Great poems
/ page 291 of 549 /
Pity the Beautiful
© Dana Gioia
Pity the beautiful,
the dolls, and the dishes,
the babes with big daddies
granting their wishes.
The Broken Crutch: A Tale
© Robert Bloomfield
A burst of laughter rang throughout the hall,
And Peggy's tongue, though overborne by all,
Pour'd its warm blessings, for, without control
The sweet unbridled transport of her soul
Was obviously seen, till Herbert's kiss
Stole, as it were, the eloquence of bliss.
The Captain and the Mermaids
© William Schwenck Gilbert
I SING a legend of the sea,
So hard-a-port upon your lee!
A ship on starboard tack!
She's bound upon a private cruise -
(This is the kind of spice I use
To give a salt-sea smack).
A Sister on the Tracks
© Donald Hall
Between pond and sheepbarn, by maples and watery birches,
Rebecca paces a double line of rust
Cold Calls: War Music, Continued
© Christopher Logue
Take Quinamid
The son of a Dardanian astrologer
Who disregarded what his father said
And came to Troy in a taxi.
August Afternoon
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Thump of a horse's hoof behind the hedge;
Long stripes of shadow, and green flame in the grass
Between them; discrowned, glaucous poppy--pods
On their tall stalks; a rose
The Icehouse in Summer
© Howard Nemerov
see Amos, 3:15
A door sunk in a hillside, with a bolt
thick as the boy’s arm, and behind that door
the walls of ice, melting a blue, faint light,
an air of cedar branches, sawdust, fern:
decaying seasons keeping from decay.
Commemoration
© Sir Henry Newbolt
I sat by the granite pillar, and sunlight fell
Where the sunlight fell of old,
And the hour was the hour my heart remembered well,
And the sermon rolled and rolled
As it used to roll when the place was still unhaunted,
And the strangest tale in the world was still untold.
Inside My Head
© Robert Creeley
Inside my head a common room,
a common place, a common tune,
a common wealth, a common doom
A Basket of Summer Fruit
© Charles Harpur
First see those ample melons-brindled o'er
With mingled green and brown is all the rind;
For they are ripe, and mealy at the core,
And saturate with the nectar of their kind.
Midsummer
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
After the May time and after the June time
Rare with blossoms and perfume sweet,
Cometh the round world's royal noon time,
The red midsummer of blazing heat,
Count Gismond—Aix in Provence
© Robert Browning
Christ God who savest man, save most
Of men Count Gismond who saved me!
Count Gauthier, when he chose his post,
Chose time and place and company
To suit it; when he struck at length
My honour, 't was with all his strength.
The Frogs
© Archibald Lampman
Often to me who heard you in your day,
With close wrapt ears, it could not choose but seem
That earth, our mother, searching in that way,
Men's hearts might know her spirit's inmost dream,
Ever at rest beneath life's change and stir,
Made you her soul, and bade you pipe for her.
In Memory of Bryan Lathrop
© Edgar Lee Masters
Who bequeathed to Chicago a School of Music.
So in Pieria, from the wedded bliss
