Great poems
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Winter Twilight
© Bliss William Carman
ALONG the wintry skyline,
Crowning the rocky crest,
Stands the bare screen of hardwood trees
Against the saffron west,
The Vanity Of Human Wishes
© Michael Wigglesworth
I walk'd and did a little Mole-hill view
Full peopled with a most industrious crew
The Tempters
© Edgar Albert Guest
EVERY gentle breeze that's blowing is a tempter very knowing,
For it penetrates my armor in its weakest, thinnest spot;
The Women of the Town
© Henry Lawson
It is up from out the alleys, from the alleys dark and vile
It is up from out the alleys I have struggled for a while
Just to breathe the breath of Heaven ere my devil drags me down,
And to sing a song of pity for the women of the town.
Partners
© Ellis Parker Butler
Love took chambers on our street
Opposite to mine;
On his door he tacked a neat,
Clearly lettered sign.
Millennium
© Ellis Parker Butler
Son, the millennium is at hand!
What though Armenians be mashed flat?
The world is getting just perfectly grand,
For the Turk has bought him a derby hat.
Little Ballads Of Timely Warning; III: On Laziness And Its Resultant Ills
© Ellis Parker Butler
There was a man in New York City
(His name was George Adolphus Knight)
So soft of heart he wept with pity
To see our language and its plight.
Judgment Day
© Ellis Parker Butler
Saint Peter stood, at Heaven's gate,
All souls claims to adjudicate
Saying to some souls, "Enter in!"
"Go to Hell," to others, "you are steeped in sin."
Street Song
© Sylvia Plath
By a mad miracle I go intact
Among the common rout
Thronging sidewalk, street,
And bickering shops;
Bird Nesting
© Ellis Parker Butler
O wonderful! In sport we climbed the tree,
Eager and laughing, as in all our play,
To see the eggs where, in the nest, they lay,
But silent fell before the mystery.
A Study In Feeling
© Ellis Parker Butler
To be a great musician you must be a man of moods,
You have to be, to understand sonatas and etudes.
To execute pianos and to fiddle with success,
With sympathy and feeling you must fairly effervesce;
It was so with Paganini, Remenzi and Cho-pang,
And so it was with Peterkin Von Gabriel OLang.
A Satisfactory Reform
© Ellis Parker Butler
A merry burgomaster
In a burgh upon the Rhine
Said, Our burghers all are
Far too fond of drinking wine.
Crucifix
© Anna Akhmatova
I
This greatest hour was hallowed and thandered
By angel's choirs; fire melted sky.
He asked his Father:"Why am I abandoned...?"
And told his Mother: "Mother, do not cry..."
The Round Table or, King Arthur's Feast
© Thomas Love Peacock
His speech was cut short by a general dismay;
For William the Second had fainted away,
At the smell of some New Forest venison before him;
But a tweak on the nose, Arthur said, would restore him.
Hymn To Death
© William Cullen Bryant
Oh! could I hope the wise and pure in heart
Might hear my song without a frown, nor deem
Bird With Two Right Wings
© Lawrence Ferlinghetti
And now our government
a bird with two right wings
flies on from zone to zone
while we go on having our little fun & games
A Vast Confusion
© Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Long long I lay in the sandsSounds of trains in the surf
in subways of the sea
And an even greater undersound
of a vast confusion in the universe
Wild Dreams Of A New Beginning
© Lawrence Ferlinghetti
There's a breathless hush on the freeway tonight
Beyond the ledges of concrete
restaurants fall into dreams
with candlelight couples
