Children poems
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Glory To God; To Men Good Will!
© Joseph Furphy
Opposed to Jewish Temple-rites,
Strange to the lore of Greece,
That message comes from starry heights,
A key to lasting Peace.
What-e'er our creed, we own its thrill
"Glory to God; to men good will!"
Benjamin Pantier
© Edgar Lee Masters
Together in this grave lie Benjamin Pantier, attorney at law,
And Nig, his dog, constant companion, solace and friend.
The Letter
© Dana Gioia
And in the end, all that is really left
Is a feeling—strong and unavoidable—
from Jubilate Agno
© Christopher Smart
let elizur rejoice with the partridge
Let Elizur rejoice with the Partridge, who is a prisoner of state and is proud of his keepers.
Gloria Mundi
© Walter de la Mare
Upon a bank, easeless with knobs of gold,
Beneath a canopy of noonday smoke,
I saw a measureless Beast, morose and bold,
With eyes like one from filthy dreams awoke,
Who stares upon the daylight in despair
For very terror of the nothing there.
[as freedom is a breakfastfood]
© Edward Estlin Cummings
as freedom is a breakfastfood
or truth can live with right and wrong
The Poets
© Archibald Lampman
Half brutish, half divine, but all of earth,
Half-way 'twixt hell and heaven, near to man,
The whole world's tangle gathered in one span,
Full of this human torture and this mirth:
Life with its hope and error, toil and bliss,
Earth-born, earth-reared, ye know it as it is.
Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day
© Delmore Schwartz
Calmly we walk through this April’s day,
Metropolitan poetry here and there,
A Poem for the Cruel Majority
© Jerome Rothenberg
Nothing can make the dark turn into light
for the cruel majority.
Nothing can make them feel hunger or terror.
Vandergast and the Girl
© Louis Simpson
Vandergast to his neighbors—
the grinding of a garage door
and hiss of gravel in the driveway.
The Wound-Dresser
© Walt Whitman
But in silence, in dreams’ projections,
While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on,
So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints off the sand,
With hinged knees returning I enter the doors, (while for you up there,
Whoever you are, follow without noise and be of strong heart.)
The Small Vases from Hebron
© Naomi Shihab Nye
Tip their mouths open to the sky.
Turquoise, amber,
the deep green with fluted handle,
pitcher the size of two thumbs,
tiny lip and graceful waist.
Days of Our Years
© Daniel Nester
It’s brief and bright, dear children; bright and brief.
Delight’s the lightning; the long thunder’s grief.
The Coast-Road
© Robinson Jeffers
A horseman high-alone as an eagle on the spur of the mountain over Mirmas Canyon draws rein, looks down
At the bridge-builders, men, trucks, the power-shovels, the teeming end of the new coast-road at the mountain’s base.
Different Ways to Pray
© Naomi Shihab Nye
And occasionally there would be one
who did none of this,
the old man Fowzi, for example, Fowzi the fool,
who beat everyone at dominoes,
insisted he spoke with God as he spoke with goats,
and was famous for his laugh.
