Great poems
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Absolution
© Edith Nesbit
He stood beside her, young and strong, and swayed
With pity for the sorrow in her eyes--
Which, as she raised them to his own, conveyed
Into his soul a sort of sad surprise--
The Storm.
© Robert Crawford
I can hear the great boughs swing
Through the stormy night,
Each a dryad-haunted thing
With its dark delight,
Epistle To A Young Friend
© Robert Burns
I lang hae thought, my youthfu' friend,
A something to have sent you,
Tho' it should serve nae ither end
Than just a kind momento:
The Yellow Bowl by Rachel Contreni Flynn : American Life in Poetry #266 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laurea
© Ted Kooser
The great American poet William Carlos Williams taught us that if a poem can capture a moment in life, and bathe it in the light of the poet’s close attention, and make it feel fresh and new, that’s enough, that’s adequate, that’s good. Here is a poem like that by Rachel Contreni Flynn, who lives in Illinois.
The Life of Lincoln West
© Gwendolyn Brooks
Ugliest little boy
that everyone ever saw.
That is what everyone said.
A Psalm Of Fortitude
© Joseph Furphy
Are you, like me, a peevish brat,
With feelings extra-fine?
Are you disposed to whip the cat
When misadventure lays your flat?
Then paste this memo in your hat
A Man Should Never Whine.
Coquette And Her Lover
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
O, foolish querist! what if I,
Beholding your enamored face
And every well-attested trace
Of verdant, young idolatry,
Should, after my own fashion, choose
To play the subtly-amorous muse,
Hard Work
© Roddy Lumsden
Tricky work sometimes not to smell yourself,
ferment being constant—constant as carnival sweat
(a non-stock phrase I palmed from a girl from Canada,
a land where I once saw this graffiti: life is great).
To Whistler, American
© Ezra Pound
On the loan exhibit of his paintings at the Tate Gallery.
You also, our first great,
Had tried all ways;
Tested and pried and worked in many fashions,
And this much gives me heart to play the game.
For You O Democracy
© Walt Whitman
Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,
I will make divine magnetic lands,
With the love of comrades,
With the life-long love of comrades.
Something Left Undone. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The Second)
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Labor with what zeal we will,
Something still remains undone,
Something uncompleted still
Waits the rising of the sun.
Erinna
© Sara Teasdale
They sent you in to say farewell to me,
No, do not shake your head; I see your eyes
The Landgraff
© Frances Anne Kemble
Through Thuringia's forest green
The Landgraff rode at close of e'en;
Kosmos
© Walt Whitman
Who includes diversity and is Nature,
Who is the amplitude of the earth, and the coarseness and sexuality of the earth, and the great charity of the earth and the equilibrium also,
Father Son and Holy Ghost
© Elizabeth Daryush
I have not ever seen my father’s grave.
Not that his judgment eyes
