All Poems
/ page 1976 of 3210 /
On Donne's Poetry
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots,
Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots;
Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue,
Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw.
An Ember Picture
© James Russell Lowell
How strange are the freaks of memory!
The lessons of life we forget,
While a trifle, a trick of color,
In the wonderful web is set,--
Family Reunion by Catherine Barnett: American Life in Poetry #67 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004
© Ted Kooser
One in a series of elegies by New York City poet Catherine Barnett, this poem describes the first gathering after death has shaken a family to its core. The father tries to help his grown daughter forget for a moment that, a year earlier, her own two daughters were killed, that she is now alone. He's heartsick, realizing that drinking can only momentarily ease her pain, a pain and love that takes hold of the entire family. The children who join her in the field are silent guardians.
Family Reunion
My father scolded us all for refusing his liquor.
He kept buying tequila, and steak for the grill,
until finally we joined him, making margaritas,
cutting the fat off the bone.
To E. Fitzgerald: Tiresias
© Alfred Tennyson
. OLD FITZ, who from your suburb grange,
Where once I tarried for a while,
Christian Burial.
© Robert Crawford
No Christian burial? Ah, he'll sleep as sound
As the old Jew who, by Beth-Peor, had
God for a sexton.
He had his Dream
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
He had his dream, and all through life,
Worked up to it through toil and strife.
Verses, To William Lyttleton, Esq.
© William Shenstone
How blithely pass'd the summer's day!
How bright was every flower!
While friends arrived in circles gay,
To visit Damon's bower!
HERE I sit with my paper
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
HERE I sit with my paper, my pen my ink,
First of this thing, and that thing,
An Essay on Man: Epistle II
© Alexander Pope
Superior beings, when of late they saw
A mortal Man unfold all Nature's law,
Admir'd such wisdom in an earthly shape,
And showed a Newton as we shew an Ape.
The Road To Ruin
© Siegfried Sassoon
My hopes, my messengers I sent
Across the ten years continent
Of Time. In dream I saw them go--
It is with awe
© Matsuo Basho
It is with awe
That I beheld
Fresh leaves, green leaves,
Bright in the sun.
There is a Way
© Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
There is a way between voice and presence
where information flows.
In disciplined silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes.
The Fairy Changeling
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
Their muttered prayers, "He has no luck!
For sure the woman is fairy-struck,
To leave her child a fairy guest,
And love the weak, wee wean the best!"
To Lydia Maria Child
© John Greenleaf Whittier
The sweet spring day is glad with music,
But through it sounds a sadder strain;
The worthiest of our narrowing circle
Sings Loring's dirges o'er again.
Veterans of the Seventies by Marvin Bell: American Life in Poetry #146 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureat
© Ted Kooser
Post-traumatic stress disorder is a new name for âshell shock,â? a term once applied only to military veterans. Here the poet Marvin Bell describes a group of these emotionally damaged soldiers, gathered together for breakfast. I'd guess that just about everybody who reads this column has known one or two men like these.
Veterans of the Seventies
Bud Discusses Cleanliness
© Edgar Albert Guest
First thing in the morning, last I hear at night,
Get it when I come from school: "My, you look a sight!
Go upstairs this minute, an' roll your sleeves up high
An' give your hands a scrubbing and wipe 'em till they're dry!
Now don't stand there and argue, and never mind your tears!
And this time please remember to wash your neck and ears."
