1. Rice Pudding - written by A.A. Milne
Read 2611 times on Poetry Connection.

What is the matter with Mary Jane?
She's crying with all her might and main,
And she won't eat her dinner - rice pudding again -
What is the matter with Mary Jane?

What is the matter with Mary Jane?
I've promised her dolls and a... (Read full poem)

'Love is all
Unsatisfied
That cannot take the whole
Body and soul';
And that is what Jane said.

'Take the sour
If you take me
I can scoff and lour
And scold for an hour.'
"That's certainly the case,' said he.

'Naked I lay,
The grass my bed;
Naked... (Read full poem)

3. Jane - written by Robert William Service
From Rhymes for My Rags. Read 626 times on Poetry Connection.

My daughter Jane makes dresses
For beautiful Princesses;
But though she's plain is Jane,
Of needlework she's vain,
And makes such pretty things
For relatives of Kings.

She reads the picture papers
Where Royalties cut capers,
And often says to... (Read full poem)

When Aunt Jane died we hunted round,
And money everywhere we found.
How much I do not care to say,
But no death duties will we pay,
And Aunt Jane will be well content
We bilked the bloody Government.

While others spent she loved to save,
But... (Read full poem)

5. Aubade - written by Dame Edith Sitwell
Read 663 times on Poetry Connection.

JANE, Jane, 
Tall as a crane, 
The morning light creaks down again;

Comb your cockscomb-ragged hair, 
Jane, Jane, come down the stair.

Each dull blunt wooden stalactite 
Of rain creaks, hardened by the light,

Sounding like an overtone... (Read full poem)

I am tired of cursing the Bishop,
(Said Crazy Jane)
Nine books or nine hats
Would not make him a man.
I have found something worse
To meditate on.
A King had some beautiful cousins.
But where are they gone?
Battered to death in a cellar,
And he... (Read full poem)

7. To Jane - written by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Read 918 times on Poetry Connection.

The keen stars were twinkling,
And the fair moon was rising among them,
Dear Jane.
The guitar was tinkling,
But the notes were not sweet till you sung them
Again.

As the moon's soft splendour
O'er the faint cold starlight of Heaven
Is thrown,
So... (Read full poem)

When I was young I was too proud
        To wheel my daughter in her pram.
"It's infra dig," I said aloud,--
        Bot now I'm old, behold I am
Perambulating up and down
        Grand-daughter through the town.

And when I come into the... (Read full poem)

9. Presentiment - written by Charlotte Bronte
Read 515 times on Poetry Connection.

' SISTER, you've sat there all the day,
Come to the hearth awhile;
The wind so wildly sweeps away,
The clouds so darkly pile.
That open book has lain, unread,
For hours upon your knee;
You've never smiled nor turned your head
What can you,... (Read full poem)

CAME the great Popinjay 
Smelling his nosegay: 
In cages like grots 
The birds sang gavottes. 
'Herodiade's flea 
Was named sweet Amanda, 
She danced like a lady 
From here to Uganda. 
Oh, what a dance was there! 
Long-haired, the candle... (Read full poem)

11. Do Not Accept - written by Yehuda Amichai
Read 1343 times on Poetry Connection.

Do not accept these rains that come too late.
Better to linger. Make your pain
An image of the desert. Say it's said
And do not look to the west. Refuse

To surrender. Try this year too
To live alone in the long summer,
Eat your drying bread,... (Read full poem)

By the winding Wollondilly where the weeping willows weep, 
And the shepherd, with his billy, half awake and half asleep, 
Folds his fleecy flocks that linger homewards in the setting sun 
Lived my hero, Jim the Ringer, "cocky" on Mylora Run.... (Read full poem)

13. Poem: Phedre - written by Oscar Wilde
From Poems. Published in 1881. Read 1087 times on Poetry Connection.

Poem: Phedre



(To Sarah Bernhardt)

How vain and dull this common world must seem
To such a One as thou, who should'st have talked
At Florence with Mirandola, or walked
Through the cool olives of the Academe:
Thou should'st have gathered... (Read full poem)

KEN ye aught o’ Captain Grose?—Igo, and ago,
If he’s amang his friends or foes?—Iram, coram, dago.
 

Is he to Abra’m’s bosom gane?—Igo, and ago,
Or haudin Sarah by the wame?—Iram, coram dago.
 

Is he south... (Read full poem)

15. Crazy Jane Reproved - written by William Butler Yeats
From The Winding Stair and Other Poems. Published in 1933. Read 1620 times on Poetry Connection.

I care not what the sailors say:
All those dreadful thunder-stones,
All that storm that blots the day
Can but show that Heaven yawns;
Great Europa played the fool
That changed a lover for a bull.
Fol de rol, fol de rol.

To round that shell's... (Read full poem)

That lover of a night
Came when he would,
Went in the dawning light
Whether I would or no;
Men come, men go;
All things remain in God.

Banners choke the sky;
Men-at-arms tread;
Armoured horses neigh
In the narrow pass:
All things remain in... (Read full poem)

17. Sonnet Reversed - written by Rupert Brooke
Read 672 times on Poetry Connection.

Hand trembling towards hand; the amazing lights 
Of heart and eye. They stood on supreme heights. 

Ah, the delirious weeks of honeymoon! 
Soon they returned, and, after strange adventures, 
Settled at Balham by the end of June. 
Their money... (Read full poem)

I met the Bishop on the road
And much said he and I.
'Those breasts are flat and fallen now,
Those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion,
Not in some foul sty.'

'Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,' I cried.
'My friends... (Read full poem)

19. Crazy Jane And Jack The Journeyman - written by William Butler Yeats
From The Winding Stair and Other Poems. Published in 1933. Read 1374 times on Poetry Connection.

I know, although when looks meet
I tremble to the bone,
The more I leave the door unlatched
The sooner love is gone,
For love is but a skein unwound
Between the dark and dawn.

A lonely ghost the ghost is
That to God shall come;
I - love's skein... (Read full poem)

When snow like sheep lay in the fold
And wind went begging at each door,
And the far hills were blue with cold,
And a cloud shroud lay on the moor,

She kept the siege. And every day
We watched her brooding over death
Like a strong bird above... (Read full poem)

21. The Man Who Was Away - written by Andrew Barton Paterson
Read 818 times on Poetry Connection.

The widow sought the lawyer's room with children three in tow, 
She told the lawyer man her tale in tones of deepest woe. 
She said, "My husband took to drink for pains in his inside, 
And never drew a sober breath from then until he died.... (Read full poem)

In sealed box cars travel
names across the land,
and how far they will travel so,
and will they ever get out,
don't ask, I won't say, I don't know.

The name Nathan strikes fist against wall,
the name Isaac, demented, sings,
the name Sarah calls out... (Read full poem)

23. Crazy Jane Grown Old Looks At The Dancers - written by William Butler Yeats
From The Winding Stair and Other Poems. Published in 1933. Read 1263 times on Poetry Connection.

I found that ivory image there
Dancing with her chosen youth,
But when he wound her coal-black hair
As though to strangle her, no scream
Or bodily movement did I dare,
Eyes under eyelids did so gleam;
Love is like the lion's tooth.

When She, and... (Read full poem)

Bring me to the blasted oak
That I, midnight upon the stroke,
(All find safety in the tomb.)
May call down curses on his head
Because of my dear Jack that's dead.
Coxcomb was the least he said:
The solid man and the coxcomb.

Nor was he Bishop when... (Read full poem)

25. Elegy For Jane - written by Theodore Roethke
Read 8872 times on Poetry Connection.

(My student, thrown by a horse)

I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;
And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile;
And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for her,
And she balanced in the delight of her... (Read full poem)