Archive

I am the Teacher of Athletes

I am the teacher of athletes; He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own, proves the width of my own; He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher. The boy I love, the same becomes a man, not through derived...

By Walt Whitman
Read More
23 February

Threnody (Fragments)

The south-wind brings Life, sunshine, and desire, And on every mount and meadow Breathes aromatic fire, But over the dead he has no power, The lost, the lost he cannot restore, And, looking over the hills, I mourn The darling who shall not return. I see my empty house, I see my trees repair...

By Ralph Waldo Emerson
Read More
03 January

The Subverted Flower

She drew back; he was calm: "It is this that had the power." And he lashed his open palm With the tender-headed flower. He smiled for her to smile, But she was either blind Or willfully unkind. He eyed her for a while For a woman and a puzzle. He flicked and flung the...

By Robert Frost
Read More
02 January

A Brown Girl Dead

With two white roses on her breasts, White candles at head and feet, Dark Madonna of the grave she rests; Lord Death has found her sweet. Her mother pawned her wedding ring To lay her out in white; She'd be so proud she'd dance and sing to see herself tonight. Countee Cullen...

By Countee Cullen
Read More
29 December

Boy at the Window

Seeing the snowman standing all alone In dusk and cold is more than he can bear. The small boy weeps to hear the wind prepare A night of gnashings and enormous moan. His tearful sight can hardly reach to where The pale-faced figure with bitumen eyes Returns him such a God-forsaken...

By Richard Wilbur
Read More
27 December

Flowers, Dear Flowers, Farewell!

'We are sending you, dear flowers, Forth alone to die, Where your gentle sisters may not weep O'er the cold graves where you lie; But you go to bring them fadeless life In the bright homes where they dwell, And you softly smile that 't is so, As we sadly sing farewell. O...

By Louisa May Alcott
Read More
26 December

Reapers

Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones Are sharpening scythes. I see them place the hones In their hip-pockets as a thing that's done, And start their silent swinging, one by one. Black horses drive a mower through the weeds, And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds, His...

By Jean Toomer
Read More
21 December

An Inscription

A conqueror as provident as brave, He robbed the cradle to supply the grave. His reign laid quantities of human dust: He fell upon the just and the unjust. Ambrose Bierce...

By Ambrose Bierce
Read More
16 December

Madness

(For Sara Teasdale) The lonely farm, the crowded street, The palace and the slum, Give welcome to my silent feet As, bearing gifts, I come. Last night a beggar crouched alone, A ragged helpless thing; I set him on a moonbeam throne -- Today he is a king. Last night a king in orb...

By Joyce Kilmer
Read More
15 December