1. Responsibilities - Introduction - written by William Butler Yeats
From Responsibilities. Published in 1914. Read 1479 times on Poetry Connection.

Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain
Somewhere in ear-shot for the story's end,
Old Dublin merchant "free of the ten and four"
Or trading out of Galway into Spain;
Old country scholar, Robert Emmet's friend,
A hundred-year-old memory to the... (Read full poem)

Song

(Act II, Scene I, lines 65-80)

A sunny shaft did I behold,
From sky to earth it slanted :
And poised therein a bird so bold--
Sweet bird, thou wert enchanted !

He sank, he rose, he twinkled, he trolled
Within that shaft of sunny... (Read full poem)

3. Sonnet XLI: Having This Day My Horse - written by Sir Philip Sidney
Read 540 times on Poetry Connection.

Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance
Guided so well that I obtain'd the prize,
Both by the judgment of the English eyes
And of some sent from that sweet enemy France;
Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance,
Town folks my strength; a... (Read full poem)

Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance
Guided so well that I obtain'd the prize,
Both by the judgment of the English eyes
And of some sent from that sweet enemy France;
Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance,
Town folks my strength; a... (Read full poem)

5. Tell - written by Paul Muldoon
Read 1586 times on Poetry Connection.

He opens the scullery door, and a sudden rush
of wind, as raw as raw,
brushes past him as he himself will brush
past the stacks of straw

that stood in earlier for Crow
or Comanche tepees hung with scalps
but tonight past muster, row upon row,
for... (Read full poem)

WEAVE the warp, and weave the woof,
The winding-sheet of Edward's race.
Give ample room, and verge enough
The characters of hell to trace.
Mark the year, and mark the night,
When Severn shall re-echo with affright
The shrieks of death, thro'... (Read full poem)

7. Jock - written by Andrew Barton Paterson
Read 540 times on Poetry Connection.

There's a soldier that's been doing of his share 
In the fighting up and down and round about. 
He's continually marching here and there, 
And he's fighting, morning in and morning out. 
The Boer, you see, he generally runs; 
But sometimes,... (Read full poem)

Quand le ciel bas et lourd pèse comme un couvercle
Sur l'esprit gémissant en proie aux longs ennuis,
Et que de l'horizon embrassant tout le cercle
Il nous verse un jour noir plus triste que les nuits; 
Quand la terre est changée... (Read full poem)

9. Ode To Maize - written by Pablo Neruda
From Elementary Odes. Read 2850 times on Poetry Connection.

America, from a grain
of maize you grew
to crown
with spacious lands
the ocean foam.
A grain of maize was your geography.
From the grain
a green lance rose,
was covered with gold,
to grace the heights
of Peru with its yellow... (Read full poem)

Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows ' flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs ' they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, ' wherever an elm... (Read full poem)

11. The Deficit Demon - written by Andrew Barton Paterson
Read 917 times on Poetry Connection.

It was the lunatic poet escaped from the local asylum, 
Loudly he twanged on his banjo and sang with his voice like a saw-mill, 
While as with fervour he sang there was borne o'er the shuddering wildwood, 
Borne on the breath of the poet a... (Read full poem)

THERE was once a day, but old Time wasythen young,
  That brave Caledonia, the chief of her line,
From some of your northern deities sprung,
  (Who knows not that brave Caledonia’s divine?)
From Tweed to the Orcades was her domain,
  To hunt,... (Read full poem)

13. The Bard - written by Thomas Gray
Read 1401 times on Poetry Connection.

Pindaric Ode

"Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!
Confusion on thy banners wait!
Tho' fanned by Conquest's crimson wing,
They mock the air with idle state.
Helm, nor hauberk's twisted mail,
Nor e'en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail
To save thy secret... (Read full poem)

To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
While I confess thy writings to be such
As neither Man nor Muse can praise too much.
'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto... (Read full poem)

15. Sir Galahad - written by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Read 587 times on Poetry Connection.

MY good blade carves the casques of men, 
My tough lance thrusteth sure, 
My strength is as the strength of ten, 
Because my heart is pure. 
The shattering trumpet shrilleth high, 
The hard brands shiver on the steel, 
The splinter'd... (Read full poem)