All Poems
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Gertrude
© Madison Julius Cawein
When first I gazed on GERTRUDE'S face,
Beheld her loveliness and grace;
Dirge
© Charles Stuart Calverley
"Dr. Birch's young friends will reassemble to-day, Feb. 1st."
White is the wold, and ghostly
The dank and leafless trees;
And 'M's and 'N's are mostly
The Black Shawl
© Alexander Pushkin
As of senses bereft, at a black shawl I stare,
And my chill heart is tortured with deadly despair.
Ghost Villanelle by Dan Lechay: American Life in Poetry #187 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-20
© Ted Kooser
I thought that we'd celebrate Halloween with an appropriate poem, and Iowa poet Dan Lechay's seems just right. The drifting veils of rhyme and meter disclose a ghost, or is it a ghost?
Ghost Villanelle
We never saw the ghost, though he was thereâ
we knew from the raindrops tapping on the eaves.
We never saw him, and we didn't care.
Sonnet 60: :Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore..."
© William Shakespeare
Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
The Lady, the Knight, and the Friar
© Thomas Love Peacock
O cavalier! what dost thou here,
Thy tuneful vigils keeping;
While the northern star looks cold from far
And half the world is sleeping?
Sonnet X
© Caroline Norton
TO TAGLIONI.
SPIRIT of Grace, whose airy footsteps fall
So lightly! sure the looker-on must be
Most dull of fancy who doth not recall
A Legend Of The Lily
© Madison Julius Cawein
Pale as a star that shines through rain
Her face was seen at the window-pane,
Her sad, frail face that watched in vain.
Babette's Love
© William Schwenck Gilbert
BABETTE she was a fisher gal,
With jupon striped and cap in crimps.
She passed her days inside the Halle,
Or catching little nimble shrimps.
Yet she was sweet as flowers in May,
With no professional bouquet.
The Comedian
© Edgar Albert Guest
Whatever the task and whatever the risk, wherever
the flag's in air,
Hopping Frog, Hop Here And Be Seen
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
Hopping frog, hop here and be seen,
I'll not pelt you with stick or stone:
Ausonius Lib. Epig.
© Richard Lovelace
Trinarii quodam currentem in littoris ora
Ante canes leporem caeruleus rapuit;
At lepus: in me omnis terrae pelagique rapina est,
Forsitan et coeli, si canis astra tenet.
When the Bear Comes Back Again
© Henry Lawson
Oh, the scene is wide an dreary an the sun is settin red,
An the grey-black sky of winters comin closer overhead.
Humanity
© Charles Harpur
I dreamed I was a sculptor, and had wrought
Out of a towering adamantine crag
The Maid Vor My Bride
© William Barnes
Ah! don't tell o' maïdens! the woone vor my bride
Is little lik' too many maïdens bezide,--
Not brantèn, nor spitevul, nor wild; she've a mind
To think o' what's right, an' a heart to be kind.
In Ambush
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
THE crescent moon, with pallid glow,
Swept backward like a bended bow:
Across, a shaft of phantom light
Thrilled, like an arrow winged for flight.
