Ella Wheeler Wilcox – A Pin

 Oh, I know a certain lady who is reckoned with the good,Yet she fills me with more terror than a raging lion would.The little chills run up and down my spine whene’er we meet,Though she seems a gentle creature, and she’s very trim and neat.And she has a thousand virtues and...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox – Life Is A Privilege

 Life is a privilege. Its youthful daysShine with the radiance of continuous Mays.To live, to breathe, to wonder and desire,To feed with dreams the heart’s perpetual fire,To thrill with virtuous passions, and to glowWith great ambitions – in one hour to knowThe depths and heights...

George Gordon Byron – To Ianthe

Not in those climes where I have late been straying,Though Beauty long hath there been matchless deemed,Not in those visions to the heart displayingForms which it sighs but to have only dreamed,Hath aught like thee in Truth or Fancy seemed:Nor, having seen thee, shall I vainly seekTo...

Sylvia Plath – Admonition

If you dissect a birdTo diagram the tongueYou'll cut the chordArticulating song.If you flay a beastTo marvel at the maneYou'll wreck the restFrom which the fur began.If you pluck out the heartTo find what makes it move,You'll halt the clockThat syncopates our lo...

John Keats – Bards of Passion and of Mirth...

Bards of Passion and of Mirth,Ye have left your souls on earth!Have ye souls in heaven too,Doubled-lived in regions new?Yes, and those of heaven communeWith the spheres of sun and moon;With the noise of fountains wondrous,And the parle of voices thund'rous;With the whisper of heaven's...

Sylvia Plath – All The Dead Dears

Rigged poker -stiff on her backWith a granite grinThis antique museum-cased ladyLies, companioned by the gimcrackRelics of a mouse and a shrewThat battened for a day on her ankle-bone.These three, unmasked now, bearDry witnessTo the gross eating gameWe'd wink at if we didn't hearStars...

Rudyard Kipling – A Ballade of Jakko Hill

One moment bid the horses wait, Since tiffin is not laid till three, Below the upward path and straight You climbed a year ago with me. Love came upon us suddenly And loosed -- an idle hour to kill -- A headless, armless armory That smote us both on Jakko Hill. Ah...

Sylvia Plath – Aquatic Nocturne

deep in liquidturquoise sliversof dilute lightquiver in thin streaksof bright tinfoilon mobile jet:pale flounderwaver bytilting silver:in the shallowsagile minnowsflicker gilt:grapeblue musselsdilate lithe andpliant valves:dull lunar globesof blubous jellyfishglow milkgreen:eels...

William Shakespeare – A Fairy Song

Over hill, over dale,Thorough bush, thorough brier,Over park, over pale,Thorough flood, thorough fire!I do wander everywhere,Swifter than the moon's sphere;And I serve the Fairy Queen,To dew her orbs upon the green;The cowslips tall her pensioners be;In their gold coats spots you...

Khalil Gibran – Children Chapter IV

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of Children."And he said:Your children are not your children.They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.They come through you but not from you,And though they are with you, yet they belong not...

William Shakespeare – A Madrigal

Crabbed Age and YouthCannot live together:Youth is full of pleasance,Age is full of care;Youth like summer morn,Age like winter weather;Youth like summer brave,Age like winter bare:Youth is full of sports,Age's breath is short,Youth is nimble, Age is lame:Youth is hot and bold,Age...

George Gordon Byron – Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (Canto the First)

I Oh, thou! in Hellas deem'd of heavenly birth, Muse! form'd or fabled at the minstrel's will! Since shamed full oft by later lyres on earth, Mine dares not call thee from thy sacred hill: Yet there I've wander'd by thy vaunted rill; Yes! sigh'd o'er Delphi's...

Robert-Frost – Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.I have outwalked the furthest city light.I have looked down the saddest city lane.I have passed by the watchman on his beatAnd dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.I have stood still and stopped...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox – A Lover's Quarrel

We two were lovers, the Sea and I;We plighted our troth 'neath a summer sky.And all through the riotous, ardent weatherWe dreamed, and loved, and rejoiced together.At times my lover would rage and storm.I said: 'No matter, his heart is warm.'Whatever his humour, I loved his ways,And...

William Shakespeare – Sonnet 100

Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so longTo speak of that which gives thee all thy might?Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song,Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light?Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeemIn gentle numbers time so idly spent;Sing to the...

Robert-Frost – After Apple-Picking

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a treeToward heaven still,And there's a barrel that I didn't fillBeside it, and there may be two or threeApples I didn't pick upon some bough.But I am done with apple-picking now.Essence of winter sleep is on the night,The scent of apples:...

William Shakespeare – Sonnet 18

Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck,And yet methinks I have astronomy,But not to tell of good, or evil luck,Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality,Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell;Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,Or say with princes if it shall go wellBy...

Robert-Frost – The Aim Was Song

Before man to blow to rightThe wind once blew itself untaught,And did its loudest day and nightIn any rough place where it caught.Man came to tell it what was wrong:It hadn't found the place to blow;It blew too hard - the aim was song.And listen - how it ought to go!He took a little...

W. H. Auden – In Memory of Sigmund Freud

When there are so many we shall have to mourn, when grief has been made so public, and exposed      to the critique of a whole epoch    the frailty of our conscience and anguish, of whom shall we speak? For every day they die among us, those...