1. What shall I do when the Summer troubles -- - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1245 times on American Poems.

What shall I do when the Summer troubles --
What, when the Rose is ripe --
What when the Eggs fly off in Music
From the Maple Keep?

What shall I do when the Skies a'chirrup
Drop a Tune on me --
When the Bee hangs all Noon in the Buttercup
What will... (Read full poem)

The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation
       Troubles my sleep,
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America,The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide... (Read full poem)

3. The Terrible People - written by Ogden Nash
Read 2905 times on American Poems.

People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven't what they
want that they really don't want it, 
And I wish I could afford to gather all such people into a gloomy castle on the Danube
 and hire half a dozen capable Draculas... (Read full poem)

Oft I remember those I have known
In other days, to whom my heart was lead
As by a magnet, and who are not dead,
But absent, and their memories overgrown
With other thoughts and troubles of my own,
As graves with grasses are, and at their... (Read full poem)

5. maggie and milly and molly and may - written by e.e. cummings
Read 36922 times on American Poems.

10

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and... (Read full poem)

There! little girl; don't cry! 
They have broken your doll, I know; 
And your tea-set blue, 
And your play-house, too, 
Are things of the long ago; 
But childish troubles will soon pass by. -- 
There! little girl; don't cry! 

There!... (Read full poem)

7. Sphincter - written by Allen Ginsberg
From Cosmopolitan Greetings. Published in 1986. Read 5195 times on American Poems.

I hope my good old asshole holds out
60 years it's been mostly OK
Tho in Bolivia a fissure operation
     survived the altiplano hospital-- 
a little blood, no polyps, occasionally
a small hemorrhoid
active, eager, receptive to phallus
     coke... (Read full poem)

I recall a boil, whereupon as I had to sit,
just where, and when I had to, for deadlines.
O I could learn to type standing,
but isn't it slim to be slumped off from that,
problems undignified, fiery dig salt mines?—
Content on one's... (Read full poem)

9. Insomniac - written by Sylvia Plath
From The Collected Poems. Published in 1961. Read 8745 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)

The continent's a tamed ox, with all its mountains,
Powerful and servile; here is for plowland, here is
     for park and playground, this helpless
Cataract for power; it lies behind us at heel
All docile between this ocean and the other. If... (Read full poem)

11. Dream Song 50: In a motion of night they massed nearer my post - written by John Berryman
From 77 Dream Songs. Published in 1964. Read 971 times on American Poems.

In a motion of night they massed nearer my post.
I hummed a short blues. When the stars went out
I studied my weapons system.
Grenades, the portable rack, the yellow spout
of the anthrax-ray: in order. Yes, and most
of my pencils were... (Read full poem)

My thoughts soar not as they ought to soar, 
Higher and higher on soul-lent wings; 
But ever and often and more and more 
They are dragged down earthward by little things, 
By little troubles and little needs, 
As a lark might be tangled among... (Read full poem)

13. Dr. Sigmund Freud Discovers the Sea Shell - written by Archibald MacLeish
Read 3470 times on American Poems.

Science, that simple saint, cannot be bothered
Figuring what anything is for:
Enough for her devotions that things are
And can be contemplated soon as gathered.

She knows how every living thing was fathered,
She calculates the climate of each... (Read full poem)

STEP me now a bridal measure, 
Work give way to love and leisure, 
Hearts be free and hearts be gay -- 
Doctor Dan doth wed to-day.

Diagnosis, cease your squalling -- 
Check that scalpel's senseless bawling, 
Put that ugly knife away --... (Read full poem)

15. Beppo - written by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Read 354 times on American Poems.

Why are thou sad, my Beppo? But last eve,
Here at my feet, thy dear head on my breast,
I heard thee say thy heart would no more grieve
Or feel the olden ennui and unrest.

What troubles thee? Am I not all thine own –
I, so long sought, so... (Read full poem)

Let us rest ourselves a bit! 
Worry?-- wave your hand to it -- 
Kiss your finger-tips and smile 
It farewell a little while.

Weary of the weary way 
We have come from Yesterday, 
Let us fret not, instead, 
Of the wary way ahead.

Let us... (Read full poem)

17. Father - written by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Read 2252 times on American Poems.

He never made a fortune, or a noise
In the world where men are seeking after fame; 
But he had a healthy brood of girls and boys
Who loved the very ground on which he trod.
They thought him just little short of God; 
Oh you should have heard... (Read full poem)

Though with gods the world is cumbered, 
Gods unnamed, and gods unnumbered, 
Never god was known to be
Who had not his devotee.
So I dedicate to mine, 
Here in verse, my temple-shrine.

‘Tis not Ares, - mighty Mars, 
Who can give success in... (Read full poem)

19. On the Death of a Young Gentleman - written by Phillis Wheatley
Read 704 times on American Poems.

Who taught thee conflict with the pow'rs of night,
To vanquish satan in the fields of light?
Who strung thy feeble arms with might unknown,
How great thy conquest, and how bright thy crown!
War with each princedom, throne, and pow'r is... (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)

21. In My Solitary Hours in My Dear Husband his Absence - written by Anne Bradstreet
Read 792 times on American Poems.

O Lord, Thou hear'st my daily moan 
And see'st my dropping tears. 
My troubles all are Thee before, 
My longings and my fears.

Thou hitherto hast been my God; 
Thy help my soul hath found. 
Though loss and sickness me assailed, 
Through... (Read full poem)

Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,
I take a box
And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.
The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical
Food-gathering flocks
Are selves I overlook.  Wisdom, said William James,

Is learning what to... (Read full poem)

23. Operation Memory - written by David Lehman
From Operation Memory. Published in 1990. Read 713 times on American Poems.

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)

TO get betimes in Boston town, I rose this morning early; 
Here’s a good place at the corner—I must stand and see the show. 
  
Clear the way there, Jonathan! 
Way for the President’s marshal! Way for the government cannon! 
Way for... (Read full poem)

25. To You. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 25846 times on American Poems.

WHOEVER you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams, 
I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands; 
Even now, your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume,
	crimes, dissipate... (Read full poem)