1. Horse - written by Louise Gluck
Read 2147 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 589 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 110325 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. a pretty a day - written by e.e. cummings
Read 102717 times on American Poems.

a pretty a day
(and every fades)
is here and away
(but born are maids
to flower an hour
in all,all)

o yes to flower
until so blithe
a doer a wooer
some limber and lithe
some very fine mower
a tall;tall

some jerry so very
(and nellie... (Read full poem)

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)

11. Anonymous Drawing - written by Donald Justice
Read 4533 times on American Poems.

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)

About the Shark, phlegmatical one,
Pale sot of the Maldive sea,
The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,
How alert in attendance be.
From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of maw,
They have nothing of harm to dread,
But liquidly glide... (Read full poem)

13. listen... (III) - written by e.e. cummings
Read 13260 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)

15. My Lady in Her White Silk Shawl - written by Vachel Lindsay
Read 815 times on American Poems.

My lady in her white silk shawl
Is like a lily dim,
Within the twilight of the room
Enthroned and kind and prim.

My lady! Pale gold is her hair.
Until she smiles her face
Is pale with far Hellenic moods,
With thoughts that find no... (Read full poem)

for Ruth Fainlight

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root;
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness?

Love is... (Read full poem)

17. Bronzes - written by Carl Sandburg
From Chicago Poems. Published in 1912. Read 1622 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)

19. The Little Garden - written by Amy Lowell
From A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass. Read 3205 times on American Poems.

A little garden on a bleak hillside
Where deep the heavy, dazzling mountain snow
Lies far into the spring.  The sun's pale glow
Is scarcely able to melt patches wide
About the single rose bush.  All denied
Of nature's tender ministries.  But... (Read full poem)

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)

21. How many schemes may die - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1456 times on American Poems.

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)

When I am tired of earnest men,
Intense and keen and sharp and clever,
Pursuing fame with brush or pen
Or counting metal disks forever,
Then from the halls of Shadowland
Beyond the trackless purple sea
Old Martin's ghost comes back to... (Read full poem)

23. Alba - written by Ezra Pound
Read 7390 times on American Poems.

As cool as the pale wet leaves 
of lily-of-the-valley 
She lay beside me in the dawn.(Read full poem)

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)

25. Question - written by May Swenson
From Nature: Poems Old and New. Published in 1994. Read 4036 times on American Poems.

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)