Children poems
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Brother Jonathan's Lament for Sister Caroline
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
SHE has gone,- she has left us in passion and pride,-
Our stormy-browed sister, so long at our side!
She has torn her own star from our firmament's glow,
And turned on her brother the face of a foe!
The Buyers.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To an apple-woman's stallOnce some children nimbly ran;
Longing much to purchase all,
They with joyous haste began
Snatching up the piles there raised,
Dedication
© Rainer Maria Rilke
I have great faith in all things not yet spoken.
I want my deepest pious feelings freed.
What no one yet has dared to risk and warrant
will be for me a challenge I must meet.
Scattering Flowers
© George Hitchcock
There is a dark tolling in the air,
an unbearable needle in the vein,
the horizon flaked with feathers of rust.
From the caves of drugged flowers
fireflies rise through the night:
they bear the sweet gospel of napalm.
The God And The Bayadere.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[This very fine Ballad was also first given in the Horen.]
(MAHADEVA is one of the numerous names of Seeva, the destroyer,--
the great god of the Brahmins.)
Faithful Eckart.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The band of the Sorceress sisters.
They hitherward speed, and on finding us here,
They'll drink, though with toil we have fetch'd it, the beer,
Niobe
© John Donne
By children's births, and death, I am become
So dry, that I am now mine own sad tomb.
Playing At Priests.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Through house and garden thus in state
We strutted early, strutted late,
Repeating with all proper unction,
Incessantly each holy function.
The best was wanting to the game;
Ballad Of The Banished And Returning Count.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[Goethe began to write an opera called Lowenstuhl,
founded upon the old tradition which forms the subject of this Ballad,
but he never carried out his design.]
Death-lament Of The Noble Wife Of Asan Aga.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Scarcely had the Cadi read this letter,
Than he gather'd all his Suatians round him,
And then tow'rd the bride his course directed,
And the veil she ask'd for, took he with him.
Ode to Marbles by Max Mendelsohn: American Life in Poetry #163 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2
© Ted Kooser
I have always enjoyed poems that celebrate the small pleasures of life. Here Max Mendelsohn, age 12, of Weston, Massachusetts, tells us of the joy he finds in playing with marbles.
Ode to Marbles
I Am A Parcel Of Vain Strivings Tied
© Henry David Thoreau
I am a parcel of vain strivings tied
By a chance bond together,
Dangling this way and that, their links
Were made so loose and wide,
Methinks,
For milder weather.
The Doubters And The Lovers
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
But we are on the proper road alone!
If gladly is to thaw the frozen soul,
The fire of love must aye be kept alive.
My Goddess.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
But unto us he
Hath his most versatile,
Most cherished daughter
Granted,--what joy!
Johanna Sebus.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[To the memory of an excellent and beautiful
girl of 17, belonging to the village of Brienen, who perished on
the 13th of January, 1809, whilst giving help on the occasion of
the breaking up of the ice on the Rhine, and the bursting of the
dam of Cleverham.]
Mahomet's Song.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[This song was intended to be introduced in
a dramatic poem entitled Mahomet, the plan of which was not carried
out by Goethe. He mentions that it was to have been sung by Ali
towards the end of the piece, in honor of his master, Mahomet, shortly
before his death, and when at the height of his glory, of which
it is typical.]
Starting From Paumanok
© Walt Whitman
Of earth, rocks, Fifth-month flowers, experienced-stars, rain, snow,
my amaze;
Having studied the mocking-bird's tones, and the mountainhawk's,
And heard at dusk the unrival'd one, the hermit thrush from the
swamp-cedars,
Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World.
