Life poems
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The Bonfire
© Robert Frost
Scare you. But if you shrink from being scared,
What would you say to war if it should come?
Thats what for reasons I should like to know
If you can comfort me by any answer.
Almon Keefer
© James Whitcomb Riley
Ah, Almon Keefer! what a boy you were,
With your back-tilted hat and careless hair,
And open, honest, fresh, fair face and eyes
With their all-varying looks of pleased surprise
And joyous interest in flower and tree,
And poising humming-bird, and maundering bee.
Pea Brush
© Robert Frost
I WALKED down alone Sunday after church
To the place where John has been cutting trees
To see for myself about the birch
He said I could have to bush my peas.
An Apple Tree In France
© Edgar Albert Guest
An apple tree beside the way,
Drinking the sunshine day by day
Misgiving
© Robert Frost
All crying, 'We will go with you, O Wind!'
The foliage follow him, leaf and stem;
But a sleep oppresses them as they go,
And they end by bidding them as they go,
And they end by bidding him stay with them.
Conversation
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
We were a baker's dozen in the house-six women and six men
Besides myself; and all of us had known
I. The Witch of Coös
© Robert Frost
I stayed the night for shelter at a farm
Behind the mountains, with a mother and son,
Two old-believers. They did all the talking.
Written to be Spoken by Mrs. Siddons
© Samuel Rogers
Yes, 'tis the pulse of life! my fears were vain!
I wake, I breathe, and am myself again.
Still in this nether world; no seraph yet!
Nor walks my spirit, when the sun is set,
An Empty Threat
© Robert Frost
I stay;
But it isn't as if
There wasn't always Hudson's Bay
And the fur trade,
A Star in a Stoneboat
© Robert Frost
Never tell me that not one star of all
That slip from heaven at night and softly fall
Has been picked up with stones to build a wall.
A Hillside Thaw
© Robert Frost
To think to know the country and now know
The hillside on the day the sun lets go
Ten million silver lizards out of snow!
As often as I've seen it done before
An Epistle Of The Right Honourable Sir Robert Walpole
© Richard Savage
As the rich cloud by due degrees expands,
And show'rs down plenty thick on sundry lands,
Thy spreading worth in various bounty fell,
Made genius flourish, and made art excel.
A Fountain, a Bottle, a Donkey's Ears, and Some Books
© Robert Frost
Old Davis owned a solid mica mountain
In Dalton that would someday make his fortune.
There'd been some Boston people out to see it:
And experts said that deep down in the mountain
The mica sheets were big as plate-glass windows.
He'd like to take me there and show it to me.
To E.T.
© Robert Frost
I slumbered with your poems on my breast
Spread open as I dropped them half-read through
Like dove wings on a figure on a tomb
To see, if in a dream they brought of you,
Raking by Tania Rochelle: American Life in Poetry #87 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
The first poem we ran in this column was by David Allan Evans of South Dakota, about a couple washing windows together. You can find that poem and all the others on our website, www.americanlifeinpoetry.org. Here Tania Rochelle of Georgia presents us with another couple, this time raking leaves. I especially like the image of the pair âbent like parentheses/ around their brittle little lawn.â?
Today Is Sunday
© Nazim Hikmet
Today is Sunday.
For the first time they took me out into the sun today.
The Trial by Existence
© Robert Frost
Even the bravest that are slain
Shall not dissemble their surprise
On waking to find valor reign,
Even as on earth, in paradise;
The Times Table
© Robert Frost
More than halfway up the pass
Was a spring with a broken drinking glass,
And whether the farmer drank or not
His mare was sure to observe the spot
The Onset
© Robert Frost
Always the same, when on a fated night
At last the gathered snow lets down as white
As may be in dark woods, and with a song
It shall not make again all winter long
Orpheus
© Edith Wharton
Love will make men dare to die for their beloved. . . Of this
Alcestis is a monument . . . for she was willing to lay down her
life for her husband . . . and so noble did this appear to the gods
that they granted her the privilege of returning to earth . . . but
Orpheus, the son of OEagrus, they sent empty away. . .
