Good poems
/ page 272 of 545 /
Purposely Ungrammatical Love Song
© Dorothy Parker
There's many and many, and not so far,
Is willing to dry my tears away;
There's many to tell me what you are,
And never a lie to all they say.
Pour Prendre Conge
© Dorothy Parker
I'm sick of embarking in dories
Upon an emotional sea.
I'm wearied of playing Dolores
(A role never written for me).
I Know I Have Been Happiest
© Dorothy Parker
Yet this the need of woman, this her curse:
To range her little gifts, and give, and give,
Because the throb of giving's sweet to bear.
To you, who never begged me vows or verse,
My gift shall be my absence, while I live;
But after that, my dear, I cannot swear.
Godmother
© Dorothy Parker
The day that I was christened-
It's a hundred years, and more!-
A hag came and listened
At the white church door,
General Review Of The Sex Situation
© Dorothy Parker
Woman wants monogamy;
Man delights in novelty.
Love is woman's moon and sun;
Man has other forms of fun.
The Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam Of Naishapur
© Edward Fitzgerald
Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.
A Letter from Artemesia in the Town to Chloe in the Country
© John Wilmot
Chloe,In verse by your command I write.
Shortly you'll bid me ride astride, and fight:
These talents better with our sex agree
Than lofty flights of dangerous poetry.
Tunbridge Wells
© John Wilmot
At five this morn, when Phoebus raised his head
From Thetis' lap, I raised myself from bed,
And mounting steed, I trotted to the waters
The rendesvous of fools, buffoons, and praters,
Cuckolds, whores, citizens, their wives and daughters.
Satyr
© John Wilmot
Were I (who to my cost already am
One of those strange prodigious Creatures Man)
A Spirit free, to choose for my own share,
What Case of Flesh, and Blood, I pleas'd to weare,
To This Moment a Rebel
© John Wilmot
To this moment a rebel I throw down my arms,
Great Love, at first sight of Olinda's bright charms.
Make proud and secure by such forces as these,
You may now play the tyrant as soon as you please.
A Satyre Against Mankind
© John Wilmot
Thus sir, you see what human nature craves,
Most men are cowards, all men should be knaves;
The difference lies, as far as I can see.
Not in the thing itself, but the degree;
And all the subject matter of debate
Is only, who's a knave of the first rate
A Ramble in St. James's Park
© John Wilmot
The second was a Grays Inn wit,
A great inhabiter of the pit,
Where critic-like he sits and squints,
Steals pocket handkerchiefs, and hints
From 's neighbor, and the comedy,
To court, and pay, his landlady.
Poems to Mulgrave and Scroope
© John Wilmot
Deare Friend. I heare this Towne does soe abound,
With sawcy Censurers, that faults are found,
With what of late wee (in Poetique Rage)
Bestowing, threw away on the dull Age;
Signior Dildo
© John Wilmot
You ladies of merry England
Who have been to kiss the Duchess's hand,
Pray, did you not lately observe in the show
A noble Italian called Signior Dildo?
An Allusion to Horace
© John Wilmot
Well Sir, 'tis granted, I said Dryden's Rhimes,
Were stoln, unequal, nay dull many times:
What foolish Patron, is there found of his,
So blindly partial, to deny me this?
Moonlight
© Vita Sackville-West
-- Then earth's great architecture swells
Among her mountains and her fells
Under the moon to amplitude
Massive and primitive and rude:
A Rhyme of Death's Inn
© Lizette Woodworth Reese
A rhyme of good Death's inn!
My love came to that door;
And she had need of many things,
The way had been so sore.
Shower
© Les Murray
From the metal poppy
this good blast of trance
arriving as shock, private cloudburst blazing down,
worst in a boarding-house greased tub, or a barrack with competitions,
The New Hieroglyphics
© Les Murray
In the World language, sometimes called
Airport Road, a thinks balloon with a gondola
under it is a symbol for speculation.
Pigs
© Les Murray
Us all on sore cement was we.
Not warmed then with glares. Not glutting mush
under that pole the lightning's tied to.
No farrow-shit in milk to make us randy.
