1. The Merry Maid - written by Edna St. Vincent Millay
From A Few Figs From Thistles. Published in 1921. Read 1716 times on American Poems.

OH, I am grown so free from care
Since my heart broke!
I set my throat against the air, 
I laugh at simple folk! 

There's little kind and little fair
Is worth its weight in smoke
To me, that's grown so free from care 
Since my heart broke! 

Lass,... (Read full poem)

The great millennium is at hand.
Redder apples grow on the tree.
A saxophone is in ev’ry band.
Brandy no longer taints our tea.
Dimples smile in the red-rouged knee.
The dowagers are no longer fat.
Radio now makes safe the sea—
And the Turk... (Read full poem)

3. Roger Heston - written by Edgar Lee Masters
Read 989 times on American Poems.

Oh many times did Ernest Hyde and I
Argue about the freedom of the will.
My favorite metaphor was Prickett's cow
Roped out to grass, and free you know as far
As the length of the rope.
One day while arguing so, watching the cow
Pull at the... (Read full poem)

Let Us play Yesterday --
I -- the Girl at school --
You -- and Eternity -- the
Untold Tale --

Easing my famine
At my Lexicon --
Logarithm -- had I -- for Drink --
'Twas a dry Wine --

Somewhat different -- must be --
Dreams tint the Sleep... (Read full poem)

5. A yacht from its harbour ropes pulled free, - written by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Read 507 times on American Poems.

A yacht from its harbour ropes pulled free,
And leaped like a steed o’er the race track blue,
Then up behind her, the dust of the sea,
A gray fog, drifted, and hid her from view.(Read full poem)

WHAT flower is this that greets the morn,
Its hues from Heaven so freshly born?
With burning star and flaming band
It kindles all the sunset land:
Oh tell us what its name may be,--
Is this the Flower of Liberty? 

It is the banner of the... (Read full poem)

7. Insomniac - written by Sylvia Plath
From The Collected Poems. Published in 1961. Read 8746 times on American Poems.

The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole --
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers... (Read full poem)

Dream fluently, still brothers, who when young
Took with your mother's milk the mother tongue,

In which pure matrix, joining world and mind,
You strove to leave some line of verse behind

Like still fresh tracks across a field of snow,
Not... (Read full poem)

9. Child of Jesus - written by Joseph Mayo Wristen
From There is a Dead Man Living in my Kitchen. Published in 2004. Read 1799 times on American Poems.

Sara

allow me to believe in your love

Saint of Awareness

tear of blood dripping
down your Father’s cheek
inside a French Church.
Outside the graveyard i
stood waiting touched
by the truth of your gift

Child of Forgiveness

your... (Read full poem)

To be an ape in little of the mountain-making mother
Like swarthy Cheops, but my own hands
For only slaves, is a far sweeter toil than to cut
Passions in verse for a sick people.
I'd liefer bed one boulder in the house-wall than be the... (Read full poem)

11. I Sang - written by Carl Sandburg
From Chicago Poems. Published in 1916. Read 3420 times on American Poems.

I sang to you and the moon
But only the moon remembers.
     I sang
O reckless free-hearted
          free-throated rythms,
Even the moon remembers them
     And is kind to me.(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)

13. Misgiving - written by Robert Frost
From New Hampshire. Published in 1923. Read 4249 times on American Poems.

All crying, 'We will go with you, O Wind!'
The foliage follow him, leaf and stem;
But a sleep oppresses them as they go,
And they end by bidding them as they go,
And they end by bidding him stay with them.

Since ever they flung abroad in... (Read full poem)

To this generation I would say:
Memorize some bit of verse of truth or beauty.
It may serve a turn in your life.
My husband had nothing to do
With the fall of the bank -- he was only cashier.
The wreck was due to the president, Thomas... (Read full poem)

15. Chartres - written by Edith Wharton
From Artemis to Acteaon and Other Verse. Published in 1909. Read 708 times on American Poems.

I

Immense, august, like some Titanic bloom,
        The mighty choir unfolds its lithic core,
Petalled with panes of azure, gules and or,
        Splendidly lambent in the Gothic gloom,
And stamened with keen flamelets that illume
        The pale... (Read full poem)

My heart is like a little bird
That sits and sings for very gladness.
Sorrow is some forgotten word, 
And so, except in rhyme, is sadness.

The world is very fair to me –
Such azure skies, such golden weather, 
I’m like a long caged bird set... (Read full poem)

17. Recurrence - written by Dorothy Parker
From Enough Rope. Published in 1926. Read 2360 times on American Poems.

We shall have our little day.
Take my hand and travel still
Round and round the little way,
Up and down the little hill.

It is good to love again;
Scan the renovated skies,
Dip and drive the idling pen,
Sweetly tint the paling lies.

Trace the... (Read full poem)

SHE sits in the dust at the walls
And makes cigars,
Bending at the bench
With fingers wage-anxious,
Changing her sweat for the day's pay.

Now the noon hour has come,
And she leans with her bare arms
On the window-sill over the river,
Leans and... (Read full poem)

19. I Know I Have Been Happiest - written by Dorothy Parker
From Enough Rope. Published in 1926. Read 6476 times on American Poems.

I know I have been happiest at your side;
But what is done, is done, and all's to be.
And small the good, to linger dolefully-
Gayly it lived, and gallantly it died.
I will not make you songs of hearts denied,
And you, being man, would have no tears... (Read full poem)

There is a drear and lonely tract of hell 
From all the common gloom removed afar: 
A flat, sad land it is, where shadows are, 
Whose lorn estate my verse may never tell. 
I walked among them and I knew them well: 
Men I had slandered on life's... (Read full poem)

21. Listen! - written by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Read 599 times on American Poems.

Whoever you are as you read this, 
Whatever your trouble or grief, 
I want you to know and to heed this: 
The day draweth near with relief.

No sorrow, no woe is unending, 
Though heaven seems voiceless and dumb; 
So sure as your cry is... (Read full poem)

Our lives avoided tragedy
Simply by going on and on,
Without end and with little apparent meaning.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.

Simply by going on and on
We managed. No need for the heroic.
Oh, there were storms and small... (Read full poem)

23. Give All To Love - written by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Read 9834 times on American Poems.

Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good fame,
Plans, credit, and the muse;
Nothing refuse.

'Tis a brave master,
Let it have scope,
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope;
High and more high,
It dives into noon,
With wing... (Read full poem)

Give all to love; 
Obey thy heart; 
Friends, kindred, days, 
Estate, good-fame, 
Plans, credit and the Muse, 
Nothing refuse. 
'T is a brave master; 
Let it have scope: 
Follow it utterly, 
Hope beyond hope: 
High and more high 
It dives into noon,... (Read full poem)

25. A Riddle Song. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 4209 times on American Poems.

THAT which eludes this verse and any verse, 
Unheard by sharpest ear, unform’d in clearest eye or cunningest mind, 
Nor lore nor fame, nor happiness nor wealth, 
And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world incessantly, 
Which... (Read full poem)