Good poems
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In Grandmamma's Kitchen
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
In grandmamma's kitchen, things got in a riot-
The cream in a pot on the shelf,
Where everything always seemed peaceful and quiet,
Got whipped, for I heard it myself.
And grandmamma said-such a queer thing to say,
That it made some things better to whip them that way.
Dedication - The Poems Of Goeth
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
By new-born flow'rs that full of dew-drops hung;
The youthful day awoke with ecstacy,
And all things quicken'd were, to quicken me.
Ye Wearie Wayfarer [A Dedication to the author of Holmby House"
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
Fytte I
By Wood and Wold
[A Preamble]
Untitled 8
© Owen Suffolk
Thou sinless and sweet one - thy voice is a strain
Which yields solace to sadness, and balm to my pain,
Rejected
© Henry Lawson
You might try to drown the sorrow, but the drink has no effect;
You cannot stand the barmaid with her coarse and vulgar wit;
And so you seek the street again, and start for home direct,
When youre hit, old manhard hit.
Child's Song In Spring
© Edith Nesbit
THE silver birch is a dainty lady,
She wears a satin gown;
The elm tree makes the old churchyard shady,
She will not live in town.
To Sleep
© Lord Alfred Douglas
My soul is sick with dreaming, let it rest.
False Sleep, thou hast conspired with Wakefulness,
I will not praise thee, I too long beguiled
With idle tales. Where is thy soothing breast ?
Thy peace, thy poppies, thy forgetfulness ?
Where is thy lap for me so tired a child ?
What The Doctor Said
© Raymond Carver
He said it doesn't look good
he said it looks bad in fact real bad
The Rape Of Lucrece
© William Shakespeare
TO THE
RIGHT HONORABLE HENRY WRIOTHESLY,
Earl of Southampton, and Baron of Tichfield.
A Years New Wish
© Edgar Albert Guest
MAY all your little cares depart
By which your heart is troubled;
May perfect peace supplant the smart,
And all your joys be doubled.
May every wish you have come true,
And every sky above be blue.
Sunrise
© Sidney Lanier
I have waked, I have come, my beloved! I might not abide:
I have come ere the dawn, O beloved, my live-oaks, to hide
In your gospelling glooms, -- to be
As a lover in heaven, the marsh my marsh and the sea my sea.
The Damsel Of Peru
© William Cullen Bryant
Where olive leaves were twinkling in every wind that blew,
There sat beneath the pleasant shade a damsel of Peru.
Betwixt the slender boughs, as they opened to the air,
Came glimpses of her ivory neck and of her glossy hair;
And sweetly rang her silver voice, within that shady nook,
As from the shrubby glen is heard the sound of hidden brook.
The Other Fathers by Lyn Lifshin : American Life in Poetry #251 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-
© Ted Kooser
The poet Lyn Lifshin, who divides her time between New York and Virginia, is one of the most prolific poets among my contemporaries, and has thousands of poems in print, by my loose reckoning. I have been reading her work in literary magazines for at least thirty years. Here’s a good example of this poet at her best.
The Progress of Error
© William Cowper
Sing, muse (if such a theme, so dark, so long
May find a muse to grace it with a song),
A Debtor to Mercy Alone
© Augustus Montague Toplady
A debtor to mercy alone, of covenant mercy I sing;
Nor fear, with Thy righteousness on, my person and offring to bring.
The terrors of law and of God with me can have nothing to do;
My Saviors obedience and blood hide all my transgressions from view.
Aunt Tabitha
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
WHATEVER I do, and whatever I say,
Aunt Tabitha tells me that is n't the way;
When she was a girl (forty summers ago)
Aunt Tabitha tells me they never did so.
Hermann And Dorothea - I. Kalliope
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
But the worthy landlord only smiled, and then answer'd
I shall dreadfully miss that ancient calico garment,
Genuine Indian stuff! They're not to be had any longer.
Well! I shall wear it no more. And your poor husband henceforward
Always must wear a surtout, I suppose, or commonplace jacket,
Always must put on his boots; good bye to cap and to slippers!"
Love Worn by Lita Hooper: American Life in Poetry #75 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
In many American poems, the poet makes a personal appearance and offers us a revealing monologue from center stage, but there are lots of fine poems in which the poet, a stranger in a strange place, observes the lives of others from a distance and imagines her way into them. This poem by Lita Hooper is a good example of this kind of writing.
Love Worn
In a tavern on the Southside of Chicago
a man sits with his wife. From their corner booth
each stares at strangers just beyond the other's shoulder,
nodding to the songs of their youth. Tonight they will not fight.
