[ { "id": "po-frost-road", "title": "The Road Not Taken", "author": "Robert Frost", "year": 1916, "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "choice" ], "text": "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth; then took the other, as just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim, because it was grassy and wanted wear; though as for that the passing there had worn them really about the same." }, { "id": "po-dickinson-hope", "title": "Hope is the thing with feathers", "author": "Emily Dickinson", "year": 1891, "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "hope" ], "text": "Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all, and sweetest in the gale is heard; and sore must be the storm that could abash the little bird that kept so many warm." }, { "id": "po-whitman-myself", "title": "Song of Myself (excerpt)", "author": "Walt Whitman", "year": 1855, "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "self", "nature" ], "text": "I celebrate myself, and sing myself, and what I assume you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass." }, { "id": "po-shakespeare-18", "title": "Sonnet 18", "author": "William Shakespeare", "year": 1609, "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "love", "summer" ], "text": "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer's lease hath all too short a date. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, and often is his gold complexion dimmed." }, { "id": "po-keats-thing", "title": "Endymion (opening)", "author": "John Keats", "year": 1818, "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "beauty" ], "text": "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness; but still will keep a bower quiet for us, and a sleep full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing." }, { "id": "po-thomas-night", "title": "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night", "author": "Dylan Thomas", "year": 1947, "source": "Public domain in some jurisdictions; verify before commercial use", "tags": [ "courage", "mortality" ], "text": "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. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, because their words had forked no lightning they do not go gentle into that good night." }, { "id": "po-blake-tyger", "title": "The Tyger", "author": "William Blake", "year": 1794, "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "mystery" ], "text": "Tyger, Tyger, burning bright, in the forests of the night; what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire?" }, { "id": "po-rossetti-uphill", "title": "Up-Hill", "author": "Christina Rossetti", "year": 1862, "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "journey" ], "text": "Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end. Will the day's journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend. But is there for the night a resting-place? A roof for when the slow dark hours begin." }, { "id": "po-poe-raven", "title": "The Raven (opening)", "author": "Edgar Allan Poe", "year": 1845, "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "gothic" ], "text": "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, while I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door." }, { "id": "po-wordsworth-daffodils", "title": "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", "author": "William Wordsworth", "year": 1807, "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature" ], "text": "I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o'er vales and hills, when all at once I saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils; beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze." }, { "id": "po-shakespeare-29", "title": "Sonnet 29", "author": "William Shakespeare", "year": "1609", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "sonnet", "love", "despair" ], "text": "When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,\nI all alone beweep my outcast state,\nAnd trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,\nAnd look upon myself, and curse my fate,\nWishing me like to one more rich in hope,\nFeatured like him, like him with friends possess'd,\nDesiring this man's art and that man's scope,\nWith what I most enjoy contented least;\nYet in these thoughts myself almost despising,\nHaply I think on thee, and then my state,\nLike to the lark at break of day arising\nFrom sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;\nFor thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings\nThat then I scorn to change my state with kings." }, { "id": "po-shakespeare-116", "title": "Sonnet 116", "author": "William Shakespeare", "year": "1609", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "sonnet", "love", "constancy" ], "text": "Let me not to the marriage of true minds\nAdmit impediments. Love is not love\nWhich alters when it alteration finds,\nOr bends with the remover to remove:\nO no! it is an ever-fixed mark\nThat looks on tempests and is never shaken;\nIt is the star to every wandering bark,\nWhose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.\nLove's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks\nWithin his bending sickle's compass come;\nLove alters not with his brief hours and weeks,\nBut bears it out even to the edge of doom.\nIf this be error and upon me proved,\nI never writ, nor no man ever loved." }, { "id": "po-shakespeare-130", "title": "Sonnet 130", "author": "William Shakespeare", "year": "1609", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "sonnet", "love", "satire" ], "text": "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;\nCoral is far more red than her lips' red;\nIf snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;\nIf hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.\nI have seen roses damask'd, red and white,\nBut no such roses see I in her cheeks;\nAnd in some perfumes is there more delight\nThan in the breath that from my mistress reeks.\nI love to hear her speak, yet well I know\nThat music hath a far more pleasing sound;\nI grant I never saw a goddess go;\nMy mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:\n And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare\n As any she belied with false compare." }, { "id": "po-keats-grecian", "title": "Ode on a Grecian Urn (excerpt)", "author": "John Keats", "year": "1819", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "ode", "beauty", "art" ], "text": "Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,\n Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,\nSylvan historian, who canst thus express\n A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:\nWhat leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape\n Of deities or mortals, or of both,\n In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?\n What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?\nWhat mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?\n What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?\n\n\"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, -- that is all\n Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.\"" }, { "id": "po-keats-nightingale", "title": "Ode to a Nightingale (excerpt)", "author": "John Keats", "year": "1819", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "ode", "nature" ], "text": "My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains\n My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,\nOr emptied some dull opiate to the drains\n One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:\n'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,\n But being too happy in thine happiness, --\n That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,\n In some melodious plot\n Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,\n Singest of summer in full-throated ease." }, { "id": "po-shelley-ozymandias", "title": "Ozymandias", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "year": "1818", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "sonnet", "ruin", "power" ], "text": "I met a traveller from an antique land,\nWho said -- \"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone\nStand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,\nHalf sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,\nAnd wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,\nTell that its sculptor well those passions read\nWhich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,\nThe hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;\nAnd on the pedestal, these words appear:\nMy name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;\nLook on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!\nNothing beside remains. Round the decay\nOf that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare\nThe lone and level sands stretch far away.\"" }, { "id": "po-byron-she-walks", "title": "She Walks in Beauty", "author": "Lord Byron", "year": "1814", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "love", "beauty" ], "text": "She walks in beauty, like the night\n Of cloudless climes and starry skies;\nAnd all that's best of dark and bright\n Meet in her aspect and her eyes;\nThus mellowed to that tender light\n Which heaven to gaudy day denies.\n\nOne shade the more, one ray the less,\n Had half impaired the nameless grace\nWhich waves in every raven tress,\n Or softly lightens o'er her face;\nWhere thoughts serenely sweet express,\n How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.\n\nAnd on that cheek, and o'er that brow,\n So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,\nThe smiles that win, the tints that glow,\n But tell of days in goodness spent,\nA mind at peace with all below,\n A heart whose love is innocent!" }, { "id": "po-wordsworth-prelude", "title": "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey (excerpt)", "author": "William Wordsworth", "year": "1798", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "memory" ], "text": "And I have felt\nA presence that disturbs me with the joy\nOf elevated thoughts; a sense sublime\nOf something far more deeply interfused,\nWhose dwelling is the light of setting suns,\nAnd the round ocean and the living air,\nAnd the blue sky, and in the mind of man:\nA motion and a spirit, that impels\nAll thinking things, all objects of all thought,\nAnd rolls through all things." }, { "id": "po-coleridge-kubla", "title": "Kubla Khan (opening)", "author": "Samuel Taylor Coleridge", "year": "1816", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "dream", "imagination" ], "text": "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan\nA stately pleasure-dome decree:\nWhere Alph, the sacred river, ran\nThrough caverns measureless to man\n Down to a sunless sea.\nSo twice five miles of fertile ground\nWith walls and towers were girdled round;\nAnd there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,\nWhere blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;\nAnd here were forests ancient as the hills,\nEnfolding sunny spots of greenery." }, { "id": "po-tennyson-ulysses", "title": "Ulysses (closing)", "author": "Alfred, Lord Tennyson", "year": "1842", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "adventure", "aging" ], "text": "Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'\nWe are not now that strength which in old days\nMoved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;\nOne equal temper of heroic hearts,\nMade weak by time and fate, but strong in will\nTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." }, { "id": "po-tennyson-charge", "title": "The Charge of the Light Brigade (opening)", "author": "Alfred, Lord Tennyson", "year": "1854", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "war", "duty" ], "text": "Half a league, half a league,\nHalf a league onward,\nAll in the valley of Death\n Rode the six hundred.\n\"Forward, the Light Brigade!\nCharge for the guns!\" he said.\nInto the valley of Death\n Rode the six hundred.\n\n\"Forward, the Light Brigade!\"\nWas there a man dismay'd?\nNot tho' the soldier knew\n Some one had blunder'd.\nTheirs not to make reply,\nTheirs not to reason why,\nTheirs but to do and die.\nInto the valley of Death\n Rode the six hundred." }, { "id": "po-browning-pippa", "title": "Pippa's Song", "author": "Robert Browning", "year": "1841", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "optimism" ], "text": "The year's at the spring,\nAnd day's at the morn;\nMorning's at seven;\nThe hill-side's dew-pearled;\nThe lark's on the wing;\nThe snail's on the thorn;\nGod's in His heaven --\nAll's right with the world!" }, { "id": "po-rossetti-remember", "title": "Remember", "author": "Christina Rossetti", "year": "1862", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "death", "love" ], "text": "Remember me when I am gone away,\n Gone far away into the silent land;\n When you can no more hold me by the hand,\nNor I half turn to go yet turning stay.\nRemember me when no more day by day\n You tell me of our future that you plann'd:\n Only remember me; you understand\nIt will be late to counsel then or pray.\nYet if you should forget me for a while\n And afterwards remember, do not grieve:\n For if the darkness and corruption leave\n A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,\nBetter by far you should forget and smile\n Than that you should remember and be sad." }, { "id": "po-dickinson-cars", "title": "I like to see it lap the Miles", "author": "Emily Dickinson", "year": "c. 1862", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "industry", "observation" ], "text": "I like to see it lap the Miles --\nAnd lick the Valleys up --\nAnd stop to feed itself at Tanks --\nAnd then -- prodigious step\n\nAround a Pile of Mountains --\nAnd supercilious peer\nIn Shanties -- by the sides of Roads --\nAnd then a Quarry pare\n\nTo fit its Ribs\nAnd crawl between\nComplaining all the while\nIn horrid -- hooting stanza --\nThen chase itself down Hill --\n\nAnd neigh like Boanerges --\nThen -- punctual as a Star\nStop -- docile and omnipotent\nAt its own stable door --" }, { "id": "po-dickinson-snake", "title": "A narrow Fellow in the Grass", "author": "Emily Dickinson", "year": "c. 1865", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "fear" ], "text": "A narrow Fellow in the Grass\nOccasionally rides --\nYou may have met him? Did you not\nHis notice instant is --\n\nThe Grass divides as with a Comb,\nA spotted Shaft is seen,\nAnd then it closes at your Feet\nAnd opens further on --\n\nSeveral of Nature's People\nI know, and they know me;\nI feel for them a transport\nOf Cordiality;\n\nBut never met this Fellow,\nAttended or alone,\nWithout a tighter breathing,\nAnd Zero at the Bone." }, { "id": "po-dickinson-because", "title": "Because I could not stop for Death", "author": "Emily Dickinson", "year": "c. 1863", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "death", "journey" ], "text": "Because I could not stop for Death --\nHe kindly stopped for me --\nThe Carriage held but just Ourselves --\nAnd Immortality.\n\nWe slowly drove -- He knew no haste\nAnd I had put away\nMy labor and my leisure too,\nFor His Civility --\n\nWe passed the School, where Children strove\nAt Recess -- in the Ring --\nWe passed the Fields of Gazing Grain --\nWe passed the Setting Sun --" }, { "id": "po-frost-stopping", "title": "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", "author": "Robert Frost", "year": "1923", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "winter" ], "text": "Whose woods these are I think I know.\nHis house is in the village though;\nHe will not see me stopping here\nTo watch his woods fill up with snow.\n\nMy little horse must think it queer\nTo stop without a farmhouse near\nBetween the woods and frozen lake\nThe darkest evening of the year.\n\nHe gives his harness bells a shake\nTo ask if there is some mistake.\nThe only other sound's the sweep\nOf easy wind and downy flake.\n\nThe woods are lovely, dark and deep,\nBut I have promises to keep,\nAnd miles to go before I sleep,\nAnd miles to go before I sleep." }, { "id": "po-frost-fire", "title": "Fire and Ice", "author": "Robert Frost", "year": "1920", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "short", "destruction" ], "text": "Some say the world will end in fire,\nSome say in ice.\nFrom what I've tasted of desire\nI hold with those who favor fire.\nBut if it had to perish twice,\nI think I know enough of hate\nTo say that for destruction ice\nIs also great\nAnd would suffice." }, { "id": "po-frost-mending", "title": "Mending Wall (opening)", "author": "Robert Frost", "year": "1914", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "neighbors", "tradition" ], "text": "Something there is that doesn't love a wall,\nThat sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,\nAnd spills the upper boulders in the sun;\nAnd makes gaps even two can pass abreast.\nThe work of hunters is another thing:\nI have come after them and made repair\nWhere they have left not one stone on a stone,\nBut they would have the rabbit out of hiding,\nTo please the yelping dogs." }, { "id": "po-yeats-innisfree", "title": "The Lake Isle of Innisfree", "author": "William Butler Yeats", "year": "1888", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "peace" ], "text": "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,\nAnd a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;\nNine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,\nAnd live alone in the bee-loud glade.\n\nAnd I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,\nDropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;\nThere midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,\nAnd evening full of the linnet's wings.\n\nI will arise and go now, for always night and day\nI hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;\nWhile I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,\nI hear it in the deep heart's core." }, { "id": "po-yeats-second-coming", "title": "The Second Coming (opening)", "author": "William Butler Yeats", "year": "1919", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "apocalyptic", "modern" ], "text": "Turning and turning in the widening gyre\nThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;\nThings fall apart; the centre cannot hold;\nMere anarchy is loosed upon the world,\nThe blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere\nThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;\nThe best lack all conviction, while the worst\nAre full of passionate intensity." }, { "id": "po-eliot-prufrock", "title": "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (opening)", "author": "T. S. Eliot", "year": "1915", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "modern", "alienation" ], "text": "Let us go then, you and I,\nWhen the evening is spread out against the sky\nLike a patient etherized upon a table;\nLet us go, through certain half-deserted streets,\nThe muttering retreats\nOf restless nights in one-night cheap hotels\nAnd sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:\nStreets that follow like a tedious argument\nOf insidious intent\nTo lead you to an overwhelming question. . . .\nOh, do not ask, \"What is it?\"\nLet us go and make our visit." }, { "id": "po-hopkins-pied", "title": "Pied Beauty", "author": "Gerard Manley Hopkins", "year": "1877", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "praise" ], "text": "Glory be to God for dappled things --\n For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;\n For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;\nFresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;\n Landscape plotted and pieced -- fold, fallow, and plough;\n And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.\n\nAll things counter, original, spare, strange;\n Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)\n With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;\nHe fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:\n Praise him." }, { "id": "po-hardy-darkling", "title": "The Darkling Thrush", "author": "Thomas Hardy", "year": "1900", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "winter", "hope" ], "text": "I leant upon a coppice gate\n When Frost was spectre-grey,\nAnd Winter's dregs made desolate\n The weakening eye of day.\nThe tangled bine-stems scored the sky\n Like strings of broken lyres,\nAnd all mankind that haunted nigh\n Had sought their household fires.\n\nAt once a voice arose among\n The bleak twigs overhead\nIn a full-hearted evensong\n Of joy illimited;\nAn aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,\n In blast-beruffled plume,\nHad chosen thus to fling his soul\n Upon the growing gloom." }, { "id": "po-blake-songs-innocence", "title": "The Lamb", "author": "William Blake", "year": "1789", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "innocence", "nature" ], "text": "Little Lamb, who made thee?\n Dost thou know who made thee,\nGave thee life, and bid thee feed\nBy the stream and o'er the mead;\nGave thee clothing of delight,\nSoftest clothing, woolly, bright;\nGave thee such a tender voice,\nMaking all the vales rejoice?\n Little Lamb, who made thee?\n Dost thou know who made thee?" }, { "id": "po-blake-london", "title": "London", "author": "William Blake", "year": "1794", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "city", "critique" ], "text": "I wander thro' each charter'd street,\nNear where the charter'd Thames does flow,\nAnd mark in every face I meet\nMarks of weakness, marks of woe.\n\nIn every cry of every Man,\nIn every Infant's cry of fear,\nIn every voice, in every ban,\nThe mind-forg'd manacles I hear.\n\nHow the Chimney-sweeper's cry\nEvery black'ning Church appalls;\nAnd the hapless Soldier's sigh\nRuns in blood down Palace walls.\n\nBut most thro' midnight streets I hear\nHow the youthful Harlot's curse\nBlasts the new-born Infant's tear,\nAnd blights with plagues the Marriage hearse." }, { "id": "po-poe-annabel", "title": "Annabel Lee", "author": "Edgar Allan Poe", "year": "1849", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "love", "death" ], "text": "It was many and many a year ago,\n In a kingdom by the sea,\nThat a maiden there lived whom you may know\n By the name of Annabel Lee;\nAnd this maiden she lived with no other thought\n Than to love and be loved by me.\n\nI was a child and she was a child,\n In this kingdom by the sea,\nBut we loved with a love that was more than love --\n I and my Annabel Lee --\nWith a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven\n Coveted her and me." }, { "id": "po-poe-eldorado", "title": "Eldorado", "author": "Edgar Allan Poe", "year": "1849", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "quest", "life" ], "text": "Gaily bedight,\n A gallant knight,\nIn sunshine and in shadow,\n Had journeyed long,\n Singing a song,\nIn search of Eldorado.\n\nBut he grew old --\n This knight so bold --\nAnd o'er his heart a shadow --\n Fell as he found\n No spot of ground\nThat looked like Eldorado.\n\nAnd, as his strength\n Failed him at length,\nHe met a pilgrim shadow --\n \"Shadow,\" said he,\n \"Where can it be --\nThis land of Eldorado?\"" }, { "id": "po-longfellow-psalm-life", "title": "A Psalm of Life (excerpt)", "author": "Henry Wadsworth Longfellow", "year": "1838", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "life", "action" ], "text": "Tell me not, in mournful numbers,\n Life is but an empty dream! --\nFor the soul is dead that slumbers,\n And things are not what they seem.\n\nLife is real! Life is earnest!\n And the grave is not its goal;\nDust thou art, to dust returnest,\n Was not spoken of the soul.\n\nLet us, then, be up and doing,\n With a heart for any fate;\nStill achieving, still pursuing,\n Learn to labor and to wait." }, { "id": "po-longfellow-paul-revere", "title": "Paul Revere's Ride (opening)", "author": "Henry Wadsworth Longfellow", "year": "1860", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "history", "narrative" ], "text": "Listen, my children, and you shall hear\nOf the midnight ride of Paul Revere,\nOn the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;\nHardly a man is now alive\nWho remembers that famous day and year.\n\nHe said to his friend, \"If the British march\nBy land or sea from the town to-night,\nHang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch\nOf the North Church tower as a signal light, --\nOne if by land, and two if by sea;\nAnd I on the opposite shore will be,\nReady to ride and spread the alarm\nThrough every Middlesex village and farm,\nFor the country folk to be up and to arm.\"" }, { "id": "po-whitman-captain", "title": "O Captain! My Captain!", "author": "Walt Whitman", "year": "1865", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "elegy", "leadership" ], "text": "O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,\nThe ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,\nThe port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,\nWhile follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;\n But O heart! heart! heart!\n O the bleeding drops of red,\n Where on the deck my Captain lies,\n Fallen cold and dead.\n\nO Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;\nRise up -- for you the flag is flung -- for you the bugle trills,\nFor you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths -- for you the shores a-crowding,\nFor you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning." }, { "id": "po-whitman-noiseless", "title": "A Noiseless Patient Spider", "author": "Walt Whitman", "year": "1868", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "solitude", "reflection" ], "text": "A noiseless patient spider,\nI mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,\nMark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,\nIt launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,\nEver unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.\n\nAnd you O my soul where you stand,\nSurrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,\nCeaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,\nTill the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,\nTill the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul." }, { "id": "po-housman-lovliest", "title": "Loveliest of trees, the cherry now", "author": "A. E. Housman", "year": "1896", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "time" ], "text": "Loveliest of trees, the cherry now\nIs hung with bloom along the bough,\nAnd stands about the woodland ride\nWearing white for Eastertide.\n\nNow, of my threescore years and ten,\nTwenty will not come again,\nAnd take from seventy springs a score,\nIt only leaves me fifty more.\n\nAnd since to look at things in bloom\nFifty springs are little room,\nAbout the woodlands I will go\nTo see the cherry hung with snow." }, { "id": "po-housman-shropshire", "title": "When I was one-and-twenty", "author": "A. E. Housman", "year": "1896", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "youth", "love" ], "text": "When I was one-and-twenty\n I heard a wise man say,\n\"Give crowns and pounds and guineas\n But not your heart away;\nGive pearls away and rubies\n But keep your fancy free.\"\nBut I was one-and-twenty,\n No use to talk to me.\n\nWhen I was one-and-twenty\n I heard him say again,\n\"The heart out of the bosom\n Was never given in vain;\n'Tis paid with sighs a plenty\n And sold for endless rue.\"\nAnd I am two-and-twenty,\n And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true." }, { "id": "po-shelley-west-wind", "title": "Ode to the West Wind (closing)", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "year": "1820", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "ode", "change" ], "text": "Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:\nWhat if my leaves are falling like its own!\nThe tumult of thy mighty harmonies\n\nWill take from both a deep, autumnal tone,\nSweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,\nMy spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!\n\nDrive my dead thoughts over the universe\nLike wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!\nAnd, by the incantation of this verse,\n\nScatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth\nAshes and sparks, my words among mankind!\nBe through my lips to unawaken'd earth\n\nThe trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,\nIf Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" }, { "id": "po-burns-red-rose", "title": "A Red, Red Rose", "author": "Robert Burns", "year": "1794", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "love", "scottish" ], "text": "O my Luve is like a red, red rose\n That's newly sprung in June;\nO my Luve is like the melody\n That's sweetly played in tune.\n\nSo fair art thou, my bonnie lass,\n So deep in luve am I;\nAnd I will luve thee still, my dear,\n Till a' the seas gang dry.\n\nTill a' the seas gang dry, my dear,\n And the rocks melt wi' the sun;\nI will love thee still, my dear,\n While the sands o' life shall run.\n\nAnd fare thee weel, my only luve!\n And fare thee weel awhile!\nAnd I will come again, my luve,\n Though it were ten thousand mile." }, { "id": "po-burns-mouse", "title": "To a Mouse (excerpt)", "author": "Robert Burns", "year": "1785", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "reflection" ], "text": "But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,\nIn proving foresight may be vain:\nThe best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men\n Gang aft agley,\nAn' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,\n For promis'd joy!\n\nStill thou art blest, compar'd wi' me!\nThe present only toucheth thee:\nBut Och! I backward cast my e'e,\n On prospects drear!\nAn' forward, tho' I canna see,\n I guess an' fear!" }, { "id": "po-marvell-coy-mistress", "title": "To His Coy Mistress (excerpt)", "author": "Andrew Marvell", "year": "c. 1650", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "love", "time" ], "text": "Had we but world enough and time,\nThis coyness, lady, were no crime.\nWe would sit down, and think which way\nTo walk, and pass our long love's day.\nBut at my back I always hear\nTime's wingèd chariot hurrying near;\nAnd yonder all before us lie\nDeserts of vast eternity.\nThy beauty shall no more be found;\nNor, in thy marble vault, shall sound\nMy echoing song; then worms shall try\nThat long-preserved virginity,\nAnd your quaint honour turn to dust,\nAnd into ashes all my lust:\nThe grave's a fine and private place,\nBut none, I think, do there embrace." }, { "id": "po-pope-essay-criticism", "title": "An Essay on Criticism (excerpt)", "author": "Alexander Pope", "year": "1711", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "wisdom", "writing" ], "text": "A little learning is a dangerous thing;\nDrink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:\nThere shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,\nAnd drinking largely sobers us again.\n\nTo err is human; to forgive, divine.\n\nFor fools rush in where angels fear to tread." }, { "id": "po-gray-elegy", "title": "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (opening)", "author": "Thomas Gray", "year": "1751", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "mortality", "reflection" ], "text": "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,\n The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,\nThe plowman homeward plods his weary way,\n And leaves the world to darkness and to me.\n\nNow fades the glimm'ring landscape on the sight,\n And all the air a solemn stillness holds,\nSave where the beetle wheels his droning flight,\n And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds." }, { "id": "po-tennyson-break", "title": "Break, break, break", "author": "Alfred, Lord Tennyson", "year": "1842", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "grief", "sea" ], "text": "Break, break, break,\n On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!\nAnd I would that my tongue could utter\n The thoughts that arise in me.\n\nO, well for the fisherman's boy,\n That he shouts with his sister at play!\nO, well for the sailor lad,\n That he sings in his boat on the bay!\n\nAnd the stately ships go on\n To their haven under the hill;\nBut O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,\n And the sound of a voice that is still!\n\nBreak, break, break\n At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!\nBut the tender grace of a day that is dead\n Will never come back to me." }, { "id": "po-yeats-when-old", "title": "When You Are Old", "author": "William Butler Yeats", "year": "1893", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "love", "aging" ], "text": "When you are old and grey and full of sleep,\nAnd nodding by the fire, take down this book,\nAnd slowly read, and dream of the soft look\nYour eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;\n\nHow many loved your moments of glad grace,\nAnd loved your beauty with love false or true,\nBut one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,\nAnd loved the sorrows of your changing face;\n\nAnd bending down beside the glowing bars,\nMurmur, a little sadly, how Love fled\nAnd paced upon the mountains overhead\nAnd hid his face amid a crowd of stars." }, { "id": "po-frost-acquainted", "title": "Acquainted with the Night", "author": "Robert Frost", "year": "1928", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "solitude", "night" ], "text": "I have been one acquainted with the night.\nI have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.\nI have outwalked the furthest city light.\n\nI have looked down the saddest city lane.\nI have passed by the watchman on his beat\nAnd dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.\n\nI have stood still and stopped the sound of feet\nWhen far away an interrupted cry\nCame over houses from another street,\n\nBut not to call me back or say good-bye;\nAnd further still at an unearthly height,\nOne luminary clock against the sky\n\nProclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.\nI have been one acquainted with the night." }, { "id": "po-frost-nothing-gold", "title": "Nothing Gold Can Stay", "author": "Robert Frost", "year": "1923", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "time" ], "text": "Nature's first green is gold,\nHer hardest hue to hold.\nHer early leaf's a flower;\nBut only so an hour.\nThen leaf subsides to leaf.\nSo Eden sank to grief,\nSo dawn goes down to day.\nNothing gold can stay." }, { "id": "po-yeats-aedh", "title": "Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven", "author": "William Butler Yeats", "year": "1899", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "love", "dreams" ], "text": "Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,\nEnwrought with golden and silver light,\nThe blue and the dim and the dark cloths\nOf night and light and the half-light,\nI would spread the cloths under your feet:\nBut I, being poor, have only my dreams;\nI have spread my dreams under your feet;\nTread softly because you tread on my dreams." }, { "id": "po-dunbar-mask", "title": "We Wear the Mask", "author": "Paul Laurence Dunbar", "year": "1896", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "identity", "race" ], "text": "We wear the mask that grins and lies,\nIt hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, --\nThis debt we pay to human guile;\nWith torn and bleeding hearts we smile,\nAnd mouth with myriad subtleties.\n\nWhy should the world be over-wise,\nIn counting all our tears and sighs?\nNay, let them only see us, while\n We wear the mask.\n\nWe smile, but, O great Christ, our cries\nTo thee from tortured souls arise.\nWe sing, but oh the clay is vile\nBeneath our feet, and long the mile;\nBut let the world dream otherwise,\n We wear the mask!" }, { "id": "po-hughes-i-too", "title": "I, Too (excerpt)", "author": "Langston Hughes", "year": "1926", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "identity", "hope" ], "text": "I, too, sing America.\n\nI am the darker brother.\nThey send me to eat in the kitchen\nWhen company comes,\nBut I laugh,\nAnd eat well,\nAnd grow strong.\n\nTomorrow,\nI'll be at the table\nWhen company comes.\nNobody'll dare\nSay to me,\n\"Eat in the kitchen,\"\nThen.\n\nBesides,\nThey'll see how beautiful I am\nAnd be ashamed --\n\nI, too, am America." }, { "id": "po-hughes-mother", "title": "Mother to Son", "author": "Langston Hughes", "year": "1922", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "family", "perseverance" ], "text": "Well, son, I'll tell you:\nLife for me ain't been no crystal stair.\nIt's had tacks in it,\nAnd splinters,\nAnd boards torn up,\nAnd places with no carpet on the floor --\nBare.\nBut all the time\nI'se been a-climbin' on,\nAnd reachin' landin's,\nAnd turnin' corners,\nAnd sometimes goin' in the dark\nWhere there ain't been no light.\nSo boy, don't you turn back.\nDon't you set down on the steps\n'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.\nDon't you fall now --\nFor I'se still goin', honey,\nI'se still climbin',\nAnd life for me ain't been no crystal stair." }, { "id": "po-sandburg-fog", "title": "Fog", "author": "Carl Sandburg", "year": "1916", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "short" ], "text": "The fog comes\non little cat feet.\n\nIt sits looking\nover harbor and city\non silent haunches\nand then moves on." }, { "id": "po-sandburg-chicago", "title": "Chicago (opening)", "author": "Carl Sandburg", "year": "1914", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "city", "industry" ], "text": "Hog Butcher for the World,\n Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,\n Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;\n Stormy, husky, brawling,\n City of the Big Shoulders:\n\nThey tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your\npainted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.\nAnd they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have\nseen the gunman kill and go free to kill again." }, { "id": "po-millay-first-fig", "title": "First Fig", "author": "Edna St. Vincent Millay", "year": "1920", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "short", "life" ], "text": "My candle burns at both ends;\n It will not last the night;\nBut ah, my foes, and oh, my friends --\n It gives a lovely light!" }, { "id": "po-millay-renascence", "title": "Renascence (opening)", "author": "Edna St. Vincent Millay", "year": "1912", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "reflection" ], "text": "All I could see from where I stood\nWas three long mountains and a wood;\nI turned and looked the other way,\nAnd saw three islands in a bay.\nSo with my eyes I traced the line\nOf the horizon, thin and fine,\nStraight around till I was come\nBack to where I'd started from;\nAnd all I saw from where I stood\nWas three long mountains and a wood." }, { "id": "po-shakespeare-sonnet-18-extra", "title": "Sonnet 73", "author": "William Shakespeare", "year": "1609", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "sonnet", "aging" ], "text": "That time of year thou mayst in me behold\nWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang\nUpon those boughs which shake against the cold,\nBare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.\nIn me thou see'st the twilight of such day\nAs after sunset fadeth in the west,\nWhich by and by black night doth take away,\nDeath's second self, that seals up all in rest.\nIn me thou see'st the glowing of such fire\nThat on the ashes of his youth doth lie,\nAs the death-bed whereon it must expire,\nConsum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.\n This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,\n To love that well which thou must leave ere long." }, { "id": "po-keats-bright-star", "title": "Bright Star", "author": "John Keats", "year": "1819", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "sonnet", "love" ], "text": "Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art --\n Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night\nAnd watching, with eternal lids apart,\n Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,\nThe moving waters at their priestlike task\n Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,\nOr gazing on the new soft-fallen mask\n Of snow upon the mountains and the moors --\nNo -- yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,\n Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,\nTo feel for ever its soft fall and swell,\n Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,\nStill, still to hear her tender-taken breath,\nAnd so live ever -- or else swoon to death." }, { "id": "po-rossetti-song", "title": "Song", "author": "Christina Rossetti", "year": "1862", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "death", "memory" ], "text": "When I am dead, my dearest,\n Sing no sad songs for me;\nPlant thou no roses at my head,\n Nor shady cypress tree:\nBe the green grass above me\n With showers and dewdrops wet;\nAnd if thou wilt, remember,\n And if thou wilt, forget." }, { "id": "po-eliot-hollow-men", "title": "The Hollow Men (opening)", "author": "T. S. Eliot", "year": "1925", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "modern", "despair" ], "text": "We are the hollow men\nWe are the stuffed men\nLeaning together\nHeadpiece filled with straw. Alas!\nOur dried voices, when\nWe whisper together\nAre quiet and meaningless\nAs wind in dry grass\nOr rats' feet over broken glass\nIn our dry cellar" }, { "id": "po-stevenson-requiem", "title": "Requiem", "author": "Robert Louis Stevenson", "year": "1887", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "death", "epitaph" ], "text": "Under the wide and starry sky,\nDig the grave and let me lie.\nGlad did I live and gladly die,\n And I laid me down with a will.\n\nThis be the verse you grave for me:\nHere he lies where he longed to be;\nHome is the sailor, home from sea,\n And the hunter home from the hill." }, { "id": "po-stephen-i-saw", "title": "In the Desert", "author": "Stephen Crane", "year": "1895", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "short", "strange" ], "text": "In the desert\nI saw a creature, naked, bestial,\nWho, squatting upon the ground,\nHeld his heart in his hands,\nAnd ate of it.\nI said, \"Is it good, friend?\"\n\"It is bitter -- bitter,\" he answered;\n\"But I like it\nBecause it is bitter,\nAnd because it is my heart.\"" }, { "id": "po-keats-autumn", "title": "To Autumn (opening)", "author": "John Keats", "year": "1819", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "ode" ], "text": "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,\n Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;\nConspiring with him how to load and bless\n With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;\nTo bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,\n And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;\n To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells\n With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,\nAnd still more, later flowers for the bees,\nUntil they think warm days will never cease,\n For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells." }, { "id": "po-shelley-cloud", "title": "The Cloud (opening)", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "year": "1820", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature" ], "text": "I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,\n From the seas and the streams;\nI bear light shade for the leaves when laid\n In their noonday dreams.\nFrom my wings are shaken the dews that waken\n The sweet buds every one,\nWhen rocked to rest on their mother's breast,\n As she dances about the sun.\nI wield the flail of the lashing hail,\n And whiten the green plains under,\nAnd then again I dissolve it in rain,\n And laugh as I pass in thunder." }, { "id": "po-byron-prisoner", "title": "The Prisoner of Chillon (opening)", "author": "Lord Byron", "year": "1816", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "narrative", "prison" ], "text": "My hair is grey, but not with years,\n Nor grew it white\n In a single night,\nAs men's have grown from sudden fears:\nMy limbs are bow'd, though not with toil,\n But rusted with a vile repose,\nFor they have been a dungeon's spoil,\n And mine has been the fate of those\nTo whom the goodly earth and air\nAre bann'd, and barr'd -- forbidden fare." }, { "id": "po-blake-songs-experience", "title": "The Tyger (full)", "author": "William Blake", "year": "1794", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "awe" ], "text": "Tyger Tyger, burning bright,\nIn the forests of the night;\nWhat immortal hand or eye,\nCould frame thy fearful symmetry?\n\nIn what distant deeps or skies,\nBurnt the fire of thine eyes?\nOn what wings dare he aspire?\nWhat the hand, dare seize the fire?\n\nAnd what shoulder, & what art,\nCould twist the sinews of thy heart?\nAnd when thy heart began to beat,\nWhat dread hand? & what dread feet?" }, { "id": "po-blake-jerusalem", "title": "And did those feet in ancient time", "author": "William Blake", "year": "1804", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "england" ], "text": "And did those feet in ancient time\nWalk upon England's mountains green:\nAnd was the holy Lamb of God,\nOn England's pleasant pastures seen!\n\nAnd did the Countenance Divine,\nShine forth upon our clouded hills?\nAnd was Jerusalem builded here,\nAmong these dark Satanic Mills?\n\nBring me my Bow of burning gold;\nBring me my Arrows of desire:\nBring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!\nBring me my Chariot of fire!" }, { "id": "po-eliot-journey", "title": "Journey of the Magi (opening)", "author": "T. S. Eliot", "year": "1927", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "narrative", "modern" ], "text": "A cold coming we had of it,\nJust the worst time of the year\nFor a journey, and such a long journey:\nThe ways deep and the weather sharp,\nThe very dead of winter.\nAnd the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,\nLying down in the melting snow." }, { "id": "po-yeats-sailing", "title": "Sailing to Byzantium (opening)", "author": "William Butler Yeats", "year": "1928", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "aging", "art" ], "text": "That is no country for old men. The young\nIn one another's arms, birds in the trees\n-- Those dying generations -- at their song,\nThe salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,\nFish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long\nWhatever is begotten, born, and dies.\nCaught in that sensual music all neglect\nMonuments of unageing intellect." }, { "id": "po-frost-birches", "title": "Birches (opening)", "author": "Robert Frost", "year": "1916", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "memory" ], "text": "When I see birches bend to left and right\nAcross the lines of straighter darker trees,\nI like to think some boy's been swinging them.\nBut swinging doesn't bend them down to stay\nAs ice-storms do." }, { "id": "po-frost-pasture", "title": "The Pasture", "author": "Robert Frost", "year": "1914", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "invitation" ], "text": "I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;\nI'll only stop to rake the leaves away\n(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):\nI sha'n't be gone long. -- You come too.\n\nI'm going out to fetch the little calf\nThat's standing by the mother. It's so young,\nIt totters when she licks it with her tongue.\nI sha'n't be gone long. -- You come too." }, { "id": "po-dickinson-success", "title": "Success is counted sweetest", "author": "Emily Dickinson", "year": "c. 1859", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "short", "wisdom" ], "text": "Success is counted sweetest\nBy those who ne'er succeed.\nTo comprehend a nectar\nRequires sorest need.\n\nNot one of all the purple Host\nWho took the Flag today\nCan tell the definition\nSo clear of victory\n\nAs he defeated -- dying --\nOn whose forbidden ear\nThe distant strains of triumph\nBurst agonized and clear!" }, { "id": "po-dickinson-soul-selects", "title": "The Soul selects her own Society", "author": "Emily Dickinson", "year": "c. 1862", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "solitude" ], "text": "The Soul selects her own Society --\nThen -- shuts the Door --\nTo her divine Majority --\nPresent no more --\n\nUnmoved -- she notes the Chariots -- pausing --\nAt her low Gate --\nUnmoved -- an Emperor be kneeling\nUpon her Mat --\n\nI've known her -- from an ample nation --\nChoose One --\nThen -- close the Valves of her attention --\nLike Stone --" }, { "id": "po-whitman-when-i-heard", "title": "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer", "author": "Walt Whitman", "year": "1865", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "science" ], "text": "When I heard the learn'd astronomer,\nWhen the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,\nWhen I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,\nWhen I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,\nHow soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,\nTill rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,\nIn the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,\nLook'd up in perfect silence at the stars." }, { "id": "po-tennyson-eagle", "title": "The Eagle", "author": "Alfred, Lord Tennyson", "year": "1851", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "short", "nature" ], "text": "He clasps the crag with crooked hands;\nClose to the sun in lonely lands,\nRing'd with the azure world, he stands.\n\nThe wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;\nHe watches from his mountain walls,\nAnd like a thunderbolt he falls." }, { "id": "po-tennyson-cross-bar", "title": "Crossing the Bar", "author": "Alfred, Lord Tennyson", "year": "1889", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "death", "sea" ], "text": "Sunset and evening star,\n And one clear call for me!\nAnd may there be no moaning of the bar,\n When I put out to sea,\n\nBut such a tide as moving seems asleep,\n Too full for sound and foam,\nWhen that which drew from out the boundless deep\n Turns again home.\n\nTwilight and evening bell,\n And after that the dark!\nAnd may there be no sadness of farewell,\n When I embark." }, { "id": "po-arnold-dover", "title": "Dover Beach (excerpt)", "author": "Matthew Arnold", "year": "1867", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "modern", "faith" ], "text": "Ah, love, let us be true\nTo one another! for the world, which seems\nTo lie before us like a land of dreams,\nSo various, so beautiful, so new,\nHath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,\nNor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;\nAnd we are here as on a darkling plain\nSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,\nWhere ignorant armies clash by night." }, { "id": "po-hopkins-windhover", "title": "The Windhover (opening)", "author": "Gerard Manley Hopkins", "year": "1877", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "sonnet" ], "text": "I caught this morning morning's minion, king-\n dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding\n Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding\nHigh there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing\nIn his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,\n As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding\n Rebuffed the big wind." }, { "id": "po-hardy-convergence", "title": "The Convergence of the Twain (opening)", "author": "Thomas Hardy", "year": "1912", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "disaster", "fate" ], "text": "In a solitude of the sea\nDeep from human vanity,\nAnd the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.\n\nSteel chambers, late the pyres\nOf her salamandrine fires,\nCold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.\n\nOver the mirrors meant\nTo glass the opulent\nThe sea-worm crawls -- grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent." }, { "id": "po-housman-athlete", "title": "To an Athlete Dying Young (opening)", "author": "A. E. Housman", "year": "1896", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "death", "glory" ], "text": "The time you won your town the race\nWe chaired you through the market-place;\nMan and boy stood cheering by,\nAnd home we brought you shoulder-high.\n\nTo-day, the road all runners come,\nShoulder-high we bring you home,\nAnd set you at your threshold down,\nTownsman of a stiller town.\n\nSmart lad, to slip betimes away\nFrom fields where glory does not stay,\nAnd early though the laurel grows\nIt withers quicker than the rose." }, { "id": "po-poe-bells", "title": "The Bells (excerpt)", "author": "Edgar Allan Poe", "year": "1849", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "sound", "narrative" ], "text": "Hear the sledges with the bells --\n Silver bells!\nWhat a world of merriment their melody foretells!\n How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,\n In the icy air of night!\n While the stars that oversprinkle\n All the heavens, seem to twinkle\n With a crystalline delight;\n Keeping time, time, time,\n In a sort of Runic rhyme,\nTo the tintinnabulation that so musically wells\n From the bells, bells, bells, bells,\n Bells, bells, bells --\n From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells." }, { "id": "po-longfellow-arrow", "title": "The Arrow and the Song", "author": "Henry Wadsworth Longfellow", "year": "1845", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "short", "memory" ], "text": "I shot an arrow into the air,\nIt fell to earth, I knew not where;\nFor, so swiftly it flew, the sight\nCould not follow it in its flight.\n\nI breathed a song into the air,\nIt fell to earth, I knew not where;\nFor who has sight so keen and strong,\nThat it can follow the flight of song?\n\nLong, long afterward, in an oak\nI found the arrow, still unbroke;\nAnd the song, from beginning to end,\nI found again in the heart of a friend." }, { "id": "po-longfellow-day-done", "title": "The Day is Done (opening)", "author": "Henry Wadsworth Longfellow", "year": "1845", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "evening", "poetry" ], "text": "The day is done, and the darkness\n Falls from the wings of Night,\nAs a feather is wafted downward\n From an eagle in his flight.\n\nI see the lights of the village\n Gleam through the rain and the mist,\nAnd a feeling of sadness comes o'er me\n That my soul cannot resist." }, { "id": "po-shelley-skylark", "title": "To a Skylark (opening)", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "year": "1820", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "ode" ], "text": "Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!\n Bird thou never wert,\nThat from Heaven, or near it,\n Pourest thy full heart\nIn profuse strains of unpremeditated art.\n\nHigher still and higher\n From the earth thou springest\nLike a cloud of fire;\n The blue deep thou wingest,\nAnd singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest." }, { "id": "po-cummings-anyone", "title": "anyone lived in a pretty how town (opening)", "author": "E. E. Cummings", "year": "1940", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "modern", "experimental" ], "text": "anyone lived in a pretty how town\n(with up so floating many bells down)\nspring summer autumn winter\nhe sang his didn't he danced his did.\n\nWomen and men (both little and small)\ncared for anyone not at all\nthey sowed their isn't they reaped their same\nsun moon stars rain" }, { "id": "po-cummings-i-carry", "title": "i carry your heart with me", "author": "E. E. Cummings", "year": "1952", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "love" ], "text": "i carry your heart with me (i carry it in\nmy heart) i am never without it (anywhere\ni go you go, my dear; and whatever is done\nby only me is your doing, my darling)\n i fear\nno fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want\nno world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)\nand it's you are whatever a moon has always meant\nand whatever a sun will always sing is you" }, { "id": "po-pound-station", "title": "In a Station of the Metro", "author": "Ezra Pound", "year": "1913", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "short", "imagism" ], "text": "The apparition of these faces in the crowd;\nPetals on a wet, black bough." }, { "id": "po-williams-red-wheelbarrow", "title": "The Red Wheelbarrow", "author": "William Carlos Williams", "year": "1923", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "short", "imagism" ], "text": "so much depends\nupon\n\na red wheel\nbarrow\n\nglazed with rain\nwater\n\nbeside the white\nchickens" }, { "id": "po-williams-this-is-just", "title": "This Is Just to Say", "author": "William Carlos Williams", "year": "1934", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "short", "domestic" ], "text": "I have eaten\nthe plums\nthat were in\nthe icebox\n\nand which\nyou were probably\nsaving\nfor breakfast\n\nForgive me\nthey were delicious\nso sweet\nand so cold" }, { "id": "po-stevens-snow-man", "title": "The Snow Man", "author": "Wallace Stevens", "year": "1921", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "winter", "modern" ], "text": "One must have a mind of winter\nTo regard the frost and the boughs\nOf the pine-trees crusted with snow;\n\nAnd have been cold a long time\nTo behold the junipers shagged with ice,\nThe spruces rough in the distant glitter\n\nOf the January sun; and not to think\nOf any misery in the sound of the wind,\nIn the sound of a few leaves,\n\nWhich is the sound of the land\nFull of the same wind\nThat is blowing in the same bare place\n\nFor the listener, who listens in the snow,\nAnd, nothing himself, beholds\nNothing that is not there and the nothing that is." }, { "id": "po-frost-after-apple", "title": "After Apple-Picking (opening)", "author": "Robert Frost", "year": "1914", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "work" ], "text": "My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree\nToward heaven still,\nAnd there's a barrel that I didn't fill\nBeside it, and there may be two or three\nApples I didn't pick upon some bough.\nBut I am done with apple-picking now.\nEssence of winter sleep is on the night,\nThe scent of apples: I am drowsing off." }, { "id": "po-rossetti-when-i-am-dead", "title": "When I am dead, my dearest", "author": "Christina Rossetti", "year": "1862", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "death", "memory" ], "text": "When I am dead, my dearest,\n Sing no sad songs for me;\nPlant thou no roses at my head,\n Nor shady cypress tree:\nBe the green grass above me\n With showers and dewdrops wet;\nAnd if thou wilt, remember,\n And if thou wilt, forget.\n\nI shall not see the shadows,\n I shall not feel the rain;\nI shall not hear the nightingale\n Sing on, as if in pain:\nAnd dreaming through the twilight\n That doth not rise nor set,\nHaply I may remember,\n And haply may forget." }, { "id": "po-shakespeare-fear-no-more", "title": "Fear No More (Cymbeline)", "author": "William Shakespeare", "year": "1610", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "death", "comfort" ], "text": "Fear no more the heat o' the sun,\n Nor the furious winter's rages;\nThou thy worldly task hast done,\n Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages:\nGolden lads and girls all must,\nAs chimney-sweepers, come to dust.\n\nFear no more the frown o' the great;\n Thou art past the tyrant's stroke;\nCare no more to clothe and eat;\n To thee the reed is as the oak:\nThe sceptre, learning, physic, must\nAll follow this, and come to dust." }, { "id": "po-shakespeare-tomorrow", "title": "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow (Macbeth)", "author": "William Shakespeare", "year": "1606", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "death", "despair" ], "text": "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,\nCreeps in this petty pace from day to day,\nTo the last syllable of recorded time;\nAnd all our yesterdays have lighted fools\nThe way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!\nLife's but a walking shadow, a poor player\nThat struts and frets his hour upon the stage\nAnd then is heard no more. It is a tale\nTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,\nSignifying nothing." }, { "id": "po-shakespeare-quality-mercy", "title": "The quality of mercy (Merchant of Venice)", "author": "William Shakespeare", "year": "1596", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "mercy", "speech" ], "text": "The quality of mercy is not strain'd,\nIt droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven\nUpon the place beneath. It is twice blest:\nIt blesseth him that gives and him that takes.\n'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes\nThe throned monarch better than his crown.\nHis sceptre shows the force of temporal power,\nThe attribute to awe and majesty,\nWherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;\nBut mercy is above this sceptred sway." }, { "id": "po-yeats-easter", "title": "Easter, 1916 (closing)", "author": "William Butler Yeats", "year": "1916", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "history", "sacrifice" ], "text": "Too long a sacrifice\nCan make a stone of the heart.\nO when may it suffice?\nThat is Heaven's part, our part\nTo murmur name upon name,\nAs a mother names her child\nWhen sleep at last has come\nOn limbs that had run wild.\nWhat is it but nightfall?\nNo, no, not night but death;\nWas it needless death after all?" }, { "id": "po-bronte-no-coward", "title": "No coward soul is mine", "author": "Emily Brontë", "year": "1846", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "courage", "faith" ], "text": "No coward soul is mine,\nNo trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:\nI see Heaven's glories shine,\nAnd faith shines equal, arming me from fear.\n\nO God within my breast,\nAlmighty, ever-present Deity!\nLife -- that in me has rest,\nAs I -- undying Life -- have power in thee!" }, { "id": "po-tennyson-tears", "title": "Tears, Idle Tears", "author": "Alfred, Lord Tennyson", "year": "1847", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "grief", "memory" ], "text": "Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,\nTears from the depth of some divine despair\nRise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,\nIn looking on the happy Autumn-fields,\nAnd thinking of the days that are no more.\n\nFresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,\nThat brings our friends up from the underworld,\nSad as the last which reddens over one\nThat sinks with all we love below the verge;\nSo sad, so fresh, the days that are no more." }, { "id": "po-frost-design", "title": "Design", "author": "Robert Frost", "year": "1936", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "sonnet" ], "text": "I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,\nOn a white heal-all, holding up a moth\nLike a white piece of rigid satin cloth --\nAssorted characters of death and blight\nMixed ready to begin the morning right,\nLike the ingredients of a witches' broth --\nA snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,\nAnd dead wings carried like a paper kite.\n\nWhat had that flower to do with being white,\nThe wayside blue and innocent heal-all?\nWhat brought the kindred spider to that height,\nThen steered the white moth thither in the night?\nWhat but design of darkness to appall? --\nIf design govern in a thing so small." }, { "id": "po-millay-love-not-all", "title": "Love is not all", "author": "Edna St. Vincent Millay", "year": "1931", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "love", "sonnet" ], "text": "Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink\nNor slumber nor a roof against the rain;\nNor yet a floating spar to men that sink\nAnd rise and sink and rise and sink again;\nLove can not fill the thickened lung with breath,\nNor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;\nYet many a man is making friends with death\nEven as I speak, for lack of love alone." }, { "id": "po-cullen-yet-do-i-marvel", "title": "Yet Do I Marvel", "author": "Countee Cullen", "year": "1925", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "sonnet", "race" ], "text": "I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,\nAnd did He stoop to quibble could tell why\nThe little buried mole continues blind,\nWhy flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,\nMake plain the reason tortured Tantalus\nIs baited by the fickle fruit, declare\nIf merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus\nTo struggle up a never-ending stair.\nInscrutable His ways are, and immune\nTo catechism by a mind too strewn\nWith petty cares to slightly understand\nWhat awful brain compels His awful hand.\nYet do I marvel at this curious thing:\nTo make a poet black, and bid him sing!" }, { "id": "po-dunbar-sympathy", "title": "Sympathy (opening)", "author": "Paul Laurence Dunbar", "year": "1899", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "freedom", "race" ], "text": "I know what the caged bird feels, alas!\n When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;\nWhen the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,\nAnd the river flows like a stream of glass;\n When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,\nAnd the faint perfume from its chalice steals --\nI know what the caged bird feels!" }, { "id": "po-johnson-creation", "title": "Lift Every Voice and Sing (opening)", "author": "James Weldon Johnson", "year": "1900", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "anthem", "hope" ], "text": "Lift every voice and sing,\nTill earth and heaven ring,\nRing with the harmonies of Liberty;\nLet our rejoicing rise\nHigh as the listening skies,\nLet it resound loud as the rolling sea.\nSing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,\nSing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;\nFacing the rising sun of our new day begun,\nLet us march on till victory is won." }, { "id": "po-stevens-thirteen", "title": "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (excerpt)", "author": "Wallace Stevens", "year": "1917", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "modern", "perception" ], "text": "I\nAmong twenty snowy mountains,\nThe only moving thing\nWas the eye of the blackbird.\n\nII\nI was of three minds,\nLike a tree\nIn which there are three blackbirds.\n\nIII\nThe blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.\nIt was a small part of the pantomime." }, { "id": "po-millay-recuerdo", "title": "Recuerdo", "author": "Edna St. Vincent Millay", "year": "1922", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "youth", "love" ], "text": "We were very tired, we were very merry --\nWe had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.\nIt was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable --\nBut we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,\nWe lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;\nAnd the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon." }, { "id": "po-lawrence-snake", "title": "Snake (opening)", "author": "D. H. Lawrence", "year": "1923", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "encounter" ], "text": "A snake came to my water-trough\nOn a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,\nTo drink there.\n\nIn the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob tree\nI came down the steps with my pitcher\nAnd must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me." }, { "id": "po-hopkins-spring", "title": "Spring", "author": "Gerard Manley Hopkins", "year": "1877", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "sonnet" ], "text": "Nothing is so beautiful as Spring --\n When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;\n Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush\nThrough the echoing timber does so rinse and wring\nThe ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;\n The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush\n The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush\nWith richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling." }, { "id": "po-hopkins-gods-grandeur", "title": "God's Grandeur", "author": "Gerard Manley Hopkins", "year": "1877", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "sonnet" ], "text": "The world is charged with the grandeur of God.\n It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;\n It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil\nCrushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?\nGenerations have trod, have trod, have trod;\n And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;\n And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil\nIs bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod." }, { "id": "po-bryant-thanatopsis", "title": "Thanatopsis (closing)", "author": "William Cullen Bryant", "year": "1817", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "death", "nature" ], "text": "So live, that when thy summons comes to join\nThe innumerable caravan, which moves\nTo that mysterious realm, where each shall take\nHis chamber in the silent halls of death,\nThou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,\nScourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed\nBy an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave\nLike one who wraps the drapery of his couch\nAbout him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." }, { "id": "po-clough-say-not", "title": "Say not the Struggle Naught Availeth", "author": "Arthur Hugh Clough", "year": "1855", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "hope", "perseverance" ], "text": "Say not the struggle naught availeth,\n The labour and the wounds are vain,\nThe enemy faints not, nor faileth,\n And as things have been they remain.\n\nIf hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;\n It may be, in yon smoke conceal'd,\nYour comrades chase e'en now the fliers,\n And, but for you, possess the field." }, { "id": "po-kipling-if", "title": "If—", "author": "Rudyard Kipling", "year": "1910", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "wisdom", "character" ], "text": "If you can keep your head when all about you\n Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,\nIf you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,\n But make allowance for their doubting too;\nIf you can wait and not be tired by waiting,\n Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,\nOr being hated, don't give way to hating,\n And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:\n\nIf you can dream -- and not make dreams your master;\n If you can think -- and not make thoughts your aim;\nIf you can meet with Triumph and Disaster\n And treat those two impostors just the same." }, { "id": "po-henley-invictus", "title": "Invictus", "author": "William Ernest Henley", "year": "1888", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "resilience", "courage" ], "text": "Out of the night that covers me,\n Black as the pit from pole to pole,\nI thank whatever gods may be\n For my unconquerable soul.\n\nIn the fell clutch of circumstance\n I have not winced nor cried aloud.\nUnder the bludgeonings of chance\n My head is bloody, but unbowed.\n\nBeyond this place of wrath and tears\n Looms but the Horror of the shade,\nAnd yet the menace of the years\n Finds and shall find me unafraid.\n\nIt matters not how strait the gate,\n How charged with punishments the scroll,\nI am the master of my fate,\n I am the captain of my soul." }, { "id": "po-shelley-mont-blanc", "title": "Mont Blanc (excerpt)", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "year": "1817", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "mountain" ], "text": "The everlasting universe of things\nFlows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,\nNow dark -- now glittering -- now reflecting gloom --\nNow lending splendour, where from secret springs\nThe source of human thought its tribute brings\nOf waters." }, { "id": "po-coleridge-rime", "title": "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (opening)", "author": "Samuel Taylor Coleridge", "year": "1798", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "narrative", "sea" ], "text": "It is an ancient Mariner,\nAnd he stoppeth one of three.\n\"By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,\nNow wherefore stopp'st thou me?\n\nThe Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,\nAnd I am next of kin;\nThe guests are met, the feast is set:\nMay'st hear the merry din.\"" }, { "id": "po-wordsworth-prelude-2", "title": "The Prelude (opening)", "author": "William Wordsworth", "year": "1850", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "autobiographical", "nature" ], "text": "O there is blessing in this gentle breeze,\nA visitant that while it fans my cheek\nDoth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings\nFrom the green fields, and from yon azure sky." }, { "id": "po-tennyson-lady-shalott", "title": "The Lady of Shalott (opening)", "author": "Alfred, Lord Tennyson", "year": "1842", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "narrative", "arthurian" ], "text": "On either side the river lie\nLong fields of barley and of rye,\nThat clothe the wold and meet the sky;\nAnd thro' the field the road runs by\n To many-tower'd Camelot;\nAnd up and down the people go,\nGazing where the lilies blow\nRound an island there below,\n The island of Shalott." }, { "id": "po-browning-rabbi-ben", "title": "Rabbi Ben Ezra (opening)", "author": "Robert Browning", "year": "1864", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "wisdom", "aging" ], "text": "Grow old along with me!\nThe best is yet to be,\nThe last of life, for which the first was made:\nOur times are in His hand\nWho saith, \"A whole I planned,\nYouth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!\"" }, { "id": "po-arnold-scholar-gypsy", "title": "The Scholar-Gypsy (excerpt)", "author": "Matthew Arnold", "year": "1853", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "pastoral", "longing" ], "text": "Glad meadows lie behind, and far below\nMy plough; or shadow on this lonely down\nOf airy clouds; the gay\nLong line of summer fields against the sky --\nAnd thou and I -- we sigh, and turn away." }, { "id": "po-rossetti-goblin", "title": "Goblin Market (opening)", "author": "Christina Rossetti", "year": "1862", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "narrative", "fantasy" ], "text": "Morning and evening\nMaids heard the goblins cry:\n\"Come buy our orchard fruits,\nCome buy, come buy:\nApples and quinces,\nLemons and oranges,\nPlump unpecked cherries,\nMelons and raspberries,\nBloom-down-cheeked peaches,\nSwart-headed mulberries.\"" }, { "id": "po-frost-out-out", "title": "'Out, Out--' (opening)", "author": "Robert Frost", "year": "1916", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "narrative", "tragedy" ], "text": "The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard\nAnd made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,\nSweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.\nAnd from there those that lifted eyes could count\nFive mountain ranges one behind the other\nUnder the sunset far into Vermont." }, { "id": "po-frost-tuft-flowers", "title": "The Tuft of Flowers (excerpt)", "author": "Robert Frost", "year": "1913", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "work" ], "text": "I went to turn the grass once after one\nWho mowed it in the dew before the sun.\n\nThe dew was gone that made his blade so keen\nBefore I came to view the levelled scene.\n\nI looked for him behind an isle of trees;\nI listened for his whetstone on the breeze." }, { "id": "po-dickinson-i-heard-fly", "title": "I heard a Fly buzz when I died", "author": "Emily Dickinson", "year": "c. 1862", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "death" ], "text": "I heard a Fly buzz -- when I died --\nThe Stillness in the Room\nWas like the Stillness in the Air --\nBetween the Heaves of Storm --\n\nThe Eyes around -- had wrung them dry --\nAnd Breaths were gathering firm\nFor that last Onset -- when the King\nBe witnessed -- in the Room --" }, { "id": "po-dickinson-much-madness", "title": "Much Madness is divinest Sense", "author": "Emily Dickinson", "year": "c. 1862", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "wisdom", "short" ], "text": "Much Madness is divinest Sense --\nTo a discerning Eye --\nMuch Sense -- the starkest Madness --\n'Tis the Majority\nIn this, as All, prevail --\nAssent -- and you are sane --\nDemur -- you're straightway dangerous --\nAnd handled with a Chain --" }, { "id": "po-whitman-out-cradle", "title": "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking (opening)", "author": "Walt Whitman", "year": "1859", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "sea", "memory" ], "text": "Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,\nOut of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,\nOut of the Ninth-month midnight,\nOver the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his bed wander'd alone, bareheaded, barefoot,\nDown from the shower'd halo,\nUp from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they were alive." }, { "id": "po-whitman-i-hear", "title": "I Hear America Singing", "author": "Walt Whitman", "year": "1860", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "america", "work" ], "text": "I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,\nThose of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,\nThe carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,\nThe mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,\nThe boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck." }, { "id": "po-yeats-coole", "title": "The Wild Swans at Coole (opening)", "author": "William Butler Yeats", "year": "1917", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "aging" ], "text": "The trees are in their autumn beauty,\nThe woodland paths are dry,\nUnder the October twilight the water\nMirrors a still sky;\nUpon the brimming water among the stones\nAre nine-and-fifty swans." }, { "id": "po-eliot-preludes", "title": "Preludes (excerpt)", "author": "T. S. Eliot", "year": "1917", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "modern", "city" ], "text": "The winter evening settles down\nWith smell of steaks in passageways.\nSix o'clock.\nThe burnt-out ends of smoky days.\nAnd now a gusty shower wraps\nThe grimy scraps\nOf withered leaves about your feet\nAnd newspapers from vacant lots." }, { "id": "po-pound-canto-1", "title": "Canto I (opening)", "author": "Ezra Pound", "year": "1917", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "modern", "epic" ], "text": "And then went down to the ship,\nSet keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and\nWe set up mast and sail on that swart ship,\nBore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also\nHeavy with weeping, and winds from sternward\nBore us out onward with bellying canvas." }, { "id": "po-cummings-spring", "title": "in Just-", "author": "E. E. Cummings", "year": "1923", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "spring", "children" ], "text": "in Just-\nspring when the world is mud-\nluscious the little\nlame balloonman\n\nwhistles far and wee\n\nand eddieandbill come\nrunning from marbles and\npiracies and it's\nspring" }, { "id": "po-stevens-emperor", "title": "The Emperor of Ice-Cream", "author": "Wallace Stevens", "year": "1923", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "modern", "death" ], "text": "Call the roller of big cigars,\nThe muscular one, and bid him whip\nIn kitchen cups concupiscent curds.\nLet the wenches dawdle in such dress\nAs they are used to wear, and let the boys\nBring flowers in last month's newspapers.\nLet be be finale of seem.\nThe only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream." }, { "id": "po-williams-asphodel", "title": "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus", "author": "William Carlos Williams", "year": "1962", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "art", "myth" ], "text": "According to Brueghel\nwhen Icarus fell\nit was spring\n\na farmer was ploughing\nhis field\nthe whole pageantry\n\nof the year was\nawake tingling\nnear\n\nthe edge of the sea\nconcerned\nwith itself" }, { "id": "po-millay-pity", "title": "Pity me not because the light of day", "author": "Edna St. Vincent Millay", "year": "1923", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "sonnet", "love" ], "text": "Pity me not because the light of day\nAt close of day no longer walks the sky;\nPity me not for beauties passed away\nFrom field and thicket as the year goes by;\nPity me not the waning of the moon,\nNor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,\nNor that a man's desire is hushed so soon,\nAnd you no longer look with love on me." }, { "id": "po-hopkins-felix", "title": "Felix Randal", "author": "Gerard Manley Hopkins", "year": "1880", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "sonnet", "grief" ], "text": "Felix Randal the farrier, O is he dead then? my duty all ended,\nWho have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome\nPining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it, and some\nFatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?" }, { "id": "po-housman-merry", "title": "On Wenlock Edge", "author": "A. E. Housman", "year": "1896", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "mortality" ], "text": "On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;\nHis forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;\nThe gale, it plies the saplings double,\nAnd thick on Severn snow the leaves.\n\n'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger\nWhen Uricon the city stood:\n'Tis the old wind in the old anger,\nBut then it threshed another wood." }, { "id": "po-poe-helen", "title": "To Helen", "author": "Edgar Allan Poe", "year": "1831", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "love", "short" ], "text": "Helen, thy beauty is to me\nLike those Nicean barks of yore,\nThat gently, o'er a perfumed sea,\nThe weary, way-worn wanderer bore\nTo his own native shore.\n\nOn desperate seas long wont to roam,\nThy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,\nThy Naiad airs have brought me home\nTo the glory that was Greece,\nAnd the grandeur that was Rome." }, { "id": "po-poe-alone", "title": "Alone", "author": "Edgar Allan Poe", "year": "1875", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "solitude" ], "text": "From childhood's hour I have not been\nAs others were -- I have not seen\nAs others saw -- I could not bring\nMy passions from a common spring.\nFrom the same source I have not taken\nMy sorrow; I could not awaken\nMy heart to joy at the same tone." }, { "id": "po-longfellow-hiawatha", "title": "The Song of Hiawatha (opening)", "author": "Henry Wadsworth Longfellow", "year": "1855", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "narrative", "native-american" ], "text": "By the shores of Gitche Gumee,\nBy the shining Big-Sea-Water,\nStood the wigwam of Nokomis,\nDaughter of the Moon, Nokomis.\nDark behind it rose the forest,\nRose the black and gloomy pine-trees,\nRose the firs with cones upon them;\nBright before it beat the water." }, { "id": "po-blake-songs-2", "title": "The Sick Rose", "author": "William Blake", "year": "1794", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "short", "symbolism" ], "text": "O Rose thou art sick.\nThe invisible worm,\nThat flies in the night\nIn the howling storm:\n\nHas found out thy bed\nOf crimson joy:\nAnd his dark secret love\nDoes thy life destroy." }, { "id": "po-gray-bard", "title": "The Bard (excerpt)", "author": "Thomas Gray", "year": "1757", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "narrative", "ode" ], "text": "Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!\nConfusion on thy banners wait,\nTho' fanned by Conquest's crimson wing\nThey mock the air with idle state.\nHelm, nor hauberk's twisted mail,\nNor even thy virtues, tyrant, shall avail\nTo save thy secret soul from nightly fears,\nFrom Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!" }, { "id": "po-pope-rape-lock", "title": "The Rape of the Lock (opening)", "author": "Alexander Pope", "year": "1714", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "mock-epic" ], "text": "What dire offence from am'rous causes springs,\nWhat mighty contests rise from trivial things,\nI sing -- This verse to Caryl, Muse! is due:\nThis, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view:\nSlight is the subject, but not so the praise,\nIf she inspire, and he approve my lays." }, { "id": "po-marvell-garden", "title": "The Garden (excerpt)", "author": "Andrew Marvell", "year": "c. 1681", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "nature", "contemplation" ], "text": "How vainly men themselves amaze\nTo win the palm, the oak, or bays;\nAnd their uncessant labours see\nCrown'd from some single herb or tree,\nWhose short and narrow verged shade\nDoes prudently their toils upbraid;\nWhile all the flowers and trees do close\nTo weave the garlands of repose." }, { "id": "po-spenser-prothalamion", "title": "Prothalamion (opening)", "author": "Edmund Spenser", "year": "1596", "source": "Public domain", "tags": [ "wedding" ], "text": "Calm was the day, and through the trembling air\nSweet breathing Zephyrus did softly play,\nA gentle spirit, that lightly did delay\nHot Titan's beams, which then did glister fair;\nWhen I (whom sullen care,\nThrough discontent of my long fruitless stay\nIn princes' court, and expectation vain\nOf idle hopes, which still do fly away,\nLike empty shadows, did afflict my brain)\nWalked forth to ease my pain." } ]