The Definition of Beauty is
That Definition is none --
Of Heaven, easing Analysis,
Since Heaven and He are one.(Read full poem)

2. By my Window have I for Scenery - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1875 times on American Poems.

By my Window have I for Scenery
Just a Sea -- with a Stem --
If the Bird and the Farmer -- deem it a "Pine" --
The Opinion will serve -- for them --

It has no Port, nor a "Line" -- but the Jays --
That split their route to the Sky --
Or a Squirrel,... (Read full poem)

The great man turns his back on the island.
Now he will not die in paradise
nor hear again
the lutes of paradise among the olive trees,
by the clear pools under the cypresses. Time

begins now, in which he hears again
that pulse which is the... (Read full poem)

4. Success is counted sweetest - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 27014 times on American Poems.

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of Victory

As he defeated -- dying --
On whose forbidden... (Read full poem)

Each picture is heartbreakingly banal,
a kitten and a ball of yarn,
a dog and bone.
The paper is cheap, easily torn.
A coloring book's authority is derived
from its heavy black lines
as unalterable as the ten commandments
within which minor... (Read full poem)

6. Fog - written by Amy Clampitt
Read 2660 times on American Poems.

A vagueness comes over everything,
as though proving color and contour
alike dispensable: the lighthouse
extinct, the islands' spruce-tips
drunk up like milk in the
universal emulsion; houses
reverting into the lost
and forgotten; granite
subsumed,... (Read full poem)

You weren't well or really ill yet either;
just a little tired, your handsomeness
tinged by grief or anticipation, which brought
to your face a thoughtful, deepening grace.

I didn't for a moment doubt you were dead.
I knew that to be true still,... (Read full poem)

8. A Catalpa Tree On West Twelfth Street - written by Amy Clampitt
From Best American Poetry 1994, Touchstone Press. Published in 1994. Read 1048 times on American Poems.

While the sun stops, or
seems to, to define a term
for the indeterminable,
the human aspect, here
in the West Village, spindles
to a mutilated dazzle—

niched shards of solitude
embedded in these brownstone
walkups such that the Hudson
at the... (Read full poem)

How wise I am to have instructed the butler
to instruct the first footman to instruct the second
footman to instruct the doorman to order my carriage;
I am about to volunteer a definition of marriage.
Just as I know that there are two Hagens, Walter... (Read full poem)

10. Coffee & Dolls - written by April Bernard
Read 2678 times on American Poems.

It was a storefront for a small-time numbers runner,
pretending to be some sort of grocery. Coffeemakers
and Bustello cans populated the shelves, sparsely.
Who was fooled. The boxes bleached in the sun,
the old guys sat inside on summer lawn... (Read full poem)

Jim just loves to garden, yes he does. 
He likes nothing better than to put on 
his little overalls and his straw hat. 
He says, "Let's go get those tools, Jim." 
But then doubt begins to set in.
He says, "What is a garden, anyway?"
And thoughts... (Read full poem)

12. What Would Freud Say? - written by Bob Hicok
From Best American Poetry 1999. Published in 1999. Read 654 times on American Poems.

Wasn't on purpose that I drilled 
through my finger or the nurse 
laughed. She apologized 
three times and gave me a shot 
of something that was a lusher 
apology. The person 
who drove me home 
said my smile was a smeared 
totem that followed 
his... (Read full poem)

Today the Masons are auctioning 
their discarded pomp: a trunk of turbans, 
gemmed and ostrich-plumed, and operetta costumes 
labeled inside the collar "Potentate" 
and "Vizier." Here their chairs, blazoned 
with the Masons' sign, huddled... (Read full poem)

14. Renascence - written by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Read 7142 times on American Poems.

All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line 
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where... (Read full poem)