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Bindweed by James McKean: American Life in Poetry #62 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Gardeners who've fought Creeping Charlie and other unwanted plants may sympathize with James McKean from Iowa as he takes on Bindweed, a cousin to the two varieties of morning glory that appear in the poem. It's an endless struggle, and in the end, of course, the bindweed wins.
The Spirit Of The Snow
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
The night brings forth the morn-
Of the cloud is lightning born;
From out the darkest earth the brightest roses grow.
Bright sparks from black flints fly,
And from out a leaden sky
Comes the silvery-footed Spirit of the Snow.
The Forest Boy
© Charlotte Turner Smith
THE trees have now hid at the edge of the hurst
The spot where the ruins decay
Of the cottage, where Will of the Woodland was nursed,
And lived so beloved, till the moment accursed
Verses On Rome
© Frances Anne Kemble
O Rome, tremendous! who, beholding thee,
Shall not forget the bitterest private grief
Getting There
© Christopher Buckley
It comes to little now
who I forgive, mourn,
or thank. The dust shifts
and we are barely
suspended in the light.
Pauline, A Fragment of a Question
© Robert Browning
And I can love nothing-and this dull truth
Has come the last: but sense supplies a love
Encircling me and mingling with my life.
Sarah Byng, Who Could Not Read and Was Tossed into a Thorny Hedge by a Bull
© Hilaire Belloc
Some years ago you heard me sing
My doubts on Alexander Byng.
The Enemies
© Elizabeth Jennings
Last night they came across the river and
Entered the city. Women were awake
With lights and food. They entertained the band,
Not asking what the men had come to take
Or what strange tongue they spoke
Or why they came so suddenly through the land.
(With a glance of your eyes...)
© Anselm Hollo
With a glance of your eyes you could plunder all the wealth of songs struck from poets harps, fair woman!
But for their praises you have no ear; therefore do I come to praise you.
You could humble at your feet the proudest heads of all the world;
But it is your loved ones, unknown to fame, whom you choose to worship; therefore I worship you.
Your perfect arms would add glory to kingly splendor with their touch;
But you use them to sweep away the dust, and to make clean your humble home; therefore I am filled with awe.
Forward Ho!
© Charles Harpur
Forward ho! Forward ho! Soldiers of liberty,
Hope on; fight on; till mans whole race shall be
There Was A Child Went Forth
© Walt Whitman
THERE was a child went forth every day;
And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became;
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of
the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.
Our Hired Girl
© James Whitcomb Riley
Our hired girl, she's 'Lizabuth Ann;
An' she can cook best things to eat!
The Walrus and the Carpenter
© Lewis Carroll
"The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright —
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
The New Colossus
© Emma Lazarus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Madeline. A Domestic Tale
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
My child, my child, thou leav'st me!âI shall hear
The gentle voice no more that blest mine ear
The Yellowhammer's Nest
© John Clare
Just by the wooden brig a bird flew up,
Frit by the cowboy as he scrambled down
The Song of a Prison
© Henry Lawson
Tis a song of the weary warders, whom prisoners call the screws
A class of men who I fancy would cleave to the Evening News.
They look after their treasures sadly. By the screw of their keys they are known,
And they screw them many times daily before they draw their own.
The Sparrow's Fall
© Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
And lifted the gloomy shadows
That overspread my life,
And flooding my home with gladness,
Made me a happy wife.
