1. Some things that fly there be - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 7258 times on American Poems.

Some things that fly there be --
Birds -- Hours -- the Bumblebee --
Of these no Elegy.

Some things that stay there be --
Grief -- Hills -- Eternity --
Nor this behooveth me.

There are that resting, rise.
Can I expound the skies?
How still the... (Read full poem)

The earth has many keys,
Where melody is not
Is the unknown peninsula.
Beauty is nature's fact.

But witness for her land,
And witness for her sea,
The cricket is her utmost
Of elegy to me.(Read full poem)

3. Elegy - written by Alan Dugan
Read 2592 times on American Poems.

I know but will not tell
you, Aunt Irene, why there
are soap suds in the whiskey:
Uncle Robert had to have
A drink while shaving. (Read full poem)

After all Birds have been investigated and laid aside --
Nature imparts the little Blue-Bird -- assured
Her conscientious Voice will soar unmoved
Above ostensible Vicissitude.

First at the March -- competing with the Wind --
Her panting note exalts... (Read full poem)

5. The Doomed -- regard the Sunrise - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 3602 times on American Poems.

The Doomed -- regard the Sunrise
With different Delight --
Because -- when next it burns abroad
They doubt to witness it --

The Man -- to die -- tomorrow --
Harks for the Meadow Bird --
Because its Music stirs the Axe
That clamors for his head... (Read full poem)

An elegy on the death of MONTGOMERY TAPPEN who dies at Poughkeepsie on the 20th of Nov. 1784 in the ninth year of his age.


The sweetest, gentlest, of the youthful train,
Here lies his clay cold upon the sable bier!
He scarce had started on... (Read full poem)

7. Elegy For Jane Kenyon (2) - written by Jean Valentine
From The Cradle Of The Real Life. Published in 2000. Read 1389 times on American Poems.

Jane is big
with death, Don
sad and kind - Jane
though she's dying
is full of mind

We talk about the table
the little walnut one
how it's like
Emily Dickinson's

But Don says No
Dickinson's
was made of iron. No
said Jane
Of flesh.(Read full poem)

In the thin classroom, where your face
was noble and your words were all things,
I find this boily creature in your place;

find you disarranged, squatting on the window sill,
irrefutably placed up there,
like a hunk of some big frog
watching us... (Read full poem)

9. Elegy Before Death - written by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Read 4919 times on American Poems.

There will be rose and rhododendron
When you are dead and under ground;
Still will be heard from white syringas
Heavy with bees, a sunny sound;

Still will the tamaracks be raining
After the rain has ceased, and still
Will there be robins in the... (Read full poem)

Henry in Ireland to Bill underground:
Rest well, who worked so hard, who made a good sound
constantly, for so many years:
your high-jinks delighted the continents & our ears:
you had so many girls your life was a triumph
and you loved your one... (Read full poem)

11. Elegy - written by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Read 4276 times on American Poems.

Let them bury your big eyes
In the secret earth securely,
Your thin fingers, and your fair,
Soft, indefinite-colored hair,—
All of these in some way, surely,
From the secret earth shall rise;
Not for these I sit and stare,
Broken and bereft... (Read full poem)

The page opens to snow on a field: boot-holed month, black hour
the bottle in your coat half voda half winter light.
To what and to whom does one say yes?
If God were the uncertain, would you cling to him?

Beneath a tattoo of stars the gate... (Read full poem)

13. To The Whore Who Took My Poems - written by Charles Bukowski
Read 26271 times on American Poems.

some say we should keep personal remorse from the 
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out... (Read full poem)

if you like my poems let them
walk in the evening,a little behind you

then people will say
"Along this road i saw a princess pass
on her way to meet her lover(it was
toward nightfall)with tall and ignorant servants."(Read full poem)

15. Her -- "last Poems" - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 22347 times on American Poems.

Her -- "last Poems" --
Poets -- ended --
Silver -- perished -- with her Tongue --
Not on Record -- bubbled other,
Flute -- or Woman --
So divine --
Not unto its Summer -- Morning
Robin -- uttered Half the Tune --
Gushed too free for the Adoring... (Read full poem)

To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie --
True Poems flee --(Read full poem)

17. As The Poems Go - written by Charles Bukowski
Read 11267 times on American Poems.

as the poems go into the thousands you
realize that you've created very
little.
it comes down to the rain, the sunlight,
the traffic, the nights and the days of the
years, the faces.
leaving this will be easier than living
it, typing one more line... (Read full poem)

(After Rilke)


Spring has returned! Everything has returned!
The earth, just like a schoolgirl, memorizes
Poems, so many poems. ... Look, she has learned
So many famous poems, she has earned so many prizes!

Teacher was strict. We delighted in the... (Read full poem)

19. Judson Stoddard - written by Edgar Lee Masters
Read 8891 times on American Poems.

On a mountain top above the clouds
That streamed like a sea below me
I said that peak is the thought of Budda,
And that one is the prayer of Jesus,
And this one is the dream of Plato,
And that one there the song of Dante,
And this is Kant and... (Read full poem)

OF what I write from myself—As if that were not the resumé; 
Of Histories—As if such, however complete, were not less complete than the preceding
	poems; 
As if those shreds, the records of nations, could possibly be as lasting as... (Read full poem)

21. The Planet On The Table - written by Wallace Stevens
Read 6299 times on American Poems.

Ariel was glad he had written his poems.
They were of a remembered time
Or of something seen that he liked.

Other makings of the sun
Were waste and welter
And the ripe shrub writhed.

His self and the sun were one
And his poems, although makings of... (Read full poem)

The great poems of
our elders in many
tongues we struggled

to comprehend who
are now content with
mystery simple

and profound you
in the night your
breath your body

orbit of time and
the moment you
Phosphorus and

Hesper a dark... (Read full poem)

23. Indications, The. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 4639 times on American Poems.

THE indications, and tally of time; 
Perfect sanity shows the master among philosophs; 
Time, always without flaw, indicates itself in parts; 
What always indicates the poet, is the crowd of the pleasant company of singers, and their
	words; 
The... (Read full poem)

Ithaca, October 1993: Jorie went on a lingerie
tear, wanting to look like a moll
in a Chandler novel. Dinner, consisting of three parts gin 
and one part lime juice cordial, was a prelude to her hair.
There are, she said, poems that can be written... (Read full poem)

25. Trees - written by Joyce Kilmer
From Trees and Other Poems. Published in 1914. Read 34848 times on American Poems.

(For Mrs. Henry Mills Alden)

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree... (Read full poem)