All Poems
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O City, Look The Eastward Way
© Enid Derham
O CITY, look the Eastward way!
Beyond thy roofs of shadowy red and grey
Ode On The Present Times, 27th January 1795
© Amelia Opie
Lo! Winter drives his horrors round;
Wide o'er the rugged soil they fly;
Epilogue
© Arthur Symons
Little waking hour of life out of sleep!
When I consider the many million years
Fand, A Feerie Act I
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Eithne's Spinning Song
Things of the Earth and things of the Air,
Strengths that we feel though we cannot share,
Shapes that are round us and everywhere.
In Summer
© Madison Julius Cawein
When in dry hollows, hilled with hay,
The vesper-sparrow sings afar;
The Pale Woman
© Arthur Symons
I spoke to the pale and heavy-lidded woman, and said:
O pale and heavy-lidded woman, why is your check
Small Things and Great
© Piet Hein
He that lets
the small things bind him
leaves the great
undone behind him.
The Chameleon
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
I KNOW that I'm like, yet I am not, a snake!
'Tis true that I glisten by boil and by brake,
That I dart out and in, can glide, quiver and coil
As swift as the lightning, but softer than oil,
Yet a creature more innocent never was drawn
From the gray of cool shadows to bask in the dawn!
Judging Distances
© Henry Reed
Not only how far away, but the way that you say it
Is very important. Perhaps You may never get
The knack of judging a distance, but at least you know
How to report on a landscape: the central sector,
The right of the arc and that, which we had last Tuesday,
And at least you know
Rehab by Thomas Reiter : American Life in Poetry #277 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Here’s hoping that very few of our readers have to go through cardiac rehab, which Thomas Reiter of New Jersey captures in this poem, but if they do, here’s hoping that they come through it feeling wildly alive and singing at the tops of their lungs.
Rehab
We wear harnesses like crossing guards.
Lines Written By The Seaside (II)
© Frances Anne Kemble
If I believed in death, how sweet a bed
For such a blessed slumber could I find,
Impromptu In The Assize Court, Nottingham
© Horace Smith
Thanks for an hour of laughing
In a world that is growing old;
The Dictaphone Bard
© Franklin Pierce Adams
We were crowded in the cabin comma
Not a soul would dare to sleep dash comma
It was midnight on the waters comma
And a storm was on the deep period
The Village Girl And Her High-Born Suitor
© Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
O maiden, peerless, come dwell with me,
And bright shall I render thy destiny:
Thou shalt leave thy cot by the green hillside,
To dwell in a palace home of pride,
Where crowding menials, with lowly mien,
Shall attend each wish of their lovely queen.
Christmas Hymn
© Edith Nesbit
O CHRIST, born on the holy day,
I have no gift to give my King;
No flowers grow by my weary way;
I have no birthday song to sing.
Let Me Sing Of What I Know
© William Allingham
A wild west Coast, a little Town,
Where little Folk go up and down,
In the street I met while walking
© Sophus Niels Christen Claussen
In the street I met while walking
Death ... a sight that pleased me so,
auburn locks that told of summer
fair maids skin as white as snow.
Let me live I death requested
in my young hearts pangs of woe!
At the Edge of Town by Don Welch: American Life in Poetry #56 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-20
© Ted Kooser
When I complained about some of the tedious jobs I had as a boy, my mother would tell me, Ted, all work is honorable. In this poem, Don Welch gives us a man who's been fixing barbed wire fences all his life.
At the Edge of Town
Hard to know which is more gnarled,
the posts he hammers staples into
or the blue hummocks which run
across his hands like molehills.
