Great poems
/ page 462 of 549 /
Waking at 3 a.m.
© William Stafford
You think water in the river;
you think slower than the tide in
the grain of the wood; you become
a secret storehouse that saves the country,
so open and foolish and empty.
Europe, MDCCCCI To Napoleon
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Soars still thy spirit, Child of Fire?
Dost hear the camps of Europe hum?
On eagle wings dost hover nigher
At the far rolling of the drum?
To see the harvest thou hast sown
Smilest thou now, Napoleon?
Before a Midnight Breaks in Storm
© Rudyard Kipling
Before a midnight breaks in storm,
Or herded sea in wrath,
The Yukon
© Joaquin Miller
THE moon resumed all heaven now,
She shepherded the stars below
Along her wide, white steeps of snow,
Nor stooped nor rested, where or how.
From The Woolworth Tower
© Sara Teasdale
Vivid with love, eager for greater beauty
Out of the night we come
Into the corridor, brilliant and warm.
A metal door slides open,
Wind
© Ted Hughes
This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet
May 8
© David Lehman
700 francs will get you $109.91
on this muggy May afternoon
which is good to know since
I just found 700 francs in my wallet
The Body of Divinity Versifyed
© Cotton Mather
A God there is, a God of boundless Might,
In Wisdom, Justice, Goodness, Infinite.
Will
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
There is no chance, no destiny, no fate,
Can circumvent or hinder or control
The firm resolve of a determined soul.
Gifts count for nothing; will alone is great;
Book Sixth [Cambridge and the Alps]
© William Wordsworth
A passing word erewhile did lightly touch
On wanderings of my own, that now embraced
With livelier hope a region wider far.
October 12
© David Lehman
My bag was missing at the airport
"Just one bag?" "Yes, but it meant a lot to me"
I had seen the bartender before, but where?
"You didn't tell me you had been to Oxford"
Eleventh Hour
© David Lehman
The bloom was off the economic recovery.
"I just want to know one thing," she said.
What was that one thing? He'll never know,
Because at just that moment he heard the sound
Paradise Lost : Book XII.
© John Milton
As one who in his journey bates at noon,
Though bent on speed; so here the Arch-Angel paused
Elegy I
© Henry James Pye
O Happiness! thou wish of every mind,
Whose form, more subtle than the fleeting air,
To The Author Of Glare
© David Lehman
There comes a time when the story turns into twenty
different stories and soon after that he academy of shadows
retreats to the cave of a solitary boy in a thriving
My Boating Song
© Horace Smith
Hurrah, boys, or losing or winning,
Feel your stretchers and make the blades bend;
Hard on to it, catch the beginning,
And pull it clean through to the end.
Hermann And Dorothea - IV. Euterpe
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Mother," he said in confusion:--"You greatly surprise me!" and quickly
Wiped he away his tears, the noble and sensitive youngster.
"What! You are weeping, my son?" the startled mother continued
"That is indeed unlike you! I never before saw you crying!
Say, what has sadden'd your heart? What drives you to sit here all lonely
Under the shade of the pear-tree? What is it that makes you unhappy?"
