Smile poems
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Lines In Memory Of Edmund Morris
© Duncan Campbell Scott
How shall we transmit in tendril-like images,
The tenuous tremor in the tissues of ether,
Before the round of colour buds like the dome of a shrine,
The preconscious moment when love has fluttered in the bosom,
Before it begins to ache?
Winter Roses
© John Greenleaf Whittier
My garden roses long ago
Have perished from the leaf-strewn walks;
Their pale, fair sisters smile no more
Upon the sweet-brier stalks.
The Recluse - Book First
© William Wordsworth
HOME AT GRASMERE
ONCE to the verge of yon steep barrier came
A roving school-boy; what the adventurer's age
Hath now escaped his memory--but the hour,
Paradise Lost: Book IX (1674)
© Patrick Kavanagh
To whom the Virgin Majestie of Eve,
As one who loves, and some unkindness meets,
With sweet austeer composure thus reply'd,
Spirit's Song
© Louisa Stuart Costello
'Tis thy Spirit calls theecome away!
I have sought thee through the weary day,
I have dived in the glassy stream for thee
I have gone wherever a spirit might be:
To Mr. Pope
© Thomas Parnell
To praise, and still with just respect to praise
A Bard triumphant in immortal bays,
The Learn'd to show, the Sensible commend,
Yet still preserve the province of the Friend,
What life, what vigour must the lines require?
What Music tune them, what affection fire?
Cold
© Madison Julius Cawein
A mist that froze beneath the moon and shook
Minutest frosty fire in the air.
January 22nd, Missolonghi
© Lord Byron
On this Day I Complete my Thirty-Sixth Year
'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it hath ceased to move:
Yet though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!
The Little Town O' Tailholt
© James Whitcomb Riley
You kin boast about yer cities, and their stiddy growth and size,
And brag about yer County-seats, and business enterprise,
And railroads, and factories, and all sich foolery--
But the little Town o' Tailholt is big enough fer me!
Information
© William Rose Benet
He had green eyes, that excellent seer,
And little peaks to either ear.
He sat there, and I sat here.
Fresh Air
© Kenneth Koch
3
Summer in the trees! “It is time to strangle several bad poets.”
The yellow hobbyhorse rocks to and fro, and from the chimney
Drops the Strangler! The white and pink roses are slightly agitated by the struggle,
But afterwards beside the dead “poet” they cuddle up comfortingly against their vase. They are safer now, no one will compare them to the sea.
Little Brown Baby
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes,
Come to yo' pappy an' set on his knee.
A Sonnet, to the Noble Lady, the Lady Mary Wroth
© Benjamin Jonson
I that have been a lover, and could show it,
Though not in these, in rhymes not wholly dumb,
Canada To England
© Isabella Valancy Crawford
If destiny is writ on night's dusk scroll,
Then youngest stars are dropping from the hand
Of the Creator, sowing on the sky
My name in seeds of light. Ages will watch
Those seeds expand to suns, such as the tree
Bears on its boughs, which grows in Paradise.
The Laws of Motion
© Nikki Giovanni
(for Harlem Magic)
The laws of science teach us a pound of gold weighs as
much as a pound of flour though if dropped from any
undetermined height in their natural state one would
reach bottom and one would fly away
Union Square
© Sara Teasdale
With the man I love who loves me not,
I walked in the street-lamps' flare;
We watched the world go home that night
In a flood through Union Square.
