There are some nights when
sleep plays coy,
aloof and disdainful.
And all the wiles
that I employ to win
its service to my side
are useless as wounded pride,
and much more painful. (Read full poem)

2. When Memory is full - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 2445 times on American Poems.

When Memory is full
Put on the perfect Lid --
This Morning's finest syllable
Presumptuous Evening said --(Read full poem)

To flee from memory
Had we the Wings
Many would fly
Inured to slower things
Birds with surprise
Would scan the cowering Van
Of men escaping
From the mind of man(Read full poem)

4. up into the silence the green... (41) - written by e.e. cummings
Read 6490 times on American Poems.

up into the silence the green
silence with a white earth in it

you will(kiss me)go

out into the morning the young
morning with a warm world in it

(kiss me)you will go

on into the sunlight the fine
sunlight with a firm day in it

you will go(kiss... (Read full poem)

Remorse -- is Memory -- awake --
Her Parties all astir --
A Presence of Departed Acts --
At window -- and at Door --

Its Past -- set down before the Soul
And lighted with a Match --
Perusal -- to facilitate --
And help Belief to stretch --

Remorse... (Read full poem)

6. Through those old Grounds of memory, - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 2183 times on American Poems.

Through those old Grounds of memory,
The sauntering alone
Is a divine intemperance
A prudent man would shun.
Of liquors that are vended
'Tis easy to beware
But statutes do not meddle
With the internal bar.
Pernicious as the sunset
Permitting to... (Read full poem)

It's snowing this afternoon and there are no flowers.
There is only this sound of falling, quiet and remote,
Like the memory of scales descending the white keys
Of a childhood piano--outside the window, palms!
And the heavy head of the cereus,... (Read full poem)

8. Sonnet 02: Time Does Not Bring Relief; You All Have Lied - written by Edna St. Vincent Millay
From Renascence and Other Poems. Published in 1917. Read 7024 times on American Poems.

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
   Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
   I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
   And last year's... (Read full poem)

AH poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats! 
Ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me! 
(For what is my life, or any man’s life, but a conflict with foes—the old, the
	incessant
	war?) 
You degradations—you tussle with passions... (Read full poem)

10. The Visitation - written by Joyce Kilmer
From Main Street and Other Poems. Published in 1917. Read 1395 times on American Poems.

(For Louise Imogen Guiney)

There is a wall of flesh before the eyes
Of John, who yet perceives and hails his King.
It is Our Lady's painful bliss to bring
Before mankind the Glory of the skies.
Her cousin feels her womb's sweet burden... (Read full poem)

We were smoking some of this knockout weed when
Operation Memory was announced. To his separate bed
Each soldier went, counting backwards from a hundred
With a needle in his arm. And there I was, in the middle
Of a recession, in the middle of a... (Read full poem)

12. Ars Poetica - written by Archibald MacLeish
Read 7925 times on American Poems.

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown-- 

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

                 *

A... (Read full poem)

This morning Hitler spoke in Danzig, we hear his voice.
A man of genius: that is, of amazing
Ability, courage, devotion, cored on a sick child's soul,
Heard clearly through the dog wrath, a sick child
Wailing in Danzig; invoking destruction and... (Read full poem)

14. Remembered Women - written by Carl Sandburg
From Cornhuskers. Published in 1918. Read 2109 times on American Poems.

FOR a woman’s face remembered as a spot of quick light on the flat land of dark night,
For this memory of one mouth and a forehead they go on in the gray rain and the mud, they go on among the boots and guns.
The horizon ahead is a thousand... (Read full poem)

Napoleon's hat is an obvious choice I guess to list as a famous
hat, but that's not the hat I have in mind. That was his hat for
show. I am thinking of his private bathing cap, which in all hon-
esty wasn't much different than the one any jerk... (Read full poem)

16. September 1961 - written by Denise Levertov
Read 766 times on American Poems.

This is the year the old ones,
the old great ones
leave us alone on the road.

The road leads to the sea.
We have the words in our pockets,
obscure directions. The old ones

have taken away the light of their presence,
we see it moving away... (Read full poem)

Memory of you is . . . a blue spear of flower.
I cannot remember the name of it.
Alongside a bold dripping poppy is fire and silk.
                         And they cover you.(Read full poem)

18. Clean Hands - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 4097 times on American Poems.

IT is something to face the sun and know you are free.
To hold your head in the shafts of daylight slanting the earth
And know your heart has kept a promise and the blood runs clean:
  It is something.
To go one day of your life among all men with... (Read full poem)

Blossoms will run away,
Cakes reign but a Day,
But Memory like Melody
Is pink Eternally.(Read full poem)

20. Georgic on Memory - written by Erin Belieu
Read 375 times on American Poems.

Make your daily monument the Ego,
use a masochist's epistemology
of shame and dog-eared certainty
that others less exacting might forgo.

If memory's an elephant, then feed
the animal. Resist revision: the stand
of feral raspberry,... (Read full poem)

What did I think, a storm clutching a clarinet
and boarding a downtown bus, headed for lessons?
I had pieces to learn by heart, but at twelve

you think the heart and memory are different.
"'It's a poor sort of memory that only works
backwards,' the... (Read full poem)

22. Rhapsody on a Windy Night - written by T.S. Eliot
From Prufrock and Other Observations. Published in 1917. Read 7409 times on American Poems.

TWELVE o’clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic... (Read full poem)

We shall not ever meet them bearded in heaven
Nor sunning themselves among the bald of hell;
If anywhere, in the deserted schoolyard at twilight,
forming a ring, perhaps, or joining hands
In games whose very names we have forgotten.
Come memory, let... (Read full poem)

24. Boston - written by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Read 657 times on American Poems.

My northern pines are good enough for me, 
But there’s a town my memory uprears— 
A town that always like a friend appears, 
And always in the sunrise by the sea. 
And over it, somehow, there seems to be
A downward flash of something new and... (Read full poem)

No Passenger was known to flee --
That lodged a night in memory --
That wily -- subterranean Inn
Contrives that none go out again --(Read full poem)