Poetry Daily

New poem everyday at 5 p.m. (EDT)

[poetry-and-prose]

Hinges

If we had hinges on our heads There wouldn’t be no sin, Cause we could take the bad stuff out, And leave the good stuff in.

— Shel Silverstein (1930-1999)

[poetry-and-prose]

All Day I Hear The Noise Of Waters

All day I hear the noise of waters Making moan, Sad as the sea-bird is when, going Forth alone, He hears the winds cry to the water's Monotone.

The grey winds, the cold winds are blowing Where I go. I hear the noise of many waters Far below. All day, all night, I hear them flowing To and fro.

— James Joyce (1882-1941)

[poetry-and-prose]

The Hope Of My Heart

I left, to earth, a little maiden fair, With locks of gold, and eyes that shamed the light; I prayed that God might have her in His care And sight.

Earth's love was false; her voice, a siren's song; (Sweet mother-earth was but a lying name) The path she showed was but the path of wrong And shame.

"Cast her not out!" I cry. God's kind words come -- "Her future is with Me, as was her past; It shall be My good will to bring her home At last."

— John McCrae (1872-1918)

[poetry-and-prose]

There Is Pleasure In The Pathless Woods

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

—Lord Byron (1788-1824)

[poetry-and-prose]

In Dream

Black and enduring separation I share equally with you. Why weep? Give me your hand, Promise me you will come again. You and I are like high Mountains and we can't move closer. Just send me word At midnight sometime through the stars.

— Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966)

[poetry-and-prose]

My Love Is Like To Ice

My love is like to ice, and I to fire: How comes it then that this her cold so great Is not dissolved through my so hot desire, But harder grows the more I her entreat? Or how comes it that my exceeding heat Is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold, But that I burn much more in boiling sweat, And feel my flames augmented manifold? What more miraculous thing may be told, That fire, which all things melts, should harden ice, And ice, which is congeal's with senseless cold, Should kindle fire by wonderful device? Such is the power of love in gentle mind, That it can alter all the course of kind.

— Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)

[poetry-and-prose]

A Little While

A little while a little love The hour yet bears for thee and me Who have not drawn the veil to see If still our heaven be lit above. Thou merely, at the day's last sigh, Hast felt thy soul prolong the tone; And I have heard the night-wind cry And deemed its speech mine own.

A little while a little love The scattering autumn hoards for us Whose bower is not yet ruinous Nor quite unleaved our songless grove. Only across the shaken boughs We hear the flood-tides seek the sea, And deep in both our hearts they rouse One wail for thee and me.

A little while a little love May yet be ours who have not said The word it makes our eyes afraid To know that each is thinking of. Not yet the end: be our lips dumb In smiles a little season yet: I'll tell thee, when the end is come, How we may best forget.

— Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 - 1882)

[poetry-and-prose]

In A Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see, I meet my shadow in the deepening shade; I hear my echo in the echoing wood-- A lord of nature weeping to a tree. I live between the heron and the wren, Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den. What's madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall. That place among the rocks--is it a cave, Or a winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences! A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon, And in broad day the midnight come again! A man goes far to find out what he is-- Death of the self in a long, tearless night, All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire. My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I? A fallen man, I climb out of my fear. The mind enters itself, and God the mind, And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

— Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)

[poetry-and-prose]

All The World’s A Stage

All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms. Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

— William Shakespear (1564-1616)

[poetry-and-prose]

“I Think I Should Have Loved You Presently”

I think I should have loved you presently, And given in earnest words I flung in jest; And lifted honest eyes for you to see, And caught your hand against my cheek and breast; And all my pretty follies flung aside That won you to me, and beneath your gaze, Naked of reticence and shorn of pride, Spread like a chart my little wicked ways. I, that had been to you, had you remained, But one more waking from a recurrent dream, Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained, And walk your memory’s halls, austere, supreme, A ghost in marble of a girl you knew Who would have loved you in a day or two.

— Edna St. Vincent Millary (1892-1950)

[poetry-and-prose]

Corpse Song

I enter your night like a darkened boat, a smuggler

These lanterns, my eyes and heart are out

I bring you something you do not want:

news of the country I am trapped in,

news of your future: soon you will have no voice

              (I resent your skin, I resent               your lungs, your glib assumptions

Therefore sing now while you have the choice

              (My body turned against me               too soon, it was not a tragedy

              (I did not become               a tree or a constellation

              (I became a winter coat the children               thought they saw on the street corner

              (I became this illusion,               this trick of ventriloquism

              this blind noun, this bandage               crumpled at your dream’s edge

or you will drift as I do from head to head

swollen with words you never said, swollen with hoarded love.

I exist in two places,               here and where you are.

Pray for me not as I am but as I am.

— Margaret Atwood (1939-present)

[poetry-and-prose]

I Don’ Deplore the Years...

I don't deplore the years of my spring, Where dreams and life were never in connection, I don't deplore the nights' mysterious ring, Sang by a lyre in a fiery passion.

I don't deplore the false and faithless friends, The wreaths of feasts, the bowls of the parties, I don't deplore the beautiful adulteries - A thoughtful stranger, I avoid these trends.

But where's the time of gentle inclination, Of hearty silence and young hopes' strings? Where are the flame and tears of inspiration? Come back again, the years of my spring!

—Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837)

[poetry-and-prose]

Bound For Hell

Hell, my ardent sisters, be assured, Is where we’re bound; we’ll drink the pitch of hell— We, who have sung the praises of the lord With every fiber in us, every cell.

We, who did not manage to devote Our nights to spinning, did not bend and sway Above a cradle—in a flimsy boat, Wrapped in a mantle, we’re now borne away.

Every morning, every day, we’d rise And have the finest Chinese silks to wear; And we’d strike up the songs of paradise Around the campfire of a robbers’ lair,

We, careless seamstresses (our seams all ran, Whether we sewed or not)—yet we have been Such dancers, we have played the pipes of Pan: The world was ours, each one of us a queen.

First, scarcely draped in tatters, and disheveled, Then plaited with a starry diadem; We’ve been in jails, at banquets we have reveled: But the rewards of heaven, we’re lost to them,

Lost in nights of starlight, in the garden Where apple trees from paradise are found. No, be assured, my gentle girls, my ardent And lovely sisters, hell is where we’re bound.

—Marina Tsvetaeva (1892 - 1941)

[poetry-and-prose]

The Fly

Little fly, Thy summer’s play My thoughtless hand Has brushed away.

Am not I A fly like thee? Or art not thou A man like me?

For I dance And drink and sing, Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life And strength and breath, And the want Of thought is death,

Then am I A happy fly, If I live, Or if I die.

— William Blake (1757-1827)

[poetry-and-prose]

I Had No Time To Hate, Becuase

I had no time to hate, because The grave would hinder me, And life was not so ample I Could finish enmity.

Nor had I time to love, but since Some industry must be, The little toil of love, I thought, Was large enough for me. 

—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

[poetry-and-prose]

Indeed, Indeed I Cannot Tell

Indeed indeed, I cannot tell, Though I ponder on it well, Which were easier to state, All my love or all my hate. Surely, surely, thou wilt trust me When I say thou dost disgust me. O, I hate thee with a hate That would fain annihilate; Yet sometimes against my will, My dear friend, I love thee still. It were treason to our love, And a sin to God above, One iota to abate Of a pure impartial hate.

—Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

[poetry-and-prose]

A Song

I

No riches from his scanty store My lover could impart; He gave a boon I valued more — He gave me all his heart!

II

His soul sincere, his generous worth, Might well this bosom move; And when I asked for bliss on earth, I only meant his love.

III

But now for me, in search of gain From shore to shore he flies; Why wander riches to obtain, When love is all I prize?

IV

The frugal meal, the lowly cot If blest my love with thee! That simple fare, that humble lot, Were more than wealth to me.

V

While he the dangerous ocean braves, My tears but vainly flow: Is pity in the faithless waves To which I pour my woe?

VI

The night is dark, the waters deep, Yet soft the billows roll; Alas! at every breeze I weep — The storm is in my soul.

— Helen Maria Williams (1761-1827)