Children poems
/ page 197 of 244 /
Exhortation: Summer 1919
© Claude McKay
Through the pregnant universe rumbles life's terrific thunder,
And Earth's bowels quake with terror; strange and terrible storms break,
Lightning-torches flame the heavens, kindling souls of men, thereunder:
Africa! long ages sleeping, O my motherland, awake!
A Cat
© Edward Thomas
She had a name among the children;
But no one loved though someone owned
Her, locked her out of doors at bedtime
And had her kittens duly drowned.
Italy : 8. The Brothers
© Samuel Rogers
In the same hour the breath of life receiving,
They came together and were beautiful;
But, as they slumbered in their mother's lap,
How mournful was their beauty! She would sit,
Sunthin' In The Pastoral Line
© James Russell Lowell
Now I wuz settin' where I'd ben, it seemed,
An' ain't sure yit whether I rally dreamed,
Nor, ef I did, how long I might ha' slep',
When I hearn some un stompin' up the step,
An' lookirz' round, ef two an' two make four,
I see a Pilgrim Father in the door.
Outgrown
© Julia Caroline (Ripley) Dorr
Nay, you wrong her my friend, she's not fickle; her love she has simply outgrown:
One can read the whole matter, translating her heart by the light of one's own.
Mangroves
© Kenneth Slessor
O silent ones that drink these timeless pools,
Eternal brothers, bending so deeply over,
Your branches tremble above my tears again...
And even my songs are stolen from some old lover
Who cried beneath your leaves like other fools,
While still they whisper "in vain...in vain...in vain..."
Rutherford McDowell
© Edgar Lee Masters
They brought me ambrotypes
Of the old pioneers to enlarge.
And sometimes one sat for me
Some one who was in being
Thomas Trevelyan
© Edgar Lee Masters
Reading in Ovid the sorrowful story of Itys,
Son of the love of Tereus and Procne, slain
For the guilty passion of Tereus for Philomela,
The flesh of him served to Tereus by Procne,
Henry C. Calhoun
© Edgar Lee Masters
I reached the highest place in Spoon River,
But through what bitterness of spirit!
The face of my father, sitting speechless,
Child-like, watching his canaries,
Written For My Son In His Sickness, To One Of His School fellows.
© Mary Barber
I little thought that honest Dick
Would slight me so, when I was sick.
Is he a Friend, who only stays,
Whilst Health and Pleasure gild our Days;
Flies, when Disease our Temper sours,
Nor helps to pass the gloomy Hours?
Introduction: More Beasts for Worse Children
© Hilaire Belloc
The parents of the learned child
(His father and his mother)
Clarence Fawcett
© Edgar Lee Masters
The sudden death of Eugene Carman
Put me in line to be promoted to fifty dollars a month,
And I told my wife and children that night.
But it didn't come, and so I thought
Departing
© Frances Anne Kemble
Pour we libations to the father, Jove,
And bid him watch propitious o'er our way;
Rev. Lemuel Wiley
© Edgar Lee Masters
I preached four thousand sermons,
I conducted forty revivals,
And baptized many converts.
Yet no deed of mine
Exempt
© Edgar Albert Guest
They have said you needn't go to the front to face the foe;
They have left you with your women and your children safe at home;
Josiah Tompkins
© Edgar Lee Masters
I was well known and much beloved
And rich, as fortunes are reckoned
In Spoon River, where I had lived and worked.
That was the home for me,
John Wasson
© Edgar Lee Masters
Oh! the dew-wet grass of the meadow in North Carolina
Through which Rebecca followed me wailing, wailing,
One child in her arms, and three that ran along wailing,
Lengthening out the farewell to me off to the war with the British,
Jonas Keene
© Edgar Lee Masters
Why did Albert Schirding kill himself
Trying to be County Superintendent of Schools,
Blest as he was with the means of life
And wonderful children, bringing him honor
