Infoplease Editors' Blog

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home:
Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine.
Long through thy weary crowds I roam;
A river-ark on the ocean brine,
Long I've been tossed like the driven foam:
But now, proud world! I'm going home.

complete...

by Sara Teasedale

The park is filled with night and fog,
   The veils are drawn about the world,
The drowsy lights along the paths
   Are dim and pearled.

Gold and gleaming the empty streets,
   Gold and gleaming the misty lake,
The mirrored lights like sunken swords,
   Glimmer and shake.

complete...

by Emily Dickinson

Some rainbow coming from the fair!
Some vision of the world Cashmere
I confidently see!
Or else a peacock's purple train,
Feather by feather, on the plain
Fritters itself away!

complete...

by Christina Rossetti

If I might see another Spring
  I'd not plant summer flowers and wait:
I'd have my crocuses at once,
My leafless pink mezereons,
  My chill-veined snowdrops, choicer yet
  My white or azure violet,
Leaf-nested primrose; anything
  To blow at once, not late.

complete...

by Amy Lowell

What torture lurks
    within a single thought
When grown too constant,
    and however kind,
However welcome still,
    the weary mind
Aches with its presence. 
    Dull remembrance taught
Remembers on unceasingly;
    unsought

complete...

by Walt Whitman

Afoot and light-hearted
     I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me
     leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune,
     I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more,
     postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints,
     libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content
     I travel the open road.

complete...

by Anne Bradstreet

Thou ill-formed offspring
    of my feeble brain,
Who after birth
    did'st by my side remain,
Till snatcht from thence by friends,
    less wise than true,
Who thee abroad exposed
    to public view,
Made thee in rags,
    halting to th' press to trudge,
Where errors were not lessened
    (all may judge).

complete...

by Percy MacKaye

Fluid the world flowed under us: the hills
   Billow on billow of umbrageous green
   Heaved us, aghast, to fresh horizons, seen
One rapturous instant, blind with flash of rills
And silver-rising storms and dewy stills
   Of dripping boulders, till the dim ravine
   Drowned us again in leafage...

complete... 

by Shaemas O Sheel

He whom a dream hath possessed
    knoweth no more of doubting,
For mist and the blowing of winds and
    the mouthing of words he scorns;
Not the sinuous speech of schools
    he hears, but a knightly shouting,
And never comes darkness down,
    yet he greeteth a million morns.

complete...

by Elsa Barker

When I am dead and sister to the dust;
 When no more avidly I drink the wine
 Of human love; when the pale Proserpine
Has covered me with poppies, and cold rust
Has cut my lyre-strings...

complete...