Great poems
/ page 448 of 549 /
Ballad of Reading Gaol II
© Oscar Wilde
He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.
On One Stone Shall Be Seven Eyes
© John Newton
Jesus Christ, the Lord's anointed,
Who his blood for sinners spilt;
Is the Stone by God appointed,
And the church is on him built:
He delivers all who trust him from their guilt.
Dorcas Gustine
© Edgar Lee Masters
I was not beloved of the villagers,
But all because I spoke my mind,
And met those who transgressed against me
With plain remonstrance, hiding nor nurturing
Exempt
© Edgar Albert Guest
They have said you needn't go to the front to face the foe;
They have left you with your women and your children safe at home;
A Thought From Propertius
© William Butler Yeats
SHE might, so noble from head
To great shapely knees
The Man From The Crowd
© Sam Walter Foss
Men seem as alike as the leaves on the trees,
As alike as the bees in a swarming of bees;
Judge Somers
© Edgar Lee Masters
How does it happen, tell me,
That I who was the most erudite of lawyers,
Who knew Blackstone and Coke
Almost by heart, who made the greatest speech
Godwin James
© Edgar Lee Masters
Harry Wilmans! You who fell in a swamp
Near Manila, following the flag,
You were not wounded by the greatness of a dream,
Or destroyed by ineffectual work,
Lucius Atherton
© Edgar Lee Masters
When my moustache curled,
And my hair was black,
And I wore tight trousers
And a diamond stud,
Scholfield Huxley
© Edgar Lee Masters
God! ask me not to record your wonders,
I admit the stars and the suns
And the countless worlds.
But I have measured their distances
Elegy XIII: His Parting From Her
© John Donne
SINCE she must go, and I must mourn, come night,
Environ me with darkness, whilst I write ;
The Fly
© Karl Shapiro
O hideous little bat, the size of snot,
With polyhedral eye and shabby clothes,
Granville Calhoun
© Edgar Lee Masters
I wanted to be County Judge
One more term, so as to round out a service
Of thirty years.
But my friends left me and joined my enemies,
Romance In The Market Place
© Roderic Quinn
YOU stood beside the flowers,
Yourself a flower;
And on your face
The twilight stayed another hour,
Oaks Tutt
© Edgar Lee Masters
My mother was for woman's rights
And my father was the rich miller at London Mills.
I dreamed of the wrongs of the world and wanted to right them.
When my father died, I set out to see peoples and countries
Alfonso Churchill
© Edgar Lee Masters
They laughed at me as "Prof. Moon,"
As a boy in Spoon River, born with the thirst
Of knowing about the stars.
They jeered when I spoke of the lunar mountains,
The Building
© Philip Larkin
Higher than the handsomest hotel
The lucent comb shows up for miles, but see,
Ariel And Caliban
© Christopher Pearse Cranch
I.
Before PROSPERO'S cell. Moonlight.
ARIEL.
So Prospero is gone and I am free
Rebecca Wasson
© Edgar Lee Masters
Spring and Summer, Fall and Winter and Spring,
After each other drifting, past my window drifting!
And I lay so many years watching them drift and counting
The years till a terror came in my heart at times,
