Best English Poems

Take some Picts, Celts and Silures
And let them settle,
Then overrun them with Roman conquerors.
...

No distance ever separates
Dreams and desires
No mirror ever dissolves
Reflection and water
...

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
...

Translated into English in 1859 by Edward FitzGerald

I.
Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
...

I don't know politics but I know the names
Of those in power, and can repeat them like
Days of week, or names of months, beginning with Nehru.
...

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
...

...

They sent me a salwar kameez
            peacock-blue,
                  and another
   glistening like an orange split open,
...

Look December
Don't ever come now!
Look, December
Deserts unnumbered have expanded in me.
...

Tell me, O moisture
Halted in the eternity of my eyes
Which stagnant epoch has confined you!
God weeps rain
...

When I were schooled english wernt my thing.
My scores in English lurning no bells done ring.
Yea I grajaded but ain't english smart ….no lie!
Come end a school year the teach said 'By Bri.'
...

What you have heard is true. I was in his house.
His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His
daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the
night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol
...

How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,
wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns.
How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,
fully grasping the meaning of every roadsign and billboard
...

My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but oh my soul is white!
White as an angel is the English child,
...

(Español)
Mueran contigo, Laura, pues moriste,
los afectos que en vano te desean,
los ojos a quien privas de que vean
...

English Teeth, English Teeth!
Shining in the sun
A part of British heritage
Aye, each and every one.
...

The walls have come out of doors
Narrows are the passages, many are the footprints
On the steep rock where the sun lies half reclined
Jumping over one's shadow, falling headlong
...

Here is a coast; here is a harbor;
here, after a meager diet of horizon, is some scenery:
impractically shaped and--who knows?--self-pitying mountains,
sad and harsh beneath their frivolous greenery,
...

Moko Kahan Dhundhere Bande
Mein To Tere Paas Mein
Na Teerath Mein, Na Moorat Mein
Na Ekant Niwas Mein
...

The darkness crumbles away
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
...

I’ve watched the Seasons passing slow, so slow,
In the fields between La Bassée and Bethune;
Primroses and the first warm day of Spring,
Red poppy floods of June,
...

They come to see us
In the company of winds and rains
Their whispers are heard
Besides the doors
...

The Oak of Lancashire emits color
Of your hair, light as Tulips on Titicaca Lake
Brown as chestnut of Hunstanton
Silken as Tianjin silk
...

Spanish

Yo hacía una divina labor, sobre la roca
Creciente del Orgullo. De la vida lejana,
...

A dream
I have to write
On the wooden slate
Of a child
...

Red lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
...

(This is a composition in Pilipino Language the first one I did, the only one, and hope some of the Filipinos will get this funny poem in this site. The poem is updated with English translation)


Noong taong otsenta dekada
...

Last nite I dreamed of T.S. Eliot
welcoming me to the land of dream
Sofas couches fog in England
Tea in his digs Chelsea rainbows
...

Nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard
metudæs maecti end his modgidanc
uerc uuldurfadur sue he uundra gihuaes
eci dryctin or astelidæ
...

Where the remote Bermudas ride
In th' Oceans bosome unespy'd,
From a small Boat, that row'd along,
The listning Winds receiv'd this Song.
...

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
...

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour;
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
...

Sadho Ye Murdon Ka Gaon
Peer Mare, Pygambar Mari Hain
Mari Hain Zinda Jogi
...

.

« What is Poetry? »
Heavens no! Don’t ask me;
...

Portate bien,
behave yourself you always said to me.
I behaved myself
when others were warm in winter
...

In the sunbathed expanse of the sky
Birds were on the wing
Now lost in the quaint net
Of limetless space
...

Take of English earth as much
As either hand may rightly clutch.
In the taking of it breathe
Prayer for all who lie beneath.
...

I TRAVELL'D among unknown men,
   In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
   What love I bore to thee.
...

The night is taken by the rain.

Someone came out of the mirror
in my lone bedroom and said:
...

A stream flowing through the old oak tree is still alive.
The heart of the forest (wood which has lived to long it is, unexpected obstacle, this living log
and complicated cover which I lowered)
of rich redwood of old green growth
...

Gone now the baby's nurse,
a lioness who ruled the roost
and made the Mother cry.
She used to tie
...

When will this thirst for freedom slake?
When will our love of slavery die?
When will our Mother's fetters break?
When will our tribulations cease?
...

Tell me where, in what country,
Is Flora the beautiful Roman,
Archipiada or Thais
Who was first cousin to her once,
...

Oh, why should a hen
have been run over
on West 4th Street
in the middle of summer?
...

It takes a lot of a person's life
To be French, or English, or American
Or Italian. And to be at any age. To live at any certain time.
The Polish-born resident of Manhattan is not merely a representative of
...

Rubaiyat (3)And, as the cock crew....
Edward FitzGerald (31 March 1809 - 14 June 1883)

And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
...

I travelled among unknown men
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.
...

GREAT are the myths--I too delight in them;
Great are Adam and Eve--I too look back and accept them;
Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages,
...

RID of the world's injustice, and his pain,
He rests at last beneath God's veil of blue:
Taken from life when life and love were new
The youngest of the martyrs here is lain,
Fair as Sebastian, and as early slain.
...

Among the hills a meteorite
Lies huge; and moss has overgrown,
And wind and rain with touches light
Made soft, the contours of the stone.
...

If you are seeking Allah,
Then keep clear of religious formalities.
Those who have seen Allah
Are away from all religions!
...

It was an English ladye bright,
(The sun shines fair on Carlisle wall,)
And she would marry a Scottish knight,
For Love will still be lord of all.
...

Spanish

Su idilio fue una larga sonrisa a cuatro labios...
En el regazo cálido de rubia primavera
...

"I will to the King,
And offer him consolation in his trouble,
For that man there has set his teeth to die,
And being one that hates obedience,
...

Those who passed from this door
Were negroes
With centuries-old ethos permeating
Their swarthy bodies.
...

We must suffer, husband and father, we must suffer, daughter and son,
For the wrong we have taken part in and the wrong that we have seen done.
Let the bride of frivolous fashion, and of ease, be ashamed and dumb,
For I tell you the nations shall rule us who have let their children come!
...

When Klopstock England defied,
Uprose William Blake in his pride;
For old Nobodaddy aloft
. . . and belch'd and cough'd;
...

Never since English ships went out
To singe the beard of Spain,
Or English sea-dogs hunted death
Along the Spanish Main,
...

Spanish

¡Oh, tú que duermes tan hondo que no despiertas!
Milagrosas de vivas, milagrosas de muertas,
...

The moon stared hiding itself,
The night was sitting
Nude in the balcony
...

Ud Jayega Huns Akela,
Jug Darshan Ka Mela
Jaise Paat Gire Taruvar Se,
Milna Bahut Duhela
...

If by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd,
And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet
Fetter'd, in spite of pained loveliness;
Let us find out, if we must be constrain'd,
...

.
I watched a movie last night about World War 2,
and the nearly 350,000 allied soldiers
stranded and under fire at Dunkirk
...

FAIR stood the wind for France
When we our sails advance,
Nor now to prove our chance
   Longer will tarry;
...

Fareweel to a' our Scottish fame,
Fareweel our ancient glory;
Fareweel ev'n to the Scottish name,
Sae famed in martial story!
...

AD M. T. CICERONEM.
CATUL EP. 50.

Disertissime Romuli nepotum,
...

SET in this stormy Northern sea,
Queen of these restless fields of tide,
England! what shall men say of thee,
Before whose feet the worlds divide?
...

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes
along a watery path of laurels and crystal lights.
The starless silence, fleeing
...

I will not try to reach again,
I will not set my sail alone,
To moor a boat bereft of men
At Yarnton's tiny docks of stone.
...

It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late
With long arrears to make good,
When the English began to hate.
...

'Twas Saltbush Bill, with his travelling sheep, was making his way to town;
He crossed them over the Hard Times Run, and he came to the Take 'Em Down;
He counted through at the boundary gate, and camped at the drafting yard:
For Stingy Smith, of the Hard Times Run, had hunted him rather hard.
...

This Sonnet is in the popular Petrarchan Form

I behold thy love as beautiful thing,
In my wrecked heart, a pleasure garden,
...

Who was frightened by a Passing Motor, and was brought to Reason

"Oh murder! What was that, Papa!"
"My child, It was a Motor-Car,
...

I have remembered beauty in the night,
Against black silences I waked to see
A shower of sunlight over Italy
And green Ravello dreaming on her height;
...

Shall I get drunk or cut myself a piece of cake,
a pasty Syrian with a few words of English
or the Turk who says she is a princess--she dances
apparently by levitation? Or Marcelle, Parisienne
...

Not in a climate near the sun
Did the cloud with its trailing fringes float,
Whence, white as the down of an angel's plume,
Fell the snow of her brow and throat.
...

Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees,
(If our loves remain)
In an English lane,
By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies.
...

Rubaiyat (1)Wake! For The Sun....Omar Khayyam


Wake! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flight
...

MILTON! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
   England hath need of thee: she is a fen
   Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
...

Reiterative poetry it seems proper to say
Has seen little sunlight in present day.
Yet it represents in all regard,
The beginning as English language broached forward.
...

Since all, that beat about in Nature's range,
Or veer or vanish ; why should'st thou remain
The only constant in a world of change,
O yearning THOUGHT ! that liv'st but in the brain ?
...

I
I have loved England, dearly and deeply,
Since that first morning, shining and pure,
The white cliffs of Dover I saw rising steeply
...

Spanish

La luna es pálida y triste, la luna es exangüe y yerta.
La media luna figúraseme un suave perfil de muerta…
...

There are people after Jesus.
They have seen the signs.
Quick, let's hide Him.
Let's think; carpenter,
...

No spot of earth where men have so fiercely for ages of time
Fought and survived and cancelled each other,
...

'But that was nothing to what things came out
From the sea-caves of Criccieth yonder.'
'What were they? Mermaids? dragons? ghosts?'
'Nothing at all of any things like that.'
...

The Latin speeches ended, the English thus began
Hail native language, that by sinews weak
Didst move my first endeavouring tongue to speak,
And mad'st imperfect words with childish trips,
...

Come, let us rejoice in James Joyce, in the greatness of this poet,
king, and king of poets
For he is our poor dead king, he is the monarch and Caesar of English,
he is the veritable King of the King's English
...

1914-18


The Garden called Gethsemane
...

Red lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
...

There's a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield,
And the ricks stand gray to the sun,
Singing: -- "Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the clover,
And your English summer's done."
...

AUSONIUS.

Vane, quid affectas faciem mihi ponere, pictor,
Ignotamque oculis solicitare manu?
...

Spanish

Debout sur mon orgueil je veux montrer au soir
L'envers de mon manteau endeuillé de tes charmes,
...

Wide lies Australia! The seas that surround her
Flow for her unity – all states in one.
Never has Custom nor Tyranny bound her –
Never was conquest so peacefully won.
...

O, Brignall banks are wild and fair,
And Greta woods are green,
And you may gather garlands there,
Would grace a summer queen:
...

The Silver Birch is a dainty lady,
She wears a satin gown;
...

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.
...

A sea of living crimson caught my eye
Of oriental splendour, out of place
Beneath the pastel of an English sky
Where soft-toned pastures etch the tranquil face
...

Spanish

La princesita hipsipilo, la vibrátil filigrana,
—Princesita ojos turquesas esculpida en porcelana—
...

AUSONIUS EPIG.

Emptis quod libris tibi bibliotheca referta est,
Doctum et grammaticum te, philomuse, putas.
...