Popular Poetry Archives

Poet’s Note: I wrote this poem in the same metrical form as the song “America the Beautiful” (but without the internal rhyme). You can sing it if you want, but I think it is most effective when simply...

Update: Winners announced: https://classicalpoets.org/shortest-poem-contest-winners-announced/\ Scroll down and read the comments section to enjoy all of the submissions. Write the shortest possible...

By Amy Foreman A cold and rainy afternoon recently gave rise to this little idea of a poem-puzzle.  I challenged myself to write a poem where each word started with a different letter of the alphabet, in...

For Elizabeth On the Poet’s Eleventh Wedding Anniversary   Though you behold me silent in this room, Know that I walk in fields of fresh-cut hay; Though I be still, my thoughts like roses...

The Muses we understand from Part 1 of this article are the daughters of the future and the past, and more specifically of memory, light, truth and beauty; they are essential for the ‘good life’, and we...

  Sonnet IV. Edward the Confessor Edward, the Cross no more on England’s shores Thy people blesses. The light of faith is gone. From stolen thrones the foes of Christ wage wars Against thy...

By Wilbur Dee Case One of the most unlikely poems of the Modernist period is that by Robert Frost: "The Pasture." It is unlikely for many reasons. First, it seems more like a Romantic lyric, i.e., one...

Pibroch of the Domhnall   By Joseph Charles MacKenzie Author’s Notes: § The refrains at the end of each stanza are to be recited by the Inaugural crowd. § A Pibroch is a rallying bagpipe...

  Tapestry A Miltonian Sonnet The pattern on the underside confused By snarl and tangle, jumbled, twisting knot. Its warp and woof embroidered without thought It seems: the flawless linen now...

By Evan Mantyk From least greatest (10) to greatest greatest (1), the poems in this list are limited to ones originally written in the English language and which are under 50 lines, excluding poems like...

  The River Wye Your stroll beside the stream has stayed with me, Has left me in my loneliness with strength Enough to face the world, to somehow see Within its depth and width and wandering...

Goodbye, sweet fetal child— for you shall die, Because a mother’s love is also dead: The hallowed place of nurture where you lie Shall soon become the ground where blood is shed. The battle to reject...

  She could not see the avalanche cascade from foam-flecked marble rapids, being blind, but torrents of egrets and apple blossoms played whirlpools of nebulous beauty in her mind. She could not...

Imagine that you were lost in a wilderness and had to find your way out. Fortunately, you have with you a number of things, or tools if you will. In the first instance you have a kitbag, which is itself...

Ballade for Trains They are no more, the whistles’ longing wails, Retreating like a stately, mournful queen. Where are the smokestacks that left fading trails, The blackened engine with its oiled...