All Poems
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Sonnet CXXXV: Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will
© William Shakespeare
Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,
And Will to boot, and Will in overplus;
Sonnet XXVI: Look In My Griefs
© Samuel Daniel
Look in my griefs, and blame me not to mourn,
From care to care that leads a life so bad;
Styx
© Robert Duncan
the cold water, the black rushing gleam, the
moving down-rush, wash, gush out over
bed-rock, toiling the boulders in flood,
purling in deeps, broad flashing in falls—
To Aristius Fuscus
© Eugene Field
Fuscus, whoso to good inclines,
And is a faultless liver,
Nor Moorish spear nor bow need fear,
Nor poison-arrowed quiver.
To the Mannequins
© Howard Nemerov
Adorable images,
Plaster of Paris
Lilies of the field,
You are not alive, therefore
Pathos will be out of place.
It sifts from Leaden Sieves - (291)
© Emily Dickinson
It sifts from Leaden Sieves -
It powders all the Wood.
It fills with Alabaster Wool
The Wrinkles of the Road -
The Father of My Country
© Diane Wakoski
All fathers in Western civilization must have
a military origin. The
Esther, A Sonnet Sequence: XLIX
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
I will not tell the secrets of that place.
When Madame Blanche returned to us again
I was kneeling there, while Esther kissed my face
And dried and comforted my tears. O vain
the message of crazy horse
© Paul Celan
i would sit in the center of the world,
the Black Hills hooped around me and
dream of my dancing horse. my wife
The Song of Songs
© King Solomon
The Song of songs, which is Solomon's.
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth:
for thy love is better than wine.
Because of the savor of thy good ointments
thy name is as ointment poured forth,
therefore do the virgins love thee.
Marriage
© Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
No more alone sleeping, no more alone waking,
Thy dreams divided, thy prayers in twain;
Thy merry sisters tonight forsaking,
Never shall we see, maiden, again.
Living: After A Death
© Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
Only to me, my love, only to me.
This cavern underneath the moaning sea;
This long, long life that I alone must tread,
To whom the living seem most like the dead,--
Thou wilt be safe out on the happy shore:
He who in God lives, liveth evermore.
For the Tattooed Man by Sharmila Voorakkara: American Life in Poetry #167 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laur
© Ted Kooser
and each pinned and martyred limb aches for more.
Her memory wraps you like a vise.
How simple the pain that trails and graces
the length of your body. How it fans, blazes,
writes itself over in the blood's tightening sighs,
bruises into wisdom you have no name for.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2005 by Sharmila Voorakkara, whose most recent book of poetry is âFire Wheel,â? Univ. of Akron Press, 2003. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
September, 1819
© André Breton
Departing summer hath assumed
An aspect tenderly illumed,
The gentlest look of spring;
That calls from yonder leafy shade
Unfaded, yet prepared to fade,
A timely carolling.
To My Old Oak Table
© Robert Bloomfield
Friend of my peaceful days! substantial friend,
Whom wealth can never change, nor int'rest bend,
On A Diet
© William Matthews
to the heaven of revisions. Why be
adipose: an expense, etc.,
in a waste, etc.? Something like
the body of the poet’s work, with its
pale shadows, begins to pare and replace
the poet’s body, and isn’t it time?
Amoretti LXXXI: Fayre is my love, when her fayre golden heares
© Edmund Spenser
Fayre is my love, when her fayre golden heares,
With the loose wynd ye waving chance to marke:
Bologna: A Poem About Gold
© James Wright
She looks like only the heavy deep gold
That drags thrones down
All day long on the vine.
Mary in Bologna, sunlight I gathered all morning
And pressed in my hands all afternoon
And drank all day with my golden-breasted
