Great poems
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I Step Across The Mystic Border-Land
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
I step across the mystic border-land,
And look upon the wonder-world of Art.
How beautiful, how beautiful its hills!
And all its valleys, how surpassing fair!
The Reason Why
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
I'D like, indeed I'd like to know
Why sister Bell, who loved me so,
And used to pet me day and night,
And could not bear me out of sight,
Realities
© Kenneth Slessor
(To the etchings of Norman Lindsay)
Now the statues lean over each to each, and sing,
Gravely in warm plaster turning; the hedges are dark.
The trees come suddenly to flower with moonlight,
A Chippewa Legend
© James Russell Lowell
The old Chief, feeling now wellnigh his end,
Called his two eldest children to his side,
Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 2. The Musician's Tale; The Ballad of Carmilhan - II.
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The jolly skipper paused awhile,
And then again began;
"There is a Spectre Ship," quoth he,
"A ship of the Dead that sails the sea,
And is called the Carmilhan.
The Golden Legend: II. A Farm In The Odenwald
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
_Elsie._ Here are flowers for you,
But they are not all for you.
Some of them are for the Virgin
And for Saint Cecilia.
On the Death of Mr. Crashaw
© Abraham Cowley
Poet and Saint! to thee alone are given
The two most sacred names of earth and heaven,
Der Freischutz
© Madison Julius Cawein
He? why, a tall Franconian strong and young,
Brown as a walnut the first frost hath hulled;
"Goldie Pinklesweet..."
© Roald Dahl
"Attention please! Attention please!
Don't dare to talk! Don't dare to sneeze!
Don't doze or daydream! Stay awake!
Your health, your very life's at stake!
Hoho, you say, they can't mean me.
Haha, we answer, wait and see.
Death And Daphne
© Jonathan Swift
Death went upon a solemn day
At Pluto's hall his court to pay;
The phantom having humbly kiss'd
His grisly monarch's sooty fist,
On Those That Hated The 'Playboy Of The Western World,' 1907
© William Butler Yeats
Once, when midnight smote the air,
Eunuchs ran through Hell and met
On every crowded street to stare
Upon great Juan riding by:
Even like these to rail and sweat
Staring upon his sinewy thigh.
Reflections - II.
© Samuel Rogers
Alas, to our discomfort and his own,
Oft are the greatest talents to be found
In a fool's keeping. For what else is he,
What else is he, however worldly wise,
No Children!
© Edgar Albert Guest
No children in the house to play-
It must be hard to live that way!
Heaven, 1963 by Kim Noriega: American Life in Poetry #120 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
He's standing in our yard on Porter Road
beneath the old chestnut tree.
He's wearing sunglasses,
a light cotton shirt,
and a dreamy expression.
Sonnet 65: Love By Sure Proof
© Sir Philip Sidney
Love by sure proof I may call thee unkind,
That giv'st no better ear to my just cries:
Thou whom to me such my good turns should bind,
As I may well recount, but none can prize:
Grandpa's Christmas
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
In his great cushioned chair by the fender
An old man sits dreaming to-night,
Those Who Sit
© Arthur Rimbaud
These old men have always been one flesh with their seats,
feeling bright suns drying their skins to the texture of calico,
or else, looking at the window-panes
where the snow is turning grey,
shivering with the painful shiver of the toad.
In Country Sleep
© Dylan Thomas
Night and the reindeer on the clouds above the haycocks
And the wings of the great roc ribboned for the fair!
The leaping saga of prayer! And high, there, on the hare-
Heeled winds the rooks
Cawing from their black bethels soaring, the holy books
Of birds! Among the cocks like fire the red fox
The Bankers Secret
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
The reader paused,--the Teacups knew his ways,--
He, like the rest, was not averse to praise.
Voices and hands united; every one
Joined in approval: "Number Three, well done!"
