
Things of the Earth and things of the Air,
Strengths that we feel though we cannot share,
Shapes that are round us and everywhere.
The Chameleon
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
I KNOW that I'm like, yet I am not, a snake!
'Tis true that I glisten by boil and by brake,
That I dart out and in, can glide, quiver and coil
As swift as the lightning, but softer than oil,
Yet a creature more innocent never was drawn
From the gray of cool shadows to bask in the dawn!
Judging Distances
© Henry Reed
Not only how far away, but the way that you say it
Is very important. Perhaps You may never get
The knack of judging a distance, but at least you know
How to report on a landscape: the central sector,
The right of the arc and that, which we had last Tuesday,
And at least you know
The Botanic Garden (Part VI)
© Erasmus Darwin
"Born in yon blaze of orient sky,
"Sweet MAY! thy radiant form unfold;
"Unclose thy blue voluptuous eye,
"And wave thy shadowy locks of gold.
An Inventor
© Augusta Davies Webster
I thought this time 'twas done at last,
the workings perfected, the life in it;
and there's the flaw again, the petty flaw,
the fretting small impossibility
that has to be made possible.
Adam: A Sacred Drama. Act 2.
© William Cowper
How exquisitely sweet
This rich display of flowers,
This airy wild of fragrance,
So lovely to the eye,
And to the sense so sweet.
Table Talk
© William Cowper
A. You told me, I remember, glory, built
On selfish principles, is shame and guilt;
