Children poems

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Pioneers! O Pioneers!

© Walt Whitman

COME, my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready;
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!

The Sea-Shore

© Letitia Elizabeth Landon

I SHOULD like to dwell where the deep blue sea
Rock'd to and fro as tranquilly,
As if it were willing the halcyon's nest
Should shelter through summer its beautiful guest.

I LIKE the homes where a Teddy Bear
Monopolizes the best arm chair,
Where the sofa a rag doll occupies
And a train of cars in the corner lies;
For those are the signs that the home is glad
With a little girl or a little lad.

The Village: Book I

© George Crabbe

The village life, and every care that reigns

O'er youthful peasants and declining swains;

Market-Night

© Robert Bloomfield

'O Winds, howl not so long and loud;
Nor with your vengeance arm the snow:
Bear hence each heavy-loaded cloud;
And let the twinkling Star-beams glow.

Candles

© Sylvia Plath

They are the last romantics, these candles:
Upside-down hearts of light tipping wax fingers,
And the fingers, taken in by their own haloes,
Grown milky, almost clear, like the bodies of saints.
It is touching, the way they'll ignore

Haymaking

© Edward Thomas

Aftear night’s thunder far away had rolled

The fiery day had a kernel sweet of cold,

Blue Monday

© Diane Wakoski

Blue Monday. Monday at 3:00 and
Monday at 5. Monday at 7:30 and
Monday at 10:00. Monday passed under the rippling
California fountain. Monday alone
a shark in the cold blue waters.

Monet Refuses the Operation

© Paul Eluard

Doctor, you say there are no haloes

around the streetlights in Paris

The Garden Buddha by Peter Pereira: American Life in Poetry #132 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004

© Ted Kooser

Children at play give personalities to lifeless objects, and we don't need to give up that pleasure as we grow older. Poets are good at discerning life within what otherwise might seem lifeless. Here the poet Peter Pereira, a family physician in the Seattle area, contemplates a smiling statue, and in that moment of contemplation the smile is given by the statue to the man.
The Garden Buddha

Gift of a friend, the stone Buddha sits zazen,
prayer beads clutched in his chubby fingers.
Through snow, icy rain, the riot of spring flowers,
he gazes forward to the city in the distanceâalways

Sappho

© James Wright

The twilight falls; I soften the dusting feathers,
And clean again.
The house has lain and moldered for three days.
The windows smeared with rain, the curtains torn,
The mice come in,
The kitchen blown with cold.

Effort at Speech Between Two People

© Katha Pollitt

: Speak to me. Take my hand. What are you now?
I will tell you all. I will conceal nothing.
When I was three, a little child read a story about a rabbit
who died, in the story, and I crawled under a chair :
a pink rabbit : it was my birthday, and a candle
burnt a sore spot on my finger, and I was told to be happy.

Quiet Dead!

© George MacDonald

Quiet, quiet dead,
Have ye aught to say
From your hidden bed
In the earthy clay?

The Drunken Boat

As I was going down impassive Rivers,

I no longer felt myself guided by haulers:

The Ghost

There stands a City,- neither large nor small,

Its air and situation sweet and pretty;

Childhood

And yet the practice worldlings call
Business, and weighty action all,
Checking the poor child for his play,
But gravely cast themselves away.

Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children

A Curious Knot God made in Paradise,
And drew it out inamled neatly Fresh.
It was the True-Love Knot, more sweet than spice
And set with all the flowres of Graces dress.
Its Weddens Knot, that ne're can be unti'de.
No Alexanders Sword can it divide.