• Austin Clarke

    The Planter’s Daughter

    When night stirred at sea
    And the fire brought a crowd in,
    They say that her beauty
    Was music in mouth
    And few in the candlelight
    Thought her too proud,
    For the house of the planter
    Is known by the trees.

    Men that had seen her
    Drank deep and were silent,
    The women were speaking
    Wherever she went –
    As a bell that is rung
    Or a wonder told shyly,
    And O she was the Sunday
    In every week.

  • Robert Frost

    Fire and Ice

    Some say the world will end in fire,
    Some say in ice.
    From what I’ve tasted of desire
    I hold with those who favor fire.
    But if it had to perish twice,
    I think I know enough of hate
    To say that for destruction ice
    Is also great
    And would suffice.

  • Percy Bysshe Shelley

    A Dirge

    Rough Wind, that moanest loud
    Grief too sad for song;
    Wild wind, when sullen cloud
    Knells all the night long;
    Sad storm, whose tears are vain,
    Bare woods, whose branches strain,
    Deep caves and dreary main, _
    Wail, for the world’s wrong!

  • Benjamin Zephaniah

    Talking Turkeys

    Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas
    Cos’ turkeys just wanna hav fun
    Turkeys are cool, turkeys are wicked
    An every turkey has a Mum.
    Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas,
    Don’t eat it, keep it alive,
    It could be yu mate, an not on your plate
    Say, Yo! Turkey I’m on your side.
    I got lots of friends who are turkeys
    An all of dem fear christmas time,
    Dey wanna enjoy it, dey say humans destroyed it
    An humans are out of dere mind,
    Yeah, I got lots of friends who are turkeys
    Dey all hav a right to a life,
    Not to be caged up an genetically made up
    By any farmer an his wife.

    Turkeys just wanna play reggae
    Turkeys just wanna hip-hop
    Can yu imagine a nice young turkey saying,
    ‘I cannot wait for de chop’,
    Turkeys like getting presents, dey wanna watch christmas TV,
    Turkeys hav brains an turkeys feel pain
    In many ways like yu an me.

    I once knew a turkey called – Turkey
    He said “Benji explain to me please,
    Who put de turkey in christmas
    An what happens to christmas trees?”,
    I said “I am not too sure turkey
    But it’s nothing to do wid Christ Mass
    Humans get greedy an waste more dan need be
    An business men mek loadsa cash’.

    Be nice to yu turkey dis christmas
    Invite dem indoors fe sum greens
    Let dem eat cake an let dem partake
    In a plate of organic grown beans,
    Be nice to yu turkey dis christmas
    An spare dem de cut of de knife,
    Join Turkeys United an dey’ll be delighted
    An yu will mek new friends ‘FOR LIFE’.

  • Arthur Guiterman

    What One Approves, Another Scorns

    What one approves,
    another scorns,
    and thus
    his nature each discloses.
    You find the rosebush
    full of thorns,
    I find the
    thornbush full of roses.

  • Carl Sandburg

    Dust

    Here is dust remembers it was a rose
    one time and lay in a woman’s hair.
    Here is dust remembers it was a woman
    one time and in her hair lay a rose.
    Oh things one time dust, what else now is it
    you dream and remember of old days?

  • Horace

    Odes, Book 3, Verse 29: Happy the Man

    Happy the man, and happy he alone,
    He who can call today his own:
    He who, secure within, can say,
    Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
    Be fair or foul or rain or shine
    The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
    Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
    But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

  • Carolyn Wells

    The Flute Tutor

    A tooter who tooted a flute
    tried to tutor two tooters to toot.
    Said the two to the tooter,
    “Is it harder to toot, or
    to tutor two tooters to toot?”

  • Philip Larkin

    Days

    What are days for?
    Days are where we live.
    They come, they wake us
    Time and time over.
    They are to be happy in:
    Where can we live but days?

    Ah, solving that question
    Brings the priest and the doctor
    In their long coats
    Running over the fields.

  • Carl Sandburg

    Grass

    Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
    Shovel them under and let me work-
    I am the grass; I cover all.

    And pile them high at Gettysburg
    And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
    Shovel them under and let me work.
    Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
    What place is this?
    Where are we now?

    I am the grass.
    Let me work.

  • Jack Prelutsky

    The Diatonic Dittymunch

    The Diatonic Dittymunch plucked music from the air,
    He swallowed scores of symphonies and still had space to spare.
    Sonatas and cantatas slithered sweetly down his throat;
    He made ballads into salads and consumed them note by note.

    He ate marches and mazurkas, he ate rhapsodies and reels,
    Minuets and tarantellas were the staples of his meals.
    But the Diatonic Dittymunch outdid himself one day:
    He ate a three-act opera —
    And LOUDLY passed away.

  • Walt Whitman

    The Dalliance of the Eagles

    Skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,)
    Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles,
    The rushing amorous contact high in space together,
    The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,
    Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,
    In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling
    Till o’er the river pois’d, the twain yet one, a moment’s lull,
    A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing,
    Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse flight,
    She hers, he his, pursuing.

  • Hilaire Belloc

    How did the party go in Portman Square?
    I cannot tell you; Juliet was not there.
    And how did Lady Gaster’s party go?
    Juliet was next me and I do not know.

  • Sara Teasdale

    Wild Asters

    In the spring I asked the daisies
    If his words were true,
    And the clever, clear-eyed daisies
    Always knew.

    Now the fields are brown and barren,
    Bitter autumn blows,
    And of all the stupid asters
    Not one knows.

  • Dorothy Parker

    One Perfect Rose

    A single flow’r he sent me, since we met.
    All tenderly his messenger he chose;
    Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet –
    One perfect rose.

    I knew the language of the floweret;
    ‘My fragile leaves,’ it said, ‘his heart enclose.’
    Love long has taken for his amulet
    One perfect rose.

    Why is it no one ever sent me yet
    One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
    Ah no, it’s always just my luck to get
    One perfect rose.

  • Walter de la Mare

    Autumn

    There is wind where the rose was,
    Cold rain where sweet grass was,
    And clouds like sheep
    Stream o’er the steep
    Grey skies where the lark was.

    Nought warm where your hand was,
    Nought gold where your hair was,
    But phantom, forlorn,
    Beneath the thorn,
    Your ghost where your face was.

    Cold wind where your voice was,
    Tears, tears where my heart was,
    And ever with me,
    Child, ever with me,
    Silence where hope was.

  • W B Yeats

    Sailing to Byzantium

    That is no country for old men. The young
    In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
    – Those dying generations – at their song,
    The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
    Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
    Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
    Caught in that sensual music all neglect
    Monuments of unageing intellect.

    An aged man is but a paltry thing,
    A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
    Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
    For every tatter in its mortal dress,
    Nor is there singing school but studying
    Monuments of its own magnificence;
    And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
    To the holy city of Byzantium.

    O sages standing in God’s holy fire
    As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
    Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
    And be the singing-masters of my soul.
    Consume my heart away; sick with desire
    And fastened to a dying animal
    It knows not what it is; and gather me
    Into the artifice of eternity.

    Once out of nature I shall never take
    My bodily form from any natural thing,
    But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
    Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
    To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
    Or set upon a golden bough to sing
    To lords and ladies of Byzantium
    Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

  • Frank Sidgwick

    The Aeronaut to his Lady

    I
    Through
    Blue
    Sky
    Fly
    To
    You.
    Why ?

    Sweet
    Love,
    Feet
    Move
    So
    Slow !

    a sonnet with only 14 words

    original post incorrectly attributed to Frank’s brother Hugh

  • Arthur Symons

    You Remain

    As a perfume doth remain
    In the folds where it hath lain,
    So the thought of you, remaining
    Deeply folded in my brain,
    Will not leave me; all things leave me;
    You remain.

    Other thoughts may come and go
    Other moments I may know,
    That shall waft me, in their going
    As a breath blown to and fro;
    Fragrant memories, fragrant memories
    Come and Go.

    Only thoughts of you remain
    In my heart where they have lain-
    Perfumed thoughts of you, remaining
    A hid sweetness, in my brain.
    Others leave me; all things leave me;
    You remain.

  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    Hiawatha’s Departure

    By the shore of Gitchie Gumee,
    By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
    At the doorway of his wigwam,
    In the pleasant Summer morning,
    Hiawatha stood and waited.
    All the air was full of freshness,
    All the earth was bright and joyous,
    And before him through the sunshine,
    Westward toward the neighboring forest
    Passed in golden swarms the Ahmo,
    Passed the bees, the honey-makers,
    Burning, singing in the sunshine.
    Bright above him shown the heavens,
    Level spread the lake before him;
    From its bosom leaped the sturgeon,
    Sparkling, flashing in the sunshine;
    On its margin the great forest
    Stood reflected in the water,
    Every tree-top had its shadow,
    Motionless beneath the water.
    From the brow of Hiawatha
    Gone was every trace of sorrow,
    As the fog from off the water,
    And the mist from off the meadow.
    With a smile of joy and triumph,
    With a look of exultation,
    As of one who in a vision
    Sees what is to be, but is not,
    Stood and waited Hiawatha.

  • Emily Dickinson

    Tell all the Truth but tell it slant

    Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
    Success in Circuit lies
    Too bright for our infirm Delight
    The Truth’s superb surprise

    As Lightening to the Children eased
    With explanation kind
    The Truth must dazzle gradually
    Or every man be blind—

  • William Carlos Williams

    Iris

    a burst of iris so that
    come down for
    breakfast

    we searched through the
    rooms for
    that

    sweetest odor and at
    first could not
    find its

    source then a blue as
    of the sea
    struck

    startling us from among
    those trumpeting
    petals

  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    Tegner’s Drapa

    I heard a voice, that cried,
    “Balder the Beautiful
    Is dead, is dead!”
    And through the misty air
    Passed like the mournful cry
    Of sunward sailing cranes.

    I saw the pallid corpse
    Of the dead sun
    Borne through the Northern sky.
    Blasts from Niffelheim
    Lifted the sheeted mists
    Around him as he passed.

    And the voice forever cried,
    “Balder the Beautiful
    Is dead, is dead!”
    And died away
    Through the dreary night,
    In accents of despair.

    Balder the Beautiful,
    God of the summer sun,
    Fairest of all the Gods!
    Light from his forehead beamed,
    Runes were upon his tongue,
    As on the warrior’s sword.

    All things in earth and air
    Bound were by magic spell
    Never to do him harm;
    Even the plants and stones;
    All save the mistletoe,
    The sacred mistletoe!

    Hoeder, the blind old God,
    Whose feet are shod with silence,
    Pierced through that gentle breast
    With his sharp spear, by fraud
    Made of the mistletoe,
    The accursed mistletoe!

    They laid him in his ship,
    With horse and harness,
    As on a funeral pyre.
    Odin placed
    A ring upon his finger,
    And whispered in his ear.

    They launched the burning ship!
    It floated far away
    Over the misty sea,
    Till like the sun it seemed,
    Sinking beneath the waves.
    Balder returned no more!

    So perish the old Gods!
    But out of the sea of Time
    Rises a new land of song,
    Fairer than the old.
    Over its meadows green
    Walk the young bards and sing.

    Build it again,
    O ye bards,
    Fairer than before!
    Ye fathers of the new race,
    Feed upon morning dew,
    Sing the new Song of Love!

    The law of force is dead!
    The law of love prevails!
    Thor, the thunderer,
    Shall rule the earth no more,
    No more, with threats,
    Challenge the meek Christ.

    Sing no more,
    O ye bards of the North,
    Of Vikings and of Jarls!
    Of the days of Eld
    Preserve the freedom only,
    Not the deeds of blood!

  • Lou Reed

    Just a perfect day
    Drink sangria in the park
    Then later, when it gets dark, we go home
    Just a perfect day
    Feed animals in the zoo
    Then later a movie too, and then home
    Oh it’s such a perfect day
    I’m glad I spent it with you
    Oh such a perfect day
    You just keep me hanging on
    You just keep me hanging on
    Just a perfect day
    Problems all left alone
    Weekenders on our own, it’s such fun
    Just a perfect day
    You made me forget myself
    I thought I was someone else, someone good
    Oh it’s such a perfect day
    I’m glad I spent it with you
    Such a perfect day
    You just keep me hanging on
    You just keep me hanging on
    You’re going to reap just what you sow
    You’re going to reap just what you sow
    You’re going to reap just what you sow
    You’re going to reap just what you sow
    You’re going to reap just what you sow

  • Mark Eckman

    I have a spelling checker
    It came with my PC
    It highlights for my review
    Mistakes I cannot sea.

    I ran this poem thru it
    I’m sure your pleased to no
    Its letter perfect in it’s weigh
    My checker told me sew.

    There are a number of different versions, extensions and derivatives of this poem that can be found; however Mark Eckman has confirmed that this is the text of his original.

  • John Boyle O’Reilly

    A White Rose

    The red rose whispers of passion,
    And the white rose breathes of love;
    O the red rose is a falcon,
    And the white rose is a dove.

    But I send you a cream-white rosebud
    With a flush on its petal tips;
    For the love that is purest and sweetest
    Has a kiss of desire on the lips.

  • David Dixon

    Haiku Error Message

    Three things are certain:
    Death, taxes, and lost data.
    Guess which has occurred.

  • John Godfrey Saxe

    The Blind Men and the Elephant

    It was six men of Indostan
    To learning much inclined,
    Who went to see the Elephant
    (Though all of them were blind),
    That each by observation
    Might satisfy his mind

    The First approached the Elephant,
    And happening to fall
    Against his broad and sturdy side,
    At once began to bawl:
    God bless me! but the Elephant
    Is very like a wall!

    The Second, feeling of the tusk,
    Cried, Ho! what have we here
    So very round and smooth and sharp?
    To me tis mighty clear
    This wonder of an Elephant
    Is very like a spear!

    The Third approached the animal,
    And happening to take
    The squirming trunk within his hands,
    Thus boldly up and spake:
    I see, quoth he, the Elephant
    Is very like a snake!

    The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
    And felt about the knee.
    What most this wondrous beast is like
    Is mighty plain, quoth he;
    ‘Tis clear enough the Elephant
    Is very like a tree!

    The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
    Said: Even the blindest man
    Can tell what this resembles most;
    Deny the fact who can
    This marvel of an Elephant
    Is very like a fan!?

    The Sixth no sooner had begun
    About the beast to grope,
    Than, seizing on the swinging tail
    That fell within his scope,
    I see, quoth he, the Elephant
    Is very like a rope!

    And so these men of Indostan
    Disputed loud and long,
    Each in his own opinion
    Exceeding stiff and strong,
    Though each was partly in the right,
    And all were in the wrong!

    Moral:

    So oft in theologic wars,
    The disputants, I ween,
    Rail on in utter ignorance
    Of what each other mean,
    And prate about an Elephant
    Not one of them has seen!

  • Carl Sandburg

    Elephants Are Different to Different People

    Wilson and Pilcer and Snack stood before the zoo elephant.

    Wilson said, “What is its name? Is it from Asia or Africa? Who feeds
    it? Is it a he or a she? How old is it? Do they have twins? How much does
    it cost to feed? How much does it weigh? If it dies, how much will another
    one cost? If it dies, what will they use the bones, the fat, and the hide
    for? What use is it besides to look at?”

    Pilcer didn’t have any questions; he was murmering to himself, “It’s
    a house by itself, walls and windows, the ears came from tall cornfields,
    by God; the architect of those legs was a workman, by God; he stands like
    a bridge out across the deep water; the face is sad and the eyes are kind;
    I know elephants are good to babies.”

    Snack looked up and down and at last said to himself, “He’s a tough
    son-of-a-gun outside and I’ll bet he’s got a strong heart, I’ll bet he’s
    strong as a copper-riveted boiler inside.”

    They didn’t put up any arguments.
    They didn’t throw anything in each other’s faces.
    Three men saw the elephant three ways
    And let it go at that.
    They didn’t spoil a sunny Sunday afternoon;

    “Sunday comes only once a week,” they told each other.

  • William Blake

    If you trap the moment before it is ripe
    The tears of repentance will certainly wipe
    But if once you let the ripe moment go
    You can never wipe off the tears of woe.

  • Sir Walter Ralegh

    Sir Walter Ralegh To His Son

    Three things there be that prosper up apace,
    And flourish while they grow asunder far;
    But on a day, they meet all in a place,
    And when they meet, they one another mar.

    And they be these: the Wood, the Weed, the Wag:
    The Wood is that that makes the gallows tree;
    The Weed is that that strings the hangman’s bag;
    The Wag, my pretty knave, betokens thee.

    Now mark, dear boy – while these assemble not,
    Green springs the tree, hemp grows, the wag is wild;
    But when they meet, it makes the timber rot,
    It frets the halter, and it chokes the child.
    Then bless thee, and beware, and let us pray,
    We part not with thee at this meeting day.

  • Ogden Nash

    The Octopus

    Tell me, O Octopus, I begs
    Is those things arms, or is they legs?
    I marvel at thee, Octopus;
    If I were thou, I’d call me Us.

  • Billy Collins

    Sonnet

    All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
    and after this one just a dozen
    to launch a little ship on love’s storm-tossed seas,
    then only ten more left like rows of beans.
    How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
    and insist the iambic bongos must be played
    and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
    one for every station of the cross.
    But hang on here wile we make the turn
    into the final six where all will be resolved,
    where longing and heartache will find an end,
    where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
    take off those crazy medieval tights,
    blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.

  • The Frog

    What a wonderful bird the frog are!
    When he stand he sit almost;
    When he hop he fly almost.
    He ain’t got no sense hardly;
    He ain’t got no tail hardly either.
    When he sit, he sit on what he ain’t got almost.

  • Edward Thomas

    The New House

    Now first, as I shut the door,
    I was alone
    In the new house; and the wind
    Began to moan.

    Old at once was the house,
    And I was old;
    My ears were teased with the dread
    Of what was foretold,

    Nights of storm, days of mist, without end;
    Sad days when the sun
    Shone in vain: old griefs and griefs
    Not yet begun.

    All was foretold me; naught
    Could I foresee;
    But I learned how the wind would sound
    After these things should be.

  • Sophie Hannah

    Trainers All Turn Grey
    (after Robert Frost’s ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay’)

    You buy your trainers new.
    They cost a bob or two.
    At first they’re clean and white,
    The laces thick and tight.
    Then they must touch the ground –
    (You have to walk around).
    You learn to your dismay
    Trainers all turn grey.

  • Boris Johnson

    The source, my friends of half life’s trouble
    Is seeking reputation’s bubble,
    And though the kids were not ambitious –
    Their beds were soft, their food delicious –
    Their lives were not entirely cushy:
    Their parents were so very pushy.

    from “The Peril of the Pushy Parents”

  • Hovis Presley

    I rely on you

    I rely on you
    like a Skoda needs suspension
    like the aged need a pension
    like a trampoline needs tension
    like a bungee jump needs apprehension
    I rely on you
    like a camera needs a shutter
    like a gambler needs a flutter
    like a golfer needs a putter
    like a buttered scone involves some butter
    I rely on you
    like an acrobat needs ice cool nerve
    like a hairpin needs a drastic curve
    like an HGV needs endless derv
    like an outside left needs a body swerve
    I rely on you
    like a handyman needs pliers
    like an auctioneer needs buyers
    like a laundromat needs driers
    like The Good Life needed Richard Briers
    I rely on you
    like a water vole needs water
    like a brick outhouse needs mortar
    like a lemming to the slaughter
    Ryan’s just Ryan without his daughter
    I rely on you

  • George Herbert

    The World

    Love built a stately house, where Fortune came,
    And spinning fancies, she was heard to say
    That her fine cobwebs did support the frame,
    Whereas they were supported by the same;
    But Wisdom quickly swept them all away.

    The Pleasure came, who, liking not the fashion,
    Began to make balconies, terraces,
    Till she had weakened all by alteration;
    But reverend laws, and many a proclamation
    Reformed all at length with menaces.

    Then entered Sin, and with that sycamore
    Whose leaves first sheltered man from drought and dew,
    Working and winding slily evermore,
    The inward walls and summers cleft and tore;
    But Grace shored these, and cut that as it grew.

    Then Sin combined with death in a firm band,
    To raze the building to the very floor;
    Which they effected, – none could them withstand;
    But Love and Grace took Glory by the hand,
    And built a braver palace than before.

  • Lewis F Richardson

    Big Whorls Have Little Whorls

    Big whorls have little whorls
    That feed on their velocity,
    And little whorls have lesser whorls
    And so on to viscosity.

    This poem summarises Richardson’s 1920 paper ‘The supply of energy from and to Atmospheric Eddies’

  • W H Auden

    The Unknown Citizen

    He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
    One against whom there was no official complaint,
    And all the reports on his conduct agree
    That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
    For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
    Except for the War till the day he retired
    He worked in a factory and never got fired,
    But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
    Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
    For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
    (Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
    And our Social Psychology workers found
    That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
    The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
    And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
    Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
    And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
    Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
    He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
    And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
    A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
    Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
    That he held the proper opinions for he time of year;
    When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.
    He was married and added five children to the population,
    Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
    And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
    Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
    Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

  • Oliver Hereford

    G K Chesterton

    When Plain Folk, such as you or I,
    See the Sun sinking in the sky,
    We think it is the Setting Sun,
    But Mr. Gilbert Chesterton
    Is not so easily misled.
    He calmly stands upon his head,
    And upside down obtains a new
    And Chestertonian point of view,
    Observing thus, how from his toes
    The sun creeps nearer to his nose,
    He cries with wonder and delight,
    “How Grand the SUNRISE is to-night!”

  • Philip Larkin

    Ignorance

    Strange to know nothing, never to be sure
    Of what is true or right or real,
    But forced to qualify or so I feel,
    Or Well, it does seem so:
    Someone must know.

    Strange to be ignorant of the way things work:
    Their skill at finding what they need,
    Their sense of shape, and punctual spread of seed,
    And willingness to change;
    Yes, it is strange,

    Even to wear such knowledge – for our flesh
    Surrounds us with its own decisions –
    And yet spend all our life on imprecisions,
    That when we start to die
    Have no idea why.

  • Stephen Crane

    I Met a Seer

    I met a seer.
    He held in his hands
    The book of wisdom.
    “Sir,” I addressed him,
    “Let me read.”
    “Child — ” he began.
    “Sir,” I said,
    “Think not that I am a child,
    For already I know much
    Of that which you hold.
    Aye, much.”

    He smiled.
    Then he opened the book
    And held it before me. —
    Strange that I should have grown so suddenly blind.

  • Thomas Hardy

    A Thunderstorm in Town

    She wore a ‘terra-cotta’ dress,
    And we stayed, because of the pelting storm,
    Within the hansom’s dry recess,
    Though the horse had stopped; yea, motionless
    We sat on, snug and warm.

    Then the downpour ceased, to my sharp sad pain,
    And the glass that had screened our forms before
    Flew up, and out she sprang to her door:
    I should have kissed her if the rain
    Had lasted a minute more.

  • Bernard Lamb

    There was a Neanderthal man
    Who found that is grunts didn’t scan
    This hearty meat-eater
    Invented the metre
    To prove that it certainly can

  • Shel Silverstein

    I know you little, I love you lots,
    my love for you could fill ten pots,
    fifteen buckets, sixteen cans,
    three teacups, and four dishpans.

  • John Hegley

    Uncle and Auntie

    my auntie gave me a colouring book and crayons
    I begin to colour
    after a while auntie leans over and says
    you’ve gone over the lines
    what do you think they’re there for
    eh?
    some kind of statement is it?
    going to be a rebel are we?
    your auntie gives you a lovely present
    and you have to go and ruin it
    I begin to cry
    my uncle gives me a hanky and some blank paper
    do some doggies of your own he says
    I begin to colour
    when I have done
    he looks over
    and says they are all very good
    he is lying
    only some of them are

  • Robert Browning

    Song, from Pippa Passes

    The year’s at the spring,
    And day’s at the morn;
    Morning’s at seven;
    The hill-side’s dew-pearled;
    The lark’s on the wing;
    The snail’s on the thorn;
    God’s in his Heaven –
    All’s right with the world!

  • Sara Teasdale

    Morning

    I went out on an April morning
    All alone, for my heart was high,
    I was a child of the shining meadow,
    I was a sister of the sky.

    There in the windy flood of morning
    Longing lifted its weight from me,
    Lost as a sob in the midst of cheering,
    Swept as a sea-bird out to sea.

  • Rudyard Kipling

    The Anvil

    England’s on the anvil — hear the hammers ring —
    Clanging from the Severn to the Tyne!
    Never was a blacksmith like our Norman King —
    England’s being hammered, hammered, hammered into line.

    England’s on the anvil! Heavy are the blows!
    (But the work will be a marvel when it’s done.)
    Little bits of Kingdoms cannot stand against their foes.
    England’s being hammered, hammered, hammered into one!

    There shall be one people — it shall serve one Lord —
    (Neither Priest nor Baron shall escape!)
    It shall have one speech and law, soul and strength and sword.
    England’s being hammered, hammered, hammered into shape!

  • Pi

    Sir. I bear a rhyme excelling
    In mystic force and magic spelling.

    (3.14159265358)

  • Ogden Nash

    The turtle lives twixt plated decks
    Which practically conceal its sex.
    I think it clever of the turtle,
    In such a fix to be so fertile.

  • Kenneth Grahame

    Mr Toad

    The world has held great Heroes,
    As history-books have showed;
    But never a name to go down to fame
    Compared with that of Toad!

    The clever men at Oxford
    Know all that there is to be knowed.
    But they none of them know one half as much
    As intelligent Mr Toad!

    The animals sat in the Ark and cried,
    Their tears in torrents flowed.
    Who was it said, “There’s land ahead”?
    Encouraging Mr Toad!

    The army all saluted
    As they marched along the road.
    Was it the King? Or Kitchener?
    No. It was Mr Toad.

    The Queen and her Ladies-in-waiting
    Sat at the window and sewed.
    She cried, “Look! Who’s that HANDSOME man?”
    They answered, “Mr Toad.”

  • London Bells

    Two sticks and an apple,
    Ring the bells at Whitechapel.

    Old Father Bald Pate,
    Ring the bells Aldgate.

    Maids in white aprons,
    Ring the bells at St. Catherine`s.

    Oranges and Lemons,
    Ring the bells at St. Clement`s

    When will you pay me?
    Ring the bells at the Old Bailey.

    When I am rich,
    Ring the bells at Fleetditch.

    When will that be?
    Ring the bells of Stepney.

    When I am old,
    Ring the great bell at Paul`s.

  • Sylvia Fine

    Pa was forced to be a hobo
    Because he played the oboe
    And the oboe it is clearly understood
    Is an ill wind that nobody blows good