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 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 E. Pauline Johnson Marshlands A thin wet sky, that yellows at the rim, And meets with sun-lost lip the marsh’s brim. The pools low lying, dank with moss and mould, Christina Rossetti Up-Hill Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end. Will the day’s journey take the whole long day? Aphra Behn Love Armed Love in Fantastic Triumph sat, Whilst Bleeding Hearts around him flowed, For whom Fresh pains he did Create, Doyali Islam bhater mondo my mother used to make little rice balls for me. she steamed and clattered about the cramped mustard kitchen, filling a pot with water, swelling and salting and songing William Shakespeare Spring When daisies pied and violets blue And lady-smocks all silver-white And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Ada Limón How to Triumph Like a Girl I like the lady horses best, how they make it all look easy, like running 40 miles per hour is as fun as taking a nap, or grass. I like their lady horse swagger, William Shakespeare Sonnet XXIX: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, 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, Jack Gilbert Alone I never thought Michiko would come back after she died. But if she did, I knew it would be as a lady in a long white dress. It is strange that she has returned as somebody's dalmatian. I meet Robert Frost Reluctance Out through the fields and the woods And over the walls I have wended; I have climbed the hills of view 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 Sheree Fitch Do Your Best Under the Circumstances There is no land of perfect, child. There is no sea of ease. There is no candy apple trail. There’s broccoli and peas. There is no suit of armour, child. There’s arrows and there’s pain. 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 Walt Whitman Beat! Beat! Drums! Beat! beat! drums! — blow! bugles! blow! Through the windows — through doors — burst like a ruthless force, Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation, John Milton On Shakespeare. 1630 What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones, The labor of an age in pilèd stones, Or that his hallowed relics should be hid Marjorie Pickthall When Winter Comes Rain at Muchalat, rain at Sooke, And rain, they say, from Yale to Skeena, And the skid-roads blind, and never a look 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 Claudia Rankine from Citizen The rain this morning pours from the gutters and everywhere else it is lost in the trees. You need your glasses to single out what you know is there because Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang Winter House My father threw his language overboard, a bag of kittens, waterlogged mewling: small hard bodies. My mother hung on to hers — Wove the words like lace, an open web Joy Kogawa Where There’s a Wall Where there’s a wall there’s a way through a gate or door. There’s even 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, Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen Mama When the horse picked Mama up by the hair that time, was she scared? There is a photograph of her with this horse in the brown family album. She stands beside him, thin in the chilly wind Afua Cooper At the Centre Today doves flew from my head and my hair grew the longing is gone from my body William Shakespeare Sonnet XV: When I Consider everything that Grows When I consider everything that grows Holds in perfection but a little moment, That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows Etel Adnan absence. displacement. absence. displacement. waiting. then comes rejection. anger follows. shame makes the beds the shadows jostle between the walls of the scarcely visited cities. Emily Dickinson “Hope” is the thing with feathers— “Hope” is the thing with feathers — That perches in the soul — And sings the tune without the words — John Keats Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art — Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Edwin Arlington Robinson The House on the Hill They are all gone away, The House is shut and still, There is nothing more to say. Gary Snyder Riprap Lay down these words Before your mind like rocks. placed solid, by hands Alfred, Lord Tennyson Break, Break, Break Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter William Shakespeare Sonnet CXVI: Let me not to the marriage of true minds Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, 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 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. Margaret Avison The Swimmer’s Moment For everyone The swimmer's moment at the whirlpool comes, But many at that moment will not say Edgar Allan Poe A Dream Within a Dream Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow — William Butler Yeats When You Are Old 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 Jane Munro Sonoma He totaled his blue truck — slowly spun out on an icy bridge, rammed it into a guard rail. Lord (George Gordon) Byron So, we’ll go no more a roving So, we’ll go no more a roving So late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving, Sara Teasdale Barter Life has loveliness to sell, All beautiful and splendid things, Blue waves whitened on a cliff, Language English