Poems List
Explore poems from our collection
The Soldier
The Soldier
He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled,
That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust,
But still lies pointed as it ploughed the dust.
If …
The Secret Sits
The Secret Sits
We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
The Oven Bird
The Oven Bird
There is a singer eveyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leav…
The Road Not Taken
The Road Not Taken
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…
The Lockless Door
The Lockless Door
It went many years,
But at last came a knock,
And I thought of the door
With no lock to lock.
I blew out the light,
I tip-t…
The Hill Wife
The Hill Wife
It was too lonely for her there,
And too wild,
And since there were but two of them,
And no child.
And work was little in the house, …
The Exposed Nest
The Exposed Nest
You were forever finding some new play.
So when I saw you down on hands and knees
I the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay,
Trying, I tho…
The Gift Outright
The Gift Outright
The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Mass…
The Death of the Hired Man
The Death of the Hired Man
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 pas…
The Bear
The Bear
The bear puts both arms around the tree above her
And draws it down as if it were a lover
And its chokecherries lips to kiss good-by,
Then lets …
The Aim Was Song
The Aim Was Song
Before man to blow to right
The wind once blew itself untaught,
And did its loudest day and night
In any rough place where it caught.
Stars
Stars
How countlessly they congregate
O'er our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
When wintry winds do blow!--
As if with keen…
Reluctance
Reluctance
Out through the fields and the woods And over the walls I have wended; I have
climbed the hills of view And looked at the world, and descended; I have com…
Rose Pogonias
Rose Pogonias
A saturated meadow,
Sun-shaped and jewel-small,
A circle scarcely wider
Than the trees around were tall;
Where winds were quite exclu…
Putting In The Seed
Putting In The Seed
You come to fetch me from my work to-night
When supper's on the table, and we'll see
If I can leave off burying the white
Soft petals…
Plowmen
Plowmen
A plow, they say, to plow the snow.
They cannot mean to plant it, no --
Unless in bitterness to mock
At having cultivated rock.
Out, out--
Out, out--
The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across …
One Step Backward Taken
One Step Backward Taken
Not only sands and gravels
Were once more on their travels,
But gulping muddy gallons
Great boulders off their balance
Bump…
October
October
O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; Tomorrow's wind,
if it be wild, Should waste them all. The crows above the forest call; T…
On Looking Up by Chance at the Constellations
On Looking Up by Chance at the Constellations
You'll wait a long, long time for anything much
To happen in heaven beyond the floats of cloud
And the Northern L…
Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same
Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same
He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong…
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to …
My November Guest
My November Guest
My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withere…
Mowing
Mowing
There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;…