Cool poems
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The Laughter of Women by Mary-Sherman Willis: American Life in Poetry #168 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Lau
© Ted Kooser
So often, reading a poem can in itself feel like a thing overheard. Here, Mary-Sherman Willis of Virginia describes the feeling of being stilled by conversation, in this case barely audible and nearly indecipherable.
The Laughter of Women
From over the wall I could hear the laughter of women
in a foreign tongue, in the sun-rinsed air of the city.
They sat (so I thought) perfumed in their hats and their silks,
The Days when we went Swimming
© Henry Lawson
The breezes waved the silver grass,
Waist-high along the siding,
Colour
© Dorothea Mackellar
The lovely things that I have watched unthinking,
Unknowing, day by day,
That their soft dyes have steeped my soul in colour
That will not pass away -
Will And I
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
I.
WE roam the hills together,
In the golden summer weather,
Will and I:
Merlin And Vivien
© Alfred Tennyson
A storm was coming, but the winds were still,
And in the wild woods of Broceliande,
Before an oak, so hollow, huge and old
It looked a tower of ivied masonwork,
At Merlin's feet the wily Vivien lay.
A Sylvan Scene
© Theocritus
I shall not go thither,
Here are oaks, here is the galingale,
Here bees hum sweetly around their hives;
Here are two springs of coolest water,
Songs Of Poltescoe Valley
© Arthur Symons
I
Under the trees in the dell.
Here by the side of the stream,
Were it not pleasant to dream,
Were it not better to dwell?
St. Dorothy
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
And Theophile burnt in the cheek, and said:
Yea, could one see it, this were marvellous.
I pray you, at your coming to this house,
Give me some leaf of all those tree-branches;
Seeing how so sharp and white our weather is,
There is no green nor gracious red to see.
Aubade
© Adelaide Crapsey
The morning is new and the skies are fresh washed with light,
The day cometh in with the sun and I awake laughing.
The Parish Register - Part I: Baptisms
© George Crabbe
floor.
Here his poor bird th' inhuman Cocker brings,
Arms his hard heel and clips his golden wings;
With spicy food th' impatient spirit feeds,
And shouts and curses as the battle bleeds.
Struck through the brain, deprived of both his
Little and Great
© Charles Mackay
A traveller on a dusty road
Strewed acorns on the lea;
And one took root and sprouted up,
And grew into a tree.
Rantoul
© John Greenleaf Whittier
One day, along the electric wire
His manly word for Freedom sped;
We came next morn: that tongue of fire
Said only, "He who spake is dead!"
Abishag
© Rainer Maria Rilke
I
She lay, and serving-men her lithe arms took,
And bound them round the withering old man,
And on him through the long sweet hours she lay,
And little fearful of his many years.
Ashtaroth: A Dramatic Lyric
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
Orion: But an understanding tacit.
You have prospered much since the day we met;
You were then a landless knight;
You now have honour and wealth, and yet
I never can serve you right.
Rural Morning
© John Clare
And now, when toil and summer's in its prime,
In every vill, at morning's earliest time,
To early-risers many a Hodge is seen,
And many a Dob's heard clattering oer the green.
Possession
© Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
A YOUTH sat down on a wayside stone,
A pack on his back and a staff at his knee.
He whistled a tune which he called his own,
"It's a fine new tune, that tune!" said he.
Stars
© Emily Jane Brontë
Ah! why, because the dazzling sun
Restored our Earth to joy,
Have you departed, every one,
And left a desert sky ?
The Spirit Of Navigation
© William Lisle Bowles
Stern Father of the storm! who dost abide
Amid the solitude of the vast deep,
