Children poems
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The Curse
© John Berryman
Cedars and the westward sun.
The darkening sky. A man alone
Watches beside the fallen wall
The evening multitudes of sin
The Virgin Martyr
© Ada Cambridge
Every wild she-bird has nest and mate in the warm April weather,
But a captive woman, made for love - no mate, no nest has she.
In the spring of young desire, young men and maids are wed together,
And the happy mothers flaunt their bliss for all the world to see:
Nature's sacramental feast for these - an empty board for me.
Love's Enchantment
© Marian Osborne
AS when two children, hand clasped fast in hand,
Explore the dimness of a fairy bower
Home's Kid (For Glenn)
© Dale Harcombe
This time I know
I will never see him again.
For a time he played the game,
like a child experimenting with blocks,
Bruise blue
© Dale Harcombe
Frail as smoke, she drifts
through the crowded train,
bringing with her
the cold ashes of poverty.
The Bride of Frankenstein
© Edward Field
The Baron has decided to mate the monster,
to breed him perhaps,
in the interests of pure science, his only god.
The Generations of Men
© Robert Frost
A governor it was proclaimed this time,
When all who would come seeking in New Hampshire
Ancestral memories might come together.
And those of the name Stark gathered in Bow,
The Ax-Helve
© Robert Frost
I've known ere now an interfering branch
Of alder catch my lifted ax behind me.
But that was in the woods, to hold my hand
From striking at another alder's roots,
Epilogue - To the Tragedy of Cleone
© William Shenstone
Well, Ladies-so much for the tragic style-
And now the custom is to make you smile.
Place for a Third
© Robert Frost
She gave it through the screen door closed between them:
"No, not with John. There wouldn't be no sense.
Eliza's had too many other men."
In the Home Stretch
© Robert Frost
Never was I beladied so before.
Would evidence of having been called lady
More than so many times make me a lady
In common law, I wonder.
A Hundred Collars
© Robert Frost
Lancaster bore him--such a little town,
Such a great man. It doesn't see him often
Of late years, though he keeps the old homestead
And sends the children down there with their mother
Never Try To Trick Me With A Kiss
© Sylvia Plath
Never try to trick me with a kiss
Pretending that the birds are here to stay;
The dying man will scoff and scorn at this.
The Bonfire
© Robert Frost
Scare you. But if you shrink from being scared,
What would you say to war if it should come?
Thats what for reasons I should like to know
If you can comfort me by any answer.
Almon Keefer
© James Whitcomb Riley
Ah, Almon Keefer! what a boy you were,
With your back-tilted hat and careless hair,
And open, honest, fresh, fair face and eyes
With their all-varying looks of pleased surprise
And joyous interest in flower and tree,
And poising humming-bird, and maundering bee.
Raking by Tania Rochelle: American Life in Poetry #87 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
The first poem we ran in this column was by David Allan Evans of South Dakota, about a couple washing windows together. You can find that poem and all the others on our website, www.americanlifeinpoetry.org. Here Tania Rochelle of Georgia presents us with another couple, this time raking leaves. I especially like the image of the pair âbent like parentheses/ around their brittle little lawn.â?
Snow
© Robert Frost
The three stood listening to a fresh access
Of wind that caught against the house a moment,
Gulped snow, and then blew free againthe Coles
Dressed, but dishevelled from some hours of sleep,
Meserve belittled in the great skin coat he wore.
New Hampshire
© Robert Frost
Just specimens is all New Hampshire has,
One each of everything as in a showcase,
Which naturally she doesn't care to sell.
Maple
© Robert Frost
Her teacher's certainty it must be Mabel
Made Maple first take notice of her name.
She asked her father and he told her, "Maple
Maple is right."
