Poems that I love

by Robert Frost Frost tried to read a poem he wrote for Kennedy's Inauguration . When the sun and wind stopped him, he recited "The Gift Outright" from memory. Three cheers f or the wind and the sun! The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people. She was ours In Massachusetts, in Virginia, But we were England's, still colonials, Possessing what we still were unpossessed by, Possessed by what we now no more possessed. Something we were withholding made us weak Until we found out that it was ourselves We were withholding from our land of living, And forthwith found salvation in surrender. Such as we were we gave ourselves outright (The deed of gift was many deeds of war) To the land vaguely realizing westward, But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, Such as she was, such as she would become. To read this poem in Frost's own hand... Please click here to g

by Robert Frost [sometimes you have to hear a poem.] Out of the mud two strangers came And caught me splitting wood in the yard, And one of them put me off my aim By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!" I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind And let the other go on a way. I knew pretty well what he had in mind: He wanted to take my job for pay. Good blocks of oak it was I split, As large around as the chopping block; And every piece I squarely hit Fell splinterless as a cloven rock. The blows that a life of self-control Spares to strike for the common good, That day, giving a loose my soul, I spent on the unimportant wood. The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day When the sun is out and the wind is still, You're one month on in the middle of May. But if you so much as dare to speak, A cloud comes over the sunlit arch, A wind comes off a frozen peak, And you're two months back in the middle of March. A bl

by Robert Frost I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain — and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street, But not to call me back or say good-bye; And further still at an unearthly height, One luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night. Stieglitz: ‘Reflections—Night’, New York, 1896 (in Picturesque Bits of New York and Other Studies, 1897) Please click here to go to a page I created for more of Frost’s poems.

by Alberto Caeiro Fernando António Nogueira Pêssoa (1888 - 1935) The frightful reality of things Is my everyday discovery. Each thing is what it is. How can I explain to anyone how much I rejoice over this, and find it enough? To be whole, it is enough to exist. I have written quite a number of poems And may write many more, of course. Each poem of mine explains it, Though all my poems are different, Because each thing that exists is always proclaiming it. Sometimes I busy myself with watching a stone, I don't begin thinking whether it feels. I don't force myself to call it my sister, But I enjoy it because of its being a stone, I enjoy it because it feels nothing, I enjoy it because it is not at all related to me. At times I also hear the wind blow by And find that merely to hear the wind blow makes it worth having been born. I don't know what others will think who read this; But I find it must be go

by Stephen Levine for little Whitney of 5 weeks God does not answer prayer. It is a sacrilege to think so. An insult to the god-drenched hearts of all who pray through the night and in the morning are nonetheless handed a dead child. The churches in Salem used to burn heretics to increase attendance. Now those who feel their prayer didn't reach quite far enough, that they were not pure enough, are victims of a merciless atheism that says all good fortune comes from God though the brutal often prosper and it is not uncommon to torture the pure of heart. We pray for the best, forgetting the unpredictable unfolding that must occur for us to learn prayer for others works better than for ourselves. Jesus prays in the garden of Gethsemane and is refused. Ten thousand, ten million prayers rise in Latin, Arabic, Hindi, and Hebrew yet their husbands and wives, children and sisters, fathers and brothers do not survive well if at all though in their chest bea

by Walt Whitman Come, said my Soul, Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one,) That should I after death invisibly return, Or, long, long hence, in other spheres, There to some group of mates the chants resuming, (Tallying Earth's soil, trees, winds, tumultuous waves,) Ever with pleas'd smile I may keep on, Ever and ever yet the verses owning---as, first, I hear and now, Signing for Soul and Body, set to them my name, photo by Barbara Mensch Walt Whitman said that the Brooklyn Bridge was “the best, most effective medicine my soul has yet partaken”.

Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I Pause to Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles by Billy Collins It seems these poets have nothing up their ample sleeves they turn over so many cards so early, telling us before the first line whether it is wet or dry, night or day, the season the man is standing in, even how much he has had to drink. Maybe it is autumn and he is looking at a sparrow. Maybe if is snowing on a town with a beautiful name. “Viewing Peonies at the Temple of Good Fortune on a Cloudy Afternoon” is one of Bun Tung Po’s. “Dipping Water from the River and Simmering Tea” is another one, or just “On a Boat, Awake at Night.” And Lu Yu takes the simple rice cake with “In a Boat on a Summer Evening I Hear the Cry of a Waterbird. It Was Very Sad and Seemed to be Saying My Woman is Cruel—Moved, I Wrote This Poem.” There is no iron turnstile to push against here as with the headings like ‘Vortex on a