1. The Neighbor - written by Rainer Maria Rilke
Read 2133 times on Poetry Connection.

Strange violin, why do you follow me?
In how many foreign cities did you
speak of your lonely nights and those of mine.
Are you being played by hundreds? Or by one?

Do in all great cities men exist
who tormented and in deep despair
would have... (Read full poem)

The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet... (Read full poem)

3. How Thought You That This Thing Could Captivate? - written by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Read 1350 times on Poetry Connection.

How thought you that this thing could captivate? 
What are those graces that could make her dear, 
Who is not worth the notice of a sneer, 
To rouse the vapid devil of her hate? 
A speech conventional, so void of weight, 
That after it has... (Read full poem)

Like some weak lords, neighbor'd by mighty kings, 
To keep themselves and their chief cities free, 
Do easily yield, that all their coasts may be 
Ready to store their camps of needful things: 

So Stella's heart finding what power Love... (Read full poem)

5. The Slow Nature - written by Thomas Hardy
Read 513 times on Poetry Connection.

(an Incident of Froom Valley)

"THY husband--poor, poor Heart!--is dead--
Dead, out by Moreford Rise;
A bull escaped the barton-shed,
Gored him, and there he lies!"

--"Ha, ha--go away! 'Tis a tale, methink,
Thou joker Kit!" laughed... (Read full poem)

I.

A MASTER of a country school
Jump'd up one day from off his stool,
Inspired with firm resolve to try
To gain the best society;
So to the nearest baths he walk'd,
And into the saloon he stalk'd.
He felt quite. startled at the door,
Ne'er... (Read full poem)

7. Gentleman Alone - written by Pablo Neruda
Read 5665 times on Poetry Connection.

The young maricones and the horny muchachas,
The big fat widows delirious from insomnia,
The young wives thirty hours' pregnant,
And the hoarse tomcats that cross my garden at night,
Like a collar of palpitating sexual oysters
Surround my solitary... (Read full poem)

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.

I'll love you,... (Read full poem)

9. For A Thirteenth Birthday - written by Lisel Mueller
From The Need to Hold Still. Published in 1980. Read 1158 times on Poetry Connection.

You have read War and Peace.
Now here is Sister Carrie,
not up to Tolstoy; still
it will second the real world:
predictable planes and levels,
pavement that holds you,
stairs that lift you,
ice that trips you,
nights that begin after sunset,
four... (Read full poem)

The humble garret where I dwell
Is in that Quarter called the Latin;
It isn't spacious -- truth to tell,
There's hardly room to swing a cat in.
But what of that! It's there I fight
For food and fame, my Muse inviting,
And all the day and half the... (Read full poem)

11. The Ballad Of Pious Pete - written by Robert William Service
From Ballads of a Cheechako. Read 555 times on Poetry Connection.

"The North has got him." --Yukonism.


I tried to refine that neighbor of mine, honest to God, I did.
I grieved for his fate, and early and late I watched over him like a kid.
I gave him excuse, I bore his abuse in every way that I could;
I swore to... (Read full poem)

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with... (Read full poem)

13. The Alarm - written by Thomas Hardy
Read 513 times on Poetry Connection.

In Memory of one of the Writer's Family who was a Volunteer during the War
with Napoleon

In a ferny byway
Near the great South-Wessex Highway,
A homestead raised its breakfast-smoke aloft;
The dew-damps still lay steamless, for the sun had... (Read full poem)