All poems and short stories, sorted by author’s name from A to Z

“What is it to grow old? Is it to lose the glory of the form, the luster of the eye? Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?—Yes, but not this alone…”

“A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below…”

“A little black thing among the snow, crying “weep! ’weep!” in notes of woe! “Where are thy father and mother? say?” “They are both gone up to the church to pray”…”

“Tyger Tyger, burning bright in the forests of the night; what immortal hand or eye, could frame thy fearful symmetry?…”

“If one could have that little head of hers painted upon a background of pale gold, such as the Tuscan’s early art prefers…”

“Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly, may gaze thro’ these faint smokes curling whitely, as thou pliest thy trade in this devil’s-smithy…”

“That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, looking as if she were alive. I call that piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands worked busily a day, and there she stands…”

“The rain set early in to-night, the sullen wind was soon awake, it tore the elm-tops down for spite, and did its worst to vex the lake…”

“I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars did wander darkling in the eternal space, rayless, and pathless…”

“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…”

“The sun was shining on the sea, shining with all his might. He did his very best to make the billows smooth and bright, and this was odd, because it was the middle of the night…”

“Afar on the pathless prairies the rarest of flowers abound; and in the dark caves of the valleys there is wealth that will never be found…”

“Ah, what is life? A bubble blown across Time’s mystic stream; its secret source, alas! unknown; its future — still a dream?…”

“Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death…”

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree: where Alph, the sacred river, ran through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea…”

“If I had but two little wings and were a little feathery bird, to you I’d fly, my dear! But thoughts like these are idle things, and I stay here.…”

“Ere the birth of my life, if I wished it or no, no question was asked me—it could not be so! If the life was the question, a thing sent to try…”

“They in their cruel traps, and we in ours, survey each other’s rage, and pass the hours commiserating each the other’s woe, to mitigate his own pain’s fiery glow.…”

“I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind, and did He stoop to quibble could tell why the little buried mole continues blind…”

“i like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more. i like your body. i like what it does…”

“O sweet spontaneous earth how often have the doting fingers of prurient philosphers pinched and poked thee, has the naughty thumb of science prodded thy beauty…”

“Spring is like a perhaps hand (which comes carefully out of Nowhere)arranging a window,into which people look…”

“Who knows if the moon’s a balloon,coming out of a keen city in the sky—filled with pretty people?…”

“It was quite by accident I discovered this incredible invasion of Earth by lifeforms from another planet. As yet, I haven’t done anything about it…”

“I heard a Fly buzz – when I died – The Stillness in the Room was like the Stillness in the Air – between the Heaves of Storm…”

“Success is counted sweetest by those who ne’er succeed. To comprehend a nectar requires sorest need…”

“Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you as yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend…”

“Pray why are you so bare, so bare, oh, bough of the old oak-tree; and why, when I go through the shade you throw, runs a shudder over me?…”

“It’s all a farce, — these tales they tell about the breezes sighing, and moans astir o’er field and dell, because the year is dying.…”

“I know what the caged bird feels, alas! When the sun is bright on the upland slopes; When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass…”

““Yes!” I answered you last night; “No!” this morning, Sir, I say! Colours, seen by candle-light, will not look the same by day…”

“If thou must love me, let it be for nought except for love’s sake only. Do not say “I love her for her smile…”

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach…”

“If you sit down at set of sun and count the acts that you have done, and, counting, find one self-denying deed, one word that eased the heart of him who heard…”

“I grant you ample leave to use the hoary formula ‘I am’ naming the emptiness where thought is not…”

“Sweet evenings come and go, love, they came and went of yore: This evening of our life, love, shall go and come no more…”

“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…”

“Before man came to blow it right the wind once blew itself untaught, and did its loudest day and night in any rough place where it caught…”

“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…”

“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;…”

“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…”

“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…”

“In the shadow of the temple my friend and I saw a blind man sitting alone. And my friend said, “Behold the wisest man of our land…”

“Three days after I was born, as I lay in my silken cradle, gazing with astonished dismay on the new world round about me, my mother spoke to the wet-nurse, saying, How does my child?…”

“I have to live with myself, and so, I want to be fit for myself to know. I want to be able as days go by, always to look myself straight in the eye…”

“I leant upon a coppice gate when Frost was spectre-grey, and Winter’s dregs made desolate the weakening eye of day…”

“Had he and I but met by some old ancient inn, we should have sat us down to wet right many a nipperkin!…”

“Something tapped on the pane of my room when there was never a trace of wind or rain, and I saw in the gloom my weary Belovéd’s face…”

“Not a line of her writing have I, not a thread of her hair, no mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby I may picture her there…”

“I heard a small sad sound, and stood awhile among the tombs around. Wherefore, old friends, said I, are you distrest, now, screened from life’s unrest?…”

“The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun…”

“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.…”

“If all the trees in all the woods were men; and each and every blade of grass a pen; if every leaf on every shrub and tree turned to a sheet of foolscap…”

“This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, sails the unshadowed main,—the venturous bark that flings on the sweet summer wind its purpled wings…”

“Little I ask; my wants are few; I only wish a hut of stone, (a very plain brown stone will do,) that I may call my own…”

“I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes, but I laugh, and eat well, and grow strong…”

“My forest brave, my Red-skin love, farewell; we may not meet to-morrow; who can tell what mighty ills befall our little band…”

“There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window…”

“O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, alone and palely loitering? The sedge has withered from the lake, and no birds sing…”

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; conspiring with him how to load and bless with fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run…”

“To one who has been long in city pent, ’tis very sweet to look into the fair and open face of heaven,—to breathe a prayer full in the smile of the blue firmament.…”

“When I have fears that I may cease to be before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain, before high-pilèd books, in charactery, hold like rich garners the full ripened grain…”

“We have not heard the music of the spheres, the song of star to star, but there are sounds more deep than human joy and human tears…”

“If she would come to me here, now the sunken swaths are glittering paths to the sun, and the swallows cut clear into the low sun—if she came to me here…”

“Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me; taking me back down the vista of years, till I see a child sitting under the piano…”

“Imagine that any mind ever thought a red geranium! As if the redness of a red geranium could be anything but a sensual experience…”

“The day is done, and the darkness falls from the wings of Night, as a feather is wafted downward from an eagle in his flight…”

“Half of my life is gone, and I have let the years slip from me and have not fulfilled the aspiration of my youth, to build some tower of song with lofty parapet.…”

“As a fond mother, when the day is o’er, leads by the hand her little child to bed, half willing, half reluctant to be led, and leave his broken playthings on the floor…”

“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…”

“It is said that in Ulthar, which lies beyond the river Skai, no man may kill a cat; and this I can verily believe as I gaze upon him who sitteth purring before the fire…”

“I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more…”

“When the last days were upon me, and the ugly trifles of existence began to drive me to madness like the small drops of water that torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their victim’s body…”

“I walk down the garden paths, and all the daffodils are blowing, and the bright blue squills. I walk down the patterned garden paths in my stiff, brocaded gown…”

“Come live with me and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove, that valleys, groves, hills, and fields, woods, or steepy mountain yields…”

“I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by…”

“By this he knew she wept with waking eyes: that, at his hand's light quiver by her head,the strange low sobs that shook their common bed were called into her with a sharp surprise…”

“Three summers since I chose a maid, too young maybe—but more’s to do at harvest-time than bide and woo…”

“I remember rooms that have had their part in the steady slowing down of the heart. The room in Paris, the room at Geneva…”

“I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron: Penelope did this too. And more than once: you can’t keep weaving all day and undoing it all through the night…”

“I shall forget you presently, my dear, so make the most of this, your little day, your little month, your little half a year, ere I forget, or die, or move away…”

“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain under my head till morning…”

“When I consider how my light is spent, ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, and that one Talent which is death to hide lodged with me useless…”

“Secrets, you said, would hold us two apart; you’d have me know of you your least transgression, and so the intimate places of your heart, kneeling, you bared to me, as in confession.…”

“Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, thus much let me avow—you are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream…”

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore…”

“True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?…”

“Happy the man, whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air, in his own ground…”

“If all the world and love were young, and truth in every Shepherd’s tongue, these pretty pleasures might me move, to live with thee, and be thy love…”

“I never said I loved you, John. Why will you tease me, day by day, and wax a weariness to think upon with always do and pray?…”

“When I am dead, my dearest, sing no sad songs for me; plant thou no roses at my head, nor shady cypress tree…”

“Jack fell as he’d have wished, the Mother said, and folded up the letter that she’d read. The Colonel writes so nicely…”

“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…”

“No longer mourn for me when I am dead than you shall hear the surly sullen bell give warning to the world that I am fled from this vile world with vilest worms to dwell…”

“The fountains mingle with the river and the rivers with the ocean, the winds of heaven mix for ever with a sweet emotion…”

“We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon; how restlessly they speed and gleam and quiver, streaking the darkness radiantly…”

“I met a traveller from an antique land, who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert…”

“Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years, ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe are brackish with the salt of human tears!…”

“My love is like to ice, and I to fire. How comes it then that this her cold so great is not dissolved through my so hot desire…”

“His Grace! impossible! what, dead! Of old age too, and in his bed! And could that mighty warrior fall, and so inglorious, after all?…”

“Sunset and evening star, and one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, when I put out to sea…”

“It little profits that an idle king, by this still hearth, among these barren crags, match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole unequal laws unto a savage race…”

“My father was a St. Bernard, my mother was a collie, but I am a Presbyterian. This is what my mother told me, I do not know these nice distinctions myself…”

“Once upon a time an artist who had painted a small and very beautiful picture placed it so that he could see it in the mirror…”

“Everything was perfectly swell. There were no prisons, no slums, no insane asylums, no cripples, no poverty, no wars. All diseases were conquered. So was old age…”

“A glimpse through an interstice caught, of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremark’d seated in a corner…”

“Whoever you are holding me now in hand, without one thing all will be useless, I give you fair warning before you attempt me further, I am not what you supposed, but far different…”

“One afternoon I was sitting outside the Café de la Paix, watching the splendour and shabbiness of Parisian life…”

“She dwelt among the untrodden ways beside the springs of Dove, a Maid whom there were none to praise and very few to love…”

“The world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—little we see in Nature that is ours…”

“Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, enwrought with golden and silver light, the blue and the dim and the dark cloths…”

“All things can tempt me from this craft of verse: One time it was a woman’s face, or worse—the seeming needs of my fool-driven land…”

“Never give all the heart, for love will hardly seem worth thinking of to passionate women if it seem certain…”

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre the falcon cannot hear the falconer; things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…”

“His chosen comrades thought at school he must grow a famous man; he thought the same and lived by rule, all his twenties crammed with toil…”

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book, and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once…”