1. I stood musing in a black world - written by Stephen Crane
From The Black Riders & Other Lines. Published in 1905. Read 3790 times on American Poems.

I stood musing in a black world,
Not knowing where to direct my feet.
And I saw the quick stream of men
Pouring ceaselessly,
Filled with eager faces,
A torrent of desire.
I called to them,
"Where do you go? What do you see?"
A thousand voices called... (Read full poem)

The vastest earthly Day
Is shrunken small
By one Defaulting Face
Behind a Pall --(Read full poem)

3. Whose cheek is this? - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 3906 times on American Poems.

Whose cheek is this?
What rosy face
Has lost a blush today?
I found her -- "pleiad" -- in the woods
And bore her safe away.

Robins, in the tradition
Did cover such with leaves,
But which the cheek --
And which the pall
My scrutiny deceives.(Read full poem)

No Life can pompless pass away --
The lowliest career
To the same Pageant wends its way
As that exalted here --

How cordial is the mystery!
The hospitable Pall
A "this way" beckons spaciously --
A Miracle for all!(Read full poem)

5. The Corpse Bird - written by Ron Rash
From Among the Believers. Published in 2000. Read 445 times on American Poems.

Bed-sick she heard the bird's call
fall soft as a pall that night
quilts tightened around her throat,
her grey eyes narrowed, their light
gone as she saw what she'd heard
waiting for her in the tree
cut down at daybreak by kin
to make the coffin,... (Read full poem)

The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see
The wantonest singing birds,
Are lips- and all thy melody
Of lip-begotten words-

Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrined,
Then desolately fall,
O God! on my funereal mind
Like starlight on a... (Read full poem)

7. The End Of The World - written by Archibald MacLeish
Read 2894 times on American Poems.

Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time... (Read full poem)

Oft as by chance, a little while apart 
The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn, 
Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart, 
Beams like the jewel on the breast of dawn: 
Not though high heaven should rend would deeper awe 
Fill me... (Read full poem)

9. In Dismal Gorge - written by Ron Rash
From Raising the Dead. Published in 2002. Read 585 times on American Poems.

The lost can stay lost down here,
in laurel slicks, false-pathed caves.
Too much too soon disappears.

On creek banks clearings appear,
once homesteads. Nothing remains.
The lost can stay lost down here,

like Tom Clark's child, our worst... (Read full poem)

In spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide world a spot
The which I could not love the less-
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that towered around.

But when the Night had thrown... (Read full poem)

11. Salome's Dancing-Lesson - written by Dorothy Parker
From Death and Taxes. Published in 1931. Read 5787 times on American Poems.

She that begs a little boon
(Heel and toe! Heel and toe!)
Little gets- and nothing, soon.
(No, no, no!  No, no, no!)
She that calls for costly things
Priceless finds her offerings-
What's impossible to kings?
(Heel and toe! Heel and toe!)

Kings are... (Read full poem)

Thin as a sheet his mother came to him
during the screaming evenings after he did it,
touched F.J.'s dead hand.
The parlour was dark, he was the first pall-bearer in,
he gave himself a dare & then did it,
the thing was quite... (Read full poem)

13. The Enthusiast - written by Herman Melville
Read 2699 times on American Poems.

"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him"

Shall hearts that beat no base retreat
In youth's magnanimous years - 
Ignoble hold it, if discreet
When interest tames to fears;
Shall spirits that worship light
Perfidious deem its sacred glow,
Recant,... (Read full poem)

Sleep softly ... eagle forgotten ... under the stone.
Time has its way with you there, and the clay has its own.

"We have buried him now," thought your foes, and in secret rejoiced.
They made a brave show of their mourning, their hatred... (Read full poem)

15. The Conqueror Worm - written by Edgar Allan Poe
Read 2111 times on American Poems.

Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years.
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre to see
A play of hopes and fears
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the... (Read full poem)

Bustopher Jones is not skin and bones--
In fact, he's remarkably fat.
He doesn't haunt pubs--he has eight or nine clubs,
For he's the St. James's Street Cat!
He's the Cat we all greet as he walks down the street
In his coat of fastidious black:
No... (Read full poem)

17. The Cathedral of Rheims - written by Joyce Kilmer
From Main Street and Other Poems. Published in 1917. Read 971 times on American Poems.

(From the French of Emile Verhaeren)

He who walks through the meadows of Champagne
At noon in Fall, when leaves like gold appear,
Sees it draw near
Like some great mountain set upon the plain,
From radiant dawn until the close of day,
Nearer... (Read full poem)