1. John Wasson - written by Edgar Lee Masters
Read 332 times on American Poems.

Oh! the dew-wet grass of the meadow in North Carolina
Through which Rebecca followed me wailing, wailing,
One child in her arms, and three that ran along wailing,
Lengthening out the farewell to me off to the war with the British,
And then the... (Read full poem)

IN a faraway northern county, in the placid, pastoral region, 
Lives my farmer friend, the theme of my recitative, a famous Tamer of Oxen: 
There they bring him the three-year-olds and the four-year-olds, to break them; 
He will take the wildest... (Read full poem)

3. The Black Unicorn - written by Audre Lorde
Read 4593 times on American Poems.

The black unicorn is greedy. 
The black unicorn is impatient. 
'The black unicorn was mistaken 
for a shadow or symbol
and taken
through a cold country 
where mist painted mockeries 
of my fury.
It is not on her lap where the horn rests 
but deep in... (Read full poem)

To-night I close my eyes and see
A strange procession passing me --
The years before I saw your face
Go by me with a wistful grace;
They pass, the sensitive, shy years,
As one who strives to dance, half blind with tears.

The years went by and never... (Read full poem)

5. A Cliff Dwelling - written by Robert Frost
From Steeple Bush. Published in 1947. Read 5115 times on American Poems.

There sandy seems the golden sky
And golden seems the sandy plain.
No habitation meets the eye
Unless in the horizon rim,
Some halfway up the limestone wall,
That spot of black is not a stain
Or shadow, but a cavern hole,
Where someone used to climb... (Read full poem)

I can't ridge it back again from char.
Not one board left. Only ash a cat explores
and shattered glass smoked black and strung
about from the explosion I believe
in the reports. The white school up for sale
for years, most homes abandoned to the... (Read full poem)

7. All Hallows - written by Louise Gluck
Read 1699 times on American Poems.

Even now this landscape is assembling.
The hills darken. The oxen
Sleep in their blue yoke,
The fields having been
Picked clean, the sheaves
Bound evenly and piled at the roadside
Among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:

This is the... (Read full poem)

INTO the gulf and the pit of the dark night, the cold night, there is a man goes into the dark and the cold and when he comes back to his people he brings fire in his hands and they remember him in the years afterward as the fire bringer—they... (Read full poem)

9. Films - written by Carl Sandburg
From Cornhuskers. Published in 1918. Read 1220 times on American Poems.

I HAVE kept all, not one is thrown away, not one given to the ragman, not one thrust in a corner with a “P-f-f.”
The red ones and the blue, the long ones in stripes, and each of the little black and white checkered ones.
Keep them: I tell... (Read full poem)

Think me not unkind and rude,
That I walk alone in grove and glen;
I go to the god of the wood
To fetch his word to men.

Tax not my sloth that I
Fold my arms beside the brook;
Each cloud that floated in the sky
Writes a letter in my book.

Chide me... (Read full poem)

11. Daddy - written by Sylvia Plath
From The Collected Poems. Published in 1962. Read 47771 times on American Poems.

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time ----
Marble-heavy, a bag full of... (Read full poem)

Black lake, black boat, two black, cut-paper people.
Where do the black trees go that drink here?
Their shadows must cover Canada.

A little light is filtering from the water flowers.
Their leaves do not wish us to hurry:
They are round and flat and... (Read full poem)

13. This Is A Poem I Wrote At Night, Before The Dawn - written by Delmore Schwartz
Published in 1961. Read 881 times on American Poems.

This is a poem I wrote before I died and was reborn:
- After the years of the apples ripening and the eagles
    soaring,
After the festival here the small flowers gleamed like the
    first stars,
And the horses cantered and romped away like the... (Read full poem)

Ye gods that have a home beyond the world, 
Ye that have eyes for all man’s agony, 
Ye that have seen this woe that we have seen,— 
Look with a just regard, 
And with an even grace,
Here on the shattered corpse of a shattered king, 
Here on a... (Read full poem)

15. Black riders came from the sea. - written by Stephen Crane
From The Black Riders & Other Lines. Published in 1905. Read 29997 times on American Poems.

Black riders came from the sea.
There was clang and clang of spear and shield,
And clash and clash of hoof and heel,
Wild shouts and the wave of hair
In the rush upon the wind:
Thus the ride of sin.(Read full poem)

Green fingers 
holding the hillside, 
mustard whipping in 
the sea winds, one blood-bright 
poppy breathing in 
and out. The odor 
of Spanish earth comes 
up to me, yellowed 
with my own piss. 
                             40 miles from... (Read full poem)

17. Long Years apart -- can make no - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1943 times on American Poems.

Long Years apart -- can make no
Breach a second cannot fill --
The absence of the Witch does not
Invalidate the spell --

The embers of a Thousand Years
Uncovered by the Hand
That fondled them when they were Fire
Will stir and understand --(Read full poem)

The mountain held the town as in a shadow 
I saw so much before I slept there once: 
I noticed that I missed stars in the west, 
Where its black body cut into the sky. 
Near me it seemed: I felt it like a wall 
Behind which I was sheltered from a... (Read full poem)

19. Kin - written by Carl Sandburg
From Chicago Poems. Published in 1913. Read 2445 times on American Poems.

BROTHER, I am fire
Surging under the ocean floor.
I shall never meet you, brother--
Not for years, anyhow;
Maybe thousands of years, brother.
Then I will warm you,
Hold you close, wrap you in circles,
Use you and change you--
Maybe thousands of... (Read full poem)

When you go away the wind clicks around to the north
The painters work all day but at sundown the paint falls
Showing the black walls
The clock goes back to striking the same hour
That has no place in the years

And at night wrapped in the bed of... (Read full poem)

21. AUTUMN - written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
From Earlier Poems. Read 9015 times on American Poems.

Thou comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain,
With banners, by great gales incessant fanned,
Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand,
And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain!
Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne,
Upon thy bridge of gold; thy... (Read full poem)

curling them around
i hold their bodies in obscene embrace
thinking of everything but kinship.
collards and kale
strain against each strange other
away from my kissmaking hand and
the iron bedpot.
the pot is black.
the cutting board is... (Read full poem)

23. Liebestod - written by Dorothy Parker
From Sunset Gun. Published in 1928. Read 2783 times on American Poems.

When I was bold, when I was bold-
And that's a hundred years!-
Oh, never I thought my breast could hold
The terrible weight of tears.

I said: "Now some be dolorous;
I hear them wail and sigh,
And if it be Love that play them thus,
Then never a love... (Read full poem)

Thou comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain,
With banners, by great gales incessant fanned,
Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand,
And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain!
Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne,
Upon thy bridge of gold; thy... (Read full poem)

25. The Black Berry -- wears a Thorn in his side -- - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1968 times on American Poems.

The Black Berry -- wears a Thorn in his side --
But no Man heard Him cry --
He offers His Berry, just the same
To Partridge -- and to Boy --

He sometimes holds upon the Fence --
Or struggles to a Tree --
Or clasps a Rock, with both His Hands --
But... (Read full poem)