1. Horse - written by Louise Gluck
Read 2140 times on American Poems.

What does the horse give you
That I cannot give you?

I watch you when you are alone,
When you ride into the field behind the dairy,
Your hands buried in the mare's
Dark mane.

Then I know what lies behind your silence:
Scorn, hatred of... (Read full poem)

I read how Quixote in his random ride
Came to a crossing once, and lest he lose
The purity of chance, would not decide

Whither to fare, but wished his horse to choose.
For glory lay wherever turned the fable.
His head was light with pride,... (Read full poem)

3. The Long Race - written by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Read 588 times on American Poems.

Up the old hill to the old house again 
Where fifty years ago the friend was young 
Who should be waiting somewhere there among 
Old things that least remembered most remain, 
He toiled on with a pleasure that was pain
To think how soon asunder... (Read full poem)

BOY heart of Johnny Jones—aching to-day?
Aching, and Buffalo Bill in town?
Buffalo Bill and ponies, cowboys, Indians?
 
Some of us know
All about it, Johnny Jones.
 
Buffalo Bill is a slanting look of the eyes,
  A slanting look under a hat on... (Read full poem)

5. Fast rode the knight - written by Stephen Crane
From War is Kind & Other Lines. Published in 1899. Read 110253 times on American Poems.

Fast rode the knight
With spurs, hot and reeking,
Ever waving an eager sword,
"To save my lady!"
Fast rode the knIght,
And leaped from saddle to war.
Men of steel flickered and gleamed
Like riot of silver lights,
And the gold of the knight's good... (Read full poem)

The horse beneath me seemed 
To know what course to steer 
Through the horror of snow I dreamed,
And so I had no fear,

Nor was I chilled to death 
By the wind’s white shudders, thanks 
To the veils of his patient breath 
And the mist of... (Read full poem)

7. Shack Dye - written by Edgar Lee Masters
Read 467 times on American Poems.

The white men played all sorts of jokes on me.
They took big fish off my hook
And put little ones on, while I was away
Getting a stringer, and made me believe
I hadn't seen aright the fish I had caught.
When Burr Robbins circus came to... (Read full poem)

Where it says snow 
read teeth-marks of a virgin 
Where it says knife read 
you passed through my bones 
like a police-whistle 
Where it says table read horse 
Where it says horse read my migrant's bundle 
Apples are to remain apples 
Each time a... (Read full poem)

9. The Lawyers Know Too Much - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 2194 times on American Poems.

THE LAWYERS, Bob, know too much.
They are chums of the books of old John Marshall.
They know it all, what a dead hand wrote,
A stiff dead hand and its knuckles crumbling,
The bones of the fingers a thin white ash.
  The lawyers know
  a dead... (Read full poem)

A delicate young Negro stands
With the reins of a horse clutched loosely in his hands;
So delicate, indeed, that we wonder if he can hold the spirited creature
beside him
Until the master shall arrive to ride him.
Already the animal's nostrils widen... (Read full poem)

11. listen... (III) - written by e.e. cummings
Read 13229 times on American Poems.

listen
beloved
i dreamed
  it appeared that you thought to
  escape me and became a great
  lily atilt on
  insolent 
  waters    but i was aware of
  fragrance and i came riding upon
  a horse of porphyry    into the
  waters i rode down... (Read full poem)

In the dour ages
Of drafty cells and draftier castles,
Of dragons breathing without the frame of fables,
Saint and king unfisted obstruction's knuckles
By no miracle or majestic means,

But by such abuses
As smack of spite and the... (Read full poem)

13. Bronzes - written by Carl Sandburg
From Chicago Poems. Published in 1912. Read 1619 times on American Poems.

I

THE bronze General Grant riding a bronze horse in Lincoln
Park
Shrivels in the sun by day when the motor cars whirr
by in long processions going somewhere to keep appointment
for dinner and matinees and buying and selling
Though in the dusk and... (Read full poem)

IF we were such and so, the same as these,
maybe we too would be slingers and sliders,
tumbling half over in the water mirrors,
tumbling half over at the horse heads of the sun,
tumbling our purple numbers.
  
Twirl on, you and your satin blue.
Be... (Read full poem)

15. The Fever Monument - written by Richard Brautigan
Read 3026 times on American Poems.

I walked across the park to the fever monument.
It was in the center of a glass square surrounded 
by red flowers and fountains. The monument 
was in the shape of a sea horse and the plaque read
We got hot and died.(Read full poem)

How many schemes may die
In one short Afternoon
Entirely unknown
To those they most concern --
The man that was not lost
Because by accident
He varied by a Ribbon's width
From his accustomed route --
The Love that would not try
Because beside the... (Read full poem)

17. All in green went my love riding - written by e.e. cummings
Read 28876 times on American Poems.

All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn. 

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the merry deer ran before. 

Fleeter be they than dappled dreams
the swift sweet deer
the red rare deer. 

Four red roebuck... (Read full poem)

Body my house
my horse my hound
what will I do
when you are fallen

Where will I sleep
How will I ride
What will I hunt

Where can I go
without my mount
all eager and quick
How will I know
in thicket ahead
is danger or treasure
when Body my... (Read full poem)

19. What Place is Besieged? - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 1917 times on American Poems.

WHAT place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege? 
Lo! I send to that place a commander, swift, brave, immortal; 
And with him horse and foot—and parks of artillery, 
And artillery-men, the deadliest that ever fired gun.(Read full poem)

WAGON WHEEL GAP is a place I never saw
And Red Horse Gulch and the chutes of Cripple Creek.
 
Red-shirted miners picking in the sluices,
Gamblers with red neckties in the night streets,
The fly-by-night towns of Bull Frog and Skiddoo,
The night-cool... (Read full poem)

21. A Time to Talk - written by Robert Frost
From Mountain Interval. Published in 1916. Read 13019 times on American Poems.

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don't stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven't hoed,
And shout from where I am, 'What is it?'
No, not as there is a time talk.
I thrust my hoe... (Read full poem)

The Life that tied too tight escapes
Will ever after run
With a prudential look behind
And spectres of the Rein --
The Horse that scents the living Grass
And sees the Pastures smile
Will be retaken with a shot
If he is caught at all --(Read full poem)

23. Sway With Me - written by Charles Bukowski
From burning in water drowning in flame. Published in 1955. Read 1931 times on American Poems.

sway with me, everything sad --
madmen in stone houses
without doors,
lepers steaming love and song
frogs trying to figure
the sky;
sway with me, sad things --
fingers split on a forge
old age like breakfast shell
used books, used people
used... (Read full poem)

I worked for a woman,
She wasn't mean--
But she had a twelve-room
House to clean.

Had to get breakfast,
Dinner, and supper, too--
Then take care of her children
When I got through.

Wash, iron, and scrub,
Walk the dog around--
It was too... (Read full poem)

25. Riders - written by Robert Frost
From West-Running Brook. Published in 1928. Read 5564 times on American Poems.

The surest thing there is is we are riders,
And though none too successful at it, guiders,
Through everything presented, land and tide
And now the very air, of what we ride.

What is this talked-of mystery of birth
But being mounted bareback on the... (Read full poem)