Great poems
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Le Masque (The Mask)
© Charles Baudelaire
Mais pourquoi pleure-t-elle? Elle, beauté parfaite,
Qui mettrait à ses pieds le genre humain vaincu,
Quel mal mystérieux ronge son flanc d'athlète?
Botany-Bay Flowers
© Barron Field
GOD of this Planet! for the name best fits
The purblind view, which men of this "dim spot"
The Tides
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I saw the long line of the vacant shore,
The sea-weed and the shells upon the sand,
Close To Greatness
© Charles Bukowski
at one stage in my life
I met a man who claimed to have
visited Pound at St. Elizabeth's.
Human Life
© Samuel Rogers
An hour like this is worth a thousand passed
In pomp or ease - 'Tis present to the last!
Years glide away untold - 'Tis still the same!
As fresh, as fair as on the day it came!
A Song In Three Parts
© Jean Ingelow
The white broom flatt'ring her flowers in calm June weather,
'O most sweet wear;
Forty-eight weeks of my life do none desire me,
Four am I fair,'
Thespis: Act II
© William Schwenck Gilbert
Jupiter, Aged Diety
Apollo, Aged Diety
Mars, Aged Diety
Diana, Aged Diety
Mercury
Peace And Dunkirk
© Jonathan Swift
Spite of Dutch friends and English foes,
Poor Britain shall have peace at last:
Holland got towns, and we got blows;
But Dunkirk's ours, we'll hold it fast.
The Shipman's Tale
© Thomas Bailey Aldrich
O shipman, woful, woful is thy tale!
Our hearts are heavy and our eyes are dimmed.
What ship is this that suffered such ill fate?
Fulfilment
© James Brunton Stephens
We cried, " How long ! " We sighed, " Not yet; "
And still with faces dawnward set
" Prepare the way," said each to each,
Looking Down
© Jean Ingelow
Mountains of sorrow, I have heard your moans,
And the moving of your pines; but we sit high
Earbud by Bill Holm : American Life in Poetry #213 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Bill Holm, one of the most intelligent and engaging writers of our northern plains, died on February 25th. He will be greatly missed. He and I were of the same generation and we shared the same sense of wonder, amusement, and skepticism about the course of technology. I don't yet own an Earbud, but I won't need to, now that we have Bill's poem.
Earbud
The Great Misgiving
© William Watson
'NOT ours,' say some, 'the thought of death to dread;
Asking no heaven, we fear no fabled hell:
Life is a feast, and we have banqueted-
Shall not the worms as well?
The Rose has flushed Red
© Shams al-Din Hafiz
But to thee, oh Hafiz, to thee, oh Tongue
That speaks through the mouth of the slender reed,
What thanks to thee when thy verses speed
From lip to lip, and the song thou hast sung?
Romaunt Of The Oak
© Madison Julius Cawein
"I rode to death, for I fought for shame--
The Lady Maurine of noble name,
Written In A Seat At Stoke Park, Near The Vicararage-House, Then Inhabited By The Author, And Comman
© Henry James Pye
Not with more joy from the loud tempest's roar,
The dangerous billow, and more dangerous shore,
It's thoughtsand just One Heart
© Emily Dickinson
It's thoughtsand just One Heart
And Old Sunshineabout
Make frugalOnesContent
And two or threefor Company
Upon a Holiday
Crowdedas Sacrament
Altiora Peto
© George Essex Evans
To each there came the passion and the fire,
The breadth of vision and the sudden light,
And for a moment on an earthly lyre
Quivered a tremor of the Infinite;
Yet to each poet of that deep-browed throng
Twas but the shadow of Immortal Song.
The Flower
© Grace Hazard Conkling
But the sun against the tall Pacific
Does not shine and triumph in my memory of that day
As do the leaf-shaped magenta petals
Of that flower you stole for me
From a roadside bougainvillea.
