Afternoon on a Hill (Edna St. Vincent Millay)
If (Rudyard Kipling)
I Hear it Said (Barbara Young)
Image Maker (Oliver St. John Gogarty)
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud (William Wordsworth)
Leisure (W.H. Davies)
Low Tide on Grand Pré (Bliss Carman)
Nightmare (Sir W.S. Gilbert)
Out of the Night that Covers Me (William Ernest Henley)
Plata (Marion Steeves)
Stopping by Woods (Robert Frost)
To See a World in a Grain of Sand (William Blake)
Walk Slowly (Adelade Love)
Links to Other Sites
Pete's Best Loved Poems Great site with alphabetical listing by title and by author The Poet's Corner Extensive library of poetic works Robert Frost Search for poem by word, phrase or line. Index of Poets Archive and anthologies Directory of Poets Library links, poetry indexes
The sun goes down, and over all
These barren reaches by the tide
Such unelusive glories fall,
I almost dream they yet will bide
Until the coming of the tide.
And yet I know that not for us,
By an ecstasy of dream,
He lingers to keep luminous
A little while the grievous stream,
Which frets, uncomforted of dream--
A grievous stream, that to and fro
Althrough the fields of Acadie
Goes wandering, as if to know
Why one beloved face should be
So long from home and Acadie.
Was it a year or lives ago
We took the grasses in our hands,
And caught the summer flying low
Over the waving meadow lands,
And held it there between our hands?
The while the river at our feet--
A drowsy inland meadow stream--
At set of sun the after-heat
Made running gold, and in the gleam
We freed our birch upon the stream.
There down along the elms at dusk
We lifted dripping blade to drift,
through twilight scented fine like musk,
Where night and gloom awhile uplift,
Nor sunder soul and soul adrift.
And that we took into our hands
Spirit of life or subtler thing--
Breathed on us there, and loosed the bands
Of death, and taught us, whispering,
The secret of some wonder-thing.
Then all your face grew light, and seemed
To hold the shadow of the sun;
The evening faltered, and I deemed
That time was ripe, and years had done
Their wheeling underneath the sun.
So all desire and all regret,
And fear and memory, were naught;
One to remember or forget
the keen delight our hands had caught;
Morrow and yesterday were naught.
The night has fallen, and the tide...
Now and again comes drifting home,
Across these aching barrens wide,
A sighlike driven wind or foam:
In grief the flood is bursting home.
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What is this life, if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare,No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
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To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.
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IF you should go before me, dear, walk slowly
Down the ways of death, well-worn and wide,
For I would want to overtake you quickly
And seek the journey's ending by your side.I would be so forlorn not to descry you
Down some shining highroad when I came,
Walk slowly, dear, and often look behind you
And pause to hear if someone calls your name.
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Last night my friend--he says he is my friend--
Came in and questioned me. "I hear it said
You have done this and that. I come to ask
Are these things true?" A glint was in his eye
Of small distrust. His words were crisp and hot.
He measured me with anger, and flung down
A little heap of facts had come to him.
"I hear it said you have done this and that."
Suppose I have? And are you not my friend?
And are you not my friend enough to say,
"If it were true, there would be reason in it.
And if I cannot know the how and why,
Still I can trust you, waiting for a word,
Or for no word, if no word ever come!"
Is friendship just a thing of afternoons,
Of pleasuring one's friend and one's dear self--
Greed for sedate approval of his pace,
Suspicion if he take one little turn
Upon the road, on flight into the air,
And has not sought you for your Yea or Nay!
No. Friendship is not so. I am my own.
And howsoever near my friend may draw
Unto my soul, there is a legend hung
Above a certain straight and narrow way
Says "Dear my friend, ye may not enter here!"
I would the time has come--as it has not--
When men shall rise and say, "He is my friend.
He has done this? And what is that to me!
Think you I have a check upon his head,
Or cast a guiding rein across his neck?
I am his friend. And for that cause I walk
Not overclose beside him, leaving still
Space for his silences, and space for mine."
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When you're lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo'd by
anxiety,
I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in, without
impropriety;
For your brain is on fire- the bedclothes conspire of usual slumber to
plunder you:
first your counterpane goes, and uncovers your toes, and your sheet
slips demurely from under you;
then the blanketing tickles- you feel like mixed pickles- so terribly sharp
is the pricking,
And you're hot, and you're cross, and you tumble and toss till there's
nothing ‘twixt you and the ticking.
Then the bedclothes all creep to the ground in a heap, and you pick ‘em all
up in a tangle;
Next your pillow resigns and politely declines to remain at its usual angle!Well, you get some repose in the form of a doze, with hot eyeballs and
head ever aching,
But your slumbering teems with such horrible dreams that you'd very much
better be waking;........
You're a regular wreck, with a crick in your neck, and no wonder you snore,
for your head's on the floor, and you've needles and pins from your
soles to your shins, and your flesh is a-creep for your left leg's asleep,
and you've cramp in your toes, and a fly on your nose, and some fluff
in your lung, and a feverish tongue, and a thirst that's intense, and
a general sense that you haven't been sleeping in clover;
But the darkness has passed, and it's daylight at last, and the night has
been long-ditto ditto my song- and thank goodness they're both of
them over!
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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,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream-and not make dreams your master,
If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same,
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so bold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings-nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And-which is more-you'll be a Man, my son!
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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.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed,
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
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