Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells, Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,? The shrill, demented choirs of […]
1900s
Prime by Amy Lowell
Prime ?by Amy Lowell ? Your voice is like bells over roofs at dawn When a bird flies And the sky changes to a fresher color. ? Speak, speak, Beloved. Say little things For my ears to catch And run with them to my heart.
Portent by William Carlos Williams
Portent by William Carlos Williams Red cradle of the night, In you The dusky child Sleeps fast till his might Shall be piled Sinew on sinew. Red cradle of the night, The dusky child Sleeping sits upright. Lo how The winds blow now! He pillows back; The winds are again mild. When he stretches his […]
Day That I Have Loved by Rupert Brooke
Day That I Have Loved by Rupert Brooke Tenderly, day that I have loved, I close your eyes, And smooth your quiet brow, and fold your thin dead hands. The grey veils of the half-light deepen; colour dies. I bear you, a light burden, to the shrouded sands, Where lies your waiting boat, by wreaths […]
Rhapsody on a Windy Night by T. S. Eliot
Rhapsody on a Windy Night by T. S. Eliot Twelve o’clock. Along the reaches of the street Held in a lunar synthesis, Whispering lunar incantations Disolve the floors of memory And all its clear relations, Its divisions and precisions, Every street lamp that I pass Beats like a fatalistic drum, And through the spaces of […]
Sea Lily by H.D.
SEA LILY by H. D. (Hilda Doolittle) Reed, slashed and torn, but doubly rich? such great heads as yours drift upon temple-steps, but you are shattered in the wind. Myrtle-bark is flecked from you, scales are dashed from your stem, sand cuts your petal, furrows it with hard edge, like flint on a bright stone. […]
California City Landscape by Carl Sandburg
California City Landscape by Carl Sandburg On a mountain-side the real estate agents Put up signs marking the city lots to be sold there. A man whose father and mother were Irish Ran a goat farm half-way down the mountain; He drove a covered wagon years ago, Understood how to handle a rifle, Shot grouse, […]
Mending Wall By Robert Frost
Mending Wall By Robert Frost Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not […]
To wish Myself Courage by William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams (1883?1963) To wish Myself Courage On the day when youth is no more upon me I will write of the leaves and the moon in a tree top! I will sing then the song, long in the making? When the stress of youth is put away from me. How can I ever […]
Gunga Din by Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) Gunga Din You may talk o’ gin and beer When you’re quartered safe out ‘ere, An’ you’re sent to penny-fights an’ Aldershot it; But when it comes to slaughter You will do your work on water, An’ you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of ‘im that’s got it. Now in Injia’s sunny clime, […]
She Is Overheard Singing by Edna St. Vicent Millay
She Is Overheard Singing Oh, Prue she has a patient man, And Joan a gentle lover, And Agatha’s Arth’ is a hug-the-hearth,? But my true love’s a rover! Mig, her man’s as good as cheese And honest as a briar, Sue tells her love what he’s thinking of,? But my dear lad’s a liar! Oh, […]
Winter In The Boulevard by D.H. Lawrence
D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) was an influential English writer, poet, and essayist. Born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire,
DESIGN by Robert Frost
Design by Robert Frost I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth? Assorted characters of death and blight Mixed ready to begin the morning right, Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth? A snow-drop spider, a flower like froth, […]
THE YOUNG MAN’S SONG W. B. Yeats
THE YOUNG MAN’S SONG I whispered, “I am too young,” And then, “I am old enough”; Wherefore I threw a penny To find out if I might love. “Go and love, go and love, young man, If the lady be young and fair,” Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny, I am looped in the loops […]
Those Who Love by Sara Teasdale
Those Who Love by Sara Teasdale Those who love the most Do not talk of their love; Francesca, Guenevere, Dierdre, Iseult, Heloise In the fragrant gardens of heaven Are silent, or speak, if at all, Of fragile, inconsequent things. And a woman I used to know Who loved one man from her youth, Against the […]