Children poems
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The Painter
© John Ashbery
Sitting between the sea and the buildings
He enjoyed painting the sea’s portrait.
But just as children imagine a prayer
Is merely silence, he expected his subject
To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush,
Plaster its own portrait on the canvas.
Swiss Song, On The Anniversary Of An Ancient Battle
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
Look on the white Alps round!
If yet they gird a land
Where freedom's voice and step are found,
Forget ye not the band,
The faithful band, our sires, who fell
Here, in the narrow battle-dell!
Questions About Angels
© Billy Collins
Of all the questions you might want to ask
about angels, the only one you ever hear
is how many can dance on the head of a pin.
The Landgraff
© Frances Anne Kemble
Through Thuringia's forest green
The Landgraff rode at close of e'en;
Good People
© William Stanley Merwin
From the kindness of my parents
I suppose it was that I held
that belief about suffering
Satire IV
© John Donne
Well; I may now receive, and die. My sin
Indeed is great, but yet I have been in
The Song Of The Sword--To Rudyard Kipling
© William Ernest Henley
The Sword
Singing -
The voice of the Sword from the heart of the Sword
Clanging imperious
Forth from Time's battlements
His ancient and triumphing Song.
Moloch In State Street
© John Greenleaf Whittier
THE moon has set: while yet the dawn
Breaks cold and gray,
Between the midnight and the morn
Bear off your prey!
from The Testament of Love
© John Hall Wheelock
from Book I, Introduction
Man’s Reason is in such deep insolvency to sense,
Singing School
© Seamus Justin Heaney
Ulster was British, but with no rights on
The English lyric: all around us, though
We hadn’t named it, the ministry of fear.
"I'd like to spend long hours at home"
© Lesbia Harford
I'd like to spend long hours at home
With a small child to bother me.
I'd take her out to see the shops
And fuss about my husband's tea.
Idyll VI. The Drawn Battle
© Theocritus
Daphnis the herdsman and Damoetas once
Had driven, Aratus, to the selfsame glen.
One chin was yellowing, one shewed half a beard.
And by a brookside on a summer noon
The pair sat down and sang; but Daphnis led
The song, for Daphnis was the challenger.
Guinevere
© Alfred Tennyson
`Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill!
Late, late, so late! but we can enter still.
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.
Poem of Disconnected Parts
© Robert Pinsky
At Robben Island the political prisoners studied.
They coined the motto Each one Teach one.
A Story
© Harriet Monroe
He loved her and he was untrue
Untrue he was, let loved her still;
For out of nether darkness drew
The winds that lashed his wandering will.
In Black
© Joyce Sutphen
The image that haunts me is not beautiful.
I do not think it will open into a field
of wildflowers; I doubt that it will take
wing suddenly, startling us into admiration.
From a Bridge
© David St. John
I saw my mother standing there below me
On the narrow bank just looking out over the river
