BRILLIANT POEMS

Blind!

A red-roofed house is shining to the skies;
A house red-roofed and brilliant in the wind:
A house of colour filled with wandering eyes;
And all the eyes are blind.
.....

Leon Gellert

Anaphora

Each day with so much ceremony
begins, with birds, with bells,
with whistles from a factory;
such white-gold skies our eyes
.....

Elizabeth Bishop

The Spider And The Fly

“Will you walk into my parlor?”
Said a spider to a fly;
“'Tis the prettiest little parlor
That ever you did spy.
.....

Mary Howitt

People Like Him

People liked him, not because
He was rich or known to fame;
He had never won applause
As a star in any game.
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

A Basket Of Summer Fruit

First see those ample melons-brindled o'er
With mingled green and brown is all the rind;
For they are ripe, and mealy at the core,
And saturate with the nectar of their kind.
.....

Charles Harpur

An Inspiring Teacher (ms. Neetu Sharma)

A marvellous, awesome teacher,
With the most brilliant feature.
Love you to moon and back,
There is nothing you lack.
.....

Priyadarshini Goel

Young Democracy

HARK! Young Democracy from sleep
Our careless sentries raps:
A backwash from the Futureâ??s deep
Our Evilâ??s foreland laps.
.....

Bernard O'dowd

Butterflies

In a fragile vase
In your chamber are
Preserved butterflies
That when touched by
.....

Jose Asuncion Silva

War Song

In anguish we uplift
A new unhallowed song:
The race is to the swift;
The battle to the strong.
.....

John Davidson

Sea Surface Full Of Clouds

                        I

In that November off Tehuantepec,
The slopping of the sea grew still one night
.....

Wallace Stevens

The Lovers' Litany

Eyes of grey -- a sodden quay,
Driving rain and falling tears,
As the steamer wears to sea
In a parting storm of cheers.
.....

Rudyard Kipling

Artist

He gave a picture exhibition,
Hiring a little empty shop.
Above its window: FREE ADMISSION
Cajoled the passers-by to stop;
.....

Robert Service

Arnold Von Winkelried

ied.
In arms the Austrian phalanx stood,
A living wall, a human wood,â??
A wall, where every conscious stone
.....

James Montgomery

To Helen (ii)

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
.....

Edgar Allan Poe

Flesh Eater

*FLESH EATER*

The sky may change it garb,
Angry streak strike between it heart,
.....

Paciolo Pen Saint

Introduction: Pippa Passes

New Year's Day at Asolo in the Trevisan


Scene.-
.....

Robert Browning

Let Zeus

I

I say, I am quite done,
quite done with this;
.....

H. D.

To Asya

Evening noise in the burning sunset
On twilight of winter day.
The third call. Hurry, remember me,
You that are going away!
.....

Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva

Enigma

The noblest name in Allegory's page,
The hand that traced inexorable rage;
A pleasing moralist whose page refined,
Displays the deepest knowledge of the mind;
.....

Edgar Allan Poe

Ione

I

Ah, yes, ‘t is sweet still to remember,
Though 'twere less painful to forget;
.....

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Tableau

Locked arm in arm they cross the way
The black boy and the white,
The golden splendor of the day
The sable pride of night.
.....

Countee Cullen

Courage

Courage isn't a brilliant dash,
A daring deed in a moment's flash;
It isn't an instantaneous thing
Born of despair with a sudden spring
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

Serenade

So sweet the hour, so calm the time,
I feel it more than half a crime,
When Nature sleeps and stars are mute,
To mar the silence ev'n with lute.
.....

Edgar Allan Poe

Azure And Gold

April had covered the hills
With flickering yellows and reds,
The sparkle and coolness of snow
Was blown from the mountain beds.
.....

Amy Lowell

Fragment

They, ere he left them, had attain'd their prime
And were less alter'd by the hand of Time;
But, the slim youth no longer met their view,
Fair, as the fancy e'er a seraph drew.
.....

Matilda Betham

Lyrics Of Love And Sorrow

I

Love is the light of the world, my dear,
Heigho, but the world is gloomy;
.....

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Birth-night Of The Humming Birds

I.

I'll tell you a Fairy Tale that's new:
How the merry Elves o'er the ocean flew
.....

Sam G. Goodrich

Star-gazer

Forty-two years ago (to me if to no one else
The number is of some interest) it was a brilliant starry night
And the westward train was empty and had no corridors
So darting from side to side I could catch the unwonted sight
.....

Louis Macneice

The King Of Brentford-s Testament

The noble King of Brentford
Was old and very sick,
He summon'd his physicians
To wait upon him quick;
.....

William Makepeace Thackeray

Matins

You want to know how I spend my time?
I walk the front lawn, pretending
to be weeding. You ought to know
I'm never weeding, on my knees, pulling
.....

Louise Gluck

Tennyson

Poets they do pursue each theme
Under a gentle head of steam,
Save one, who needed fierce fire on,
The brilliant, passionate Byron.
.....

James Mcintyre

Thousand Star Hotel, Hanoi

I.

Over the road from the three star Galaxy Hotel is our hotel,
the old park on Phan Dinh Phung Street,
.....

S. K. Kelen

Staying At Ed's Place

I like being in your apartment, and not disturbing anything.
As in the woods I wouldn't want to move a tree,
or change the play of sun and shadow on the ground.

.....

May Swenson

Let's Take This World As Some Wide Scene.

Let's take this world as some wide scene.
Thro' which in frail but buoyant boat,
With skies now dark and now serene,
Together thou and I must float;
.....

Thomas Moore

Local Lad

I never saw a face so bright
With brilliant blood and joy,
As was the grinning mug last night
Of Dick, our local boy,
.....

Robert Service

A Little Child Shall Lead Them

Only a little scrap of blue
Preserved with loving care,
But earth has not a brilliant hue
To me more bright and fair.
.....

Frances E. W. Harper

Don Juan: Canto The Fourteenth

If from great nature's or our own abyss
Of thought we could but snatch a certainty,
Perhaps mankind might find the path they miss--
But then 'twould spoil much good philosophy.
.....

George Gordon Byron

The House Of Dust: Part 04: 03: Palimpsest: A Deceitful Portrait

Well, as you say, we live for small horizons:
We move in crowds, we flow and talk together,
Seeing so many eyes and hands and faces,
So many mouths, and all with secret meanings,—
.....

Conrad Potter Aiken

Daphne

Musing on the fate of Daphne,
Many feelings urged my breast,
For the God so keen desiring,
And the Nymph so deep distrest.
.....

George Meredith

The Legacy

When in death I shall calmly recline,
O bear my heart to my mistress dear,
Tell her it lived upon smiles and wine
Of the brightest hue, while it linger'd here.
.....

Thomas Moore

The Odyssey: Book 18

Now there came a certain common tramp who used to go begging all
over the city of Ithaca, and was notorious as an incorrigible
glutton and drunkard. This man had no strength nor stay in him, but he
was a great hulking fellow to look at; his real name, the one his
.....

Homer

Tz'u No. 15

To the tune of "Rinsing Silk Stream"

Thousands of light flakes of crushed gold
for its blossoms,
.....

Li Ching Chao

Dancer

THE LADY in red, she in the chile con carne red,
Brilliant as the shine of a pepper crimson in the summer sun,
She behind a false-face, the much sought-after dancer, the most sought-after dancer of all in this masquerade,
The lady in red sox and red hat, ankles of willow, crimson arrow amidst the Spanish clashes of music,
.....

Carl Sandburg

The Van Nessiad

From end to end, thine avenue, Van Ness,
Rang with the cries of battle and distress!
Brave lungs were thundering with dreadful sound
And perspiration smoked along the ground!
.....

Ambrose Bierce

Beyond The Moon

[Written to the Most Beautiful Woman in the World]


My Sweetheart is the TRUTH BEYOND THE MOON,
.....

Vachel Lindsay

King Stephen

A FRAGMENT OF A TRAGEDY
ACT I.
SCENE I. Field of Battle.
Alarum. Enter King STEPHEN, Knights, and Soldiers.
.....

John Keats

The Glass-vendor

There are some natures purely contemplative and antipathetic to action, who nevertheless, under a mysterious and inexplicable impulse, sometimes act with a rapidity of which they would have believed themselves incapable. Such a one is he who, fearing to find some new vexation awaiting him at his lodgings, prowls about in a cowardly fashion before the door without daring to enter; such a one is he who keeps a letter fifteen days without opening it, or only makes up his mind at the end of six months to undertake a journey that has been a necessity for a year past. Such beings sometimes feel themselves precipitately thrust towards action, like an arrow from a bow.
The novelist and the physician, who profess to know all things, yet cannot explain whence comes this sudden and delirious energy to indolent and voluptuous souls; nor how, incapable of accomplishing the simplest and most necessary things, they are at some certain moment of time possessed by a superabundant hardihood which enables them to execute the most absurd and even the most dangerous acts.
One of my friends, the most harmless dreamer that ever lived, at one time set fire to a forest, in order to ascertain, as he said, whether the flames take hold with the easiness that is commonly affirmed. His experiment failed ten times running, on the eleventh it succeeded only too well.
Another lit a cigar by the side of a powder barrel, in order to see, to know, to tempt Destwiy, for a jest, to have the pleasure of suspense, for no reason at all, out of caprice, out of idleness. This is a kind of energy that springs from weariness and reverie; and those in whom it manifests so stubbornly are in general, as I have said, the most indolent and dreamy beings.
.....

Charles Baudelaire

Midnight In The Pantry

You can boast your round of pleasures, praise the sound of popping corks,
Where the orchestra is playing to the rattle of the forks;
And your after-opera dinner you may think superbly fine,
But that can't compare, I'm certain, to the joy that's always mine
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

Ode To Fanny

Physician Nature! Let my spirit blood!
O ease my heart of verse and let me rest;
Throw me upon thy Tripod, till the flood
Of stifling numbers ebbs from my full breast.
.....

John Keats

From The Woolworth Tower

Vivid with love, eager for greater beauty
Out of the night we come
Into the corridor, brilliant and warm.
A metal door slides open,
.....

Sara Teasdale