Explore Poems: Classics

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On Quiet Feet
By Nikki Grimes
When my dad walks
into a room,
or down
the street,
he inches
up on me
silent
as shadow,
and I don't know
he's there
until I feel
his hug.
Sometimes
when he is
near
I might even
hear
his heart beat—
but never
his quiet
feet.
the world is about to end and my grandparents are in love
By Kara Jackson
still, living like they orbit one another,
my grandfather, the planet, & grandma, his moon assigned
by some gravitational pull. they have loved long enough
for a working man to retire. grandma says she’s not tired,

she...
Thanksgiving Day [“Over the river and through the wood”]
By Lydia Maria Child
Over the river and through the wood,
    To grandfather's house we go;
         The horse knows the way
         To carry the sleigh
    Through the white and drifted snow.

Over the river and through the wood--
    Oh, how the wind does blow!
         It stings the toes
         And...
Ode on a Grecian Urn
By John Keats
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
       Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
       A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
       Of deities or mortals, or of both,
               In Tempe...
O Captain! My Captain!
By Walt Whitman
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and...
Casey at the Bat
By Ernest Lawrence Thayer
The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day;
The score stood four to two with but one inning more to play.
And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,
A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of...
The Charge of the Light Brigade
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

II
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though...
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star
By Jane Taylor
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.

When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,...
Figs from Thistles: First Fig
By Edna St. Vincent Millay
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!
Trees
By Joyce Kilmer
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in...
- Classics
- Sports and Outdoor Activities
Pied Beauty
By Gerard Manley Hopkins
Glory be to God for dappled things –
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
      And áll...
Mending Wall
By Robert Frost
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where...
The Road Not Taken
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;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And...
The Raven
By Edgar Allan Poe
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis...
Ozymandias
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell...
If—
By Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be...
To an Athlete Dying Young
By A. E. Housman
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a...
Jack
By Jane Yolen
Jack was quite nimble,
Jack was quite quick,
Jack gave the beanstalk
A mighty big kick.

Down came the giant—
GIGANTIC fall—
Bottoms up in a crater,
Thus ending it all.
- Being Oneself
- Classics
If We Must Die
By Claude McKay
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our...
The Witch Has Told You a Story
By Ava Leavell Haymon
You are food.
You are here for me
to eat. Fatten up,
and I will like you better.

Your brother will be first,
you must wait your turn.
Feed him yourself, you will
learn to do it. You will take him

eggs with yellow sauce, muffins
torn apart and...

p1the world is about to end and my grandparents are in love

p1Figs from Thistles: First Fig

p1Trees

p1The Witch Has Told You a Story

the world is about to end and my grandparents are in love

Figs from Thistles: First Fig

Trees

The Witch Has Told You a Story