Good poems
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A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day
© John Donne
'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
The Song of Right and Wrong
© Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Feast on wine or fast on water
And your honour shall stand sure,
Dear Doctor, I have Read your Play
© Lord Byron
Dear Doctor, I have read your play,
Which is a good one in its way,
The "William P. Frye"
© Jeanne Robert Foster
I saw her first abreast the Boston Light
At anchor; she had just come in, turned head,
And sent her hawsers creaking, clattering down.
I was so near to where the hawse-pipes fed
The Scamps
© Henry Lawson
Of home, name and wealth and ambition bereft
We are children of fortune and luck:
With Antecedents
© Walt Whitman
I respect Assyria, China, Teutonia, and the Hebrews;
I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god;
I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without
exception;
Peacock Display by David Wagoner: American Life in Poetry #11 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-20
© Ted Kooser
Here David Wagoner, a distinguished poet living in Washington state, vividly describes a peacock courtship, and though it's a poem about birds, haven't you seen the males of other species, including ours, look every bit as puffed up, and observed the females' hilarious indifference?
Peacock Display
He approaches her, trailing his whole fortune,
Perfectly cocksure, and suddenly spreads
The huge fan of his tail for her amazement.
The Candidate
© Charles Churchill
This poem was written in , on occasion of the contest between the
Earls of Hardwicke and Sandwich for the High-stewardship of the
To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare
© Benjamin Jonson
To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
Above The Gaspereau
© Bliss William Carman
How still through the sweet summer sun, through the soft summer rain,
They have stood there awaiting the summons should bid them attain
The freedom of knowledge, the last touch of truth to explain
The great golden gist of their brooding, the marvellous train
Of thought they have followed so far, been so strong to sustain,
The white gospel of sun and the long revelations of rain!
In Chandler Country
© Dana Gioia
Relentlessly the wind blows on. Next door
catching a scent, the dogs begin to howl.
Lean, furious, raw-eyed from the storm,
packs of coyotes come down from the hills
where there is nothing left to hunt.
A Salutation
© Louise Imogen Guiney
High-hearted Surrey! I do love your ways,
Venturous, frank, romantic, vehement,
A Letter of Recommendation
© John Wesley
On summer nights I sleep naked
in Jerusalem. My bed
stands on the brink of a deep valley
without rolling down into it.
Banana Trees by Joseph Stanton: American Life in Poetry #119 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-200
© Ted Kooser
I'm especially attracted to poems that describe places I might not otherwise visit, in the manner of good travel writing. I'm a dedicated stay-at-home and much prefer to read something fascinating about a place than visit it myself. Here the Hawaii poet, Joseph Stanton, describes a tree that few of us have seen but all of us have eaten from.
Banana Trees
They are tall herbs, really, not trees,
though they can shoot up thirty feet
if all goes well for them. Cut in cross
The God Of The Poor
© William Morris
There was a lord that hight Maltete,
Among great lords he was right great,
On poor folk trod he like the dirt,
None but God might do him hurt.
Deus est Deus pauperum.
Elegy VII: Nature’s lay idiot, I taught thee to love
© John Donne
Nature’s lay idiot, I taught thee to love,
And in that sophistry, oh, thou dost prove
The Wanderer: A Vision: Canto III
© Richard Savage
Ye traytors, tyrants, fear his stinging lay!
Ye pow'rs unlov'd, unpity'd in decay!
But know, to you sweet-blossom'd Fame he brings,
Ye heroes, patriots, and paternal kings!
An Offering for Patricia
© Anthony Evan Hecht
The work has been going forward with the greatest difficulty, chiefly because I cannot concentrate. I have no feeling about whether what I am writing is good or bad, and the whole business is totally without excitement and pleasure for me. And I am sure I know the reason. It’s that I can’t stand leaving unresolved my situation with Pat. I hear from her fairly frequently, asking when I plan to come back, and she knows that I am supposed to appear at the poetry reading in the middle of January. It is not mainly loneliness I feel, though I feel it; but I have been lonely before. It is quite frankly the feeling that nothing is really settled between us, and that in the mean time I worry about how things are going to work out. This has made my work more difficult than it has ever been before.
