Good poems
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An Easy Goin' Feller
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
Ther' ain't no use in all this strife,
An' hurryin', pell-mell, right thro' life.
The Garden Buddha by Peter Pereira: American Life in Poetry #132 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004
© Ted Kooser
Children at play give personalities to lifeless objects, and we don't need to give up that pleasure as we grow older. Poets are good at discerning life within what otherwise might seem lifeless. Here the poet Peter Pereira, a family physician in the Seattle area, contemplates a smiling statue, and in that moment of contemplation the smile is given by the statue to the man.
The Garden Buddha
Gift of a friend, the stone Buddha sits zazen,
prayer beads clutched in his chubby fingers.
Through snow, icy rain, the riot of spring flowers,
he gazes forward to the city in the distanceâalways
Number Man
© Carl Sandburg
He balanced fives against tens
and made them sleep together
and love each other.
The Drunken Boat
© Arthur Rimbaud
As I was going down impassive Rivers,
I no longer felt myself guided by haulers:
In My Dreams
© Stevie Smith
In my dreams I am always saying goodbye and riding away,
Whither and why I know not nor do I care.
And the parting is sweet and the parting over is sweeter,
And sweetest of all is the night and the rushing air.
From Faust - Second Part - I.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
HARK! the storm of hours draws near,
Loudly to the spirit-ear
Signs of coming day appear.
Rocky gates are wildly crashing,
Phoebus' wheels are onward dashing;
Morte d'Arthur
© Alfred Tennyson
To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere:
"It is not meet, Sir King, to leave thee thus,
Aidless, alone, and smitten thro' the helm.
A little thing may harm a wounded man.
Yet I thy hest will all perform at full,
Watch what I see, and lightly bring thee word."
The Ghost
© Richard Harris Barham
There stands a City,- neither large nor small,
Its air and situation sweet and pretty;
The Gardener 38
© Anselm Hollo
My love, once upon a time your poet launched a great epic in his mind.
Caliban upon Setebos
© Robert Browning
'Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match,
But not the stars; the stars came otherwise;
Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that:
Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon,
And snaky sea which rounds and ends the same.
Chant d'automne (Song Of Autumn)
© Charles Baudelaire
Bientôt nous plongerons dans les froides ténèbres;
Adieu, vive clarté de nos étés trop courts!
J'entends déjà tomber avec des chocs funèbres
Le bois retentissant sur le pavé des cours.
Leave the Hand In
© John Ashbery
Furthermore, Mr. Tuttle used to have to run in the streets.
Now, each time friendship happens, they’re fully booked.
Essay on Psychiatrists
© Robert Pinsky
It's crazy to think one could describe them—
Calling on reason, fantasy, memory, eyes and ears—
As though they were all alike any more
Incantation
© Czeslaw Milosz
Human reason is beautiful and invincible.
No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books,
Deeply Morbid
© Stevie Smith
Deeply morbid deeply morbid was the girl who typed the letters
Always out of office hours running with her social betters
But when daylight and the darkness of the office closed about her
Not for this ah not for this her office colleagues came to doubt her
It was that look within her eye
Why did it always seem to say goodbye?
The Dream Of A Boy Who Lived At Nine-Elms
© William Brighty Rands
Nine grenadiers, with bayonets in their guns;
Nine bakers' baskets, with hot cross buns;
