Reverent

I've Dreamt of You So Often

I've dreamt of you so often that you become unreal.

Is there still time to reach this living body and to kiss on its mouth the birth of

the voice so dear to me?

I've dreamt of you so often that my arms used to embracing your shadow and

only crossing on my own chest might no longer meet your body's...

Robert Desnos
1900-1945

On Antiphon Island

— “mu” twenty-eighth part —

On Antiphon Island they lowered

the bar and we bent back. It

wasn't limbo we were in albeit

we limbo'd. Everywhere we

went we

limbo' d, legs bent, shoulder

blades grazing the...

Nathaniel Mackey
1947

Wind, Water, Stone

for Roger Caillois

Water hollows stone,

wind scatters water,

stone stops the wind.

Water, wind, stone.

Wind carves stone,

stone's a cup of water,

water escapes and is wind.

Stone, wind, water.

Wind sings in its whirling,

water murmurs going by...

Octavio Paz
1914-1998

The Young Sun's Greeting

The young sun’s greeting

On my bed, your letter’s glow

All the sounds that burst from morning

Blackbirds’ brassy calls, jingle of gonoleks

Your smile on the grass, on the radiant dew.

In the innocent light, thousands of dragonflies

Quivering, like large black-winged golden bees

And like helicopters turning with gentle...

Léopold Sédar Senghor
1906-2001

Kome's Story

for auntie nagasaki

it's the same story

told again & again

the modulations

& the machinations

the maudlin

& the dream

schemes & data

a million documents

& a single story

kome's

she said she...

Roy Miki
b. 1942

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the...

Langston Hughes
1902-1967

Ella Josephine Campbell

Slim, slight. Sinew and bird bones.

Cords of her hands like spruce roots.

Came from Ship Cove to Crow Gulch

with little more than the child inside her,

landed in a small shack flanked by

an outhouse, train tracks. Made it work,

had to. No surviving a place like this

without some acceptance, some yield

to the...

Douglas Walbourne-Gough

In Jerusalem

In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,

I walk from one epoch to another without a memory

to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing

the history of the holy ... ascending to heaven

and returning less discouraged and melancholy, because love

and peace are holy and are coming to town.

I was walking down a slope and thinking...

Mahmoud Darwish
1941-2008

area boys

brash talk on sidewalk

brethren to irreverence

short teeth long stories

aspirations high

rolling tape decks tweeters six

by nine speakers deep

joyride profiles boom

down sto:lo street thump lean ass

out brwrwaa car window

...

Hari Alluri

The Young Poets of Winnipeg

scurried around a classroom papered with poems.

Even the ceiling, pink and orange quilts of phrase...

they introduced one another, perched on a tiny stage

to read their work, blessed their teacher who

encouraged them to stretch, wouldn’t let their parents

attend the reading because parents might criticize,

believed in the third and fourth...

Naomi Shihab Nye
b. 1952

from Sharking of the Birdcage ["the spirit of"]

the spirit of

your flowers is

my favourite shelter

we were in love is

the main

thing

faintest green light in

tree pulls me forward

whenever life is

beautiful makes

me think of...

CA Conrad
b. 1966

The Little Car

The 31st day of August 1914

I left Deauville a little before midnight

In Rouveyre’s little car

Counting his driver there were three of us

We said good-bye to an entire epoch

Furious giants...

Guillaume Apollinaire
1880-1918

Ramadan

You wanted to be so hungry, you would break into branches,

and have to choose between the starving month’s

nineteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-third evenings.

The liturgy begins to echo itself and why does it matter?

If the ground-water is too scarce one can stretch nets

into the air and harvest the fog.

...

Kazim Ali
b. 1971

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

The night above the dingle starry,

Time let me hail and climb

Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

And once below a...

Dylan Thomas
1914–1953

With the Dying of the Light

I recited to him,

Now as I was young and easy,

and in the cough-afflicted wheeze that was left of my father’s voice,

he answered, under the apple boughs,

and so it went between us

in the days I waited for him to...

Richard Harrison
1957

Tape hiss, Value Village, vibraphones. On fixed-gears scrubbed with salt and lemon, like the secret at the centre of a Magic Eye the witches, genderless as light, breathe green and lavender, appear and disappear, chanting your passwords in a round. Voices like dimes dropped in a bowl, blush ultraviolet, glittering auras. Skin so soft they move through walls they press against your window,...

Emma Healey
b. 1991

somewhere i have never travelled

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring...

e.e. cummings
1894-1962

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Among twenty snowy mountains,

The only moving thing

Was the eye of the blackbird.

I was of three minds,

Like a tree

In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.

It was a small part of...

Wallace Stevens
1879-1955

Blackberrying

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,

Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,

A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea

Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries

Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes

Ebon in the hedges, fat

With blue-red juices. These they squander on my...

Sylvia Plath
1932–1963

Invitation to Love

Come when the nights are bright with stars

Or when the moon is mellow;

Come when the sun his golden bars

Drops on the hay-field yellow.

Come in the twilight soft and gray,

Come in the night or come in the day,

Come, O love, whene’er you may,

And you are welcome, welcome.

You are sweet, O Love, dear Love,

...

Paul Laurence Dunbar
1872-1906

Sonnets from the Portuguese 24

Let the world’s sharpness, like a clasping knife,

Shut in upon itself and do no harm

In this close hand of Love, now soft and warm,

And let us hear no sound of human strife

After the click of the shutting. Life to life —

I lean upon thee, Dear, without alarm,

And feel as safe as guarded by a charm

Against the stab of worldlings,...

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
1806-1861

Black Sheroes

My Black heroes don’t drop names like Fendi Gucchi Prada

My Black sheroes rock afros like Angela Davis and Assata

But my sheroes are more than a trend and they’re bigger than a hairstyle

For their people they risk death, imprisonment, and exile

They’ll give you an education in gender, race, and class

So for real knowledge you need to honour...

El Jones

Sons of Orion

for Alton Sterling, Andrew Loku, Philando Castile, et al.

I wanna live, son. But which son are you?

There where the rivers are made

of moonshine and the lights still wait,

move by the music of the dealer’s bootleg CDs.

Have you left the street-side, the Rigel stage

for another watery home?

What still...

Canisia Lubrin
b. 1984

Unspeakable Acts in Cars

It’s the first day of summer and we’re so happy

To see the sun and the satchel of colours it schleps

All those dark kilometres. The sky is so blue

And the sea is blue and the small islands in the sea

Are blue also. How our sun must love blue.

We have beachgrass and bull kelp and lion’s mane

And we love them all because we love the sea...

Matt Rader
b. 1978

A History of Houses Built Out of Spite

none of us know Amy personally, but she’s here & she’s singing / rising above our sodden heads bowed in something like prayer / maybe // most of us are trying to move enough to pretend she doesn’t remind us of our mothers & Sunday morning spring cleans / the sharp bleached smell of it, the shrill peak of their voices demanding something far less beautiful // we’re trying not / to...

Chimwemwe Undi
1994

A Short Story of Falling

It is the story of the falling rain

to turn into a leaf and fall again

it is the secret of a summer shower

to steal the light and hide it in a flower

and every flower a tiny tributary

that from the ground flows green and momentary

is one of water’s wishes and this tale

hangs in a seed-head smaller...

Alice Oswald
b. 1966

Say the Names

— say the names say the names

and listen to yourself

an echo in the mountains

Tulameen Tulameen

say them like your soul

was listening and overhearing

and you dreamed you dreamed

you were a river

and you were a river

Tulameen Tulameen

— not the flat borrowed imitations

of foreign names...

Al Purdy
1918-2000

Praise the Rain

Praise the rain, the seagull dive

The curl of plant, the raven talk—

Praise the hurt, the house slack

The stand of trees, the dignity—

Praise the dark, the moon cradle

The sky fall, the bear sleep—

Praise the mist, the warrior name

The earth eclipse, the fired leap—

Praise the backwards, upward sky

The baby...

Joy Harjo
b. 1951

The Novel As Manuscript

An ars poetica

I remember the death, in Russia,

of postage stamps

like immense museum masterpieces

patchwork

wrapped in linen, tea stained,

with hemp for strapping...

these colored stamps designed for foreign places

were even printed during famine—

so when they vanished...

Norman Dubie
b. 1945

I’ll Teach You Cree

with the tip of my spring tongue, ayîki frog

your mouth will be the web

catching apihkêsis words, spider

a crawling-out ceremony

that cannot be translated.

hâw, pîkiskwê! Now, speak!

I’ll teach you Cree, nêhiyawêwin...

Gregory Scofield
b. 1966

What Is Poetry

(a twelve-tone poem)

trite yap show

rosy twit heap

posterity haw

a wept history

it’s yawp rot, eh

a wisher potty

a power shitty

a whitey sport

poetry is what

whips yo tater

pets it awry, oh

oh, twisty pear

two hearts yip

it’s paw theory...

Susan Holbrook
b. 1967

All About My Grandmother

Wheat daughter, prisoner of sneaky pigweed, mother

to the five corners of the world and your three hectares,

beak-nosed carpenter’s wife and the potter’s lover,

queen of the aroma of grey soap, head covered

with a gold-trimmed kerchief, the glory of birds at dawn,

tired liege of furrowed fields, midwife to our breads,

magic purveyor of...

Wioletta Greg
b. 1974

Kay in Summer

Someone waiting in the lobby of a Hotel Imperial amid

the spaciousness tourists and peeling gold leaf

might see it all as too hesitant for truth

Might think for a moment about the art in scattering

too solidly carved tables crowding too many dreams

before dim Victorian...

Claire Harris
1937-2018

At Thomas Merton’s Grave

We can never be with loss too long.

Behind the warped door that sticks,

the wood thrush calls to the monks,

pausing atop the stone crucifix,

singing: “I am marvelous alone!”

Thrash, thrash goes the hayfield:

rows of marrow and bone undone.

The horizon’s flashing fastens tight,

sealing the blue hills with vermillion....

Spencer Reece
b. 1963

Money

Coin Exhibit, British Museum.

Their misshapenness strikes the table in tiny splashes,

like still-cooling splatters of silver. Stater and shekel,

mina and obol. Persia’s bullion had a lion and bull.

Athens an owl, Messana a hare, a jar for Terone, Melos

a pomegranate. Call it museum money, written...

Carmine Starnino
b. 1970

From Correspondences

Sometimes we are led through the doorway

by a child, sometimes

by a stranger, always a matter of grace changing

the past, for if there is anything we must change

it is the past. To look back

and see another map.

Love enough to fill

a shoe, a suitcase, a bit of ink,

a painting, a child’s eyes at a chalkboard,...

Anne Michaels

My Meadow, My Twilight

Sure, there’s a spell the leaves can make, shuddering,

and in their lying suddenly still again — flat, and still,

like time itself when it seems unexpectedly more

available, more to lose therefore, more to love, or

try to...

But to look up from the leaves, remember,

is a choice also, as if up from the shame of it...

Carl Phillips
b. 1959

My Idea of the Circus Is My Idea of the Circus Otherwise Known As: My Mother Was a Celebrated Stunt Motorcyclist, Vietnam, 1958 to 1962

Very loud a mad frenzy The wooden

barrel she rode would have roared

(I first wrote “road”)

Left home to join the circus: 15 years old

You enter at the bottom and wind upwards

in spirals the bike climbing the sides

You enter the barrel on a Peugeot

with automatic tied down handles

...

Hoa Nguyen
b. 1967

Cocteau Twins

I’ve heard the phrase between you

and me too many times to believe

it to be true, but between me and you

there was Cocteau, wagging his testimonial

finger, as usual, while flat out on the floor

with my arms in receipt of the flower

of thought, palms upwards, I envisaged

the...

Rachel Boast
b. 1975

Equinox Ritual with Ravens & Pines

— so we said to the somewhat: Be born —

& the shadow kept arriving in segments,

cold currents pushed minerals

up from the sea floor, up through

coral & labels of Diet Coke blame shame

bottles down there —

it is so much work to appear!

unreadable zeroes drop lamps

...

Brenda Hillman
b. 1951

Let the Ponies Out

oh papa, to have you drift up, some part of you drift up through

water through

fresh water into the teal plate of sky soaking foothills, papa,

to have your breath leave, escape you, escape the

weight of bone, muscle and organ, escape you, to rise up, to loft,

till you are all breath filling the room, rising, escaping the white...

Marilyn Dumont
b. 1955

Chinese Chimes: Nine Detours of the Yellow River

you are unaware of your obscure sources

but you are explicitly sure of the vast sea

as your final destination

you always frown with your brownish wrinkles

but you prefer a nonprofessional smile on your face

your only luggage of life

...

Changming Yuan
b. 1957

The Loaf

When I put my finger to the hole they’ve cut for a dimmer switch

in a wall of plaster stiffened with horsehair

it seems I’ve scratched a two-hundred-year-old itch

with a pink and a pink and a pinkie-pick....

Paul Muldoon
b. 1951

The Day Lady Died

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday

three days after Bastille day, yes

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine

because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton

at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
...

Frank O’Hara
1926-1966

The Lonely Land

Cedar and jagged fir

uplift sharp barbs

against the gray

and cloud-piled sky;

and in the bay

blown spume and windrift

and thin, bitter spray...

A. J. M. Smith
1902-1980

A Glass Tube Ecstasy

For Hugo Ball

a glass tube

for my leg       says Hugo Ball

my hat a cylinder

in blue & white

the night the german ostriches       the sink

he pisses in

all these become his world

his dada song, begun there

holds the image

until it comes at us:

the image from its...

Jerome Rothenberg
b. 1931

Homage to the Mineral of the Onion (I)

In the onion, there’s

something of fire. That fire known as

Fog. The onion is the way

fog has of entering the earth.

Into the soil. Through the green leaves of the onion....

Erin Mouré
b. 1955

From Summer Grass

The willows are thinking again about thickness,

slowness, lizard skin on hot rock,

and day by day this imaging transforms them

into what we see: dragons in leaf, draped scales

alongside the river of harried, spring-...

Roo Borson

Vancouver Lights

About me the night moonless wimples the mountains

wraps ocean      land air and mounting

sucks at the stars       The city throbbing below

webs the sable peninsula     The golden
...

Earle Birney
1904-1995

Poetry

I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.

   Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it one discovers that there

is in

   it after all, a place for the genuine.
...

Marianne Moore
1887-1972

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth, like a garment, wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless...

William Wordsworth
1770-1850

The World Is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; —

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for...

William Wordsworth
1770-1850

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate...

William Butler Yeats
1865-1939

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings...

William Butler Yeats
1865-1939

Richard Cory

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.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
...

Edwin Arlington Robinson
1869-1935

Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep...

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
1809-1892

Père Lalement

I lift the Lord on high,

Under the murmuring hemlock boughs, and see

The small birds of the forest lingering by

And making melody.

These are mine acolytes and these my choir,

And this mine altar in the cool green shade,

Where the wild soft-eyed does draw nigh

Wondering, as in the byre

Of Bethlehem the oxen heard Thy cry...

Marjorie Pickthall
1883-1922

Sonnet CXVI: Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand’ring bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

...

William Shakespeare
1564-1616

Sonnet LV: Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Not marble nor the gilded monuments

Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,

But you shall shine more bright in these contents

Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.

When wasteful war shall statues overturn,

And broils root out the work of masonry,

Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn

The living...

William Shakespeare
1564-1616

Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring —

When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;

Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they...

Gerard Manley Hopkins
1844-1889

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things —

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced — fold, fallow, and plough;

And áll trádes, their gear...

Gerard Manley Hopkins
1844-1889

The Snow-Storm

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,

And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.

The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet

Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit

...

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882

A Thunderstorm

A moment the wild swallows like a flight

Of withered gust-caught leaves, serenely high,

Toss in the windrack up the muttering sky.

The leaves hang still. Above the weird twilight,

The hurrying centres of the storm unite

And spreading with huge trunk and rolling fringe,

Each wheeled upon its own tremendous hinge,

Tower darkening...

Archibald Lampman
1861-1899

Marshlands

A thin wet sky, that yellows at the rim,

And meets with sun-lost lip the marsh’s brim.

The pools low lying, dank with moss and mould,

Glint through their mildews like large cups of gold.

Among the wild rice in the still lagoon,

In monotone the lizard shrills his tune.

The wild goose,...

E. Pauline Johnson
1861-1913

Flaxman

We deemed the secret lost, the spirit gone,

Which spake in Greek simplicity of thought,

And in the forms of gods and heroes wrought

Eternal beauty from the sculptured stone, —

A higher charm than modern culture won

With all the wealth of metaphysic lore,

Gifted to analyze, dissect, explore.

A many-colored light flows from one sun...

Margaret Fuller
1810-1850

Experience

The lords of life, the lords of life, —

I saw them pass,

In their own guise,

Like and unlike,

Portly and grim, —

Use and Surprise,

Surface and Dream,

Succession swift and spectral Wrong,

Temperament without a tongue,

And the inventor of the game

Omnipresent without name; —

Some to see, some to...

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art —

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,

Or gazing on the new...

John Keats
1795-1821

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks...

Gerard Manley Hopkins
1844-1889

The Poet

Out of the deep and the dark,

A sparkling mystery, a shape,

Something perfect,

Comes like the stir of the day:

One whose breath is an odor,

Whose eyes show the road to stars,

The breeze in his face,

The glory of heaven on his back.

He steps like a vision hung in air,

Diffusing the passion of eternity;

...

Yone Noguchi
1875-1947

The Dead

How great unto the living seem the dead!

How sacred, solemn; how heroic grown;

How vast and vague, as they obscurely tread

The shadowy confines of the dim unknown! —

For they have met the monster that we dread,

Have learned the secret not to mortal shown.

E’en as gigantic shadows on the wall

The spirit of the daunted child amaze...

Charles Heavysege
1816-1876

The Pulley

When God at first made man,

Having a glass of blessings standing by,

“Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can.

Let the world’s riches, which dispersèd lie,

Contract into a span.”

So strength first made a way;

Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure.

...

George Herbert
1593-1633

The Windhover

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-

dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,

As a skate’s...

Gerard Manley Hopkins
1844-1889

Journey of the Magi

“A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

The ways deep and the weather sharp,

The very dead of winter.”

And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,

Lying down in the melting snow.

There were times we regretted

The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,...

T. S. Eliot
1888-1965

Old Ironsides

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!

Long has it waved on high,

And many an eye has danced to see

That banner in the sky;

Beneath it rung the battle shout,

And burst the cannon’s roar; —

The meteor of the ocean air

Shall sweep the clouds no more!...

Oliver Wendell Holmes
1809-1894

Love (III)

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

If I lack’d any thing.

“A guest,” I answer’d, “worthy to be here”;
...

George Herbert
1593-1633

Thoughtless Cruelty

There, Robert, you have kill’d that fly — ,

And should you thousand ages try

The life you’ve taken to supply,

You could not do it.

You surely must have been devoid

Of thought and sense, to have destroy’d

A thing which no way you annoy’d —

You’ll one day rue it.

Twas...

Charles Lamb
1775-1834

The Tree

Fair tree! for thy delightful shade

’Tis just that some return be made;

Sure some return is due from me

To thy cool shadows, and to thee.

When thou to birds dost shelter give,

Thou music dost from them receive;

If travellers beneath thee stay

Till storms have worn themselves away,

That time in praising thee they spend...

Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea
1661-1720

A Hymn to God the Father

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,

Which was my sin, though it were done before?

Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,

And do run still, though still I do deplore?

When thou hast done, thou hast not done,

For I have more.

Wilt thou...

John Donne
1572-1631

A Psalm of Life

What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist.

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.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;
...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1807-1882

Give All to Love

Give all to love;

Obey thy heart;

Friends, kindred, days,

Estate, good-fame,

Plans, credit and the Muse, —

Nothing refuse.

’T is a brave master;

Let it have scope:

Follow it utterly,

Hope beyond hope:

High and more high

It dives into noon,

With wing unspent,

...

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882

When I consider how my light is spent

When I consider how my light is spent,

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one Talent which is death to hide

Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest he returning chide;
...

John Milton
1608-1674

My Grandmother’s Love Letters

There are no stars tonight

But those of memory.

Yet how much room for memory there is

In the loose girdle of soft rain.

There is even room enough

For the letters of my mother’s mother,

Elizabeth,

That have been pressed so long

Into a corner of the roof

That they are brown and soft,
...

Hart Crane
1899-1932

To My Dear and Loving Husband

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.

If ever wife was happy in a man,

Compare with me, ye women, if you can.

I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,

Or all the riches that the East doth hold.

My love is such that rivers cannot quench,

Nor ought but love from thee give recompense...

Anne Bradstreet
1612-1672

She Walks in Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
...

Lord (George Gordon) Byron
1788-1824

How One Winter Came in the Lake Region

For weeks and weeks the autumn world stood still,

Clothed in the shadow of a smoky haze;

The fields were dead, the wind had lost its will,

And all the lands were hushed by wood and hill,

In those grey, withered days.

Behind a mist the blear sun rose and set,

At night the...

Wilfred Campbell
1858-1918

Lord of My Heart’s Elation

Lord of my heart’s elation,

Spirit of things unseen,

Be thou my aspiration

Consuming and serene!

Bear up, bear out, bear onward

This mortal soul alone,

To selfhood or oblivion,

Incredibly thine own, —

As the foamheads are loosened

And blown along the sea,

Or sink and...

Bliss Carman
1861-1929

The Soldier

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;

A body of England...

Rupert Brooke
1887-1915

Kubla Khan

Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round;

And...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1772-1834

The Tyger

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?

And what shoulder, and what art,

...

William Blake
1757-1827

Light Shining out of Darkness

God moves in a mysterious way,

His wonders to perform;

He plants his footsteps in the sea,

And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines

Of never-failing skill,

He treasures up his bright designs,

And works his sov’reign will....

William Cowper
1731-1800

I Am

I am — yet what I am none cares or knows;

My friends forsake me like a memory lost:

I am the self-consumer of my woes —

They rise and vanish in oblivious host,

Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes

And yet I am, and live — like vapours tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,

Into the living sea...

John Clare
1793-1864

Ah! Why, Because the Dazzling Sun

Ah! why, because the dazzling sun

Restored my earth to joy

Have you departed, every one,

And left a desert sky?

All through the night, your glorious eyes

Were gazing down in mine,

And with a full heart’s thankful sighs

I blessed that watch divine!

I was at peace, and drank your beams...

Emily Brontë
1818-1848

At Melville’s Tomb

Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge

The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath

An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,

Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.

And wrecks passed without sound of bells,

The calyx of death’s bounty giving back

A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,
...

Hart Crane
1899-1932

Shall earth no more inspire thee

Shall earth no more inspire thee,

Thou lonely dreamer now?

Since passion may not fire thee

Shall Nature cease to bow?

Thy mind is ever moving

In regions dark to thee;

Recall its useless roving —

Come back and dwell with me.

I know my mountain breezes

Enchant and soothe thee...

Emily Brontë
1818-1848

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I've Dreamt of You So Often

On Antiphon Island

Wind, Water, Stone

The Young Sun's Greeting

Kome's Story

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Ella Josephine Campbell

In Jerusalem

area boys

The Young Poets of Winnipeg

from Sharking of the Birdcage ["the spirit of"]

The Little Car

Ramadan

Fern Hill

With the Dying of the Light

Trust Fund Witches

somewhere i have never travelled

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Blackberrying

Invitation to Love

Sonnets from the Portuguese 24

Black Sheroes

Sons of Orion

Unspeakable Acts in Cars

A History of Houses Built Out of Spite

A Short Story of Falling

Say the Names

Praise the Rain

The Novel As Manuscript

I’ll Teach You Cree

What Is Poetry

All About My Grandmother

Kay in Summer

At Thomas Merton’s Grave

Money

From Correspondences

My Meadow, My Twilight

My Idea of the Circus Is My Idea of the Circus Otherwise Known As: My Mother Was a Celebrated Stunt Motorcyclist, Vietnam, 1958 to 1962

Cocteau Twins

Equinox Ritual with Ravens & Pines

Let the Ponies Out

Chinese Chimes: Nine Detours of the Yellow River

The Loaf

The Day Lady Died

The Lonely Land

A Glass Tube Ecstasy

Homage to the Mineral of the Onion (I)

From Summer Grass

Vancouver Lights

Poetry

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

The World Is Too Much With Us

The Second Coming

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

Richard Cory

Crossing the Bar

Père Lalement

Sonnet CXVI: Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Sonnet LV: Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Spring

Pied Beauty

The Snow-Storm

A Thunderstorm

Marshlands

Flaxman

Experience

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

The Poet

The Dead

The Pulley

The Windhover

Journey of the Magi

Old Ironsides

Love (III)

Thoughtless Cruelty

The Tree

A Hymn to God the Father