To jump directly to a poem, click its name in this list on the right:

Shakespeare's Sonnet Number 55
Shakespeare's Sonnet Number 116
Shakespeare's Sonnet Number 138
William Wordsworth - The Small Celandine
Dylan Thomas - Do not go gentle into that good night
Ron Carnell - She Wears It Like A Mask
Robert Frost - The Road Not Taken

Shakespeare's Sonnet Number 55

Not marble, nor the guilded monuments,
Of Princes shall out live this powerful rime,
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Then unswept stone, besmeer'd with sluttish time.
When wastefull warre Statues over-turne,
And broiles roote out the worke of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword, nor warres quick fire shall burne
the living record of your memory.
Gainst death, and all oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth, your praise shall stil finde room,
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That weare this world out to the ending doome.
So til the judgement that your selfe arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers eies.

Shakespeare's Sonnet Number 116

Let me not to the marriage of true mindes
Admit impediments, love is not love
Which alters when it alteration findes,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever fixed marke
That lookes on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandring barke,
Whose worths unknowne, although his higth be taken.
Lov's not Times foole, though rosie lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickles compasse come,
Love alters not with his breefe houres and weekes,
But beares it out even to the edge of doome:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Shakespeare's Sonnet Number 138

When my love sweares that she is made of truth,
I do beleeve her though I know she lyes,
That she might thinke me some untutured youth,
Unlearned in the worlds false subtilties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinkes me young,
Although she knowes my dayes are past the best,
Simply I credit her false speaking tongue,
On both sides thus is simple truth supprest;
But wherefore sayes she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O loves best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love, loves not to have yeares told.
Therefore I lye with her, and she with me,
And in our faults by lyes we flattered be.

William Wordsworth - The Small Celandine

There is a flower, the Lesser Celandine,
That shrinks, like many more, from cold and rain;
And, the first moment that the sun may shine,
Bright as the sun himself, 'tis out again!

When hailstones have been falling swarm on swarm,
Or blasts the green field and the trees distrest,
Oft have I seen it muffled up from harm,
In close self-shelter, like a Thing at rest.

But lately, one rough day, this Flower I passed,
And recognised it, though an altered Form,
Now standing forth an offering to the Blast,
And buffetted at will by Rain and Storm.

I stopped, and said with inly muttered voice,
'It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold;
This neither is its courage nor its choice,
But its necessity in being old.

'The sunshine may not bless it, nor the dew;
It cannot help itself in its decay;
Stiff in its members, withered, changed of hue.
And, in my spleen, I smiled that it was grey.

To be a Prodigal's Favourite - then, worse truth,
A Miser's Pensioner - behold our lot!
O Man! that from thy fair and shining youth
Age might but take the things Youth needed not!

Dylan Thomas - Do not go gentle into that good night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men, who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Ron Carnell - She Wears It Like A Mask

She wears it like a mask
Each time she comes to me,
A shroud to cloud my eyes,
A veil I cannot see.

But her mask is just a ruse,
An aspect of her game,
It hides the girl behind
The fiction of her name.

That name is but a symbol
Of the role she plays for me,
A promise unfulfilled,
A hope of what could be.

Removing all between us,
Clothed only in her name,
Her touch is my illusion,
Setting heart and loin aflame.

A mirage within a dream,
A ghost of fragile youth,
She is fantasy. And fire.
And beauty born of truth.

Her name is but a name,
A symbol, just a mask -
Concealing what I see,
Revealing what I ask.

Robert Frost - The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.