Category Poets

In this pond of placid water,Half a hundred years ago,So they say, a farmer’s daughter,Jilted by her farmer beau, Waded out among the rushes,Scattering the blue dragon-flies;That dried stick the ripple washesMarks the spot, I should surmise. Think, so near…

“Heaven bless the babe,” they said.“What queer books she must have read!”(Love, by whom I was beguiled,Grant I may not bear a child!) “Little does she guess todayWhat the world may be,” they say.(Snow, drift deep and coverTill the spring…

Oh, come, my lad, or go, my lad, And love me if you like!I hardly hear the door shut Or the knocker strike.Oh, bring me gifts or beg me gifts, And wed me if you will!I’d make a man a…

Weep him dead and mourn as you may, Me, I sing as I must:Blessèd be Death, that cuts in marble What would have sunk to dust!Blessèd be Death, that took my love And buried him in the sea,Where never a…

Oh, lay my ashes on the windThat blows across the sea.And I shall meet a fishermanOut of Capri, And he will say, seeing me,“What a Strange Thing!Like a fish’s scale or aButterfly’s wing.” Oh, lay my ashes on the windThat…

In the spring of the year, in the spring of the year,I walked the road beside my dear.The trees were black where the bark was wet.I see them yet, in the spring of the year.He broke me a bough of…

Once from a big, big building,When I was small, small,The queer folk in the windowsWould smile at me and call. And in the hard wee gardensSuch pleasant men would hoe:“Sir, may we touch the little girl’s hair!”—It was so red,…

As I sat down by Saddle StreamTo bathe my dusty feet there,A boy was standing on the bridgeAny girl would meet there. As I went over Woody KnobAnd dipped into the hollow,A youth was coming up the hillAny maid would…

It’s little I care what path I take,And where it leads it’s little I care,But out of this house, lest my heart break,I must go, and off somewhere! It’s little I know what’s in my heart,What’s in my mind it’s…

I wound myself in a white cocoon of singing, All day long in the brook’s uneven bed, Measuring out my soul in a mucous thread;Dimly now to the brook’s green bottom clinging, Men behold me, a worm spun-out and dead,Walled…