Great poems
/ page 329 of 549 /
Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight
© Roald Dahl
(In Springfield, Illinois)
It is portentous, and a thing of state
That here at midnight, in our little town
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
Near the old court-house pacing up and down.
The Ballad Of The Taylor Pup
© Eugene Field
Now lithe and listen, gentles all,
Now lithe ye all and hark
Unto a ballad I shall sing
About Buena Park.
Retroduction to American History
© Allen Tate
Cats walk the floor at midnight; that enemy of fog,
The moon, wraps the bedpost in receding stillness; sleep
Collects all weary nothings and lugs away the towers,
The pinnacles of dust that feed the subway.
On The Mountain
© Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
THE top of the world and an empty morning,
Mist sweeping in from the dim Outside,
The door of day just a little bit open--
The wind's great laugh as he flings it wide!
Upon a Spider Catching a Fly
© Edward Taylor
Thou sorrow, venom Elfe:
Is this thy play,
To spin a web out of thyselfe
To Catch a Fly?
For Why?
Michael: A Pastoral Poem
© William Wordsworth
Thus in his Father's sight the Boy grew up:
And now, when he had reached his eighteenth year,
He was his comfort and his daily hope.
What the Sexton Said
© Roald Dahl
Your dust will be upon the wind
Within some certain years,
Though you be sealed in lead to-day
Amid the country’s tears.
Truth Serum
© Naomi Shihab Nye
We made it from the ground-up corn in the old back pasture.
Pinched a scent of night jasmine billowing off the fence,
The Spirit Land
© Jones Very
Father! thy wonders do not singly stand,
Nor far removed where feet have seldom strayed;
A Dedication - To K.S.G.
© Henry Timrod
Fair Saxon, in my lover's creed,
My love were smaller than your meed,
Sonnet: They Dub Thee Idler
© Henry Timrod
They dub thee idler, smiling sneeringly,
And why? because, forsooth, so many moons,
The Parade
© Billy Collins
How exhilarating it was to march
along the great boulevards
in the sunflash of trumpets
and under all the waving flags
the flag of ambition, the flag of love.
Elizabethan
© Linda Pastan
Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft and made of melting snow
—Queen Elizabeth I
First Thanksgiving
© Sharon Olds
When she comes back, from college, I will see
the skin of her upper arms, cool,
Prejudice
© Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer
How strangely blind is prejudice, the Negro's greatest foe!
It never fails to see the wrong but naught of good can know.
'Tis blind to all that's lofty, yea, to truth it is opposed,
Degrading things will ope his eyes, while good will keep them closed.
Song of Myself: 36
© Walt Whitman
Stretchd and still lies the midnight,
Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness,
