Children poems
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Brothers-American Drama
© James Weldon Johnson
See! There he stands; not brave, but with an air
Of sullen stupor. Mark him well! Is he
Not more like brute than man? Look in his eye!
No light is there; none, save the glint that shines
In the now glaring, and now shifting orbs
Of some wild animal caught in the hunter’s trap.
Holy Thursday: Is this a holy thing to see
© William Blake
Is this a holy thing to see,
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reducd to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?
The Bridal of the Year
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
Yes! the Summer is returning,
Warmer, brighter beams are burning
Fresh Air
© Kenneth Koch
3
Summer in the trees! “It is time to strangle several bad poets.”
The yellow hobbyhorse rocks to and fro, and from the chimney
Drops the Strangler! The white and pink roses are slightly agitated by the struggle,
But afterwards beside the dead “poet” they cuddle up comfortingly against their vase. They are safer now, no one will compare them to the sea.
Night Without Sleep
© Robinson Jeffers
The world’s as the world is; the nations rearm and prepare to change; the age of tyrants returns;
The greatest civilization that has ever existed builds itself higher towers on breaking foundations.
Recurrent episodes; they were determined when the ape’s children first ran in packs, chipped flint to an edge.
My Mother’s Pillow
© Cecilia Woloch
My mother sleeps with the Bible open on her pillow;
she reads herself to sleep and wakens startled.
The Only Child
© Katharine Tynan
Lest he miss other children, lo!
His angel is his playfellow.
A riotous angel two years old,
With wings of rose and curls of gold.
Full Flight
© Richard Jones
I'm in a plane that will not be flown into a building.
It's a SAAB 340, seats 40, has two engines with propellers
Summer And Winter
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
It was a bright and cheerful afternoon,
Towards the end of the sunny month of June,
When the north wind congregates in crowds
The floating mountains of the silver clouds
Equations of the Light
© Dana Gioia
Turning the corner, we discovered it
just as the old wrought-iron lamps went on—
a quiet, tree-lined street, only one block long
resting between the noisy avenues.
Beowulf
© Charles Baudelaire
LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!
Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes,
Children
© Letitia Elizabeth Landon
A word will fill the little heart
With pleasure and with pride;
It is a harsh, a cruel thing,
That such can be denied.
The Loehrs And The Hammonds
© James Whitcomb Riley
"Hey, Bud! O Bud!" rang out a gleeful call,--
"_The Loehrs is come to your house!_" And a small
The Cure For Weariness
© Edgar Albert Guest
Seemed like I couldn't stand it any more,
The factory whistles blowin' day by day,
Who Understands Me but Me
© James Russell Lowell
They turn the water off, so I live without water,
they build walls higher, so I live without treetops,
The Snowmass Cycle
© Stephen Dunn
If the rich are casually cruel
perhaps its because
they can stare at the sky
and never see an indictment
in the shape of clouds.
Insomnia and the Seven Steps to Grace
© Joy Harjo
At dawn the panther of the heavens peers over the edge of the world.
She hears the stars gossip with the sun, sees the moon washing her lean
darkness with water electrified by prayers. All over the world there are those
who can't sleep, those who never awaken.
