Search Categories - Any -25 Lines or FewerCanadaPre 21st Century21st Century Grade levels - Any -Grades 7-9 / Sec. 1-3Grades 10-12 / Sec. 4 & 5 / CEGEP 1 Sort by RandomNewestMost popularA -> ZZ -> A Apply Leigh Hunt Rondeau Jenny kissed me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in; Time, you thief, who love to get Thomas Hardy Hap If but some vengeful god would call to me From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing, Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, Tamar Rubin Perennial For thirty-one years, my mother tried not to miss her. Every week, a little water or the trickle of a few ice cubes dropped in black earth. Years back, in the muck of Toronto, April, Oliver Wendell Holmes Old Ironsides Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see Lauren Turner from Quit Dying to Die When the doctors burrowed into my body, they unearthed a slew of tumours. Growths speckled across lungs and kidneys. Carl Sandburg I Am the People, the Mob I am the people — the mob — the crowd — the mass. Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me? I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes. Don Kerr Editing the Prairie Well, it’s too long for one thing and very repetitive. Remove half the fields. Then there are far too many fences interrupting the narrative flow. Get some cattlemen to cut down those fences. Lucille Clifton forgiving my father it is friday. we have come to the paying of the bills. all week you have stood in my dreams like a ghost, asking for more time but today is payday, payday old man; my mother’s hand opens in her early grave Katherine Philips Epitaph On her Son H.P. at St. Syth’s Church where her body also lies interred What on Earth deserves our trust? Youth and Beauty both are dust. Ilya Kaminsky We Lived Happily during the War And when they bombed other people’s houses, we protested but not enough, we opposed them but not enough. I was in my bed, around my bed America Charles Heavysege The Dead How great unto the living seem the dead! How sacred, solemn; how heroic grown; How vast and vague, as they obscurely tread Jen Sookfong Lee Community Garden There, the bolting black kale, taller than it has any right to be and not the twitter troll who asked if you were on your period. In the corner, a pile of dead zucchini leaves, spotted with rot Aphra Behn A Thousand Martyrs A thousand martyrs I have made, All sacrific’d to my desire; A thousand beauties have betray’d, Ulrikka Gernes K was supposed to come with the key, I was K was supposed to come with the key, I was to wait outside the gate. I arrived on time, the time we had agreed on and waited, as agreed, Margaret Avison The Swimmer’s Moment For everyone The swimmer's moment at the whirlpool comes, But many at that moment will not say Percy Bysshe Shelley Ozymandias 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, George Elliott Clarke Blank Sonnet The air smells of rhubarb, occasional Roses, or first birth of blossoms, a fresh, Undulant hurt, so body snaps and curls Ralph Waldo Emerson Experience The lords of life, the lords of life, — I saw them pass, In their own guise, A. M. Klein Heirloom My father bequeathed me no wide estates; No keys and ledgers were my heritage; Only some holy books with yahrzeit dates Walt Whitman O Captain! My Captain! 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, Lady Mary Chudleigh To the Ladies Wife and servant are the same, But only differ in the name: For when that fatal knot is tied, Bernard Ferguson juxtaposition with seeds i thought you were gone / stupid bird / darling worms shifting in the mud / this time i am not so certain / is it kinship or are you gloating? / have i grown bitter with the bees / how they bring the blooms reliably? Sonnet L'Abbé Poor Speaker I understand you. I get what you’re trying to say. What you’re trying to say is you want me to get it. I get it. You want me to understand. You want me to know Ben Jonson Song: To Celia Come, my Celia, let us prove, While we can, the sports of love; Time will not be ours forever; Lorna Crozier Not the Music Not the music. It is this other thing I keep from all of them that matters, inviolable. I scratch in my journals, a mouse rummaging through cupboards, Suzannah Showler Too Negative I was a kid other kids’ parents gossiped about. They told their children what I was: too negative. I get it. Fair to fear contagion of bad attitudes, William Butler Yeats An Irish Airman Foresees His Death I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Don Paterson Francesca Woodman i At the heart there is a hollow sun by which we are constructed and undone William Shakespeare Sonnet LV: Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Not marble nor the gilded monuments Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme, But you shall shine more bright in these contents Sadiqa de Meijer Women Do This Every Day At the park I look for Levita, because our work is the same— swaying wide-legged over foraging toddlers, we avert bruises, discourage the consumption Pierre Nepveu Last Visit Now I set out across a minefield, space having taken all I owned, I’m starting over from a point where every pebble may explode beneath my shoe and the flowers blaze up behind my body as I gasp for air, Tina Cane Imaginary Dad Was so imaginary he ceased to exist Wallace Stevens The Snow Man One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, Weyman Chan But I’m No One for M. Maylor Dear Anne Carson: My friend read me the poem where your mom said that the dead walk backwards. You thought this myth arose from poor translation. Charles G. D. Roberts The Potato Harvest A high bare field, brown from the plough, and borne Aslant from sunset; amber wastes of sky Washing the ridge; a clamour of crows that fly Christina Rossetti Amor Mundi “Oh where are you going with your love-locks flowing On the west wind blowing along this valley track?” “The downhill path is easy, come with me an it please ye, Michael Longley The Boxers We were combatants from the start. Our dad Bought us boxing gloves when we were ten — Champions like Euryalus, say, or Epeius Ada Limón The Raincoat When the doctor suggested surgery and a brace for all my youngest years, my parents scrambled to take me to massage therapy, deep tissue work, osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine Ron Padgett Prose Poem (“The morning coffee.”) The morning coffee. I’m not sure why I drink it. Maybe it’s the ritual of the cup, the spoon, the hot water, the milk, and the little heap of brown grit, the way they come together to form a nail I can hang the Meghan Kemp-Gee A Newly Discovered Species of Lizard with Distinctive Triangular Scales I am Charles Darwin. I eat owlflesh at Cambridge University. I have discovered something, an entirely new species with tropical fever in its reptile fingers. I am busy with taxonomying its most peculiar and three-sided Language English