A Paumanok Picture by Walt Whitman
Two boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still, Ten fishermen waiting–they discover a thick school of mossbonkers– they drop the join’d seine-ends in the water, The boats separate and row off, each on its rounding course to the beach, enclosing the mossbonkers, The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who […]
Evening Star by Edgar Allan Poe
The Echoing Green by William Blake
The sun does arise, And make happy the skies; The merry bells ring To welcome the Spring; The skylark and thrush, The birds of the bush, Sing louder around To the bells’ cheerful sound; While our sports shall be seen On the echoing Green. Old John, with white hair, Does laugh away care, Sitting under […]
A Prayer in Spring by Robert Frost
Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today; And give us not to think so far away As the uncertain harvest; keep us here All simply in the springing of the year. Oh, give us pleasure in the orcahrd white, Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night; And make us happy in the […]
The Park by Ralph Waldo Emerson
The prosperous and beautiful To me seem not to wear The yoke of conscience masterful, Which galls me everywhere. I cannot shake off the god; On my neck he makes his seat; I look at my face in the glass,– My eyes his eyeballs meet. Enchanters! Enchantresses! Your gold makes you seem wise; The morning […]
Marlena by Herman Melville
Far off in the sea is Marlena, A land of shades and streams, A land of many delights, Dark and bold, thy shores, Marlena; But green, and timorous, thy soft knolls, Crouching behind the woodlands. All shady thy hills; all gleaming thy springs, Like eyes in the earth looking at you. How charming thy haunts, […]
Blue-Butterfly Day by Robert Frost
It is blue-butterfly day here in spring, And with these sky-flakes down in flurry on flurry There is more unmixed color on the wing Than flowers will show for days unless they hurry. But these are flowers that fly and all but sing: And now from having ridden out desire They lie closed over in […]
I Write About the Butterfly by Louisa May Alcott
“I write about the butterfly, It is a pretty thing; And flies about like the birds, But it does not sing. “First it is a little grub, And then it is a nice yellow cocoon, And then the butterfly Eats its way out soon. “They live on dew and honey, They […]
Field Path by John Clare
The beams in blossom with their spots of jet Smelt sweet as gardens wheresoever met; The level meadow grass was in the swath; The hedge briar rose hung right across the path, White over with its flowers–the grass that lay Bleaching beneath the twittering heat to hay Smelt so deliciously, the puzzled bee […]
Love’s Lantern by Alfred Joyce Kilmer
Because the road was steep and long And through a dark and lonely land, God set upon my lips a song And put a lantern in my hand. Through miles on weary miles of night That stretch relentless in my way My lantern burns serene and white, An unexhausted cup of […]