Collection
Toasts and Celebrations
Poems to celebrate successes, salute loved ones, and offer thanks for life’s blessings, big and small.
BY The Editors
![Illustration/gif of a person holding up a champagne glass in celebration with a crowd.](https://cdn-test.poetryfoundation.org/cdn-cgi/image/w=10,h=10,q=50,blur=3/content/images/b68b0a5f53e6caf18f4535faba8bb3f5f7fdd32f.gif)
Poems For Giving Toasts
Found Letter
Joshua Weiner
In the office; close friends who speak the truth;
Good food, cooked simply; a memory that’s rich- We had better empty the wine-cups.
To-morrow, at bright dawn, the world’s business will entangle us. Jet
Tony Hoagland
out of the box, uncapping the bottle
to let the effervescence gush
through the narrow, usually constricted neck.- Muriel Rukeyser
Burn in the daylong light;My Triumph
John Greenleaf Whittier
I join the great march onwardCheer
Stanley Plumly
my father says, lifting his glass to greet
a morning in which he's awake to be
with the birds: or up all night in the sleep
of the world, alive again, singing.
Poems Of Praise And Celebration
Praise Song for the Day
Elizabeth Alexander
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.- won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model. Things to Do in New York (City)
Ted Berrigan
& everyone else’s birth:Lift Every Voice and Sing
James Weldon Johnson
High as the listening skies,
Odes To The Little Things
In Praise of My Bed
Meredith Holmes
moan, so grateful to be held this way.Hymn to the Comb-Over
Wesley McNair
in all of their varieties, some skinny
as the bands of headphones, some risingThe Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog
Alicia Ostriker
so hard
God’s love
washes right through youMore Than Enough
Marge Piercy
joy for the bee. The green will never
again be so green,- Pablo Neruda
was the only shape left
with purpose or directionGreen Tea
Dale Ritterbusch
in ceremony, a celebration,
Seize The Day
Center
Josephine Miles
Not only what we are, where we are from,
But what in the risk and moment of our day
We may become.Immortal Sails
Alfred Noyes
We'll mount and sing and spread immortal sails.- Fernando Pessoa
In the least you ever do.The House of Life: 71. The Choice, I
Dante Gabriel Rossetti