1. 46. The Belles of Mauchline - written by Robert Burns
From Poems and Songs. The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.. Published in 1784. Read 941 times on Poetry Connection.

IN Mauchline there dwells six proper young belles,
  The pride of the place and its neighbourhood a’;
Their carriage and dress, a stranger would guess,
  In Lon’on or Paris, they’d gotten it a’.
 

Miss Miller is fine, Miss... (Read full poem)

Miss Don't-do-this and Don't-do-that
     Has such a sunny smile
You cannot help but chuckle at
     Her cuteness and her guile.
Her locks are silken floss of gold,
     Her eyes are pansy blue:
Maybe of years to eighty old
          The best is... (Read full poem)

3. Madrigal - written by Lewis Carroll
Read 652 times on Poetry Connection.

(To Miss May Forshall.) 


HE shouts amain, he shouts again, 
(Her brother, fierce, as bluff King Hal), 
"I tell you flat, I shall do that!" 
She softly whispers " 'May' for 'shall'!" 
He wistful sighed one eventide 
(Her friend,... (Read full poem)

Since I noo mwore do zee your feace,
Up steairs or down below,
I’ll zit me in the lwonesome pleace,
Where flat-bough’d beech do grow;
Below the beeches’ bough, my love,
Where you did never come,
An’ I don’t look to meet ye now,
As I do look... (Read full poem)

5. A Subaltern's Love Song - written by John Betjeman
Read 2883 times on Poetry Connection.

Miss J.Hunter Dunn, Miss J.Hunter Dunn,
Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament - you against me!

Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the... (Read full poem)

Oh bear with me, for I am old
And count on fingers five
The years this pencil I may hold
And hope to be alive;
How sadly soon our dreaming ends!
How brief the sunset glow!
Be kindly to the old, my friends:
You'll miss them when they go. 

I've seen... (Read full poem)

7. The Key Of The Street - written by Robert William Service
From Rhymes of a Roughneck. Read 459 times on Poetry Connection.

"Miss Rosemary," I dourly said,
"Our balance verges on the red,
We must cut down our overhead.
One of the staff will have to go.
There's Mister Jones, he's mighty slow,
Although he does his best, I know. 

"A deer old man; I like him well,
But age,... (Read full poem)

ASK why God made the gem so small?
  And why so huge the granite?—
Because God meant mankind should set
  That higher value on it.(Read full poem)

9. A Cradle Song - written by William Butler Yeats
From The Rose. Published in 1893. Read 3353 times on Poetry Connection.

The angels are stooping
Above your bed;
They weary of trooping
With the whimpering dead.

God's laughing in Heaven
To see you so good;
The Sailing Seven
Are gay with His mood.

I sigh that kiss you,
For I must own
That I shall miss you
When you have... (Read full poem)

FAIR maid, you need not take the hint,
  Nor idle texts pursue:
’Twas guilty sinners that he meant,
  Not Angels such as you.(Read full poem)

11. Arrival At Santos - written by Elizabeth Bishop
From Questions of Travel. Published in 1952. Read 2105 times on Poetry Connection.

Here is a coast; here is a harbor; 
here, after a meager diet of horizon, is some scenery: 
impractically shaped and--who knows?--self-pitying mountains, 
sad and harsh beneath their frivolous greenery,

with a little church on top of one. And... (Read full poem)

CEASE, ye prudes, your envious railing,
  Lovely Burns has charms—confess:
True it is, she had one failing,
  Had a woman ever less?(Read full poem)

13. 175. Epigram to Miss Jean Scott - written by Robert Burns
From Poems and Songs. The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.. Published in 1787. Read 723 times on Poetry Connection.

O HAD each Scot of ancient times
  Been, Jeanie Scott, as thou art;
The bravest heart on English ground
  Had yielded like a coward.(Read full poem)

Jenny kiss'd me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and welth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but... (Read full poem)

15. The moon tonight - written by Kobayashi Issa
From The Essential Haiku. Published in 1994. Read 986 times on Poetry Connection.

The moon tonight--
I even miss
her grumbling.(Read full poem)

HOW, Liberty! girl, can it be by thee nam’d?
Equality too! hussey, art not asham’d?
Free and Equal indeed, while mankind thou enchainest,
And over their hearts a proud Despot so reignest.(Read full poem)

17. Jenny kiss'd Me - written by James Henry Leigh Hunt
Read 433 times on Poetry Connection.

Jenny kiss'd me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and welth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but... (Read full poem)

LAMENT him, Mauchline husbands a’,
  He aften did assist ye;
For had ye staid hale weeks awa,
  Your wives they ne’er had miss’d ye.
 

Ye Mauchline bairns, as on ye press
  To school in bands thegither,
O tread ye lightly on his... (Read full poem)

19. Music To Me Is Like Days - written by Les Murray
Read 678 times on Poetry Connection.

Once played to attentive faces 
music has broken its frame 
its bodice of always-weak laces 
the entirely promiscuous art 
pours out in public spaces 
accompanying everything, the selections 
of sex and war, the rejections. 
To jeans-wearers in... (Read full poem)

SWEET naïveté of feature,
  Simple, wild, enchanting elf,
Not to thee, but thanks to Nature,
  Thou art acting but thyself.
 

Wert thou awkward, stiff, affected,
  Spurning Nature, torturing art;
Loves and Graces all rejected,
  Then... (Read full poem)

21. What News - written by Walter Savage Landor
Read 520 times on Poetry Connection.

Here, ever since you went abroad,
If there be change, no change I see,
I only walk our wonted road,
The road is only walkt by me.

Yes; I forgot; a change there is;
Was it of that you bade me tell?
I catch at times, at times I miss
The... (Read full poem)

Once on a time I fair Dorinda kiss'd, 
Whose nose was too distinguish'd to be miss'd; 
My dear, says I, I fain would kiss you closer, 
But tho' your lips say aye--your nose says, no, Sir.-- 
The maid was equally to fun inclin'd, 
And... (Read full poem)

23. From the Antique - written by Christina Rossetti
Read 560 times on Poetry Connection.

It's a weary life, it is, she said: 
Doubly blank in a woman's lot: 
I wish and I wish I were a man: 
Or, better then any being, were not:

Were nothing at all in all the world, 
Not a body and not a soul: 
Not so much as a grain of dust... (Read full poem)

A SHAFT of fire that falls like dew,
  And melts and maddens all my blood,
From out thy spirit flashes through
  The burning-glass of womanhood.
 

Only so far; here must I stay:
  Nearer I miss the light, the fire;
I must endure the torturing ray,... (Read full poem)

25. The Telegraph Operator - written by Robert William Service
From Ballads of a Cheechako. Read 504 times on Poetry Connection.

I will not wash my face;
I will not brush my hair;
I "pig" around the place--
There's nobody to care.
Nothing but rock and tree;
Nothing but wood and stone,
Oh, God, it's hell to be
Alone, alone, alone!

Snow-peaks and deep-gashed draws
Corral me in... (Read full poem)