Home poems
/ page 256 of 465 /
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
© Walt Whitman
1
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
The Three Brothers Budrys
© Adam Mickiewicz
Doughty Budrys the old, Lithuanian bold,
He has summoned his lusty sons three.
"Your chargers stand idle, now saddle and bridle
And out with your broadswords," quoth he.
Persimmons
© Li-Young Lee
In sixth grade Mrs. Walker
slapped the back of my head
and made me stand in the corner
for not knowing the difference
between persimmon and precision.
How to choose
The Lady Of La Garaye - Prologue
© Caroline Norton
This was the Chapel: that the stair:
Here, where all lies damp and bare,
The fragrant thurible was swung,
The silver lamp in beauty hung,
And in that mass of ivied shade
The pale nuns sang--the abbot prayed.
Fox Sleep
© William Stanley Merwin
On a road through the mountains with a friend many years ago
I came to a curve on a slope where a clear stream
A Poem: To The Memory of Mrs. Oldfield
© Richard Savage
Oldfield's no more!-And can the Muse forbear,
O'er Oldfield's Grave to shed a grateful Tear?
Ode Read At The One Hundreth Anniversary Of The Fight At Concord Bridge
© James Russell Lowell
I
Who cometh over the hills,
Coole Park 1929
© William Butler Yeats
I MEDITATE upon a swallow's flight,
Upon a aged woman and her house,
The Minister of Culture Gets His Wish
© Mark Strand
The Minister of Culture goes home after a grueling day at the office
Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio
© James Wright
In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.
from The Bridge: The Tunnel
© Hart Crane
Or can’t you quite make up your mind to ride;
A walk is better underneath the L a brisk
Ten blocks or so before? But you find yourself
Preparing penguin flexions of the arms,—
As usual you will meet the scuttle yawn:
The subway yawns the quickest promise home.
Good-Bye
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home:
Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine.
Long through thy weary crowds I roam;
A river-ark on the ocean brine,
Long I've been tossed like the driven foam;
But now, proud world! I'm going home.
Song (“The world is full of loss ... ”)
© Katha Pollitt
The world is full of loss; bring, wind, my love,
my home is where we make our meeting-place,
and love whatever I shall touch and read
within that face.
Humidifier
© Louise Gluck
—After Robert Pinsky
Defier of closed space, such as the head, opener
Of the sealed passageways, so that
Sunlight entering the nose can once again
Belated
© Augusta Davies Webster
BLITHE summer blossom, born too late,
Wilt make my desert garden fair?
Lo Winter's hand is on the gate,
His breath is in the curdling air.
from The Testament of John Lydgate
© John Lydgate
Beholde, o man! lyft up thyn eye and see
What mortall peyne I suffre for thi trespace.
At San Giovanni Del Lago
© Alfred Austin
I leaned upon the rustic bridge,
And watched the streamlet make
Its chattering way past zigzag ridge
Down to the silent lake.
