Great poems
/ page 267 of 549 /
it may not always be so
© Edward Estlin Cummings
if this should be,i say if this should be-
you of my heart,send me a little word;
that i may go unto him,and take his hands,
saying,Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face,and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands.
i am a little church
© Edward Estlin Cummings
i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
-i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april
All in green went my love riding
© Edward Estlin Cummings
All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.
i thank you God for this most amazing
© Edward Estlin Cummings
i thank You God for this most amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
wich is natural which is infinite which is yes
Primitive
© Sharon Olds
I have heard about the civilized,
the marriages run on talk, elegant and honest, rational. But you and I are
savages. You come in with a bag,
hold it out to me in silence.
Topography
© Sharon Olds
After we flew across the country we
got in bed, laid our bodies
delicately together, like maps laid
face to face, East to West, my
A Week Later
© Sharon Olds
A week later, I said to a friend: I don't
think I could ever write about it.
Maybe in a year I could write something.
There is something in me maybe someday
Sex Without Love
© Sharon Olds
How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
For Bartleby The Scrivener
© Billy Collins
ice skating into a sixty
mile an hour wind, fully exerting
the legs and swinging arms
Pinup
© Billy Collins
The murkiness of the local garage is not so dense
that you cannot make out the calendar of pinup
drawings on the wall above a bench of tools.
Your ears are ringing with the sound of
The Iron Bridge
© Billy Collins
the way I am keeping an eye on that cormorant
who just broke the glassy surface
and is moving away from me and the iron bridge,
swiveling his curious head,
slipping out to where the sun rakes the water
and filters through the trees that crowd the shore.
Consolation
© Billy Collins
How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,
wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns.
How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,
fully grasping the meaning of every roadsign and billboard
and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.
By A Swimming Pool Outside Syracusa
© Billy Collins
All afternoon I have been struggling
to communicate in Italian
with Roberto and Giuseppe, who have begun
to resemble the two male characters
The Progress of Poesy
© Thomas Gray
A Pindaric OdeAwake, Aeolian lyre, awake,
And give to rapture all thy trembling strings.
From Helicon's harmonious springs
A thousand rills their mazy progress take:
The Sompnour's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
1. Carrack: A great ship of burden used by the Portuguese; the
name is from the Italian, "cargare," to load
The Cook's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
1. Jack of Dover: an article of cookery. (Transcriber's note:
suggested by some commentators to be a kind of pie, and by
others to be a fish)
The Man of Law's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
1. Plight: pulled; the word is an obsolete past tense from
"pluck."
The Reeve's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
1. "With blearing of a proude miller's eye": dimming his eye;
playing off a joke on him.
The Friar's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
"Peace, with mischance and with misaventure,"
Our Hoste said, "and let him tell his tale.
Now telle forth, and let the Sompnour gale,* *whistle; bawl
Nor spare not, mine owen master dear."
The Miller's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
1. Pilate, an unpopular personage in the mystery-plays of the
middle ages, was probably represented as having a gruff, harsh
voice.
