Work poems
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Christabel
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
She stole along, she nothing spoke,
The sighs she heaved were soft and low,
And naught was green upon the oak
But moss and rarest misletoe:
She kneels beneath the huge oak tree,
And in silence prayeth she.
How?
© Franklin Pierce Adams
How can I work when you play the piano,
Feminine person above?
How can I think, with your ceaseless soprano
Singing: "Ah, Love--"?
Fancy
© Jean Ingelow
O fancy, if thou flyest, come back anon,
Thy fluttering wings are soft as love's first word,
Olney Hymn 13: The Covenant
© William Cowper
The Lord proclaims His grace abroad!
"Behold, I change your hearts of stone;
Each shall renounce his idol-god,
And serve, henceforth, the Lord alone.
John Barleycorn: A Ballad
© Robert Burns
There was three kings unto the east,
Three kings both great and high,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn should die.
The Fair Youth Sonnets (18 - 77, 87 - 126)
© William Shakespeare
Comprising the largest grouping of poems, the Fair Youth sonnets are addressed to the same young man in the Procreation Sonnets. But their themes and subjects are more drastically varied.
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The French Revolution as It Appeared to Enthusiasts at Its Commencement
© André Breton
Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
A Winter Hymn
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
O WEARY winds! O winds that wail!
O'er desert fields and ice-locked rills!
O heavens that brood so cold and pale
Above the frozen Norland hills!
House of Shadows. Home of Simile
© Eavan Boland
One afternoon of summer rain
my hand skimmed a shelf and I found
an old florin. Ireland, 1950.
The Deserted Village
© Mark van Doren
Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheared the labouring swain,
To Toussaint LOuverture
© William Wordsworth
TOUSSAINT, the most unhappy man of men!
Whether the whistling Rustic tend his plough
Within thy hearing, or thy head be now
Pillowed in some deep dungeon's earless den;--
The Scholar-Gipsy
© Matthew Arnold
Go, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill;
Go, shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes!
A Summer Pastoral
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
It's hot to-day. The bees is buzzin'
Kinder don't-keer-like aroun'
A Historical Footnote to Consider Only When All Else Fails
© Nikki Giovanni
Why, LBJ has made it
quite clear to me
He doesn’t give a
Good goddamn what I think
(else why would he continue to masterbate in public?)
The Picture, Or The Lover's Resolution
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Through weeds and thorns, and matted underwood
I force my way; now climb, and now descend
O'er rocks, or bare or mossy, with wild foot
Crushing the purple whorts; while oft unseen,
O my pa-pa
© Richard Jones
Our fathers have formed a poetry workshop.
They sit in a circle of disappointment over our fastballs
Imaginary Suicides
© Kostas Karyotakis
They turn the key in the door, take out
their old, well-hidden letters,
read them quietly, then drag
their feet a final time.
An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician
© Robert Browning
Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs,
The not-incurious in God's handiwork
