. As a strong bird on pinions free,
Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,
Such be the thought I'd think to-day of thee, America,
Such be the recitative I'd bring to-day for thee.

A garden of mouthings. Purple, scarlet-speckled, black
The great corollas dilate, peeling back their silks.
Their musk encroaches, circle after circle,
A well of scents almost too dense to breathe in.
Hieratical in your frock coat, maestro of the bees,
You move among the many-breasted hives,

His Youth

© Wilcox Ella Wheeler

Dying? I am not dying. Are you mad?
You think I need to ask for heavenly grace?
\I\ think \you\ are a fiend, who would be glad
To see me struggle in death's cold embrace.

Idyll VII. Harvest-Home

© Theocritus

He spake and paused; and thereupon spake I.
"I too, friend Lycid, as I ranged the fells,
Have learned much lore and pleasant from the Nymphs,
Whose fame mayhap hath reached the throne of Zeus.
But this wherewith I'll grace thee ranks the first:
Thou listen, since the Muses like thee well.

A Poetical Version Of A Letter From Facob Behmen

© John Byrom

TIS Mans own Nature, which in its own Life,

Or Centre, stands in Enmity and Strife,

Fishing Song: To J.A. Froude and Tom Hughes

© Charles Kingsley

Oh, Mr. Froude, how wise and good,
To point us out this way to glory-
They're no great shakes, those Snowdon Lakes,
And all their pounders myth and story.
Blow Snowdon! What's Lake Gwynant to Killarney,
Or spluttering Welsh to tender blarney, blarney, blarney?

Andante Con Moto

© William Ernest Henley

Forth from the dust and din,

The crush, the heat, the many-spotted glare,

Riddles By Dr. Swift And His Friends

© Jonathan Swift

FROM Venus born, thy beauty shows;
But who thy father, no man knows:
Nor can the skilful herald trace
The founder of thy ancient race;

Arcanna

© Madison Julius Cawein

Earth hath her images of utterance,

Her hieroglyphic meanings which elude;

To A Child

The greatest poem ever known
Is one all poets have outgrown:
The poetry, innate, untold,
Of being only four years old.

Fashion

See those resplendent creatures, as they glide

O'er scarlet carpet, between footmen tall,

London Types: Drum-Major

Who says Drum-Major says a man of mould,

Shaking the meek earth with tremendous tread,

To The Queen Of England

© Edith Nesbit

COME forth! the world's aflame with flags and flowers,

The shout of bells fills full the shattered air,

Safari, Rift Valley by Roy Jacobstein: American Life in Poetry #116 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2

© Ted Kooser

It's the oldest kind of story: somebody ventures deep into the woods and comes back with a tale. Here Roy Jacobstein returns to America to relate his experience on a safari to the place believed by archaeologists to be the original site of human life. And against this ancient backdrop he closes with a suggestion of the brevity of our lives.