Welcome to our Collection of poems by KNOWN POETS
Home
Table of Contents
Family
Children
Lovers
Friends
Religious
Fun and Funny
Thank You
|
| Sonnet 24 | Sonnet # 34 | Sonnet #62 | How Do I Love Thee? |
| I Like to See It Lap The Miles | A Song | Broken Sky | Grassroots |
If you don't wish to hear the music. You can turn off the music here.
Sonnet 24Mine eye hath played the painter and hath stelled
Thy beauty's form in table of my heart.
My body is the frame wherein 'tis held,
And perspective it is best painter's art.
For through the painter must you see his skill,
To find where your true image pictured lies,
Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still,
That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes.
Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done.
Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me
Are windows to my breast, wherethrough the sun
Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee.
Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art,
They draw but what they see, know not the heart.
by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Back to Top
Sonnet # 34
Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
To let base clouds o'er take me in my way,
Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?
'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
For no man well of such a salve can speak
That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace.
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief.
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss,
The offender's sorrow lends but weak relief
To him that bears the strong offense's cross.
Ah, but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,
And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds.
by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Back to Top
Sonnet #62
Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye
And all my soul and all my every part,
And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded inward in my heart.
Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of such account,
And for myself mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths surmount.
But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
Beated and chapped with tanned antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read.
Self so self-loving were iniquity.
'Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise,
Painting my age with beauty of thy days.
by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Back to Top
How Do I Love Thee?
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints -- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! -- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
Back to Top
I Like to See It Lap The Miles
I like to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, step
Around a pile of mountains,
and, sepercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of roads;
And then a quarry pare
- Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Back to Top
A Song
A widow bird sat mourning for her love
Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below.
There was not leaf upon the forest bare,
No flower upon the ground,
And little motion in the air
Except the mill-wheel's sound
- Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
Back to Top
Broken Sky
The sky of gray is eaten in six places,
Rag holes stand out.
It is an army blanket and the sleeper
slept to near the fire.
- Carl Sandburg
Back to Top
Grassroots
Grass clutches at the dark dirt with finger holds.
Let it be blue grass, barley, rye or wheat,
Let it be button weed or butter-and-eggs,
Let it be Johnny-jump-ups springing clean blue streaks.
Grassroots down under put fingers into dark dirt.
- Carl Sandburg
Back to Top