Search Categories - Any -25 Lines or FewerCanadaPre 21st Century21st Century Grade levels - Any -Grades 7-9 / Sec. 1-3Grades 10-12 / Sec. 4 & 5 / CEGEP 1 Sort by RandomNewestMost popularA -> ZZ -> A Apply Claudia Rankine from Citizen The rain this morning pours from the gutters and everywhere else it is lost in the trees. You need your glasses to single out what you know is there because Aphra Behn Love Armed Love in Fantastic Triumph sat, Whilst Bleeding Hearts around him flowed, For whom Fresh pains he did Create, Joy Harjo Praise the Rain Praise the rain, the seagull dive The curl of plant, the raven talk- Praise the hurt, the house slack Thomas Hardy Hap If but some vengeful god would call to me From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing, Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, Spencer Reece 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, Christian Bök From Chapter I Writing is inhibiting. Sighing, I sit, scribbling in ink this pidgin script. I sing with nihilistic witticism, disciplining signs with trifling gimmicks — impish Carl Sandburg I Am the People, the Mob I am the people — the mob — the crowd — the mass. Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me? I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes. Lorine Niedecker What horror to awake at night What horror to awake at night and in the dimness see the light. Time is white Sara Teasdale Barter Life has loveliness to sell, All beautiful and splendid things, Blue waves whitened on a cliff, William Wordsworth I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang Winter House My father threw his language overboard, a bag of kittens, waterlogged mewling: small hard bodies. My mother hung on to hers — Wove the words like lace, an open web John McCrae In Flanders Fields In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky Tamar Rubin Perennial For thirty-one years, my mother tried not to miss her. Every week, a little water or the trickle of a few ice cubes dropped in black earth. Years back, in the muck of Toronto, April, Dennis Lee Bike-Twister Place a foot upon a pedal, Put your pedal-pushers on; To the pedal pin a paddle, Paddle-pedal push upon. Place the paddle-pedal-cycle On a puddle in the park; Souvankham Thammavongsa Gayatri I have a picture of us when we are seven but we aren’t in it. At the time it was taken we thought we were. We posed with our wide Elizabeth Bishop One Art 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. Naomi Shihab Nye 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 Ward Maxwell grass grass is unusual it was invented by the Romans unlike most people grass stays where it grows if grass had gone to the moon it would be there today because grass looks luxurious Dorothy Parker One Perfect Rose A single flow’r he sent me, since we met. All tenderly his messenger he chose; Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet— Robert Frost Fire and Ice Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire E. Pauline Johnson Through Time and Bitter Distance Unknown to you, I walk the cheerless shore. The cutting blast, the hurl of biting brine May freeze, and still, and bind the waves at war, Ere you will ever know, O! Heart of mine, Leigh Hunt Rondeau Jenny kissed me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in; Time, you thief, who love to get Michael Longley The Boxers We were combatants from the start. Our dad Bought us boxing gloves when we were ten — Champions like Euryalus, say, or Epeius Percy Bysshe Shelley England in 1819 An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King; Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn, — mud from a muddy spring; Edmund Waller Song Go, lovely rose! Tell her that wastes her time and me, That now she knows, Robert Burns Ae Fond Kiss Tune: Rory Dall’s Port First printed in Johnson’s S.M.M., Vol. 4, 13th August 1792. Ae fond kiss, and then we sever; one Edgar Albert Guest It Couldn’t Be Done Somebody said that it couldn’t be done But he with a chuckle replied That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one Don Kerr Editing the Prairie Well, it’s too long for one thing and very repetitive. Remove half the fields. Then there are far too many fences interrupting the narrative flow. Get some cattlemen to cut down those fences. Jason Camlot Dear Death, Am I a praise poet or a blame poet? Today I am a blame poet. O Death, face it, existence doesn’t like you. You can’t sing. You can’t paint. Pierre Nepveu Last Visit Now I set out across a minefield, space having taken all I owned, I’m starting over from a point where every pebble may explode beneath my shoe and the flowers blaze up behind my body as I gasp for air, John Keats When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain, Before high-pilèd books, in charactery, Lorna Crozier Not the Music Not the music. It is this other thing I keep from all of them that matters, inviolable. I scratch in my journals, a mouse rummaging through cupboards, Tomasz Rózycki 11. Headwinds When I began to write, I didn’t know each of my words would bit by bit remove things from the world and in return leave blank Hoa Nguyen 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”) Alfred, Lord Tennyson Crossing the Bar Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, Ezra Pound A Virginal No, no! Go from me. I have left her lately. I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness, For my surrounding air hath a new lightness; Elinor Wylie Full Moon My bands of silk and miniver Momently grew heavier; The black gauze was beggarly thin; Lorna Goodison Ideas of Home i Winter has landed; my boot bucks on a stone surrounded by snow; I swear, I murmur Oracabessa. “The rock” is what I call home, all islanders do, and I’m in blessed Ann Arbour, Walt Whitman O Captain! My Captain! 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, Amy Lowell A Fixed Idea What torture lurks within a single thought When grown too constant, and however kind, However welcome still, the weary mind Language English