1. Prayers After World War - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 3059 times on American Poems.

WANDERING oversea dreamer,
Hunting and hoarse, Oh daughter and mother,
Oh daughter of ashes and mother of blood,
Child of the hair let down, and tears,
Child of the cross in the south
And the star in the north,
Keeper of Egypt and Russia and... (Read full poem)

I had no objection at all
To selling my household effects at auction
On the village square.
It gave my beloved flock the chance
To get something which had belonged to me
For a memorial.
But that trunk which was struck off
To Burchard, the... (Read full poem)

3. He was my host -- he was my guest, - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1937 times on American Poems.

He was my host -- he was my guest,
I never to this day
If I invited him could tell,
Or he invited me.

So infinite our intercourse
So intimate, indeed,
Analysis as capsule seemed
To keeper of the seed.(Read full poem)

I have sown beside all waters in my day.
I planted deep, within my heart the fear
that wind or fowl would take the grain away.
I planted safe against this stark, lean year. 

I scattered seed enough to plant the land
in rows from Canada to... (Read full poem)

5. Given in Marriage unto Thee - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 2566 times on American Poems.

Given in Marriage unto Thee
Oh thou Celestial Host --
Bride of the Father and the Son
Bride of the Holy Ghost.

Other Betrothal shall dissolve --
Wedlock of Will, decay --
Only the Keeper of this Ring
Conquer Mortality --(Read full poem)

for Hayden Carruth

If you didn't see the six-legged dog,
It doesn't matter.
We did, and he mostly lay in the corner.
As for the extra legs,

One got used to them quickly
And thought of other things.
Like, what a cold, dark night
To be out at the... (Read full poem)

7. A Rhyme of Death's Inn - written by Lizette Woodworth Reese
Read 2045 times on American Poems.

A rhyme of good Death's inn!
   My love came to that door;
And she had need of many things,
   The way had been so sore.

My love she lifted up her head,
   "And is there room?" said she;
"There was no room in Bethlehem's inn
   For... (Read full poem)

Civilization -- spurns -- the Leopard!
Was the Leopard -- bold?
Deserts -- never rebuked her Satin --
Ethiop -- her Gold --
Tawny -- her Customs --
She was Conscious --
Spotted -- her Dun Gown --
This was the Leopard's nature -- Signor --
Need -- a... (Read full poem)

9. The Price - written by Ron Rash
Read 464 times on American Poems.

Knee deep in the Watauga's
rock leaping whitewater,
my brother loses his balance,
his life if our father
doesn't flail downstream swimming
the air, running the river,
tripping the stones to collar
his son gasping and coughing
onto a sandbar as... (Read full poem)

I am the blossom pressed in a book,
found again after two hundred years. . . .

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper. . . . 

When the young girl who starves
sits down to a table
she will sit beside me. . . . 

I am food on the... (Read full poem)

11. Rearrange a "Wife's" affection! - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 2571 times on American Poems.

Rearrange a "Wife's" affection!
When they dislocate my Brain!
Amputate my freckled Bosom!
Make me bearded like a man!

Blush, my spirit, in thy Fastness --
Blush, my unacknowledged clay --
Seven years of troth have taught thee
More than Wifehood... (Read full poem)

MANY things I might have said today.
And I kept my mouth shut.
So many times I was asked
To come and say the same things
Everybody was saying, no end
To the yes-yes, yes-yes, me-too, me-too.
  
The aprons of silence covered me.
A wire and hatch held... (Read full poem)

13. Wilderness - written by Carl Sandburg
From Cornhuskers. Published in 1918. Read 4429 times on American Poems.

THERE is a wolf in me … fangs pointed for tearing gashes … a red tongue for raw meat … and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.
 
There is a fox in... (Read full poem)

Pray why are you so bare, so bare, 
Oh, bough of the old oak-tree;
And why, when I go through the shade you throw,
Runs a shudder over me?
My leaves were green as the best, I trow,
And sap ran free in my veins,
But I say in the moonlight dim... (Read full poem)

15. Judgment Day - written by Ellis Parker Butler
From The Tuscarora Club's Forty Year History. Published in 1941. Read 755 times on American Poems.

Saint Peter stood, at Heaven's gate,
All souls claims to adjudicate
Saying to some souls, "Enter in!"
"Go to Hell," to others, "you are steeped in sin."
When up from earth, with a great hubbub,
Came all the members of the Tuscarora... (Read full poem)

Father, this year's jinx rides us apart 
where you followed our mother to her cold slumber; 
a second shock boiling its stone to your heart,
leaving me here to shuffle and disencumber
you from the residence you could not afford:
a gold key, your... (Read full poem)

17. The Bride of Frankenstein - written by Edward Field
Read 646 times on American Poems.

The Baron has decided to mate the monster,
to breed him perhaps,
in the interests of pure science, his only god.

So he goes up into his laboratory
which he has built in the tower of the castle
to be as near the interplanetary forces as... (Read full poem)

The opening scene.  The yellow, coal-fed fog
Uncurling over the tainted city river,
A young girl rowing and her anxious father
Scavenging for corpses.  Funeral meats.  The clever
Abandoned orphan.  The great athletic killer
Sulking in his tent.  As... (Read full poem)

19. Singer in the Prison, The. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 3147 times on American Poems.

1
    O sight of shame, and pain, and dole! 
                O fearful thought—a convict Soul! 
RANG the refrain along the hall, the prison, 
Rose to the roof, the vaults of heaven above, 
Pouring in floods of melody, in tones so pensive, sweet... (Read full poem)

1
FIRST, O songs, for a prelude, 
Lightly strike on the stretch’d tympanum, pride and joy in my city, 
How she led the rest to arms—how she gave the cue, 
How at once with lithe limbs, unwaiting a moment, she sprang; 
(O superb! O... (Read full poem)

21. The Death of the Hired Man - written by Robert Frost
From North of Boston. Published in 1914. Read 30881 times on American Poems.

Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table
Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step,
She ran on tip-toe down the darkened passage
To meet him in the doorway with the news
And put him on his guard. 'Silas is back.'
She pushed him outward with... (Read full poem)

In the willows along the river at Pleasure Bay
A catbird singing, never the same phrase twice.
Here under the pines a little off the road
In 1927 the Chief of Police
And Mrs. W. killed themselves together,
Sitting in a roadster.  Ancient unshaken... (Read full poem)

23. The Division Of Parts - written by Anne Sexton
Read 2968 times on American Poems.

1.
Mother, my Mary Gray,
once resident of Gloucester
and Essex County,
a photostat of your will
arrived in the mail today.
This is the division of money.
I am one third
of your daughters counting my bounty
or I am a queen alone
in the parlor... (Read full poem)