Infoplease Editors' Blog

by John Keats

The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's—he takes the lead
In summer luxury,—he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.

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by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let me go where'er I will,
I hear a sky-born music still:
It sounds from all things old,
It sounds from all things young,
From all that's fair, from all that's foul,
Peals out a cheerful song.

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by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

My own Beloved, who hast lifted me
From this drear flat of earth where I was thrown,
And, in betwixt the languid ringlets, blown
A life-breath, till the forehead hopefully
Shines out again, as all the angels see,
Before thy saving kiss!

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by Cale Young Rice

When the wind is low,
     and the sea is soft,
 And the far heat-lightning plays
On the rim of the west
     where dark clouds nest
 On a darker bank of haze;
When I lean o'er the rail
     with you that I love
 And gaze to my heart's content;
I know that the heavens
     are there above--
 But you are my firmament.

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by John Keats

Now Morning
   from her orient chamber came,
And her first footsteps
   touch'd a verdant hill;
Crowning its lawny crest
   with amber flame,
Silv'ring the untainted gushes
   of its rill;

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There's a path that leads to Nowhere
 In a meadow that I know,
Where an inland island rises
 And the stream is still and slow;
There it wanders under willows
 And beneath the silver green
Of the birches' silent shadows
 Where the early violets lean.

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by Amy Lowell

Thou father of the children of my brain
 By thee engendered in my willing heart,
 How can I thank thee for this gift of art
Poured out so lavishly, and not in vain.

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by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

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by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
 The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
 Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
 Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
 The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
 The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
 The best lack all conviction, while the worst
 Are full of passionate intensity.

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by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

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