Good poems
/ page 436 of 545 /
Warning
© Margaret Widdemer
AS long as you never marry me, and I never marry you,
There's nothing on earth that we cannot say and nothing we cannot do
The flames lift up from our blowing hair, the leaves flash under our feet
When once in a year or a score of years our hands and our laughters meet!
Two valentines
© Eugene Field
There were three cavaliers, all handsome and true,
On Valentine's day came a maiden to woo,
And quoth to your mother: "Good-morrow, my dear,
We came with some songs for your daughter to hear!"
Twin idols
© Eugene Field
There are two phrases, you must know,
So potent (yet so small)
That wheresoe'er a man may go
He needs none else at all;
To Robin Goodfellow
© Eugene Field
I see you, Maister Bawsy-brown,
Through yonder lattice creepin';
You come for cream and to gar me dream,
But you dinna find me sleepin'.
The White Lady
© Dorothy Parker
I cannot rest, I cannot rest
In straight and shiny wood,
My woven hands upon my breast-
The dead are all so good!
Thirty-nine
© Eugene Field
O hapless day! O wretched day!
I hoped you'd pass me by--
Alas, the years have sneaked away
And all is changed but I!
The two little skeezucks
© Eugene Field
There were two little skeezucks who lived in the isle
Of Boo in a southern sea;
They clambered and rollicked in heathenish style
In the boughs of their cocoanut tree.
The Twenty-Third Psalm
© Eugene Field
My Shepherd is the Lord my God,--
There is no want I know;
His flock He leads in verdant meads,
Where tranquil waters flow.
The three tailors
© Eugene Field
I shall tell you in rhyme how, once on a time,
Three tailors tramped up to the inn Ingleheim,
On the Rhine, lovely Rhine;
They were broke, but the worst of it all, they were curst
With that malady common to tailors--a thirst
For wine, lots of wine.
Invocation
© Ambrose Bierce
Goddess of Liberty! O thou
Whose tearless eyes behold the chain,
And look unmoved upon the slain,
Eternal peace upon thy brow,-
The Sugar-Plum Tree
© Eugene Field
Have you ever heard of the Sugar-Plum Tree?
'T is a marvel of great renown!
It blooms on the shore of the Lollipop sea
In the garden of Shut-Eye Town;
The straw parlor
© Eugene Field
Way up at the top of a big stack of straw
Was the cunningest parlor that ever you saw!
And there could you lie when aweary of play
And gossip or laze in the coziest way;
Sonnet XXIII. On His Deceased Wife
© John Milton
Methought I saw my late espoused Saint
Brought to me like Alcestus from the grave,
Who Jove's great Son to her glad Husband gave,
Rescu'd from death by force though pale and faint.
The stoddards
© Eugene Field
When I am in New York, I like to drop around at night,
To visit with my honest, genial friends, the Stoddards hight;
Their home in Fifteenth street is all so snug, and furnished so,
That, when I once get planted there, I don't know when to go;
A cosy cheerful refuge for the weary homesick guest,
Combining Yankee comforts with the freedom of the west.
The shut-eye train
© Eugene Field
Come, my little one, with me!
There are wondrous sights to see
As the evening shadows fall;
In your pretty cap and gown,
The peter-bird
© Eugene Field
Out of the woods by the creek cometh a calling for Peter,
And from the orchard a voice echoes and echoes it over;
Down in the pasture the sheep hear that strange crying for Peter,
Over the meadows that call is aye and forever repeated.
So let me tell you the tale, when, where, and how it all happened,
And, when the story is told, let us pay heed to the lesson.
The happy household
© Eugene Field
It's when the birds go piping and the daylight slowly breaks,
That, clamoring for his dinner, our precious baby wakes;
Then it's sleep no more for baby, and it's sleep no more for me,
For, when he wants his dinner, why it's dinner it must be!
Friar Lubin. (From The French)
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
ENVOY
When an evil deed 's to do
Friar Lubin is stout and true;
Glimmers a ray of goodness through it,
Friar Lubin cannot do it.
The great journalist in spain
© Eugene Field
Good editor Dana--God bless him, we say--
Will soon be afloat on the main,
Will be steaming away
Through the mist and the spray
To the sensuous climate of Spain.
The fly-away horse
© Eugene Field
Oh, a wonderful horse is the Fly-Away Horse -
Perhaps you have seen him before;
Perhaps, while you slept, his shadow has swept
