Children poems
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Report from the Subtropics
© Billy Collins
For one thing, there’s no more snow
to watch from an evening window,
and no armfuls of logs to carry into the house
so cumbersome you have to touch the latch with an elbow,
Upon the Infant Martyrs
© Richard Crashaw
To see both blended in one flood,
The mothers’ milk, the children’s blood,
Make me doubt if heaven will gather
Roses hence, or lilies rather.
Dirge
© Kenneth Fearing
And twelve o'clock arrived just once too often,
just the same he wore one gray tweed suit, bought one straw hat, drank one straight Scotch, walked one short step, took one long look, drew one deep breath,
just one too many,
St. Peter Claver
© Toi Derricotte
On holy cards St. Peter’s face is olive-toned, his hair near kinky;
I thought he was one of us who pass between the rich and poor, the light and dark.
Now I read he was “a Spanish Jesuit priest who labored for the salvation of the African Negroes and the abolition of the slave trade.”
I was tricked again, robbed of my patron,
and left with a debt to another white man.
The Flâneur
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
Boston Common, December 6, 1882 during the Transit of Venus
I love all sights of earth and skies,
The King Of Brentfords Testament
© William Makepeace Thackeray
The noble King of Brentford
Was old and very sick,
He summon'd his physicians
To wait upon him quick;
They stepp'd into their coaches
And brought their best physick.
Modern Love XXX
© George Meredith
What are we first? First, animals; and next
Intelligences at a leap; on whom
A Bear Story
© Edgar Albert Guest
There was a bear - his name was Jim,
An' children weren't askeered of him,
Five Visions of Captain Cook
© Kenneth Slessor
Two chronometers the captain had,
One by Arnold that ran like mad,
One by Kendal in a walnut case,
Poor devoted creature with a hangdog face.
My Mother-Land
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
Death! What of death?--
Can he who once drew honorable breath
In liberty's pure sphere,
Foster a sensual fear,
When death and slavery meet him face to face,
All Quiet Along the Potomac
© Ethel Lynn Eliot Beers
"All quiet along the Potomac to-night!"
Except here and there a stray picket
The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry: American Life in Poetry #17 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureat
© Ted Kooser
Nearly all of us spend too much of our lives thinking about what has happened, or worrying about what's coming next. Very little can be done about the past and worry is a waste of time. Here the Kentucky poet Wendell Berry gives himself over to nature.
The Peace of Wild Things
Ode For September
© Robert Laurence Binyon
On that long day when England held her breath,
Suddenly gripped at heart
And called to choose her part
Between her loyal soul and luring sophistries,
Land’s End
© Weldon Kees
A day all blue and white, and we
Came out of woods to sand
And snow-capped waves. The sea
Rose with us as we walked, the land
Built dunes, a lighthouse, and a sky of gulls.
