New-Year's Eve - James Russell Lowell

This is the midnight of the century,

Lullaby - Louisa May Alcott

Now the day is done,
Now the shepherd sun
Drives his white flocks from the sky;
Now the flowers rest
On their mother's breast,
Hushed by her low lullaby.

Anniversaries - Aldous Huxley

Once more the windless days are here,
Quiet of autumn, when the year
Halts and looks backward and draws breath
Before it plunges into death.

Love And Age - Thomas Love Peacock

I play’d with you ’mid cowslips blowing,
When I was six and you were four;
When garlands weaving, flower-balls throwing,
Were pleasures soon to please no more.
Through groves and meads, o’er grass and heather,
With little playmates, to and fro,
We wander’d hand in hand together;
But that was sixty years ago.

The Nativity - Henry Vaughan

Peace? and to all the world? sure, One
And He the Prince of Peace, hath none.

My Little Doll - Charles Kingsley

I once had a sweet little doll, dears,
The prettiest doll in the world;

Journey Of The Magi - T.S. Eliot

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'

[little tree] - ee cummings

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower

Christmas Bells - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

The Garden Year - Sara Coleridge

January brings the snow,
Makes our feet and fingers glow.

I Saw Three Ships - Anonymous

I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas day, on Christmas day;
I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas day in the morning.

The House Of Christmas - G. K. Chesterton

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

When Christmas Comes - Virna Sheard

For thee, my small one--trinkets and new toys,
The wine of life and all its keenest joys,
When Christmas comes.
For me, the broken playthings of the past
That in my folded hands I still hold fast,
When Christmas comes.

Love Came Down at Christmas - Christina Georgina Rossetti

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and angels gave the sign.

The Oxen - Thomas Hardy

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

Christmas: 1915 - Percy MacKaye

Now is the midnight of the nations:

Star Of My Heart - Vachel Lindsay

Star of my heart, I follow from afar.
Sweet Love on high, lead on where shepherds are,
Where Time is not, and only dreamers are.

Home For Christmas — Old Style - Cicely Fox Smith

"I'm goin' to get 'er 'ome
For Christmas," said the skipper
O' the clipper
Flyin' Foam . . .

A Visit from St. Nicholas - Clement Clark Moore

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

Christmas Gifts - Carolyn Wells

Ten Christmas presents standing in a line;
Robert took the bicycle, then there were nine.

Christmas In The Olden Time - Sir Walter Scott

On Christmas-eve the bells were rung;
The damsel donned her kirtle sheen;
The hall was dressed with holly green;
Forth to the wood did merry men go,
To gather in the mistletoe.

At Christmas - Edgar A. Guest

A man is at his finest towards the finish of the year;
He is almost what he should be when the Christmas season's here;
Then he's thinking more of others than be's thought the months before,
And the laughter of his children is a joy worth toiling for.
He is less a selfish creature than at any other time;
When the Christmas spirit rules him he comes close to the sublime.

The Christmas Homes of England - Caroline Hayward

The Christmas homes of England!
How far-famed and how dear;
In bright array they ever stand,
That glad day of the year;
When gathered round the hearth-stone,
The loved ones joyful meet,
With one accord from far and near,
The circle glad to greet.

Christmas At Sea - Robert Louis Stevenson

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could stand;
The wind was a nor'wester, blowing squally off the sea;
And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.

Christmas Bells - Hattie Howard

Ring out, O bells, in joyful chime!
   Again we hail the Christmas time;
In melting, mellow atmosphere,
   The crown and glory of the year.

John Greenleaf Whittier - After Election

THE day's sharp strife is ended now,
Our work is done, God knoweth how!
As on the thronged, unrestful town
The patience of the moon looks down,
I wait to hear, beside the wire,
The voices of its tongues of fire.

Sunday - Thomas Gent

Come, thou blessed day of rest!

In Memoriam, July 19, 1914 - Anna Akhmatova

We aged a hundred years and this descended
In just one hour, as at a stroke.
The summer had been brief and now was ended;
The body of the ploughed plains lay in smoke.

Song: A youth for Jane with ardour sighed... - Amelia Opie

A youth for Jane with ardour sighed,
    The maid with sparkling eye;
But to his vows she still replied,
    ‘I’ll hear you by and by.’

Hot Sun, Cool Fire - George Peele

Hot sun, cool fire, tempered with sweet air,
Black shade, fair nurse, shadow my white hair.

Song of the Little Cripple at the Street Corner - Rainer Maria Rilke

Read the translator's notes
Maybe my soul’s all right.
But my body’s all wrong,
All bent and twisted,
All this that hurts me so.

Student Taper - James Stephens

When
- At end of moon,
At end of day -
My lamp is lit,

The Ballad of Sally in our Alley - Henry Carey

Of all the Girls that are so smart
There’s none like pretty SALLY,
She is the Darling of my Heart,
And she lives in our Alley.
There is no Lady in the Land
Is half so sweet as SALLY,
She is the Darling of my Heart,
And she lives in our Alley.

Take, Oh, Take Those Lips Away - John Fletcher

Take, oh, take those lips away
That so sweetly were forsworn

The Arrow - William Butler Yeats

I thought of your beauty, and this arrow,
Made out of a wild thought, is in my marrow.

Agamede’s Song - Arthur Upson

Grow, grow, thou little tree,
His body at the roots of thee;
Since last year’s loveliness in death
The living beauty nourisheth.

People are Legends - Kevin Gilbert

Kill the legend
Butcher it
With your acute cyncicisms
Your paternal superfluities
With your unwise wisdom

The Song of Fionn - Finn MacCool (trad.)

May-day, delightful time! How beautiful the colour!

The Lamb - William Blake

      Little Lamb, who made thee?
        Dost thou know who made thee?

The Green Isle of Lovers - Robert Charles Sands

They say that, afar in the land of the west,
Where the bright golden sun sinks in glory to rest,
Mid ferns where the hunter ne’er ventured to tread,
A fair lake unruffled and sparkling is spread;
Where, lost in his course, the rapt Indian discovers,
In distance seen dimly, the green Isle of Lovers.

Spring - Thomas Nashe

Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year’s pleasant king;
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing—
     Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

The Ordinary Man - Robert Service

If you and I should chance to meet,
I guess you wouldn't care;
I'm sure you'd pass me in the street
As if I wasn't there;
You'd never look me in the face,
My modest mug to scan,
Because I'm just a commonplace
      And Ordinary Man.

Corrymeela - Moira O’Neill

Over here in England I’m helpin’ wi’ the hay,
And I wisht I was in Ireland the livelong day;
Weary on the English hay, an’ sorra take the wheat!
Och! Corrymeela, an’ the blue sky over it.

Eileen Aroon - Gerald Griffin

When, like the early rose,
   Eileen aroon!
Beauty in childhood blows,
   Eileen aroon!
When, like a diadem,
Buds blush around the stem,
Which is the fairest gem?
   Eileen aroon!

The Magic Flower - E. Nesbit

Through many days and many days
The seed of love lay hidden close;

Presence - T.E. Brown

Expecting him, my door was open wide:
   Then I looked round
   If any lack of service might be found,
And saw him at my side:
   How entered, by what secret stair,
   I know not, knowing only he was there.

---

T.E. Brown (1830 - 1897) Isle of Man, England

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43) - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Karolin’s Song - Ben Jonson

Though I am young, and cannot tell,
Either what love, or death is well,

Manchester TRAFFIC - Mark Stubbs

There once was a project at Manchester Met
To transform curriculum was the goal that we set
Rewriting every module was the name of the game
Enhancing assessment for learning, our overall aim

When You And I Grow Up - Kate Greenaway

When you and I
Grow up–Polly–

Evanescence - Angelina Weld Grimke

You are like a pale purple flower
In the blue spring dusk

Words on a train - Bruce Levitan

On the commuter train home
    listening to two young people
        slagging off their friends:
They talked in consonant free jargon,
    not an H or a T to be heard --
        but the invective was clear and rough.

Would it be the same in Rome?
    Do youths descend from Dante's steeple
        to incoherently speak? The same trends
across our world -- really so far gone
    that we might as well be a herd
        that speaks only in acidic guff?

Would Nietzsche include in his tome
    of humanity's idiocy and evil,
        thoughts on how to cleanse
or how to kill the dragon?
    How far must the spoken word
        be destroyed before we've had enough?

---

Bruce Levitan (born 1955) England (born: Kenya)

We Waves - August Strindberg

We, we waves,
That are rocking the winds
To rest—
Green cradles, we waves!

I Do Not Know - Chihwan Yu

Whose footprint is that paulonia leaf
That drops softly, rousing ripples in the windless air?
whose face is that blue sky
Glimpsed between the threatening, dark clouds
Blown by the west wind after a long rain?

A Good Night - Francis Quarles

   Close now thine eyes and rest secure;

The Enchantment - Thomas Otway

I did but look and love awhile,
    ’Twas but for one half-hour;
Then to resist I had no will,
    And now I have no power.

Days - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,

The Happy Man - G. K. Chesterton

To teach the grey earth like a child,
   To bid the heavens repent,
I only ask from Fate the gift
   Of one man well content.

Afternoon On A Hill - Edna St. Vincent Millay

I will be the gladdest thing
   Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
   And not pick one.

To a Sea Shell - Hubert Church

Friend of my chamber—O thou spiral shell
That murmurest of the ever-murmuring sea!

Flesh - Mary Eliza Fullerton

I have seen a gum-tree,
Scarred by the blaze
Of the pioneer axe,
Mend after long days;
Lip to lip shut
Of the separate bark,
Till the gape of the wound
Was a vanishing mark.

Why I Love Them - Mary Alice Walton

I would tell thee of Stella, how she made glad the hours,
So oft calling mother with strewn wreaths and flowers,
Blue eyes fondly glancing, and gleefully dance,
While singing so gayly or skipping, perchance.

A Silent Mouth - Cathal O’Byrne

O little green leaf on the bough, you hear the lark in morn,
You hear the grey feet of the wind stir in the shimmering corn,
You hear, low down in the grass,
The Singing Sidhe as they pass,
Do you ever hear, O little green flame,
My loved one calling, whispering my name?

Fluffy, A Cat - R. C. Lehmann

So now your tale of years is done,
Old Fluff, my friend, and you have won,
Beyond our land of mist and rain,
Your way to the Elysian plain,
Where through the shining hours of heat
A cat may bask and lap and eat;
Where goldfish glitter in the streams,
And mice refresh your waking dreams,
And all, in fact, is planned—and that’s
Its great delight—to please the cats.

Gardener's Prayer - Karel Matej Capek Chod

O Lord, grant that in some way
it may rain every day,

Thanks - Henrik Johan Ibsen

Her griefs were the hours
When my struggle was sore,--
Her joys were the powers
That the climber upbore.

The Eagle - Lord Alfred Tennyson

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

The personal, grown-up song of Ynurti Yantune - Lyubov Nenyang

Never in my life have I taken anything
Without asking
Nor have I stolen the tiniest little thing
From anybody

Bridal Eve - E. Nesbit

Good-night, my Heart, my Heart, good-night—
Oh, good and dear and fair,
With lips of life and eyes of light
And roses in your hair.

As Long As We Are Not Alone - Israel Emiot

As long as we are not alone,
as long as we have a partner.
Perhaps a stone also hears,
we shall rejoice,

The Motor Bus - Alfred Denis Godley

What is this that roareth thus?
Can it be a Motor Bus?

A Word To The 'Elect' - Anne Brontë

You may rejoice to think YOURSELVES secure;
You may be grateful for the gift divine--
That grace unsought, which made your black hearts pure,
And fits your earth-born souls in Heaven to shine.

Brer Rabbit, You’s De Cutes’ Of ’Em All - James Weldon Johnson

Once der was a meetin’ in de wilderness,
All de critters of creation dey was dar;
Brer Rabbit, Brer ‘Possum, Brer Wolf, Brer Fox,
King Lion, Mister Terrapin, Mister B’ar.
De question fu’ discussion was, “Who is de bigges’ man?”
Dey ‘pinted ole Jedge Owl to decide;
He polished up his spectacles an’ put ’em on his nose,
An’ to the question slowly he replied:

Revelation - Edmund Gosse

 Into the silver night
      She brought with her pale hand
    The topaz lanthorn-light,
  And darted splendour o’er the land;
      Around her in a band,
Ringstraked and pied, the great soft moths came flying,
  And flapping with their mad wings, fann’d
The flickering flame, ascending, falling, dying.

Sonnet 22 - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

When our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,

The Vanity of This World - Andreas Gryphius

Look anywhere you will, the Earth is empty show.
What someone builds today, another soon tears down;
Where now a city stands will be a grassy mound,
A place that only shepherds grazing their flocks will know.

Meeting at Night - Robert Browning

The gray sea and the long black land;

Ossian Sang - Domhnull mac Fhionnlaidh

Sweet is the voice in the land of gold,
    And sweeter the music of birds that soar,
When the cry of the heron is heard on the wold,
    And the waves break softly on Bundatrore.

Christ in creation - Joseph Mary Plunkett

I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.

Korosta Katzina Song - Anonymous (Hopi Indian)

              Yellow butterflies,
Over the blossoming virgin corn,
              With pollen-painted faces
Chase one another in brilliant throng.

The Heart of Auss - John M Wenitong

I've seen the Rock at the break of day
And it seems so right for a place to stay
A place in Law to live love and pass away
For the people of my Dreaming

To Rosemounde - Geoffrey Chaucer

Ma dame, ye ben of al beaute shryne
As fer as cercled is the mapamonde;
For as the cristall glorious ye shyne,
And lyke ruby ben your chekys rounde.
Therwyth ye ben so mery and so iocunde
That at a reuell whan that I se you dance,
It is an oynement vnto my wounde,
Thoght ye to me ne do no daliance.

Fire runs through my body - Anonymous

Fire runs through my body with the pain of loving you,
pain runs through my body with the fires of my love for you.

About My Poetry - Nazim Hikmet

I have no silver-saddled horse to ride,
no inheritance to live on,
neither riches no real-estate —
a pot of honey is all I own.
A pot of honey
red as fire!

Sonnet 101 [Ways apt and new to sing of love I'd find] - Petrarch

Ways apt and new to sing of love I'd find,
Forcing from her hard heart full many a sigh,

A Garden - Andrew Marvell

See how the flowers, as at parade,
Under their colours stand display'd:

The Human Seasons - John Keats

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:

Beyond the Years - Paul Laurence Dunbar

I
Beyond the years the answer lies,
Beyond where brood the grieving skies
    And Night drops tears.
Where Faith rod-chastened smiles to rise
    And doff its fears,
And carping Sorrow pines and dies—
    Beyond the years.

I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone - Rainer Maria Rilke

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
     enough
to truly consecrate the hour.

Kubla Khan - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
    Down to a sunless sea.

The Elephant is Slow to Mate - D. H. Lawrence

The elephant, the huge old beast,
      is slow to mate;
he finds a female, they show no haste
      they wait

A Dream - Edgar Allan Poe

In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.

The hand that signed the paper - Dylan Thomas

The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.

Bethsabe's song - George Peele

Hot sun, cool fire, tempered with sweet air,

My lute awake - Sir Thomas Wyatt

My lute awake, perform the last
Labour, that thou and I shall waste,
And end that I have now begun:
And when this song is sung and past,
My lute! be still, for I have done.

To an Old Lady - William Empson

Ripeness is all; her in her cooling planet
Revere; do not presume to think her wasted.
Project her no projectile, plan nor man it;
Gods cool in turn, by the sun long outlasted.

Song - Richard Watson Dixon

The feathers of the willow
Are half of them grown yellow
Above the swelling stream;
And ragged are the bushes,
And rusty now the rushes,
And wild the clouded gleam.

Love in a Life - Robert Browning

Room after room,
I hunt the house through
We inhabit together.
Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her,
Next time, herself!—not the trouble behind her
Left in the curtain, the couch's perfume!
As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew,—
Yon looking-glass gleamed at the wave of her feather.

Thanks - W. S. Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
smiling by the windows looking out
in our directions

That Sure is My Little Dog - Eleanor Lerman

Yes, indeed, that is my house that I am carrying around
on my back like a bullet-proof shell and yes, that sure is
my little dog walking a hard road in hard boots.

A Poem For The End Of The Century - Czesław Miłosz

When everything was fine
And the notion of sin had vanished
And the earth was ready
In universal peace
To consume and rejoice
Without creeds and utopias,

Believing in Iron - Yusef Komunyakaa

The hills my brothers & I created
Never balanced, & it took years
To discover how the world worked.

The Gladness of Nature - William Cullen Bryant

Is this a time to be cloudy and sad,
When our mother Nature laughs around;
When even the deep blue heavens look glad,
And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground?

Benediction - Sister Ruth Fox

May God bless us with discomfort
at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships,
so that we may live from deep within our hearts.

The Harvest Bow - Seamus Heaney

As you plaited the harvest bow
You implicated the mellowed silence in you
In wheat that does not rust
But brightens as it tightens twist by twist
Into a knowable corona,
A throwaway love-knot of straw.

Untitled [This is what was bequeathed us] - Gregory Orr

This is what was bequeathed us:
This earth the beloved left
And, leaving,
Left to us.

The Changing Light - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The changing light
                    at San Francisco
       is none of your East Coast light

A Drinking Song - W. B. Yeats

Wine comes in at the mouth

And love comes in at the eye;

They had it coming - Steve Turner

The South East Asians,
they were made to cry,
Look at their eyes all
narrowed up and ready to bawl.

Upon Julia's Clothes - Robert Herrick

Whenas in silks my Julia goes,

Jabberwocky - Lewis Carroll

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Ballad - Sonia Sanchez

forgive me if i laugh
you are so sure of love
you are so young
and i too old to learn of love.

Song - H. D.

You are as gold
as the half-ripe grain

A Blessing - James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

Mother Teresa - Sydney Carter

No revolution will come in time
   to alter this man's life
   except the one
   surprise of being loved.

Summer Song - William Carlos Williams

Wanderer moon
smiling a
faintly ironical smile

Father's Song - Gregory Orr

Yesterday, against admonishment,
my daughter balanced on the couch back,
fell and cut her mouth.

Gospel - Philip Levine

The new grass rising in the hills,
the cows loitering in the morning chill,
a dozen or more old browns hidden
in the shadows of the cottonwoods
beside the streambed. I go higher

A Girl - Ezra Pound

The tree has entered my hands,

My Father's Love Letters - Yusef Komunyakaa

On Fridays he'd open a can of Jax
After coming home from the mill,

Daniel Boone - Stephen Vincent Benét

When Daniel Boone goes by

Three rusty nails - Roger McGough

Mother, there's a strange man
Waiting at the door
With a familiar sort of face
You feel you've seen before.

Haiku (the spotted moon) - Bruce Levitan

the spotted moon hangs

Dream Variations - Langston Hughes

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
    Dark like me--
That is my dream!

Where I Live - Maxine Kumin

is vertical:
garden, pond, uphill

Stanzas in Meditation - Gertrude Stein

I think very well of Susan but I do not know her name

Home-Thoughts, From Abroad - Robert Browning

Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England--now!

As Far As My Eye Can See In My Body’s Senses - Paul Éluard

All the trees all their branches all of their leaves
The grass at the foot of the rocks and the houses en masse

Wild Yeasts - Annie Finch

Rumbling a way up my dough's heavy throat to its head,
seeping the trailed, airborne daughters down into the core,
bubbles go rioting through my long-kneaded new bread;
softly, now, breath of the wildest yeast starts to roar.

The Bagel - David Ignatow

I stopped to pick up the bagel

Babylon - Robert Graves

The child alone a poet is:
Spring and Fairyland are his.

Be Near Me - Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Be near me now,
My tormenter, my love, be near me—

Mary's Lamb - Sarah Josepha Hale

Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow,
And every where that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go;
He followed her to school one day—
That was against the rule,
It made the children laugh and play,
To see a lamb at school.

Niggerlips - Martín Espada

Niggerlips was the high school name
for me.
So called by Douglas
the car mechanic, with green tattoos
on each forearm,
and the choir of round pink faces
that grinned deliciously
from the back row of classrooms,
droned over by teachers
checking attendance too slowly.

Disclosure - Anne Lewin

Prayer is like watching for the
Kingfisher.

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond - ee cummings

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

A Birthday - Christina Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these,
Because my love is come to me.

Wind at Tindari - Salvatore Quasimodo

Tindari, I know you
mild between broad hills, overhanging the waters
of the god’s sweet islands.
Today, you confront me
and break into my heart.

Sunday Visit - Christy Brown

We finally found him
curled up in the chair like a many-wrinkled shell
staring blindly out at nothing
among a gathering of imbecilic fossils
his one good eye fastening fiercely onto life
the hair still sturdy though silver under the old cloth cap.

Majung Village - Ko Un

Over the steep, panting hills where
I rest my heart.
I like the simple homeliness
of the bitch and her puppies.
For how many centuries have
such homely sights been dear to us?
The stern old nettle tree standing by the village gate
gathers sweeping winds.

My Aunts - Adam Zagajewski

Always caught up in what they called
the practical side of life
(theory was for Plato),
up to their elbows in furniture, in bedding,
in cupboards and kitchen gardens,
they never neglected the lavender sachets
that turned a linen closet to a meadow.

A Lesson for This Sunday - Derek Walcott

The growing idleness of summer grass
With its frail kites of furious butterflies
Requests the lemonade of simple praise
In scansion gentler than my hammock swings
And rituals no more upsetting than a
Black maid shaking linen as she sings
The plain notes of some Protestant hosanna—
Since I lie idling from the thought in things—

Un petit d'un petit - Luis d'Antin van Rooten

Un petit d'un petit
S'étonne aux Halles

Russian Letter - John Yau

It is said, the past
sticks to the present

Evening Concert, Sainte-Chapelle - John Updike

The celebrated windows flamed with light
directly pouring north across the Seine;

My Father's Hat - Mark Irwin

Sunday mornings I would reach
high into his dark closet while standing
on a chair and tiptoeing reach
higher, touching, sometimes fumbling

When Malindy Sings - Paul Laurence Dunbar

G'way an' quit dat noise, Miss Lucy--
Put dat music book away;
What's de use to keep on tryin'?
Ef you practise twell you're gray,
You cain't sta't no notes a-flyin'
Lak de ones dat rants and rings
F'om de kitchen to de big woods
When Malindy sings.

Trees - Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

Vertical - Linda Pastan

Perhaps the purpose
of leaves is to conceal
the verticality
of trees

bush-clover flowers - Matsuo Basho

bush-clover flowers —

Sometime During Eternity - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Sometime during eternity
some guys show up

How Doth the Little Busy Bee - Isaac Watts

How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower!

Shanti Mantra - Ravi Shankar

Lead me from the unreal to the real
Lead me from darkness to light
Lead me from death to immortality
Aum peace, peace and perfect peace

---

Ravi Shankar (1920 - 2012) India

The Mountain And The Lake - Robert Service

I know a mountain thrilling to the stars,
Peerless and pure, and pinnacled with snow;
Glimpsing the golden dawn o'er coral bars,
Flaunting the vanisht sunset's garnet glow;
Proudly patrician, passionless, serene;
Soaring in silvered steeps where cloud-surfs break;
Virgin and vestal -- Oh, a very Queen!
And at her feet there dreams a quiet lake.

Days I enjoy - Victoria Sackville-West

Days I enjoy are days when nothing happens,

Jumbo Jet - Spike Milligan

I saw a little elephant standing in my garden,
I said 'You don't belong in here', he said 'I beg you pardon?',
I said 'This place is England, what are you doing here?',
He said 'Ah, then I must be lost' and then 'Oh dear, oh dear'.

Vespers - AA Milne

Little Boy kneels at the foot of the bed,
Droops on the little hands little gold head.
Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares!
Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.

Rain, Sun, Summer - Paul Latham

A dreary drab day,
It’s grey gloomy glow gradually growing.

For A Child Expected - Anne Ridler

Lovers whose lifted hands are candles in winter,
Whose gentle ways like streams in the easy summer,
Lying together
For secret setting of a child, love what they do,
Thinking they make that candle immortal, those streams
forever flow,
And yet do better than they know.

To Celia - Ben Jonson

Drinke to me, onely, with thine eyes,

The Barren Shore - Coventry Patmore

Full many sing to me and thee

I Remember, I Remember - Thomas Hood

I remember, I remember
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon
Nor brought too long a day;
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away.

Everyone Sang - Siegfried Sassoon

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;

God’s Grandeur - Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

Anthem for Doomed Youth - Wilfred Owen

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Envoi - Kathleen Raine

Take of me what is not my own,
my love, my beauty, and my poem-
the pain is mine, and mine alone.

Sir Philip Sydney - The Bargain

My true love bath my heart, and I have his,

Up on the downs - John Masefield

Up on the downs the red-eyed kestrels hover,
Eyeing the grass.
The field-mouse flits like a shadow into cover
As their shadows pass.

A Week - Thomas Hardy

On Monday night I closed my door,
And thought you were not as heretofore,
And little cared if we met no more.

Love - George Herbert

LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
                                 Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
                                 From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
                                 If I lacked anything.

A Song from the Suds - Louisa May Alcott

Queen of my tub, I merrily sing,

While the white foam raises high,

And sturdily wash, and rinse, and wring,

And fasten the clothes to dry;

Then out in the free fresh air they swing,

Under the sunny sky.

Charles GD Roberts - The Potato Harvest

A high bare field, brown from the plough, and borne
    Aslant from sunset; amber wastes of sky
    Washing the ridge; a clamour of crows that fly
In from the wide flats where the spent tides mourn
To yon their rocking roosts in pines wind-torn;
    A line of grey snake-fence, that zigzags by
    A pond, and cattle; from the homestead nigh
The long deep summonings of the supper horn.

A Boat beneath a Sunny Sky - Lewis Carroll

A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July --

With people, so with trees - Mervyn Peake

With people, so with trees: where there are groups
Of either, men or trees, some will remain
Aloof while others cluster where one stoops
To breathe some dusky secret. Some complain

They tell me to be... - Thomas Robert Hamilton-Bruce

They tell me to be a star, shining brightly for everyone to see.

The Dot - Moiso Mlingi

I have a tiny dot
with a big name in me
the HIV dot
It scares my neighbour
It stresses the young and old
I neither love nor hate it.

Lines On The Loss Of The "Titanic" - Thomas Hardy

In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

The Bluebell - Anne Brontë

A fine and subtle spirit dwells
In every little flower,
Each one its own sweet feeling breathes
With more or less of power.

Fire's Reflection - Rainer Maria Rilke

Perhaps it's no more than the fire's reflection
on some piece of gleaming furniture
that the child remembers so much later
like a revelation.

Cargoes - John Masefield

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

maggie and milly and molly and may - ee cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

On an Invitation to the United States - Thomas Hardy

My ardours for emprize nigh lost
Since Life has bared its bones to me,
I shrink to seek a modern coast
Whose riper times have yet to be;
Where the new regions claim them free
From that long drip of human tears
Which peoples old in tragedy
Have left upon the centuried years.

White sheep - Christina Rossetti

White sheep, white sheep on a blue hill.

Rescued - Theresa Ann Moore

Clump of exploring brown fur
Exploring with a nervous grip
Hesitating… fearfully immobile
Unsure… beginning to slip

A Divine Rapture - Francis Quarles

E'en like two little bank-dividing brooks,
   That wash the pebbles with their wanton streams,
And having ranged and search'd a thousand nooks,
   Meet both at length in silver-breasted Thames,
   Where in a greater current they conjoin:
So I my Best-beloved's am; so He is mine.

The Song Of The Sword - Cicely Fox Smith

This is the Song of the Sword,
A proud and a ringing song,
The song of the tempered blade
That has lain in the sheath too long.
'It's oh for the strong tight hand,
and the hiss of the wheeling brand,
to make honour a power in the land,'
Saith the sword.

A Parody - Charles Lamb

Lazy-bones, lazy-bones, wake up and peep;
The Cat's in the cupboard, your Mother's asleep.

To a Young Lady, on Her Birthday - Samuel Johnson

This tributary verse receive, my fair,
Warm with an ardent lover's fondest prayer,
May this returning day for ever find
Thy form more lovely, more adorn'd thy mind;
All pains, all cares, may favouring heaven remove,
All but the sweet solicitudes of love!

Gold! - Thomas Hood

Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!

The Truth Will Set You Free - Francis Duggan

From lying your soul is in spiritual poverty
But the truth though hard to say will surely set you free

The King's Daughter - Algernon Charles Swinburne

We were ten maidens in the green corn,
Small red leaves in the mill-water:
Fairer maidens never were born,
Apples of gold for the king's daughter.

The Bible in Fifty Words - Dana Livesay

God made
Adam bit

Haiku (The low yellow...) - Jack Kerouac

The low yellow

Save Me From Madness - Aleksandr Pushkin

Save me from madness, God, I beg.
No, I prefer the beggar's bag,
Prefer to starve and toil.
And not as if I praise my head,
And not as if I were not glad
To part with mind at all.

Stone Is Not Stone - Carson McCullers

There was a time when stone was stone
And a face on the street was a finished face.
Between the Thing, myself and God alone
There was an instant symmetry.
Since you have altered all my world this trinity is twisted:

Job Interview - William Matthews

Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife
He would have written sonnets all his life?
DON JUAN, III, 63-4

The Emmaus Road - Edward A. Morris

Some poor stranger strolled beside them
On their long and lonely walk.
Kind and wise, He gently plied them,
Why such sadness in their talk?
How their hearts within were burning
When His wondrous Word He taught!
Precious lessons they were learning,
Though they recognized Him not.

Hailstorm in May - Gerard Manley Hopkins

Strike, churl; hurl, cheerless wind, then; heltering hail

An Exam - Gita Ashok

Filling in the blanks;
choosing the right alternative;
deciding whether true or false;
defining and justifying;
comparing and contrasting;
coding, compiling and debugging;
estimating and proving;
integrating and differentiating;
plotting and interpreting,
illustrating and debating.

Another Ordinary Day - Bullion Grey

Just an ordinary man with an ordinary wife,
going through ordinary days, living an ordinary life.
He has his ordinary job, receives his ordinary pay,
has his ordinary feelings every ordinary day.

The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon - JRR Tolkien

There is an inn, a merry old inn
beneath an old grey hill,
And there they brew a beer so brown
That the Man in the Moon himself came down
one night to drink his fill.

To A Mouse - Robert Burns

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

In Tintagel Graveyard - Brian Patten

Who brought flowers to this grave?
I, said the wren.
I brought them as seeds and then
Watched them grow.

The Unicorn - Rainer Maria Rilke

The saintly hermit, midway through his prayers
stopped suddenly, and raised his eyes to witness
the unbelievable: for there before him stood
the legendary creature, startling white, that
had approached, soundlessly, pleading with his eyes.

Refugee - Lindsay MacRae

He can't speak a word of English
But the picture he paints needs no words

Buckingham Palace - AA Milne

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
Alice is marrying one of the guard.
"A soldier's life is terrible hard,"
Says Alice.

On Wenlock Edge - A.E. Housman

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

April - Hilaire Belloc

The stranger warmth of the young sun obeying,
Look! little beads of green begin to grow,
And hidden flowers have dated their tops to show
Where late such droughty dusts were rudely playing.
It's not the month, but all the world's a-maying!
Come then with me, I'll take you, for I know
Where the first hedgethorns and white windflowers blow:
We two alone,, that goes without the saying.

Poem to Curry - William Makepeace Thackeray

Three pounds of veal my darling girl prepares,
And chops it nicely into little squares;
Five onions next prures the little minx
(The biggest are the best, her Samiwel thinks),
And Epping butter nearly half a pound,
And stews them in a pan until they’re brown’d.

Sailing For Flanders - John Masefield

To need any more the skies or man to importune
For us departing to-day with spirits at peace,
Now that the inner warfares, that tire men, cease
For us the chosen of God's lot, the spoilt darlings of Fortune.

Easter wings – George Herbert

Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,

Though foolishly he lost the same,

Decaying more and more,

Till he became

Most poor:

With thee

Oh let me rise

As larks, harmoniously,

And sing this day thy victories:

Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

Black Stone on Top of a White Stone - Cesar Vallejo

I shall die in Paris, in a rainstorm,
On a day I already remember.
I shall die in Paris -- it does not bother me --
Doubtless on a Thursday, like today, in autumn.

Holy Thursday - William Blake

'Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,
The children walking two & two, in red & blue & green,
Grey-headed beadles walk'd before, with wands as white as snow,
Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames' waters flow.

O Captain! My Captain! - Walt Whitman

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

Surprised by Joy - William Wordsworth

Surprised by joy — impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport

Balade - Geoffrey Chaucer

Hyd, Absolon, thy gilte tresses clere;
Ester, ley thou thy meknesse al a-doun;
Hyd, Jonathas, al thy frendly manere;
Penalopee, and Marcia Catoun,
Mak of your wyfhod no comparisoun;
Hyde ye your beautes, Isoude and Eleyne;
My lady cometh, that al this may disteyne.

The Donkey - G.K. Chesterton

When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born;

The Lady of Shalott - Alfred Lord Tennyson

On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road run by
To many-tower'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.

About The Sheltered Garden Ground - Robert Louis Stevenson

About the sheltered garden ground
The trees stand strangely still.
The vale ne'er seemed so deep before,
Nor yet so high the hill.

Hunger - Kingmerut

Fear hung over me.
I dared not try
to hold out in my hut.

May my love become an alder tree - Yi Chongbo

May my love become an alder tree
  of Kumsong in Hoeyang, and
  I an arrowroot vine in
  the third month or fourth:

The Artist Lives Dangerously - Otieno Amisi

The artist lives dangerously
Cursing, blasting, blaming, weeping
The artist lives dangerously
Hits the stone with his ass
Crosses swords with the censor
Critic and state

Community - John Donne

Good we must love, and must hate ill,
For ill is ill, and good good still;
   But there are things indifferent,
Which wee may neither hate, nor love,
But one, and then another prove,
   As we shall find our fancy bent.

The Pobble Who Has No Toes - Edward Lear

The Pobble who has no toes
Had once as many as we;
When they said "Some day you may lose them all;"
He replied "Fish, fiddle-de-dee!"
And his Aunt Jobiska made him drink
Lavender water tinged with pink,
For she said "The World in general knows
There's nothing so good for a Pobble's toes!"

Beneath My Hands - Leonard Cohen

Beneath my hands
your small breasts
are the upturned bellies
of breathing fallen sparrows.

But Not Forgotten - Dorothy Parker

I think, no matter where you stray,
That I shall go with you a way.

Wind - Ted Hughes

This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Heart And Mind - Edith Sitwell

SAID the Lion to the Lioness-'When you are amber dust,-
No more a raging fire like the heat of the Sun
(No liking but all lust)-
Remember still the flowering of the amber blood and bone,
The rippling of bright muscles like a sea,
Remember the rose-prickles of bright paws
Though the fire of that sun the heart and the moon-cold bone are one.'

(For Mother's day) Proverbs 23:22-26 - The Bible

Hearken unto thy father that begat thee,
and despise not thy mother when she is old.

Wind on the Hill - AA Milne

No one can tell me,
Nobody knows,
Where the wind comes from,
Where the wind goes.

The Tyger - William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Jungle danger - Bruce Levitan

The ermine softness of the leaves
Brushing against his arm.
The air, warm and moist
Like an inhaler full of balm.
Menace seems to lurk
In every shadow of apparent calm.

Love Is... - Adrian Henri

Love is...

Is/Not - Margaret Atwood

Love is not a profession
genteel or otherwise

Home From Abroad - Laurie Lee

Far-fetched with tales of other worlds and ways,
My skin well-oiled with wines of the Levant,
I set my face into a filial smile
To greet the pale, domestic kiss of Kent.

The Early Morning - Hilaire Belloc

The moon on the one hand, the dawn on the other:

In My Dreams - Stevie Smith

In my dreams I am always saying goodbye and riding away,

Sheep in Fog - Sylvia Plath

The hills step off into whiteness.
People or stars
Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.

If - Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

Martha - Walter de la Mare

"Once...Once upon a time..."
Over and over again,
Martha would tell us her stories,
In the hazel glen.

As Kingfishers Catch Fire - Gerard Manley Hopkins

As king fishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

The Telephone - Michel Quoist

I have just hung up;
why did he telephone?
I don’t know…
O! I get it…
I talked a lot and listened little.

Morning at the window - T.S. Eliot

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.

My Dream - Ogden Nash

This is my dream,
It is my own dream,
I dreamt it.

Sonnet 113 - William Shakespeare

Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind,

Love and the Gentle Heart - Dante Alighieri

Love is but one thing with the gentle heart,
  As in the saying of the sage we find.
  Thus one from other cannot be apart,
  More than the reason from the reasoning mind.

Five-Per-Cent - Robert William Service

Because I have ten thousand pounds I sit upon my stern,
And leave my living tranquilly for other folks to earn.
For in some procreative way that isn't very clear,
Ten thousand pounds will breed, they say, five hundred every year.
So as I have a healthy hate of economic strife,
I mean to stand aloof from it the balance of my life.
And yet with sympathy I see the grimy son of toil,
And heartly congratulate the tiller of the soil.
I like the miner in the mine, the sailor on the sea,
Because up to five hundred pounds they sail and mine for me.
For me their toil is taxed unto that annual extent,
According to the holy shibboleth of Five-per-Cent.

The Lent Lily - Alfred Edward Housman

'Tis spring; come out to ramble
The hilly brakes around,
For under thorn and bramble
About the hollow ground
The primroses are found.

A Bird Came Down - Emily Dickinson

A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.

A Prayer in Spring - Robert Lee Frost

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Soil - Roger McGough

we've ignored eachother for a long time
and I'm strictly an indoor man
anytime to call would be the wrong time
I'll avoid you as long as I can

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night - Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Havisham - Carol Ann Duffy

Beloved sweetheart bastard. Not a day since then
I haven’t wished him dead. Prayed for it
so hard I’ve dark green pebbles for eyes,
ropes on the back of my hands I could strangle with.

i carry your heart with me - Edward Estlin Cummings (ee cummings)

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)