Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
...

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
...

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
...

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
...

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
...

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
...

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
...

The free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
...

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
...

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.
...

The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set -
...

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:
...

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
...

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
...

It was a long time ago.
I have almost forgotten my dream.
But it was there then,
In front of me,
...

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
...

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because -
because - I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.
...

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
...

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
...

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
...

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
...

Let me die a youngman's death
not a clean and inbetween
the sheets holywater death
not a famous-last-words
...

'Hope' is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
...

I've got the children to tend
The clothes to mend
The floor to mop
The food to shop
...

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
...

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
...

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
...

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
...

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
...

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.
...

Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.
...

The wind was a torrent of darkness upon the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight looping the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding-
...

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
...

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
...

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.
...

When I was young, I used to
Watch behind the curtains
As men walked up and down the street. Wino men, old men.
Young men sharp as mustard.
...

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
...

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,
...

we had goldfish and they circled around and around
in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
covering the picture window and
my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
...

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
...

Chaos ruled OK in the classroom
as bravely the teacher walked in
the nooligans ignored him
his voice was lost in the din
...

480

"Why do I love" You, Sir?
Because—
...

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
...

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
...

In England once there lived a big
And wonderfully clever pig.
To everybody it was plain
That Piggy had a massive brain.
...

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all say BOO!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
...

Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire!
...

My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.
...

Your skin like dawn
Mine like musk

One paints the beginning
...

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
...

I keep on dying again.
Veins collapse, opening like the
Small fists of sleeping
Children.
...

Give me your hand

Make room for me
to lead and follow
...

A millionbillionwillion miles from home
Waiting for the bell to go. (To go where?)
Why are they all so big, other children?
So noisy? So much at home they
...

the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
...

668

'Nature' is what we see—
The Hill—the Afternoon—
...

Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.
...

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.
...

185

"Faith" is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see—
...

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'
...

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
...

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
...

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
...

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its lovliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
...

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
...

O my Luve's like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June;
O my Luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly play'd in tune.
...

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;
...

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead man naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
...

The night has been long,
The wound has been deep,
The pit has been dark,
And the walls have been steep.
...

The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.
...

My old man's a white old man
And my old mother's black.
If ever I cursed my white old man
I take my curses back.
...

I love chocolate cake.
And when I was a boy
I loved it even more.
...

We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
...

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned out backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
...

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.
...

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,-
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
...

In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed-
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.
...

They went home and told their wives,
that never once in all their lives,
had they known a girl like me,
But... They went home.
...

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,
...

All you who sleep tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hand to left or right
And emptiness above -
...

Take some Picts, Celts and Silures
And let them settle,
Then overrun them with Roman conquerors.
...

Children, I come back today
To tell you a story of the long dark way
That I had to climb, that I had to know
In order that the race might live and grow.
...

There are some nights when
sleep plays coy,
aloof and disdainful.
And all the wiles
...

A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth.
...

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
...

A woman who my mother knows
Came in and took off all her clothes.

Said I, not being very old,
...

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
...

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
...

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.
...

Last night I dreamed of chickens,
there were chickens everywhere,
they were standing on my stomach,
they were nesting in my hair,
...

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,
...

I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny
blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny
they are small, and the fountain is in France
where you wrote me that last letter and
...

Long walks at night--
that's what good for the soul:
peeking into windows
watching tired housewives
...

I loved you, and I probably still do,
And for a while the feeling may remain...
But let my love no longer trouble you,
I do not wish to cause you any pain.
...

Be glad your nose is on your face,
not pasted on some other place,
for if it were where it is not,
you might dislike your nose a lot.
...

This girlchild was born as usual
and presented dolls that did pee-pee
and miniature GE stoves and irons
and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.
...

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
...

We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.
...

THIS is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou
lovest best.
...

Fear no more the heat o' the sun;
Nor the furious winter's rages,
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages;
...

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
...