Explore Poems

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
...

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
...

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
...

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
...

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
...

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
...

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
...

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
...

The free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
...

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
...

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.
...

The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set -
...

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.
...

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
...

It was a long time ago.
I have almost forgotten my dream.
But it was there then,
In front of me,
...

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
...

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.
...

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
...

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because -
because - I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.
...

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
...

'Hope' is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
...

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
...

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
...

Let me die a youngman's death
not a clean and inbetween
the sheets holywater death
not a famous-last-words
...

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;
...

I've got the children to tend
The clothes to mend
The floor to mop
The food to shop
...

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
...

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
...

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.
...

Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.
...

The wind was a torrent of darkness upon the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight looping the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding-
...

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
...

the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
...

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
...

we had goldfish and they circled around and around
in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
covering the picture window and
my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
...

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
...

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
...

Chaos ruled OK in the classroom
as bravely the teacher walked in
the nooligans ignored him
his voice was lost in the din
...

When I was young, I used to
Watch behind the curtains
As men walked up and down the street. Wino men, old men.
Young men sharp as mustard.
...

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
...

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all say BOO!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
...

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
...

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
...

Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire!
...

480

"Why do I love" You, Sir?
Because—
...

Your skin like dawn
Mine like musk

One paints the beginning
...

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
...

My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.
...

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
...

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its lovliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
...

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
...

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
...

668

'Nature' is what we see—
The Hill—the Afternoon—
...

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
...

Give me your hand

Make room for me
to lead and follow
...

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
...

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'
...

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.
...

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead man naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
...

I keep on dying again.
Veins collapse, opening like the
Small fists of sleeping
Children.
...

185

"Faith" is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see—
...

In England once there lived a big
And wonderfully clever pig.
To everybody it was plain
That Piggy had a massive brain.
...

A millionbillionwillion miles from home
Waiting for the bell to go. (To go where?)
Why are they all so big, other children?
So noisy? So much at home they
...

Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.
...

The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.
...

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
...

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; - on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
...

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
...

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
...

The night has been long,
The wound has been deep,
The pit has been dark,
And the walls have been steep.
...

A woman who my mother knows
Came in and took off all her clothes.

Said I, not being very old,
...

My old man's a white old man
And my old mother's black.
If ever I cursed my white old man
I take my curses back.
...

We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
...

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art-
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
...

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned out backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
...

O my Luve's like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June;
O my Luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly play'd in tune.
...

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
...

THIS is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou
lovest best.
...

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.
...

Beloved,
In what other lives or lands
Have I known your lips
Your Hands
...

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,-
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
...

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
...

All you who sleep tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hand to left or right
And emptiness above -
...

In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed-
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.
...

I love chocolate cake.
And when I was a boy
I loved it even more.
...

It was passed from one bird to another,
the whole gift of the day.
The day went from flute to flute,
went dressed in vegetation,
...

WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
...

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
...

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.
...

They went home and told their wives,
that never once in all their lives,
had they known a girl like me,
But... They went home.
...

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,
...

Long walks at night--
that's what good for the soul:
peeking into windows
watching tired housewives
...

You're sad because you're sad.
It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.
Go see a shrink or take a pill,
or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll
...

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
...

Take some Picts, Celts and Silures
And let them settle,
Then overrun them with Roman conquerors.
...

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
...

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.
...

We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.
...

Fear no more the heat o' the sun;
Nor the furious winter's rages,
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages;
...

There are some nights when
sleep plays coy,
aloof and disdainful.
And all the wiles
...