Good poems
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I Sing the Body Electric
© Walt Whitman
1
I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.
Holy Sonnets: Since she whom I lov'd hath paid her last debt
© John Donne
Since she whom I lov'd hath paid her last debt
To nature, and to hers, and my good is dead,
My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun (764)
© Emily Dickinson
My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -
In Corners - till a Day
The Owner passed - identified -
And carried Me away -
Passing Through
© Ai
“Earth is the birth of the blues,” sang Yellow Bertha,
as she chopped cotton beside Mama Rose.
Chomei at Toyama
© Ted Hughes
Swirl sleeping in the waterfall!
On motionless pools scum appearing
disappearing!
Theodicy
© Czeslaw Milosz
No, it won’t do, my sweet theologians.
Desire will not save the morality of God.
Mary Shelley in Brigantine
© Stephen Dunn
Because the ostracized experience the world
in ways peculiar to themselves, often seeing it
clearly yet with such anger and longing
that they sometimes enlarge what they see,
she at first saw Brigantine as a paradise for gulls.
She must be a horseshoe crab washed ashore.
The Snow-Shower
© William Cullen Bryant
Stand here by my side and turn, I pray,
On the lake below, thy gentle eyes;
Lincoln, Man of the People
© Edwin Markham
When the Norn Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour
Greatening and darkening as it hurried on,
The Bachelor’s Soliloquy
© Edgar Albert Guest
To wed, or not to wed; that is the question;
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
St. Agnes' Eve
© Kenneth Fearing
The dramatis personae include a fly-specked Monday evening,
A cigar store with stagnant windows,
Noah’s Wife
© Michael Rosen
is doing her usual for comic relief.
She doesn’t
see why she should get on the boat, etc.,
Amoretti LXX: Fresh spring the herald of loves mighty king
© Edmund Spenser
Fresh spring the herald of loves mighty king,
In whose cote armour richly are displayed
Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I Pause To Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles
© Billy Collins
"Viewing Peonies at the Temple of Good Fortune
on a Cloudy Afternoon" is one of Sun Tung Po's.
"Dipping Water from the River and Simmering Tea"
is another one, or just
"On a Boat, Awake at Night."
Jordan (I)
© George Herbert
Who says that fictions only and false hair
Become a verse? Is there in truth no beauty?
Is all good structure in a winding stair?
May no lines pass, except they do their duty
Not to a true, but painted chair?
Movement Song
© Elizabeth Daryush
I have studied the tight curls on the back of your neck
moving away from me
