Good poems
/ page 309 of 545 /
The Instruction Manual
© John Ashbery
As I sit looking out of a window of the building
I wish I did not have to write the instruction manual on the uses of a new metal.
Mabel Martin
© John Greenleaf Whittier
PROEM.
I CALL the old time back: I bring my lay
in tender memory of the summer day
When, where our native river lapsed away,
Jock O The Side
© Andrew Lang
Now Liddisdale has ridden a raid,
But I wat they had better staid at hame;
For Mitchell o Winfield he is dead,
And my son Johnie is prisner tane?
With my fa ding diddle, la la dew diddle.
Acting
© Ronald Stuart Thomas
Alone now on the brittle platform
Of herself she is playing her last rôle.
It is perfect. Never in all her career
Was she so good. And yet the curtain
Has fallen. My charmer, come out from behind
It to take the applause. Look, I am clapping too.
The Little Old-Fashioned Church
© Edgar Albert Guest
THE little old-fashioned church, with the pews that were straight-backed and plain,
Where the sunbeams to worship came in through the windows that bore not a stain,
And the choir was composed of the good folks who toiled week-days in meadow and lane;
The Boy and the Mantle
© Thomas Percy
In the third day of May,
To Carleile did come
A kind curteous child,
That cold much of wisdome.
Holy Sonnet VII: At The Round Earth's Imagined Corners
© John Donne
At the round earth's imagined corners blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
L'INNUSTRIA (Striving)
© Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli
Un giorno che arrestai propio a la fetta,
Senz'avé manco l'arma d'un quadrino,
Senti che cosa fo: curro ar camino
E roppo in quattro pezzi la paletta.
The Gift
© Aline Murray Kilmer
HE has taken away the things that I loved best
Love and youth and the harp that knew my hand.
Laughter alone is left of all the rest.
Does He mean that I may fill my days with laughter,
Or will it, too, slip through my fingers like spilt sand?
O Me! O Life!
© Walt Whitman
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
Madam’s Past History
© Langston Hughes
My name is Johnson—
Madam Alberta K.
The Madam stands for business.
I’m smart that way.
Ballad of John Cable and Three Gentlemen
© William Stanley Merwin
He that had come that morning,
One after the other,
Over seven hills,
Each of a new color,
Love's Clock
© James Russell Lowell
'Bid me not stay!
Hear reason, pray!
'Tis striking six! Sure never day
Was short as this is!'
Deola Thinking
© Cesare Pavese
Deola passes her mornings sitting in a cafe,
and nobody looks at her. Everyone’s rushing to work,
My Thoughts To-Night
© Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
I sit by the fire musing,
With sad and downcast eye,
Sad Wine (II)
© Cesare Pavese
The hard thing’s to sit without being noticed.
Everything else will come easy. Three sips
Chamber Thicket
© Sharon Olds
As we sat at the feet of the string quartet,
in their living room, on a winter night,
Sermons We See
© Edgar Albert Guest
I'd rather see a sermon than hear one any day;
I'd rather one should walk with me than merely tell the way.
The eye's a better pupil and more willing than the ear,
Fine counsel is confusing, but example's always clear;
And the best of all the preachers are the men who live their creeds,
For to see good put in action is what everybody needs.
To The Rev. William Cawthorne Unwin
© William Cowper
Unwin, I should but ill repay
The kindness of a friend,
Whose worth deserves as warm a lay
As ever friendship penned,
Thy name omitted in a page
That would reclaim a vicious age.
