Good poems
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Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry
© Stephen Dunn
Imagine yourself a caterpillar.
There's an awful shrug and, suddenly,
You're beautiful for as long as you live.
At Midnight
© Sara Teasdale
Now at last I have come to see what life is,
Nothing is ever ended, everything only begun,
And the brave victories that seem so splendid
Are never really won.
Because
© Sara Teasdale
Oh, because you never tried
To bow my will or break my pride,
And nothing of the cave-man made
You want to keep me half afraid,
Gilbert
© Charlotte Bronte
I. THE GARDEN.ABOVE the city hung the moon,
Right o'er a plot of ground
Where flowers and orchard-trees were fenced
With lofty walls around:
Preference
© Charlotte Bronte
NOT in scorn do I reprove thee,
Not in pride thy vows I waive,
But, believe, I could not love thee,
Wert thou prince, and I a slave.
Winter Stores
© Charlotte Bronte
WE take from life one little share,
And say that this shall be
A space, redeemed from toil and care,
From tears and sadness free.
Pilate's Wife's Dream
© Charlotte Bronte
I've quenched my lamp, I struck it in that start
Which every limb convulsed, I heard it fall
The crash blent with my sleep, I saw depart
Its light, even as I woke, on yonder wall;
Over against my bed, there shone a gleam
Strange, faint, and mingling also with my dream.
Parting
© Charlotte Bronte
THERE'S no use in weeping,
Though we are condemned to part:
There's such a thing as keeping
A remembrance in one's heart:
Snapshot of a Lump
© Kelli Russell Agodon
My breast is pressed flat - a torpedo,
a pyramid, a triangle, a rocket on this altar;
this can't be good for anyone.
To the Muse
© Alexander Blok
In your hidden memories
There are fatal tidings of doom...
A curse on sacred traditions,
A desecration of happiness;
The Twelve
© Alexander Blok
III
Our sons have gone
to serve the Reds
to serve the Reds
to risk their heads!
The Death of Grandfather
© Alexander Blok
We waited commonly for sleep or even death.
The instances were wearisome as ages.
But suddenly the wind's refreshing breath
Touched through the window the Holy Bible's pages:
I Prefer the Gorgeous Freedom
© Alexander Blok
I prefer the gorgeous freedom,
And I fly to lands of grace,
Where in wide and clear meadows
All is good, as dreams, and blest.
The Star
© Henry Vaughan
1 Whatever 'tis, whose beauty here below
2 Attracts thee thus and makes thee stream and flow,
3 And wind and curl, and wink and smile,
4 Shifting thy gate and guile;
The Orient Express
© Randall Jarrell
One looks from the train
Almost as one looked as a child. In the sunlight
What I see still seems to me plain,
I am safe; but at evening
The House In The Woods
© Randall Jarrell
At the back of the houses there is the wood.
While there is a leaf of summer left, the woodMakes sounds I can put somewhere in my song,
Has paths I can walk, when I wake, to goodOr evil: to the cage, to the oven, to the House
In the Wood. It is a part of life, or of the storyWe make of life. But after the last leaf,
Next Day
© Randall Jarrell
Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,
I take a box
And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.
The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical
Food-gathering flocks
Are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James,
Cinderella
© Randall Jarrell
Her imaginary playmate was a grown-up
In sea-coal satin. The flame-blue glances,
The wings gauzy as the membrane that the ashes
Draw over an old ember --as the mother
A Sick Child
© Randall Jarrell
The postman comes when I am still in bed.
"Postman, what do you have for me today?"
I say to him. (But really I'm in bed.)
Then he says - what shall I have him say?
Hope
© Randall Jarrell
The spirit killeth, but the letter giveth life.
The week is dealt out like a hand
That children pick up card by card.
One keeps getting the same hand.
