All Poems
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Not Forgotten
© Toi Derricotte
I love the way the black ants use their dead.
They carry them off like warriors on their steel
Portico
© Rubén Dario
I am the singer who of late put by
The verse azulean and the chant profane,
Across whose nights a rossignol would cry
And prove himself a lark at morn again.
Convergences
© Donald Hall
At sixteen he dismisses his mother with contempt.
She hears with dread the repulsive wave’s approach
and her fifty-year-old body smothers under water.
The Prayer Of Nature
© George Gordon Byron
Father of Light! great God of Heaven!
Hear'st thou the accents of despair?
Can guilt like man's be e'er forgiven?
Can vice atone for crimes by prayer?
Barbara Allen
© Pierre Reverdy
In Scarlet town, where I was born,
There was a fair maid dwellin’,
Made every youth cry Well-a-way!
Her name was Barbara Allen.
Gay Chaps at the Bar
© Gwendolyn Brooks
This poem originally appeared in the November 1944 issue of Poetry. See it in its original context.
Death The Leveller
© James Shirley
The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against Fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Kaas Hunting
© Rudyard Kipling
His spots are the joy of the Leopard: his horns are the Buffalos pride.
Be clean, for the strength of the hunter is known by the gloss of his hide.
Salve Saturnia Tellus
© Oscar Wilde
I reached the Alps: the soul within me burned
Italia, my Italia, at thy name:
A Supplement of an Imperfect Copy of Verses of Mr. William Shakespear’s, by the Author
© Sir John Suckling
One of her hands one of her cheeks lay under,
Cosening the pillow of a lawful kiss,
Which therefore swell’d, and seem’d to part asunder,
As angry to be robb’d of such a bliss!
The one look’d pale and for revenge did long,
While t’other blush’d, ’cause it had done the wrong.
They Betrayed Virtue and the Last Came First...
© Kostas Karyotakis
They betrayed virtue and the last came first.
With money the heart is taken and the friend is appraised.
If once it was shimmering in the mind, in the eyes, in everything,
life is already dark and unfeasible like a legend,
it's bitterness on the lip.
To Sir Henry Cary
© Benjamin Jonson
That neither fame nor love might wanting be
To greatness, Cary, I sing that and thee;
A Psalm For New Years Eve
© Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
A FRIEND stands at the door;
In either tight-closed hand
Hiding rich gifts, three hundred and three score:
Waiting to strew them daily o'er the land
Kalamazoo
© Roald Dahl
Once, in the city of Kalamazoo,
The gods went walking, two and two,
With the friendly phoenix, the stars of Orion,
The speaking pony and singing lion.
For in Kalamazoo in a cottage apart
Lived the girl with the innocent heart.
Toil's Sweet Content
© Sam Walter Foss
The Man of Questions paused and stood
Before the Man of Toil,
And asked, "Are you content, my man,
To dig here in the soil?
The Town Dump
© Howard Nemerov
“The art of our necessities is strange,
That can make vile things precious.”
Dialogue Souldn't Cease (With English Translation)
© Ali Sardar Jafri
GUFTGOO BAnD NA HO
BAAT SE BAAT CHALEY
SUBH TAK SHAAM-E-MULAAQAAT CHALEY
HUM PE HAnSTI HUEE
YE TAAROn BHARI RAAT CHALEY
A Lesson In Humility
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Where is thy greater virtue? Thinkest thou sin
Is but crime's record on the judgment seat?
Or must thou wait for death to be bowed down?
Oh for a righteous reading which should join
Thy deeds together in an accusing sheet,
And leave thee if thou couldst, to face men's frown!
