Find and share the perfect poems.
I kissed a kiss in youth Upon a dead man’s brow; And that was long ago,— And I’m a grown man now, It’s lain there in the dust, Thirty years and more;— My lips that set a light At a dead man’s door.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on July 15, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
Keats’ Birthday
Time sitting on the throne of Memory
Bade all her subject Days, the past had known
Arise and say what thing gave them renown
Unforgetable, ‘Rising from the sea,
I gave the Genoese his dream to be;’
‘I saw the Corsican’s Guards swept down;’
‘Colonies I made free from a tyrant’s crown;’—
So each Day told its immortality.
Father John’s bread was made of rye,
Felicite’s bread was white;
Father John loved the sun noon-high,
Felicite, the moon at night.
Father John drank wine with his bread;
Felicite drank sweet milk;
Father John loved flowers, pungent and red;
Felicite, lilies soft as silk.
Heart free, hand free,
Blue above, brown under,
All the world to me
Is a place of wonder.
Sun shine, moon shine,
Stars, and winds a-blowing.
All into this heart of mine
Flowing, flowing, flowing!