Great poems
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Reuben Bright
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
And after she was dead, and he had paid
The singers and the sexton and the rest,
He packed a lot of things that she had made
Most mournfully away in an old chest
Of hers, and put some chopped-up cedar boughs
In with them, and tore down the slaughter-house.
The Field of Glory
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
War shook the land where Levi dwelt,
And fired the dismal wrath he felt,
That such a doom was ever wrought
As his, to toil while others fought;
The Deserted Village
© Oliver Goldsmith
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed can never be supplied.
The Wife of the Mind
© Charles Webb
Sharecroppers' child, she was more schooled
In slaughtering pigs and coaxing corn out of
The ground than in the laws of Math, the rules
Of Grammar. Seventeen, she fell in love
Giant Fungus
© Charles Webb
The sky is full of ruddy ducks
and widgeon's, mockingbirds,
bees, bats, swallowtails,
dragonflies, and great horned owls.
Enthusiasm
© Charles Webb
"Don't overdo it," Dad yelled, watching me
Play shortstop, collect stamps and shells,
Roll on the grass laughing until I peed my pants.
"Screw him," I said, and grabbed every cowry
To A Sad Daughter
© Michael Ondaatje
One day I'll come swimming
beside your ship or someone will
and if you hear the siren
listen to it. For if you close your ears
only nothing happens. You will never change.
To the Memory of Henry Welles Livingston
© Major Henry Livingston, Jr.
A gentle spirit now above
Once animated what lies here
Till heav'n announc'd in tenderest love
"Ascend Immortal to yon sphere."
Britannia's Pastorals
© William Browne
Now as an angler melancholy standing
Upon a green bank yielding room for landing,
A wriggling yellow worm thrust on his hook,
Now in the midst he throws, then in a nook:
The Lonely God
© James Brunton Stephens
So Eden was deserted, and at eve
Into the quiet place God came to grieve.
His face was sad, His hands hung slackly down
Along his robe; too sorrowful to frown
In The Poppy Field
© James Brunton Stephens
Mad Patsy said, he said to me,
That every morning he could see
An angel walking on the sky;
Across the sunny skies of morn
In The Cool Of The Evening
© James Brunton Stephens
I thought I heard Him calling. Did you hear
A sound, a little sound? My curious ear
Is dinned with flying noises, and the tree
Goes -- whisper, whisper, whisper silently
Psalm CXXXVII The Babylonian Captivity
© Joel Barlow
ALONG the banks where Babel's current flows
Our captive bands in deep despondence stray'd,
While Zion's fall in sad remembrance rose,
Her friends, her children mingled with the dead.
The Bistro Styx
© Rita Dove
She was thinner, with a mannered gauntness
as she paused just inside the double
glass doors to survey the room, silvery cape
billowing dramatically behind her.What's this,
Behind, perhaps, let the sea blow
© Carlos Barbarito
Behind, perhaps, let the sea blow.
Let some word blow
outside every destination of slime, rust.
Perhaps ointments from Avicenna,
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
© John Ashbery
As Parmigianino did it, the right hand
Bigger than the head, thrust at the viewer
And swerving easily away, as though to protect
What it advertises. A few leaded panes, old beams,
My Philosophy of Life
© John Ashbery
Just when I thought there wasn't room enough
for another thought in my head, I had this great idea--
call it a philosophy of life, if you will.Briefly,
it involved living the way philosophers live,
according to a set of principles. OK, but which ones?
Daffy Duck In Hollywood
© John Ashbery
Something strange is creeping across me.
La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars
Of "I Thought about You" or something mellow from
Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can
They Did Not Expect This
© Vernon Scannell
They did not expect this. Being neither wise nor brave
And wearing only the beauty of youth's season
They took the first turning quite unquestioningly
And walked quickly without looking back even once.
Makers And Creatures
© Vernon Scannell
It is a curious experience
And one you"re bound to know, though probably
In other realms than that of literature,
Though I speak of poems now, assuming
