1. Monotone - written by Carl Sandburg
From Chicago Poems. Published in 1916. Read 3121 times on American Poems.

The monotone of the rain is beautiful,
And the sudden rise and slow relapse
Of the long multitudinous rain.

     The sun on the hills is beautiful,
Or a captured sunset sea-flung,
Bannered with fire and gold.

     A face I know is... (Read full poem)

AFTER you have spent all the money modistes and manicures and mannikins will take for fixing you over into a thing the people on the streets call proud and beautiful,
After the shops and fingers have worn out all they have and know and can hope to... (Read full poem)

3. Under the Harvest Moon - written by Carl Sandburg
From Chicago Poems. Read 5438 times on American Poems.

Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

     Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in... (Read full poem)

One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides 
The Queen Anne's Lace lying like lilies
On water; it glides
So from the walker, it turns 
Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of
     you
Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.

The beautiful... (Read full poem)

5. Sleep Waltz - written by Terence Winch
From The Drift of Things. Published in 2001. Read 709 times on American Poems.

for MCW

Get old enough so you won't have much to fear.
By then, the music plays inside your head
and everything beautiful must be learned by ear.

In the bathroom mirror I behold my wear and tear.
In our bedroom I try to levitate in... (Read full poem)

You are so beautiful and I am a fool
to be in love with you
is a theme that keeps coming up
in songs and poems.
There seems to be no room for variation.
I have never heard anyone sing
I am so beautiful
and you are a fool to be in love with me,
even... (Read full poem)

7. When The Year Grows Old - written by Edna St. Vincent Millay
From Renascence and Other Poems. Published in 1917. Read 2852 times on American Poems.

I cannot but remember
   When the year grows old—
October—November—
   How she disliked the cold!

She used to watch the swallows
   Go down across the sky,
And turn from the window
   With a little sharp sigh.

And often when the... (Read full poem)

They dont make it 
the beautiful die in flame- 
sucide pills,rat poison,rope what- 
ever... 
they rip their arms off, 
throw themselves out of windows, 
they pull their eyes out of the sockets, 
reject love 
reject hate 
reject,reject. 

they do'nt... (Read full poem)

9. The Beautiful Poem - written by Richard Brautigan
Published in 1950. Read 4736 times on American Poems.

I go to bed in Los Angeles thinking
about you.

Pissing a few moments ago
I looked down at my penis
affectionately.

Knowing it has been inside
you twice today makes me
feel beautiful.

3 A.M.
January 15, 1967(Read full poem)

I CRIED over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.
 
The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.
 
The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full... (Read full poem)

11. Beautiful Women. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 11560 times on American Poems.

WOMEN sit, or move to and fro—some old, some young; 
The young are beautiful—but the old are more beautiful than the young.(Read full poem)

It rests me to be among beautiful women
Why should one always lie about such matters?
I repeat:
It rests me to converse with beautiful women
Even though we talk nothing but nonsense,

The purring of the invisible antennae
Is both stimulating... (Read full poem)

13. Drunken Memories Of Anne Sexton - written by Alan Dugan
From American Poetry Review 25th Anniv. Issue. Read 1018 times on American Poems.

The first and last time I met
my ex-lover Anne Sexton was at
a protest poetry reading against
some anti-constitutional war in Asia
when some academic son of a bitch,
to test her reputation as a drunk,
gave her a beer glass full of wine
after our... (Read full poem)

WORD over all, beautiful as the sky! 
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost; 
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly wash again, and ever
    again,
	this
	soil’d world: 
...... (Read full poem)

15. The Samantha Sonnets #2 - written by Stanley Gemmell
Read 358 times on American Poems.

--after Emmanuel Hocquard 

Samantha is
Samantha

Is my most beautiful, stolen poem
(Stolen from The Druids
who in turn had stolen
from The Greeks
who in turn had stolen
gods from Aegypt-

words from the god
of all things... (Read full poem)

--after Emmanuel Hocquard 

Samantha is
Samantha

Is my most beautiful, stolen poem
(Stolen the way storm-clouds steal
light - Who in the world
dark and stolen - Stand stones
in solemn circles
for the solstice-

stones from the god
of... (Read full poem)

17. Whatever it is -- she has tried it -- - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1287 times on American Poems.

Whatever it is -- she has tried it --
Awful Father of Love --
Is not Ours the chastising --
Do not chastise the Dove --

Not for Ourselves, petition --
Nothing is left to pray --
When a subject is finished --
Words are handed away --

Only lest she... (Read full poem)

The words the happy say
Are paltry melody
But those the silent feel
Are beautiful --(Read full poem)

19. Music I Heard - written by Conrad Aiken
Read 4785 times on American Poems.

Music I heard with you was more than music, 
And bread I broke with you was more than bread; 
Now that I am without you, all is desolate; 
All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver, 
And I have seen... (Read full poem)

I'd rather recollect a setting
Than own a rising sun
Though one is beautiful forgetting --
And true the other one.

Because in going is a Drama
Staying cannot confer
To die divinely once a Twilight --
Than wane is easier --(Read full poem)

21. Poem in praise of menstruation - written by Lucille Clifton
Read 2181 times on American Poems.

if there is a river 
more beautiful than this 
bright as the blood 
red edge of the moon if 
there is a river 
more faithful than this 
returning each month 
to the same delta if there

is a river 
braver than this 
coming and coming in a... (Read full poem)

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new

Whose name you meditate --
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little

Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and... (Read full poem)

23. The Beautiful American Word, Sure - written by Delmore Schwartz
Read 1201 times on American Poems.

The beautiful American word, Sure,
As I have come into a room, and touch
The lamp's button, and the light blooms with such
Certainty where the darkness loomed before,

As I care for what I do not know, and care
Knowing for little she might not have... (Read full poem)

this time has finished me. 
I feel like the German troops
whipped by snow and the communists
walking bent
with newspapers stuffed into
worn boots. 
my plight is just as terrible.
maybe more so. 
victory was so close
victory was there. 
as she stood... (Read full poem)

25. The Beautiful Lawn Sprinkler - written by Howard Nemerov
From The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov. Read 692 times on American Poems.

What gives it power makes it change its mind
At each extreme, and lean its rising rain
Down low, first one and then the other way;
In which exchange humility and pride
Reverse, forgive, arise, and die again,
Wherefore it holds at both ends of the... (Read full poem)