All Poems
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Back Then by Trish Carpo : American Life in Poetry #246 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Childhood is too precious a part of life to lose before we have to, but our popular culture all too often yanks our little people out of their innocence. Here is a poem by Trish Crapo, of Leyden, Massachusetts, that captures a moment of that innocence.
Back Then
Ballad
© John Clare
A faithless shepherd courted me,
He stole away my liberty.
When my poor heart was strange to men,
He came and smiled and stole it then.
Departure
© Sylvia Plath
The figs on the fig tree in the yard are green;
Green, also, the grapes on the green vine
Shading the brickred porch tiles.
The money's run out.
The Joy Of The Hills
© Edwin Markham
I ride on the hills, I forgive, I forget
Life's hoard of regret
All the terror and pain
Of the chafing chain.
Grind on, O cities, grind;
I leave you a blur behind.
The River Of Sleep
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
There are curious isles in the River of Sleep,
Curious isles without number.
We'll visit them all as we leisurely creep
Down the winding stream whose current is deep,
In our beautiful barge of Slumber.
The Innocent Thief
© William Cowper
Not a flower can be found in the fields,
Or the spot that we till for our pleasure,
From the largest to the least, but it yields
The bee never wearied a treasure.
The Two Ships
© Francis Bret Harte
As I stand by the cross on the lone mountain's crest,
Looking over the ultimate sea,
God permit industrious angels
© Emily Dickinson
God permit industrious angels
Afternoons to play.
I met one, - forgot my school-mates,
All, for him, straightaway.
It Happens In The B.R. Families
© Franklin Pierce Adams
'Twas on the shores that round our coast
From Deal to Newport lie
That I roused from sleep in a huddled heap
An elderly wealthy guy.
The Blessed Damozel
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The blessed damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of Heaven;
Our Dum'd Animals
© Franklin Pierce Adams
What time I seek my virtuous couch to steal
Some surcease from the labours of the day,
Ere silence like a poultice comes to heal--
In short, when I prepare to hit the hay;
Ere slumber's chains (I quote from Moore) have bound me,
I hear a lot of noises all around me.
The Hares, A Fable.
© James Beattie
Mild was the morn, the sky serene,
The jolly hunting band convene,
The beagle's breast with ardour burns,
The bounding steed the champaign spurns,
And Fancy oft the game descries
Through the hound's nose, and huntsman's eyes.
On An Engraving Of Hindoo Temples
© Letitia Elizabeth Landon
LITTLE the present careth for the past,
Too little'tis not well!
For careless ones we dwell
Beneath the mighty shadow it has cast.
The Old Farm
© Madison Julius Cawein
Dormered and verandaed, cool,
Locust-girdled, on the hill;
Stained with weather-wear, and dull-
Streak'd with lichens; every sill
Thresholding the beautiful;
Homer's Hymn To Venus
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
Muse, sing the deeds of golden Aphrodite,
Who wakens with her smile the lulled delight
Of sweet desire, taming the eternal kings
Of Heaven, and men, and all the living things
His Stenographer
© Harriet Monroe
Does she love you?well, I wonder
Married twenty years, they say!
You, so bald and fat and funny,
Grubbing like a mole for money?
Guess she likes to spend the plunder
Geeshe knows the way!
