Pocket Posh 100 Classic Poems

By Jennifer Fox

Poetry can lift our spirits and inspire our daily lives. William Blake's "The Tyger," Emily Dickinson's "Hope Is the Thing with Feathers," William Wordsworth's "The World Is Too Much with Us," and John Keats's "A Thing of Beauty" (from Endymion) are among the classic poems collected in this pocket-sized edition. Now you can readily spend a few moments each day with these timeless verses because Pocket Posh 100 Classic Poems fits easily into any size bag, tote, or briefcase. William Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, John Keats, Alfred Tennyson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Butler Yeats, Emily Bronte, Amy Lowell, Christina Rossetti, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edgar Allan Poe, Sara Teasdale, Lord Byron, and other gifted poets are all here in this portable edition of 100 classic verses.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
• Release date: Oct 9, 2012
• ISBN: 9781449423933

Book preview

1 The World Is Too Much with Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gather’d now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not.—Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

—William Wordsworth

2 Hope Is the Thing with Feathers

Hope is the thing with feathers—

That perches in the soul—

And sings the tune without the words—

And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—

And sore must be the storm—

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm—

I’ve heard it in the chillest land—

And on the strangest Sea—

Yet, never, in Extremity—

It asked a crumb—of Me.

—Emily Dickinson

3 This Is What You Shall Do (from Leaves of Grass)

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labors to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

—Walt Whitman

4 A Thing of Beauty [from Endymion]

A Thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing

A flowery band to bind us to the earth,

Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth

Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,

Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkned ways

Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,

Some shape of beauty moves away the pall

From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,

Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon

For simple sheep; and such are daffodils

With the green world they live in; and clear rills

That for themselves a cooling covert make

’Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,

Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:

And such too is the grandeur of the dooms

We have imagined for the mighty dead;

An endless fountain of immortal drink,

Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.

—John Keats

5 Flower in the Crannied Wall

Flower in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies,

I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,

Little flower—but if I could understand

What you are, root and all, and all in all,

I should know what God and man is.

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson

6 A Psalm of Life

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each to-morrow

Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave,