NATIONAL POEMS

The Maiden's Vow

(A speaker at the National Education Association advised girls not to
study algebra. Many girls, he said, had lost their souls through this
study. The idea has been taken up with enthusiasm.)

.....

Alice Duer Miller

Patriotism- Love For The Nation

In your heart keep the love for nation,
Its protected by those who never take a vacation.

It provides a national feeling of proud,
.....

Priyadarshini Goel

Global Peace

In this era the leaders are very ambitious,
They want to lead and threaten the world,
With power of force and nuclear weapons &
Capture beyond the control land,
.....

Norbu Dorji

The Greek National Anthem

We knew thee of old,
Oh divinely restored,
By the light of thine eyes
And the light of thy Sword.
.....

Rudyard Kipling

Tender Arrivals

Where ever something breathes
Heart beating the rise and fall
Of mountains, the waves upon the sky
Of seas, the terror is our ignorance, that's
.....

Amiri Baraka

Our Children

OUR CHILDREN

Our children still do not admit defeat,
Nor do they think to withdraw
.....

Mohammad Younus

Heritage Site Jdnp

Mesmerizing landscape of snowy mountains
Is a landmark of park & country,
Significant of Jigme Dorji National Park,
Is the home where one can see all national diversity.
.....

Norbu Dorji

The Poet

The riches of the poet are equal to his poetry
His power is his left hand
It is idle weak and precious
His poverty is his wealth, a wealth which may destroy him
.....

Delmore Schwartz

Burns

MY OWN WILD BURNS! these rude-wrought rhymes of thine
In golden worth are like the unshapely coin
Of some new realm, yet pure as from the mineâ??
And Art may well be spared with such alloy
.....

Charles Harpur

Flowers In My Garden

Colors of flowers represent love,
Colors of flowers represent identity,
Colors of flowers represent joy and happiness
Colors of flowers represent peace,
.....

Liks Lekes

You Know What I Mean

I've noticed this happen, when everything is black,
When I'm down below zero and cannot get back,
When I feel like a sort of a National Debt,
That will go on for ages and never be met,
.....

John Milton Hayes

On An Occasion Of National Mourning

It is admittedly difficult for a whole
Nation to mourn and be seen to do so, but
It can be done, the silvery platitudes
Were waiting in their silos for just such
.....

Howard Nemerov

Song For Norway National Hymn

Yes, we love this land that towers
Where the ocean foams;
Rugged, storm-swept, it embowers
Many thousand homes.
.....

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

Who Shall Rule This American Nation?

Who shall rule this American Nation?
Say, boys, say!
Who shall sit in the loftiest station?
Say, boys, say!
.....

Henry Clay Work

Landscapes

The ridges either side of the valley
were covered in dark pine forest.
The ploughed hill sides were red,
and the pastures were very green.
.....

Lee Harwood

Alan Dugan Telling Me I Have A Problem With Time

He reads my latest attempt at a poem
and is silent for a long time, until it feels
like that night we waited for Apollo,
my mother wandering in and out of her bedroom, asking,
.....

Nick Flynn

Twenty-two Rhymes To Left-prime-minister Wei

Boys in fancy clothes never starve,
but Confucian scholars often find their lives in ruin.
Please listen to my explanation, Sir,
I, your humble student, ask permission to state my case.
.....

Du Fu

Epigram-thanks For A National Victory

YE hypocrites! are these your pranks?
To murder men and give God thanks!
Desist, for shame!â??proceed no further;
God won't accept your thanks for MURTHER
.....

Robert Burns

America

Once in English they said America. Was it English to them.
Once they said Belgian.
We like a fog.
Do you for weather.
.....

Gertrude Stein

The Half-way House

Love I was shewn upon the mountain-side
And bid to catch Him ere the dropp of day.
See, Love, I creep and Thou on wings dost ride:
Love it is evening now and Thou away;
.....

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Sure Hit Songwriter-s Pen

Now I was hangin' round Nashville writin' songs and playin' 'em for all of the stars
Watchin' 'em laugh and hand 'em back livin' on hope and Hershey bars
So I pawned my guitar and bought a ticket home and I's headin' for the Trailway bus
When I seen an old fountain pen laying in the gutter so I stopped and picked it up
.....

Shel Silverstein

Formerly A Slave

An idealized Portrait, by E. Vedder, in the Spring
Exhibition of the National Academy, 1865


.....

Herman Melville

Bess

Ours are the streets where Bess first met her
cancer. She went to work every day past the
secure houses. At her job in the library
she arranged better and better flowers, and when
.....

William Stafford

National Song (e.c.)

There is no land like England
Where banks rise day by day,
There are no banks like English banks
To make the people pay.
.....

Ezra Pound

The Venetian Girl's Evening Song.

Unmoor the skiff, - unmoor the skiff, -
The night wind's sigh is on the air,
And o'er the highest Alpine cliff,
The pale moon rises, broad and clear.
.....

George W. Sands

The Ballad Of Casey's Billy-goat

You've heard of “Casey at The Bat,”
And “Casey's Tabble Dote”;
But now it's time
To write a rhyme
.....

Robert Service

Meditations In Time Of Civil War

I. Ancestral Houses

Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns,
Amid the rustle of his planted hills,
.....

William Butler Yeats

Land Of Five Perfections

The hidden land of Himalaya,
Encircled by snow capped mountains,
Makes a continue flow of rivers to nourish,
Decorated with evergreen floral diversity,
.....

Norbu Dorji

Property

The forest is a national property,
Is freely exposed in open area for all,
If we use lavishly without concern,
Younger generation may not have access to this wealth.
.....

Norbu Dorji

How We Kept The Day.

I.
The great procession came up the street,
With clatter of hoofs and tramp of feet;
There was General Jones to guide the van,
.....

Will Carleton

The New Hawaiian Girl

EXPLANATORY

Kamehameha First, of the Hawaiian Islands, conquered his
foes in a great battle, driving them over the high mountain
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Face Of Qana

The face of Qana
Pale, like that of Jesus
and the sea breeze of Aprilâ?¦
Rains of blood.. and tears..
.....

Nizar Qabbani

Samson Agonistes (excerpts)

[Samson's Opening Speech]
A little onward lend thy guiding hand
To these dark steps, a little further on;
For yonder bank hath choice of sun or shade,
.....

John Milton

Rural Life In England - Prose

Oh! friendly to the best pursuits of man,
Friendly to thought, to virtue and to peace,
Domestic life in rural pleasures past!
- COWPER.
.....

Washington Irving

Westminster Abbey - Prose

When I behold, with deep astonishment,
To famous Westminster how there resorte,
Living in brasse or stoney monument,
The princes and the worthies of all sorte;
.....

Washington Irving

Drapers Dummies

What do they dream about standing there
In the windows facing the street?
Eyes transfixed in a strange, far stare,
Smiles so ineffably sweet;
.....

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

The Flatting-mill. An Illustration

When a bar of pure silver or ingot of gold
Is sent to be flatted or wrought into length,
It is pass'd between cylinders often, and roll'd
In an engine of utmost mechanical strength.
.....

William Cowper

Velocity Of Money

Iâ??m delighted by the velocity of money as it whistles through the windows
of Lower East Side
Delighted by skyscrapers rising the old grungy apartments falling on
84th Street
.....

Allen Ginsberg

Despite

The terrible things that the Governor
Of Kansas says alarm me;
And yet somehow we won the war
In spite of the Regular Army.
.....

Franklin Pierce Adams

Part 7 Of Trout Fishing In America

THE PUDDING MASTER OF



.....

Richard Brautigan

John Bull - Prose

An old song, made by an aged old pate,
Of an old worshipful gentleman who had a great estate,
That kept a brave old house at a bountiful rate,
And an old porter to relieve the poor at his gate.
.....

Washington Irving

Wellington

Great captain if you will! great Duke! great Slave!
Great minion of the crown! - but a great man
He was not! He? the iron instrument
Of mere authority! the atheist
.....

Charles Harpur

Opening Hymn

[Sung at the Opening of the Queensland National Society's Exhibition,
1876.]
While nations joining gifts
Their fanes of Art adorn,
.....

James Brunton Stephens

A Call To National Service

Up and be doing, all who have a hand
To lift, a back to bend. It must not be
In times like these that vaguely linger we
To air our vaunts and hopes; and leave our land
.....

Thomas Hardy

The Child-world

A Child-World, yet a wondrous world no less,
To those who knew its boundless happiness.
A simple old frame house--eight rooms in all--
Set just one side the center of a small
.....

James Whitcomb Riley

A National Hymn. - Government House, March 1880.

From our Dominion never
Take Thy protecting hand,
United, Lord, for ever
Keep Thou our fathers' land!
.....

John Campbell

Damascus, What Are You Doing To Me?

1
My voice rings out, this time, from Damascus
It rings out from the house of my mother and father
In Sham. The geography of my body changes.
.....

Nizar Qabbani

Dedication

Grant me a moment of peace,
Let me but open mine eyes,
Forgetting the empire of lies
And warfare's majestic increase
.....

John Le Gay Brereton

Walt Whitman

For erratic style he leads van,
Wildly, wayward Walt Whitman.

*Mathew Arnold saw fit to say that Longfellow was not
.....

James Mcintyre

Song Of The Redwood-tree

A CALIFORNIA song!
A prophecy and indirection--a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air;
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing--or hamadryads departing;
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky,
.....

Walt Whitman