Come In By Robert Frost As I came to the edge of the woods, Thrush music — hark! Now if it was dusk outside, Inside it was dark. Too dark in the woods for a bird By sleight of wing…
Category: Poem Analysis
Cherry-Ripe
Cherry-Ripe By Thomas Campion There is a garden in her face Where roses and white lilies blow; A heavenly paradise is that place, Wherein all pleasant fruits do flow There cherries grow which none may buy Till “Cherry-ripe” themselves do…
Quarantine
Quarantine By Eavan Boland In the worst hour of the worst season of the worst year of a whole people a man set out from the workhouse with his wife. He was walking—they were both walking—north. She was sick with…
Postcards from God
Postcards from God By Imtiaz Dharker Yes, I do feel like a visitor, a tourist in this world that I once made. I rarely talk, except to ask the way, distrusting my interpreters, tired out by the babble of what…
The Pigeons
The Pigeons By Richard Kell They paddle with staccato feet In powder-pools of sunlight, Small blue busybodies Strutting like fat gentlemen With hands clasped Under their swallowtail coats; And, as they stump about, Their heads like tiny hammers Tap at…
The Pearl
The Pearl By George Herbert MATTHEW-xiii I know the ways of learning; both the head And pipes that feed the press, and make it run; What reason hath from nature borrowed, Or of itself, like a good huswife, spun In…
Peace of Wild Things
Peace of Wild Things By Wendell Berry When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and…
Ogichidag
Ogichidag By Jim Northrup I was born in war, WW Two. Listened as the old men told stories of getting gassed in the trenches, WW One. Saw my uncles come back from Guadalcanal, North Africa and the battle of the…
Next, Please
Next, Please By Philip Larkin Always too eager for the future, we Pick up bad habits of expectancy. Something is always approaching; every day Till then we say, Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear Sparkling armada of promises draw…
Mushrooms
Mushrooms By Sylvia Plath Overnight, very Whitely, discreetly, Very quietly Our toes, our noses Take hold on the loam, Acquire the air. Nobody sees us, Stops us, betrays us; The small grains make room. Soft fists insist on Heaving the…
Paper Boats
Paper Boats By Rabindranath Tagore Day by day I float my paper boats one by one down the running stream. In big black letters I write my name on them and the name of the village where I live. I…
On Time
On Time By John Milton Fly envious Time, till thou run out thy race, Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours, Whose speed is but the heavy Plummets pace; And glut thy self with what thy womb devours, Which is no…
On Not Shoplifting Louise Bogan’s The Blue Estuaries
On Not Shoplifting Louise Bogan’s The Blue Estuaries Connecticut College, 1968 by Julia Alvarez Your book surprised me on the bookstore shelf — swans gliding on a blueblack lake; no blurbs by the big boys on back; no sassy, big-haired picture…
Night Mail
Night Mail By WH Auden This is the night mail crossing the Border, Bringing the cheque and the postal order, Letters for the rich, letters for the poor, The shop at the corner, the girl next door. Pulling up Beattock,…
Love Poem
Love Poem By John Frederick Nims My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases, At whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring, Whose palms are bulls in china, burs in linen, And have no cunning with any soft thing Except…
Legacies
Legacies By Nikki Giovanni her grandmother called her from the playground “yes, ma’am” “i want chu to learn how to make rolls” said the old woman proudly but the little girl didn’t want to learn how because she knew even…
Harvest at Mynachlog
Harvest at Mynachlog By Gillian Clarke At last the women come with baskets, The older one in flowered apron, A daisied cloth covering the bread And dappled china, sweet tea In a vast can. The women stoop Spreading their cups…
Wild Bees
Wild Bees By James K. Baxter Often in summer, on a tarred bridge plank standing, Or downstream between willows, a safe Ophelia drifting In a rented boat — I had seen them come and go, Those wild bees swift as…
We and They
We and They By Rudyard Kipling Father and Mother, and Me, Sister and Auntie say All the people like us are We, And every one else is They. And They live over the sea, While We live over the way,…
Cargo Hulks
Cargo Hulks By Peter Tower Ramshackle barges limp the coastal passages carrying hogfuel and sulphur to the ever-hungry mills— food for the insatiable bellies of the digesters, ammunition for the smokestacks to vomit at the gulls. Cargo hulks stripped of…