Good poems
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In A Railroad Station
© Sara Teasdale
We stood in the shrill electric light,
Dumb and sick in the whirling din
We who had all of love to say
And a single second to say it in.
The Judgement of Hercules
© William Shenstone
Wrapp'd in a pleased suspense, the youth survey'd
The various charms of each attractive maid:
Alternate each he view'd, and each admired,
And found, alternate, varying flames inspired:
Quick o'er their forms his eyes with pleasure ran,
When she, who first approach'd him, first began:-
Labor Is Prayer
© Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
LABORARE est orare:
We, black-visaged sons of toil,
From the coal-mine and the anvil
And the delving of the soil,--
The Bold Buccaneer
© John Le Gay Brereton
One very rough day on the Pride of the Fray
In the scuppers a poor little cabin-boy lay,
When the Bosun drew nigh with wrath in his eye
And gave him a kick to remember him by,
As he cried with a sneer: What good are you here?
Go home to your mammy, my bold buccaneer.
Talking To The Moon
© William Matthews
But some people hoard words.
"The year the lake froze all the way
across . . . ," a sentence might begin
and then nod, sleepy in a hot kitchen.
The words are a spell to make the lake
freeze again. The sentence never ends.
Use of Wealth to the Wise
© Theocritus
Fools! what boots the gold hid
Within doors in untold heaps?
Not so the truly wise employ their wealth;
Some give part to their own enjoyment,
Lines On Reading Frank J. Wilstach's
© Franklin Pierce Adams
As neat as wax, as good as new,
As true as steel, as truth is true,
Good as a sermon, keen as hate,
Full as a tick, and fixed as fate-
The Conscientious Objector
© Karl Shapiro
The gates clanged and they walked you into jail
More tense than felons but relieved to find
The Virtues Of Sid Hamet The Magicians Rod
© Jonathan Swift
The rod was but a harmless wand,
While Moses held it in his hand;
But, soon as e'er he laid it down,
Twas a devouring serpent grown.
Tinkerin' At Home
© Edgar Albert Guest
Some folks there be who seem to need excitement fast and furious,
An' reckon all the joys that have no thrill in 'em are spurious.
Some think that pleasure's only found down where the lights are shining,
An' where an orchestra's at work the while the folks are dining.
Still others seek it at their play, while some there are who roam,
But I am happiest when I am tinkerin' 'round the home.
The Death Of Shelley
© Charles Harpur
Fit winding-sheet for thee
Was the upheaving eternal sea,
Fit dirge the tempests slave-alarming roll
For yokeless as the waves alway
Styx River Anthology
© Carolyn Wells
A parody of Edgar Lee Masters' "Spoon River Anthology," wherein characters from famous poems and novels recite their own epithets.
ANNABEL LEE
They may say all they like
About germs and micro-crocuses -
Voices Of The Night : L'Envoi
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Ye voices, that arose
After the Evening's close,
And whispered to my restless heart repose!
A Good World
© Edgar Albert Guest
IT'S a good old world we're livin' in
With all its pain an' sorrow;
America The Beautiful
© Katharine Lee Bates
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
The Duellist - Book II
© Charles Churchill
Deep in the bosom of a wood,
Out of the road, a Temple stood:
The Shepheardes Calender: December
© Edmund Spenser
I thee beseche (so be thou deigne to heare,
Rude ditties tund to shepheards Oaten reede,
Or if I euer sonet song so cleare,
As it with pleasaunce mought thy fancie feede)
Hearken awhile from thy greene cabinet,
The rurall song of carefull Colinet.
