Good poems
/ page 445 of 545 /
Planting a Dogwood by Roy Scheele: American Life in Poetry #73 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2
© Ted Kooser
Those of us who have planted trees and shrubs know well that moment when the last spade full of earth is packed around the root ball and patted or stamped into place and we stand back and wish the young plant good fortune. Here the poet Roy Scheele offers us a few well-chosen words we can use the next time.
Jacob Goodpasture
© Edgar Lee Masters
When Fort Sumter fell and the war came
I cried out in bitterness of soul:
"O glorious republic now no more!"
When they buried my soldier son
Written For My Son In His Sickness, To One Of His School fellows.
© Mary Barber
I little thought that honest Dick
Would slight me so, when I was sick.
Is he a Friend, who only stays,
Whilst Health and Pleasure gild our Days;
Flies, when Disease our Temper sours,
Nor helps to pass the gloomy Hours?
E.C. Culbertson
© Edgar Lee Masters
Is it true, Spoon River,
That in the hall-way of the New Court House
There is a tablet of bronze
Containing the embossed faces
Jacob Godbey
© Edgar Lee Masters
How did you feel, you libertarians,
Who spent your talents rallying noble reasons
Around the saloon, as if Liberty
Was not to be found anywhere except at the bar
Harry Carey Goodhue
© Edgar Lee Masters
You never marveled, dullards of Spoon River,
When Chase Henry voted against the saloons
To revenge himself for being shut off.
But none of you was keen enough
Tennessee Claflin Shope
© Edgar Lee Masters
I was the laughing-stock of the village,
Chiefly of the people of good sense, as they call themselves --
Also of the learned, like Rev. Peet, who read Greek
The same as English.
Henry Tripp
© Edgar Lee Masters
The bank broke and I lost my savings.
I was sick of the tiresome game in Spoon River
And I made up my mind to run away
And leave my place in life and my family;
Gustav Richter
© Edgar Lee Masters
After a long day of work in my hot-houses
Sleep was sweet, but if you sleep on your left side
Your dreams may be abruptly ended.
I was among my flowers where some one
Ballad of Reading Gaol II
© Oscar Wilde
He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.
Ballade Of Dead Ladies
© Andrew Lang
Prince, all this week thou need'st not pray,
Nor yet this year the thing to know.
One burden answers, ever and aye,
"Nay, but where is the last year's snow?"
Exempt
© Edgar Albert Guest
They have said you needn't go to the front to face the foe;
They have left you with your women and your children safe at home;
Dow Kritt
© Edgar Lee Masters
Samuel is forever talking of his elm --
But I did not need to die to learn about roots:
I, who dug all the ditches about Spoon River.
Look at my elm!
Ancient Eternal And Immortal Spirit
© Kostis Palamas
Immortal spirit of antiquity,
Father of the true, beautiful and good,
Descend, appear, shed over us thy light
Upon this ground and under this sky
Godwin James
© Edgar Lee Masters
Harry Wilmans! You who fell in a swamp
Near Manila, following the flag,
You were not wounded by the greatness of a dream,
Or destroyed by ineffectual work,
Homer Clapp
© Edgar Lee Masters
Often Aner Clute at the gate
Refused me the parting kiss,
Saying we should be engaged before that;
And just with a distant clasp of the hand
June
© John Payne
THE empress of the year, the meadows' queen,
Back from the East, with all her goodly train,
Chase Henry
© Edgar Lee Masters
In my life I was the town drunkard;
When I died the priest denied me burial
In holy ground.
The which rebounded to my good fortune.
William Goode
© Edgar Lee Masters
To all in the village I seemed, no doubt,
To go this way and that way, aimlessly.
But here by the river you can see at twilight
The soft-winged bats fly zig-zag here and there --
