1. 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)

His Cheek is his Biographer --
As long as he can blush
Perdition is Opprobrium --
Past that, he sins in peace --(Read full poem)

3. The Rose did caper on her cheek - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 2922 times on American Poems.

The Rose did caper on her cheek --
Her Bodice rose and fell --
Her pretty speech -- like drunken men --
Did stagger pitiful --

Her fingers fumbled at her work --
Her needle would not go --
What ailed so smart a little Maid --
It puzzled me to know... (Read full poem)

How does Love speak? 
In the faint flush upon the tell-tale cheek, 
And in the pallor that succeeds it; by
The quivering lid of an averted eye –
The smile that proves the parent to a sigh –
Thus doth Love speak.

How does Love speak? 
By the... (Read full poem)

5. Pheasant - written by Sylvia Plath
Read 3610 times on American Poems.

You said you would kill it this morning.
Do not kill it. It startles me still,
The jut of that odd, dark head, pacing

Through the uncut grass on the elm's hill.
It is something to own a pheasant,
Or just to be visited at all.

I am not mystical: it... (Read full poem)

UNDER THE BLESSING OF YOUR PSYCHE WINGS


Though I have found you llke a snow-drop pale, 
On sunny days have found you weak and still,
Though I have often held your girlish head
Drooped on my shoulder, faint from little ill:—

Under the... (Read full poem)

7. To Jessica, Gone Back To The City - written by Ellis Parker Butler
From Century Magazine. Published in 1897. Read 319 times on American Poems.

Sence fair Jessica hez left us
Seems ez ef she hed bereft us,
When she went, o’ half o’ livin’;
Fer we never knowed she’d driven
Into us so much content,
Till fair Jessica hed went.
  (Knowed a feller once thet cried
  When his yaller dog hed... (Read full poem)

Often I think of the beautiful town
That is seated by the sea;
Often in thought go up and down
The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
And my youth comes back to me. 
And a verse of a Lapland song
Is haunting my memory still:
"A boy's... (Read full poem)

9. Themself are all I have -- - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1234 times on American Poems.

Themself are all I have --
Myself a freckled -- be --
I thought you'd choose a Velvet Cheek
Or one of Ivory --
Would you -- instead of Me?(Read full poem)

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
     I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
     He did a lazy sway . . .
     He did a lazy sway . . .
To... (Read full poem)

11. All That Love Asks - written by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Read 1283 times on American Poems.

All that I ask, 'says Love, 'is just to stand
And gaze, unchided, deep in thy dear eyes;
For in their depths lies largest Paradise.
Yet, if perchance one pressure of thy hand
Be granted me, then joy I thought complete
Were still more... (Read full poem)

Your hands easy
weight, teasing the bees
hived in my hair, your smile at the
slope of my cheek. On the
occasion, you press
above me, glowing, spouting
readiness, mystery rapes
my reason

When you have withdrawn
your self and the magic,... (Read full poem)

13. The morns are meeker than they were - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 6280 times on American Poems.

The morns are meeker than they were --
The nuts are getting brown --
The berry's cheek is plumper --
The Rose is out of town.

The Maple wears a gayer scarf --
The field a scarlet gown --
Lest I should be old fashioned
I'll put a trinket on.(Read full poem)

A little leaf just in the forest's edge,
All summer long, had listened to the wooing
Of amorous brids that flew across the hedge,
Singing their blithe sweet songs for her undoing.
So many were the flattering things they told her,
The parent... (Read full poem)

15. The Bear - written by Robert Frost
From West-Running Brook. Published in 1928. Read 8343 times on American Poems.

The bear puts both arms around the tree above her
And draws it down as if it were a lover
And its choke cherries lips to kiss good-bye,
Then lets it snap back upright in the sky.
Her next step rocks a boulder on the wall
(She's making her... (Read full poem)

There is a fork in a branch
of an ancient, enormous maple,
one of a grove of such trees,
where I climb sometimes and sit and look out
over miles of valleys and low hills.
Today on skis I took a friend
to show her the trees. We set out
down the road,... (Read full poem)

17. Atmosphere - written by Robert Frost
From West-Running Brook. Published in 1928. Read 5742 times on American Poems.

Inscription for a Garden Wall

Winds blow the open grassy places bleak;
But where this old wall burns a sunny cheek,
They eddy over it too toppling weak
To blow the earth or anything self-clear;
Moisture and color and odor thicken here.
The hours of... (Read full poem)

They laid their hands upon my head,
They stroked my cheek and brow;
And time could heal a hurt, they said,
And time could dim a vow.

And they were pitiful and mild
Who whispered to me then,
"The heart that breaks in April, child,
Will mend in May... (Read full poem)

19. Glowing is her Bonnet, - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 2782 times on American Poems.

Glowing is her Bonnet,
Glowing is her Cheek,
Glowing is her Kirtle,
Yet she cannot speak.

Better as the Daisy
From the Summer hill
Vanish unrecorded
Save by tearful rill --

Save by loving sunrise
Looking for her face.
Save by feet... (Read full poem)

-- for Jane kenyon


It is a day after many days of storms.
Having been washed and washed, the air glitters;
small heaped cumuli blow across the sky; a shower
visible against the firs douses the crocuses.
We knew it would happen one day this... (Read full poem)

21. A Wounded Deer -- leaps highest - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 5431 times on American Poems.

A Wounded Deer -- leaps highest --
I've heard the Hunter tell --
'Tis but the Ecstasy of death --
And then the Brake is still!

The Smitten Rock that gushes!
The trampled Steel that springs!
A Cheek is always redder
Just where the Hectic... (Read full poem)

A STONE face higher than six horses stood five thousand
years gazing at the world seeming to clutch a secret.
A boy passes and throws a niggerhead that chips off the
end of the nose from the stone face; he lets fly a
mud ball that spatters the right... (Read full poem)

23. You - written by Russell Edson
Read 1428 times on American Poems.

Out of nothing there comes a time called childhood, which 
is simply a path leading through an archway called 
adolescence. A small town there, past the arch called youth.
  Soon, down the road, where one almost misses the life 
lived beyond the... (Read full poem)

You know that Portrait in the Moon --
So tell me who 'tis like --
The very Brow -- the stooping eyes --
A fog for -- Say -- Whose Sake?

The very Pattern of the Cheek --
It varies -- in the Chin --
But -- Ishmael -- since we met -- 'tis long --
And... (Read full poem)

25. The Portrait - written by Stanley Kunitz
Read 5243 times on American Poems.

My mother never forgave my father
for killing himself,
especially at such an awkward time
and in a public park,
that spring
when I was waiting to be born.
She locked his name 
in her deepest cabinet
and would not let him out,
though I could... (Read full poem)