Good poems
/ page 315 of 545 /
from The Testament of Love
© John Hall Wheelock
from Book I, Introduction
Man’s Reason is in such deep insolvency to sense,
Singing School
© Seamus Justin Heaney
Ulster was British, but with no rights on
The English lyric: all around us, though
We hadn’t named it, the ministry of fear.
Idyll VI. The Drawn Battle
© Theocritus
Daphnis the herdsman and Damoetas once
Had driven, Aratus, to the selfsame glen.
One chin was yellowing, one shewed half a beard.
And by a brookside on a summer noon
The pair sat down and sang; but Daphnis led
The song, for Daphnis was the challenger.
Guinevere
© Alfred Tennyson
`Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill!
Late, late, so late! but we can enter still.
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.
Poem of Disconnected Parts
© Robert Pinsky
At Robben Island the political prisoners studied.
They coined the motto Each one Teach one.
To Quilca, a Country House not in Good Repair
© Jonathan Swift
Let me thy Properties explain,
A rotten Cabin, dropping Rain;
The House of Life LIII: Without Her
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
What of the heart without her? Nay, poor heart,
Of thee what word remains ere speech be still?
A wayfarer by barren ways and chill,
Steep ways and weary, without her thou art,
Where the long cloud, the long woods counterpart,
Sheds doubled darkness up the labouring hill.
An Essay on Criticism: Part 2
© Alexander Pope
Thus critics, of less judgment than caprice,
Curious not knowing, not exact but nice,
Form short ideas; and offend in arts
(As most in manners) by a love to parts.
Northumberland House
© Stevie Smith
I was always a thoughtful youngster,
Said the lady on the omnibus,
I remember Father used to say,
You are more thoughtful than us.
Blood
© Naomi Shihab Nye
“A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,”
my father would say. And he’d prove it,
cupping the buzzer instantly
while the host with the swatter stared.
A Lay Of St. Gengulphus
© Richard Harris Barham
Gengulphus comes from the Holy Land,
With his scrip, and his bottle, and sandal shoon;
Full many a day has he been away,
Yet his Lady deems him return'd full soon.
Venus And Adonis
© William Shakespeare
TO THE
RIGHT HONORABLE HENRY WRIOTHESLY,
EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON, AND BARON OF TICHFIELD.
RIGHT HONORABLE,
Faint Music
© Robert Hass
Maybe you need to write a poem about grace.
When everything broken is broken,
Sing me a Song of a Lad that is Gone
© Robert Louis Stevenson
Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
Say, could that lad be I?
Merry of soul he sailed on a day
Over the sea to Skye.
Hymn To Energy
© Arthur Symons
God is; and because life omnipotent
Gives birth to life, or of itself must die,
The Choosing Of Valentines
© Thomas Nashe
It was the merie moneth of Februarie,
When yong men, in their iollie roguerie,
Rose earelie in the morne fore breake of daie,
To seeke them valentines soe trimme and gaie;
The Dreadful Story of Harriet and the Matches
© Heinrich Hoffmann
It almost makes me cry to tell
What foolish Harriet befell.
Wirastrua
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
Wirastrua, wirastrua, woe to me that you are dead!
The corpse has spoken from out his bed.
Nabokovs Blues
© William Matthews
The wallful of quoted passages from his work,
with the requisite specimens pinned next
to their literary cameo appearances, was too good
