1. Poem: To My Wife - With A Copy Of My Poems - written by Oscar Wilde
From Poems. Published in 1881. Read 86568 times on Poetry Connection.

Poem: To My Wife - With A Copy Of My Poems


I can write no stately proem
As a prelude to my lay;
From a poet to a poem
I would dare to say.

For if of these fallen petals
One to you seem fair,
Love will waft it till it settles
On your... (Read full poem)

1    If a man understands a poem,
     he shall have troubles.

2    If a man lives with a poem,
     he shall die lonely.

3    If a man lives with two poems,
     he shall be unfaithful to one.

4    If a man conceives of a poem,
     he shall... (Read full poem)

3. To Lucy, Countess of Bedford, with John Donne's Satires - written by Ben Jonson
Read 3430 times on Poetry Connection.

Lucy, you brightness of our sphere, who are
Life of the Muses' day, their morning star!
If works, not th' author's, their own grace should look,
Whose poems would not wish to be your book?
But these, desir'd by you, the maker's ends
Crown... (Read full poem)

Once a great love cut my life in two.
The first part goes on twisting
at some other place like a snake cut in two.

The passing years have calmed me
and brought healing to my heart and rest to my eyes.

And I'm like someone standing in the Judean... (Read full poem)

5. 148. To Miss Logan, with Beattie’s Poems - written by Robert Burns
From Poems and Songs. The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.. Published in 1787. Read 2866 times on Poetry Connection.

AGAIN the silent wheels of time
  Their annual round have driven,
And you, tho’ scarce in maiden prime,
  Are so much nearer Heaven.
 

No gifts have I from Indian coasts
  The infant year to hail;
I send you more than India boasts,
  In... (Read full poem)

I don't Know if history repeats itself
But I do know that you don't.

I remember that city was didvided 
Not only between Jews and Arabs,
But Between me and you,
When we were there together.

We made ourselves a womb of dangers
We built... (Read full poem)

7. THE OWLS - written by Charles Baudelaire
From The Poems and Prose Poems . Published in 1919. Read 5366 times on Poetry Connection.

UNDER the overhanging yews, 
The dark owls sit in solemn state, 
Like stranger gods; by twos and twos 
Their red eyes gleam. They meditate. 
  
Motionless thus they sit and dream 
Until that melancholy hour 
When, with the sun's last fading... (Read full poem)

SOFTLY as brown-eyed Angels rove 
I will return to thy alcove, 
And glide upon the night to thee, 
Treading the shadows silently. 
  
And I will give to thee, my own, 
Kisses as icy as the moon, 
And the caresses of a snake 
Cold gliding in... (Read full poem)

9. Eating Poetry - written by Mark Strand
From Selected Poems. Published in 1980. Read 13266 times on Poetry Connection.

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The... (Read full poem)

MUSIC doth uplift me like a sea 
Towards my planet pale, 
Then through dark fogs or heaven's infinity 
I lift my wandering sail. 
  
With breast advanced, drinking the winds that flee, 
And through the cordage wail, 
I mount the hurrying... (Read full poem)

11. THE SKY - written by Charles Baudelaire
From The Poems and Prose Poems . Published in 1919. Read 906 times on Poetry Connection.

WHERE'ER he be, on water or on land, 
Under pale suns or climes that flames enfold; 
One of Christ's own, or of Cythera's band, 
Shadowy beggar or Crœsus rich with gold; 
  
Citizen, peasant, student, tramp; whate'er 
His little brain may... (Read full poem)

HERE is the chamber consecrate, 
Wherein this maiden delicate, 
And enigmatically sedate, 
  
Fans herself while the moments creep, 
Upon her cushions half-asleep, 
And hears the fountains plash and weep. 
  
Dorothy's chamber undefiled.... (Read full poem)

13. That Sweet Flute John Clare - written by Mary Oliver
From West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems. Published in 1997. Read 2959 times on Poetry Connection.

That sweet flute John Clare;
that broken branch Eddy Whitman;
Christopher Smart, in the press of blazing electricity;
My uncle the suicide;
Woolf, on her way to the river;
Wolf, of the sorrowful songs;
Swift, impenetrable mask of Dublin;
Schumann,... (Read full poem)

SOUND, sweet song, from some far land,
Sighing softly close at hand,

Now of joy, and now of woe!

Stars are wont to glimmer so.

Sooner thus will good unfold;
Children young and children old
Gladly hear thy numbers... (Read full poem)

15. A FORMER LIFE - written by Charles Baudelaire
From The Poems and Prose Poems . Published in 1919. Read 991 times on Poetry Connection.

LONG since, I lived beneath vast porticoes, 
By many ocean-sunsets tinged and fired, 
Where mighty pillars, in majestic rows, 
Seemed like basaltic caves when day expired. 
  
The rolling surge that mirrored all the skies 
Mingled its music,... (Read full poem)

It is a curious experience
And one you"re bound to know, though probably
In other realms than that of literature,
Though I speak of poems now, assuming
That you are interested, otherwise,
Of course, you wouldn"t be reading this.
It is strange to... (Read full poem)

17. CONTEMPLATION - written by Charles Baudelaire
From The Poems and Prose Poems . Published in 1919. Read 755 times on Poetry Connection.

THOU, O my Grief, be wise and tranquil still, 
The eve is thine which even now drops down, 
To carry peace or care to human will, 
And in a misty veil enfolds the town. 
  
While the vile mortals of the multitude, 
By pleasure, cruel... (Read full poem)

I AM as lovely as a dream in stone, 
And this my heart where each finds death in turn, 
Inspires the poet with a love as lone 
As clay eternal and as taciturn. 
  
Swan-white of heart, a sphinx no mortal knows, 
My throne is in the heaven's... (Read full poem)

19. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. - written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
From The Poems. Read 554 times on Poetry Connection.

I have taken advantage of the publication of a Second Edition 
of my translation of the Poems of Goethe (originally published in 
1853), to add to the Collection a version of the much admired classical 
Poem of Hermann and Dorothea, which was... (Read full poem)

YOU are a sky of autumn, pale and rose; 
But all the sea of sadness in my blood 
Surges, and ebbing, leaves my lips morose, 
Salt with the memory of the bitter flood. 
  
In vain your hand glides my faint bosom o'er, 
That which you seek,... (Read full poem)

21. Quick And Bitter - written by Yehuda Amichai
From Poems of Jerusalem and Love Poems. Read 1370 times on Poetry Connection.

The end was quick and bitter.
Slow and sweet was the time between us,
slow and sweet were the nights
when my hands did not touch one another in despair but in the love 
of your body which came
between them.

And when I entered into you 
it... (Read full poem)

THE Moon more indolently dreams to-night 
Than a fair woman on her couch at rest, 
Caressing, with a hand distraught and light, 
Before she sleeps, the contour of her breast. 
  
Upon her silken avalanche of down, 
Dying she breathes a long... (Read full poem)

23. EXOTIC PERFUME - written by Charles Baudelaire
From The Poems and Prose Poems . Published in 1919. Read 1696 times on Poetry Connection.

WHEN with closed eyes in autumn's eves of gold 
I breathe the burning odours of your breast, 
Before my eyes the hills of happy rest 
Bathed in the sun's monotonous fires, unfold. 
  
Islands of Lethe where exotic boughs 
Bend with their... (Read full poem)

THEY say to me, thy clear and crystal eyes: 
"Why dost thou love me so, strange lover mine?" 
Be sweet, be still! My heart and soul despise 
All save that antique brute-like faith of thine; 
  
And will not bare the secret of their shame 
To... (Read full poem)

25. THE LIVING FLAME - written by Charles Baudelaire
From The Poems and Prose Poems . Published in 1919. Read 800 times on Poetry Connection.

THEY pass before me, these Eyes full of light, 
Eyes made magnetic by some angel wise; 
The holy brothers pass before my sight, 
And cast their diamond fires in my dim eyes. 
  
They keep me from all sin and error grave, 
They set me in the... (Read full poem)