Good poems
/ page 297 of 545 /
from Dante Études: Book Three: In My Youth Not Unstaind
© Robert Duncan
Now, upon old age: “Our life
has a fixt course and a simple path”
I would not avoid, “that of our right nature”
—then Dante adds, himself quoting:
“and in every part of our life
place is given for certain things”:
The Amenities
© Heather McHugh
I owe you an explanation.
My first memory isn’t your own
of an empty box. My babyhood cabinets held
a countlessness of cakes, my backyard
rotted into apple glut, windfalls of
money-tree, mouthfuls of fib.
Sir Peter Harpdon's End
© William Morris
John Curzon
Of those three prisoners, that before you came
We took down at St. John's hard by the mill,
Two are good masons; we have tools enough,
And you have skill to set them working.
The Sign Of The Cross
© John Henry Newman
WHENEER across this sinful flesh of mine
I draw the Holy Sign,
A Name
© John Greenleaf Whittier
The name the Gallic exile bore,
St. Malo! from thy ancient mart,
Became upon our Western shore
Greenleaf for Feuillevert.
Neighboring You
© Eli Siegel
On a table
With the sunlight coming in,
A mat, irregularly placed, with many curves within it;
A napkin somewhat used, by now a little disreputable,
The Coast-Road
© Robinson Jeffers
A horseman high-alone as an eagle on the spur of the mountain over Mirmas Canyon draws rein, looks down
At the bridge-builders, men, trucks, the power-shovels, the teeming end of the new coast-road at the mountain’s base.
The Correspondence-School Instructor Says Goodbye to His Poetry Students
© Washington Allston
Goodbye,
you who are, for me, the postmarks again
of imaginary towns—Xenia, Burnt Cabins, Hornell—
their solitude given away in poems, only their loneliness kept.
a song in the front yard
© Gwendolyn Brooks
I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.
I want a peek at the back
Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.
A girl gets sick of a rose.
Fand, A Feerie Act III
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
[She looks towards the sea.
Attendant. None.
The sea mist drives too thickly.
Banjo Dog Variations
© Donald Justice
Agriculture and Industry
Embraced in public on a wall
Heroes in shirt-sleeves! Next to them
The average man felt small.
In Reference to her Children, 23 June 1659
© Anne Bradstreet
I had eight birds hatcht in one nest,
Four Cocks were there, and Hens the rest.
Cape Cod
© George Santayana
The low sandy beach and the thin scrub pine,
The wide reach of bay and the long sky line,
O, I am sick for home!
Sonnet LXVI: Tir'd with all these, for Restful Death
© William Shakespeare
Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry,
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
The Banks Of Wye - Book III
© Robert Bloomfield
PEACE to your white-wall'd cots, ye vales,
Untainted fly your summer gales;
