1. The Road Not Taken - written by Robert Frost
From Mountain Interval. Published in 1916. Read 274468 times on American Poems.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better... (Read full poem)

THERE are places I go when I am strong.
One is a marsh pool where I used to go
            with a long-ear hound-dog.
One is a wild crabapple tree; I was there
      a moonlight night with a girl.
The dog is gone; the girl is gone; I go to these... (Read full poem)

3. River Roads - written by Carl Sandburg
From Cornhuskers. Published in 1918. Read 2469 times on American Poems.

LET the crows go by hawking their caw and caw.
They have been swimming in midnights of coal mines somewhere.
Let ’em hawk their caw and caw.
 
Let the woodpecker drum and drum on a hickory stump.
He has been swimming in red and blue pools... (Read full poem)

In many and reportless places
We feel a Joy --
Reportless, also, but sincere as Nature
Or Deity --

It comes, without a consternation --
Dissolves -- the same --
But leaves a sumptuous Destitution --
Without a Name --

Profane it by a search -- we... (Read full poem)

5. Roads - written by Amy Lowell
From A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass. Read 6089 times on American Poems.

I know a country laced with roads,
They join the hills and they span the brooks,
They weave like a shuttle between broad fields,
And slide discreetly through hidden nooks.
They are canopied like a Persian dome
And carpeted with orient... (Read full poem)

Naturally it is night.
Under the overturned lute with its
One string I am going my way
Which has a strange sound.

This way the dust, that way the dust.
I listen to both sides
But I keep right on.
I remember the leaves sitting in judgment
And then... (Read full poem)

7. Places among the stars - written by Stephen Crane
From The Black Riders & Other Lines. Published in 1905. Read 7898 times on American Poems.

Places among the stars,
Soft gardens near the sun,
Keep your distant beauty;
Shed no beams upon my weak heart.
Since she is here
In a place of blackness,
Not your golden days
Nor your silver nights
Can call me to you.
Since she is here
In a place of... (Read full poem)

I LOVE your faces I saw the many years
I drank your milk and filled my mouth
With your home talk, slept in your house
And was one of you.
But a fire burns in my heart.
Under the ribs where pulses thud
And flitting between bones of skull
Is the push,... (Read full poem)

9. All Roads That Lead To God Are Good - written by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Read 1634 times on American Poems.

All roads that lead to God are good.
What matters it, your faith, or mine?
Both centre at the goal divine
Of love’s eternal Brotherhood.

The kindly life in house or street –
The life of prayer and mystic rite –
The student’s search for truth... (Read full poem)

My wheel is in the dark!
I cannot see a spoke
Yet know its dripping feet
Go round and round.

My foot is on the Tide!
An unfrequented road --
Yet have all roads
A clearing at the end --

Some have resigned the Loom --
Some in the busy tomb
Find... (Read full poem)

11. Zeroing In - written by Denise Levertov
Read 660 times on American Poems.

"I am a landscape," he said,
"a landscape and a person walking in that landscape.
There are daunting cliffs there,
and plains glad in their way
of brown monotony. But especially
there are sinkholes, places
of sudden terror, of small... (Read full poem)

these hips are big hips.
they need space to 
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go 
they do... (Read full poem)

13. Just Before April Came - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 1395 times on American Poems.

THE SNOW piles in dark places are gone.
Pools by the railroad tracks shine clear.
The gravel of all shallow places shines.
A white pigeon reels and somersaults.
  
Frogs plutter and squdge—and frogs beat the air with a recurring thin steel... (Read full poem)

OF him I love day and night, I dream’d I heard he was dead; 
And I dream’d I went where they had buried him I love—but he was not in that
    place; 
And I dream’d I wander’d, searching among burial-places, to find him; 
And... (Read full poem)

15. Sadness - written by Donald Justice
Read 8777 times on American Poems.

1
Dear ghosts, dear presences, O my dear parents,
Why were you so sad on porches, whispering?
What great melancholies were loosed among our swings!
As before a storm one hears the leaves whispering
And marks each small change in the atmosphere,
So... (Read full poem)

You'll find -- it when you try to die --
The Easier to let go --
For recollecting such as went --
You could not spare -- you know.

And though their places somewhat filled --
As did their Marble names
With Moss -- they never grew so full --
You... (Read full poem)

17. Desert Places - written by Robert Frost
From A Further Range. Published in 1936. Read 25239 times on American Poems.

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it—it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in... (Read full poem)

on Mulberry and Spring on a rainy night.
Her head sticks out of some woman’s tote bag
placed on top of the bar, she winks
at Ang Tunay na Lalaki. He looks at his gin and tonic,
looks back at the doll and hears her tiny voice
even though her... (Read full poem)

19. Doing Without - written by David Ray
From Gathering Firewood. Published in 1974. Read 776 times on American Poems.

's an interesting
custom, involving such in-
         visible items as the food
that's not on the table, the clothes
         that are not on the back
the radio whose music
         is silence. Doing without
is a great protector of reputations... (Read full poem)

This is a place on the way after the distances
     can no longer be kept straight here in this dark corner
of the barn a mound of wheels has convened along
     raveling courses to stop in a single moment
and lie down as still as the chariots of... (Read full poem)

21. Mother to Son - written by Langston Hughes
From Collected Poems. Published in 1994. Read 133750 times on American Poems.

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin'... (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)

23. Death Valley Pupfish - written by Jenny Factor
Read 445 times on American Poems.

Nevertheless,
the blind pupfish burst open
into the sometime stream,

dodging pebbles,
wiggling away from shadows,
darting back and forth
through the dusty water.

I wonder
how many eggs
lie waiting in places
the water never... (Read full poem)

Seen my lady home las' night, 
Jump back, honey, jump back.
Hel' huh han' an' sque'z it tight,
Jump back, honey, jump back.
Hyeahd huh sigh a little sigh,
Seen a light gleam f'om huh eye,
An' a smile go flittin' by --
Jump back,... (Read full poem)

25. With Ruins - written by Li-Young Lee
Read 873 times on American Poems.

Choose a quiet
place, a ruins, a house no more
a house,
under whose stone archway I stood
one day to duck the rain.

The roofless floor, vertical
studs, eight wood columns
supporting nothing,
two staircases careening to nowhere, all
make... (Read full poem)