Below are a selection of Poems from various authors. Click on the name of a poem to view it in full.

 

  • 3982

    Symptoms of Love

    Love is a universal migraine, A bright stain on the vision Blotting out reason. Symptoms of true love Are leanness, jealousy, Laggard dawns; Are omens and nightmares – Listening for a knock, Waiting for a sign: For a touch of her fingers In a darkened room, For a searching look. Take courage, lover! Could you
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  • 1202

    He Fumbles at Your Spirit

    He fumbles at your Spirit As Players at the Keys Before they drop full Music on – He stuns you by degrees – Prepares your brittle Nature For the Ethereal Blow By fainter Hammers – further heard – Then nearer – Then so slow Your Breath has times to straighten – Your Brain – to
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  • 1243

    The First Day

    I wish I could remember the first day, First hour, first moment of your meeting me, If bright or dim the season, it might be Summer or Winter for aught I can say. So unrecorded did it slip away, So blind was I to see and foresee, So dull to mark the budding of my
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  • 3982

    Bright Star

    Bright Star! would I were steadfast as thou art – Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores, Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask Of snow upon the
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  • 3951

    Sonnet 116

    Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no, it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although
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  • 2349

    Remember Me

    Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land; When you can no more hold me by the hand, Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay. Remember me when no more day by day You tell me of our future that you plann’d: Only remember me; you understand
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  • 1897

    Valentine

    My heart has made its mind up And I’m afraid it’s you. Whatever you’ve got lined up, My heart has made its mind up And if you can’t be signed up This year, next year will do. My heart has made its mind up And I’m afraid it’s you.  – Wendy Cope (1945-)

  • 1965

    Sonnet 106

    When in the chronicle of wasted time I see descriptions of the fairest wights, And beauty making beautiful old rime In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights, Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best, Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, I see their antique pen would have exprest Even
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  • 3214

    Flowers

    Some men never think of it. You did. You’d come along And say you’d nearly brought me flowers But something had gone wrong. The shop was closed. Or you had doubts – The sort that minds like ours Dream up incessantly. You thought I might not want your flowers. It made me smile and hug
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  • 3942

    She Walks In Beauty

    She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellow’d to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impair’d the nameless grace Which
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  • 1278

    Sonnets from the Portugese

    How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday’s Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. I love thee
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  • 1918

    He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven

    Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark clothes Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because
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  • 3239

    Live Your Life

    Can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about his religion. Respect others in their views and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and of service to your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when
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  • 3981

    The Wheel

    Time is a wheel: the day that we met Is still there: Everything changes but nothing is lost All that we shared, All that we ever loved, belongs to us still: Time is a wheel Whatever has ended is just about to begin All that we feel, All that we ever felt, will come back
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  • 4832

    Gone From My Sight

    I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue occan. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky
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  • 1278

    Death not be proud

    Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so, For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow, Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow, And soonest
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  • 1298

    You can shed tears that she is gone

    You can shed tears that she is gone or you can smile because she has lived. You can close your eyes and pray that she’ll come back or you can open your eyes and see all she’s left. Your heart can be empty because you can’t see her or you can be fully of the
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  • 3908

    The Friend

    In a circle of friends, the one who dies first is the friend you will never forget: this is the death that unhinges you from the trappings of everyday life and makes you – suddenly – absurdly grateful for each new breath – beginning with this one. This is the death that could break you
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  • 3763

    Marriage & Death

    We are not dovetailed but opened to each other So that our edges blur, and to and fro A little wind-borne trade plies, filtering over, Bartering our atoms when fair breezes blow. Though, not like waters met and inter-running, Our peoples dwell each under different sky, Here at high, unsurveyed, dissolving frontiers We cannot prove:
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  • 2872

    Time does not bring relief

    Time does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide; The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane; But last
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  • 4012

    Music When Soft Voices Die

    Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory; Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken. Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heap’d for the beloved’s bed; And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on.  – Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

  • 2973

    Too Soon

    This was a life That had hardly begun No time to find Your place in the sun No time to do All you could have done But we loved you enough for a lifetime. No time to enjoy The world and its wealth No time to take life Down off the shelf No time to
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  • 1908

    A Song For Living

    Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die. I have sent up my gladness on wings, to be lost in the blue of the sky. I have run and leaped with the rain, I have taken the wind to my breast. My cheek like a drowsy child to the face of the earth
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  • 1891

    Because I could not stop for Death

    Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me – The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality. We slowly drove – He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility – We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess
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  • 2981

    On Death

    Then Almitra spoke, saying, We would ask now of Death. And he said: You would know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life? The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light. If you would indeed
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  • 1226

    Don’t Tell Me That I Mourn Too Much

    don’t tell me that I mourn too much and I won’t tell you that you mourn too much don’t tell me that I mourn too little and I won’t tell you that you mourn too little don’t tell me that I mourn in the wrong place and I won’t tell you that you mourn in
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  • 1337

    While I Slept

    While I slept, while I slept and the night grew colder She would come to my room, stepping softly And draw a blanket about my shoulder While I slept. While I slept, while I slept in the dark, still heat She would come to my bedside, stepping coolly And smooth and twisted, troubled sheet While
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  • 1011

    On the Death of a Child

    The greatest griefs shall find themselves inside the smallest cage It’s only then that we can hope to tame their rage, The monsters we must live with. For it will not do To hiss humanity because one human threw Us out of heart and home. Or part At odds with life because one baby failed
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  • 2016

    Rest

    Are yours to keep I have found my rest; I have turned my face To the sun, and now I sleep.  – Alan Curtis (1959-)

  • 3146

    When I Have Fears

    When I have fears, as Keats had fears, Of the moment I’ll cease to be I console myself with vanished years Remembered laughter, remembered tears, And the peace of the changing sea. When I feel sad, as Keats felt sad, That my life is so nearly done It gives me comfort to dwell upon Remembered
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  • 2139

    A thing of beauty is a joy forever

    Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and a quiet breathing. Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing A flowery band to bind us to the earth, Spite the despondence, of the inhuman dearth Of
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  • 1237

    The Legacy

    The song of the wind in the tree The hang and heave of the sea The cry of a bird on the wing This is my legacy. The sun on a frosting of dew The rain when it comes on cue The greening and the shining I leave all this to you.  – Sarah-Jane Brooks
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  • 3891

    The New Path

    Now I know what is meant by death – A leavetaking In one way, in another A kind of waking. The old world almost gone your voices ringing in my ears like a distant echo barely clinging. The stones of the earth are warm and the grass is singing as I start down my new
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  • 1988

    Think of Me Then

    On a day of rain when you sit indoors By the fire with a book, as I loved to do, And the storm wind roars Think of me then. As you walk by the shore when the sun is high And the sea is blue, as I loved to do, And the seagulls cry Think
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  • 2318

    When I Died

    I’m coming back on All Saints’ Day for your olives, old peanuts and dodgy sherry, dirty dancing. I’ll cross-dress at last pirouette and flash, act pissed. You’ll have to look for me hard: search for my bones in the crowd. Or lay a pint and a pie on my grave to tempt me out and
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  • 3219

    If Death Is Kind

    Perhaps if Death is kind, and there can be returning, We will come back to earth some fragrant night, And take these lanes to find the sea, and bending Breathe the same honeysuckle, low and white. We will come down at night to these resounding beaches And the long gentle thunder of the sea, Here
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  • 1989

    Heaven Haven

    I have desired to go Where springs not fail, To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail And a few lilies blow.   And I have asked to be Where no storms come, Where the green swell in the havens dumb, And out of the swing of the sea.   – Gerard Manley Hopkins
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  • 1337

    Our revels are now ended

    Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous places, The solemn temples, the great glove itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial
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