Good poems
/ page 308 of 545 /
Consolation
© Robert Louis Stevenson
Though he, that ever kind and true,
Kept stoutly step by step with you,
What I Have Seen #3
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
I saw two youths: both were fair in the face,
They had set out foot to foot in life's race;
But one said to the other, "I say now, my brother,
You are going a little too slow;
The world will look on, and say, 'See Josy John,'
We must put on more style, now, you know."
The Congo: A Study of the Negro Race
© Roald Dahl
I. THEIR BASIC SAVAGERY
Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,
Killing Him: A Radio Play
© John Wesley
LISTEN TO THE RADIO PLAY
JOE, a doctoral candidate in literature
RACHEL, his fiancée
POET/CRITIC
The Child Of The Islands - Autumn
© Caroline Norton
I.
BROWN Autumn cometh, with her liberal hand
Binding the Harvest in a thousand sheaves:
A yellow glory brightens o'er the land,
Duke
© Richard Jones
He was hit back of the head for a haul of $15,
a Diner’s Club Card and picture of his daughter in a helmet
on a horse tethered to a pole that centered
its revolving universe. Pacing the halls, he’d ask
Translation Of The Nurse's Dole In The Medea Of Euripides
© George Gordon Byron
Oh how I wish that an embargo
Had kept in port the good ship Argo!
Who, still unlaunch'd from Grecian docks,
Had never pass'd the Azure rocks;
But now I fear her trip will be a
Damned business for my Miss Medea, &c. &c.
The Conscientious Objector
© Ishmael Reed
The gates clanged and they walked you into jail
More tense than felons but relieved to find
Italy : 10. Como
© Samuel Rogers
I love to sail along the Larian Lake
Under the shore -- though not to visit Pliny,
To catch him musing in his plane-tree walk,
Or fishing, as he might be, from his window:
My Lady Of Verne
© Madison Julius Cawein
It all comes back as the end draws near;
All comes back like a tale of old!
Shall I tell you all? Will you lend an ear?
You, with your face so stern and cold;
You, who have found me dying here ...
Imitations of Horace
© Alexander Pope
While you, great patron of mankind, sustain
The balanc'd world, and open all the main;
Your country, chief, in arms abroad defend,
At home, with morals, arts, and laws amend;
How shall the Muse, from such a monarch steal
An hour, and not defraud the public weal?
For C.
© Lola Ridge
After the clash of elevator gates
And the long sinking, she emerges where,
A slight thing in the morning’s crosstown glare,
She looks up toward the window where he waits,
Then in a fleeting taxi joins the rest
Of the huge traffic bound forever west.
The Hackney Coachman: Or the Way to Get a Good Fare
© Erica Jong
I am a bold Coachman, and drive a good hack,
With a coat of five capes that quite covers my back;
And my wife keeps a sausage-shop, not many miles
From the narrowest alley in all Broad St Giles.
To Mrs. Strangeways Horner, With A Letter From My Son;
© Mary Barber
Methinks, I see your Friendship rise,
And sparkle in your lovely Eyes.
Your Heir! (I hear you now repeat)
I long to know of your Estate.
Say--Is it an Hibernian Bog,
Where Phoebus seldom shines for Fog?
The Circus
© Kenneth Koch
Noel Lee was in Paris then but usually out of it
In Germany or Denmark giving a concert
As part of an endless activity
Which was either his career or his happiness or a combination of both
Or neither I remember his dark eyes looking he was nervous
With me perhaps because of our days at Harvard.
A Second Train Song for Gary
© Jack Spicer
When the trains come into strange cities
The citizens come out to meet the strangers.
The Abencerrage : Canto II.
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
"Hamet! oh, wrong me not! - too could speak
Of sorrows - trace them on my faded cheek,
In the sunk eye, and in the wasted form,
That tell the heart hath nursed a canker-worm!
But words were idle - read my sufferings there,
Where grief is stamped on all that once was fair.
Jenny
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
It was a careless life I led
When rooms like this were scarce so strange
Not long ago. What breeds the change,
The many aims or the few years?
Because to-night it all appears
Something I do not know again.
