Good poems
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Dead Butterfly by Ellen Bass: American Life in Poetry #164 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Was it the year her brother was born?
Was this her own too-fragile baby
that had livedâso brieflyâin its glassed world?
Or the year she refused to go to her father's house?
Was this the holding-her-breath girl she became there?
The Deeds That Might Have Been
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
All these are pitiful. Yet, after tears,
Come rest and sleep and calm forgetfulness,
And God's good providence consoles the years.
Only the coward heart which did not guess,
The dreamer of brave deeds that might have been,
Shall cureless ache with wounds for ever green.
The Haughty Actor
© William Schwenck Gilbert
"Too bad," said GIBBS, "my case to shirk!
You must be bad innately,
To save your skill for mighty work
Because it's valued greatly!"
But here he woke, with sudden start.
To Rafael
© Richard Monckton Milnes
Thine was the scheme, and worthy to be thine,
O Painter--Poet! with care and regu'lar toil,
To raise those marvels from the' entombing soil
With which Greek Art made Rome a place divine.
The Model
© Harriet Monroe
Have you forgottenyou, the chief,
The art-director, president,
What not, of the establishment
Forgot how for a moment brief
The whole show, all our strife and stir,
Went outfor her?
Portrait From The Infantry
© Alan Dugan
He smelled bad and was red-eyed with the miseries
of being scared while sleepless when he said
The Best School of All
© Sir Henry Newbolt
It's good to see the school we knew,
the land of youth and dream.
To greet again the rule we knew,
before we took the stream.
The Friends of Fallen Fortunes
© Henry Lawson
The battlefield behind us,
And night loomed on the track;
Emperors And Kings, How Oft Have Temples Rung
© William Wordsworth
EMPERORS and Kings, how oft have temples rung
With impious thanksgiving, the Almighty's scorn!
How oft above their altars have been hung
Trophies that led the good and wise to mourn
Recollections Of A Faded Beauty
© Caroline Norton
There was a certain Irishman, indeed,
Who borrowed Cupid's darts to make me bleed.
My aunt said he was vulgar; he was poor,
And his boots creaked, and dirtied her smooth floor.
She hated him; and when he went away,
He wrote--I have the verses to this day:--
A Lover's Quarrel Among the Fairies
© William Butler Yeats
Male Fairies: Do not fear us, earthly maid!
We will lead you hand in hand
By the willows in the glade,
By the gorse on the high land,
Epitaph On Mr. Chester Of Chicheley
© William Cowper
Tears flow, and cease not, where the good man lies,
Till all who know him follow to the skies.
Tears therefore fall where Chester's ashes sleep;
Him wife, friends, brothers, children, servants, weep;
And justly -- few shall ever him transcend
As husband, parent, brother, master, friend.
Mons Angelorum
© Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
Joshua O father of my soul, I cannot tell.
The burden of the Lord is heavy on me,
And I am broken beneath it.
The Way Of The Bush
© Alice Guerin Crist
A night of storm and wind and rain,
Tall trees bowing beneath the blast
That shakes and rattles the window-pane,
And a thunderous roar as the creek goes past.
Economy, A Rhapsody, Addressed to Young Poets
© William Shenstone
Insanis; omnes gelidis quaecunqne lacernis
Sunt tibi, Nasones Virgiliosque vides. ~Mart.
Imitation.
--Thou know'st not what thou say'st;
In garments that scarce fence them from the cold
Our Ovids and our Virgils you behold.
The Beggar And The Angel
© Duncan Campbell Scott
An angel burdened with self-pity
Came out of heaven to a modern city.
Rhymed Plea For Tolerance - Dialogue II.
© John Kenyon
A.
By no faint shame withheld from general gaze,
'Tis thus, my friend, we bask us in the blaze;
Where deeds, more surface-smooth than inly bright,
Snatch up a transient lustre from the light.
