All Poems
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The Sheep
© Ellis Parker Butler
The Sheep adorns the landscape rural
And is both singular and plural
It gives grammarians the creeps
To hear one say, "A flock of sheeps."
To One In A Garden
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
If I were other than, alas, I am,
A soul in strife, whom banded foemen vex,
If toil were folly and good deeds a sham,
And hydra wrong had shed its serpent necks,
Silent Music by Floyd Skloot: American Life in Poetry #94 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
While many of the poems we feature in this column are written in open forms, that's not to say I don't respect good writing done in traditional meter and rhyme. But a number of contemporary poets, knowing how a rigid attachment to form can take charge of the writing and drag the poet along behind, will choose, say, the traditional villanelle form, then relax its restraints through the use of broken rhythm and inexact rhymes. I'd guess that if I weren't talking about it, you might not notice, reading this poem by Floyd Skloot, that you were reading a sonnet.
Silent Music
Homeward Going
© Roderic Quinn
GRAY smoke in the green leaves,
Someone homeward going,
No sound in the lone hills . . .
Only cattle lowing.
Limerick: There was a young person whose history
© Edward Lear
There was a young person whose history
Was always considered a mystery.
She sate in a ditch,
Although no one knew which,
And composed a small treatise on history.
Joe Golightly - Or, The First Lord's Daughter
© William Schwenck Gilbert
A tar, but poorly prized,
Long, shambling, and unsightly,
Thrashed, bullied, and despised,
Was wretched JOE GOLIGHTLY.
Phantasmagoria Canto VI ( Dyscomfyture )
© Lewis Carroll
As one who strives a hill to climb,
Who never climbed before:
Who finds it, in a little time,
Grow every moment less sublime,
And votes the thing a bore:
Sonnet V. To the River Tweed.
© William Lisle Bowles
O TWEED! a stranger, that with wand'ring feet
O'er hill and dale has journey'd many a mile,
The Voyageur
© Susie Frances Harrison
LIKE the swarthy son of some tropic shore
He sleeps, with his olive bosom bared,
He sleepsin his earrings of brassy ore.
Betrothal Night
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
THROUGH golden languors of low glimmering light,
Deep eyes, o'erbrimmed with passion's sacred wine,
Heart-perfumed tears--yearning towards me, shine
Like stars made lovelier by faint mists at night;
The Eagles
© Jones Very
THE eagles gather on the place of death
So thick the ground is spotted with their wings,
Friendship
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Dear friend, I pray thee, if thou wouldst be proving
Thy strong regard for me,
Make me no vows. Lip-service is not loving;
Let thy faith speak for thee.
Chanson Du Rouet
© Leconte de Lisle
Ô mon cher rouet, ma blanche bobine,
Je vous aime mieux que l'or et l'argent!
Vous me donnez tout, lait, beurre et farine,
Et la gai logis, et le vêtement.
Je vous aime mieux que l'or et l'argent!
Ô mon cher rouet, ma blanche bobine!
To the Tune of the Coventry Carol
© Stevie Smith
The nearly right
And yet not quite
In love is wholly evil
And every heart
That loves in part
Is mortgaged to the devil
On Station Farewells
© Edgar Albert Guest
IN parting from a dear old friend for months, perhaps, or years,
There's bound to be some bitter sobs, an' generally tears,
"The Greeks planned for war"
© Osip Emilevich Mandelstam
The Greeks planned for war
On the delightful island of Salamis.
From the harbor of Athens, you could see it
Seized by the enemy's hand.
