This is one of my all time favourite poems. It stands the test of time despite references to events from the '70s and specifically Australian place names. It is very, very long, uses a lot of repetition and yet reads compulsively.

my friends.

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First Evening (Première Soirée)
by Arthur Rimbaud

Her clothes were almost off;
Outside, a curious tree
Beat a branch at the window
To see what it could see.

Perched on my enormous easy chair,
Half nude, she clasped her hands.
Her feet trembled on the floor,
As soft as they could be.

I watched as a ray of pale light,
Trapped in the tree outside,
Danced from her mouth
To her breast, like a fly on a flower.

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz
Or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off
I love you as certain dark things to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul

I love you as the plant that never blooms
But carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
Thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
Risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body

Untamed temerity

Broke the morning air with an uneven stride,
stole three kisses from a bachelor’s loving bride.
Surely I was happy I had nothing of worth to hide,
been working so hard to turn down my secular pride.

Wave after wave kept rolling on their wetted sand,
kept my powder dry, my canon close to my left hand.
the nihilistic brotherhood of toff’s couldn’t understand,
you pluck no other’s strings if you’re a one man bland.

black room
and beyond white window
the thin shade
blurring the shapes
drifting

overcast
and settling into the low
front moving
slow

dialing up the numbers
with easy fingers
and looking at the
crack in the wall travelling
from the doorframe
to the lamp hanging
down

not expecting
me
not expecting you

ringing
ringing
ringing

haps I should have learned to swim better
maybe it wasn't so smart to paddle out
in a fifteen foot cyclone surf
on a foam board
Mum and Dad
will be so mad
I wonder if
I'll get in trouble?
They say your life
flashes before
your eyes
when you die
this shouldn't
take long,
I'm only
twelve.

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Submitted by Esker on Wed, 2013-01-23 04:48
Rain is speaking
beneath the sky
a paper roams
indifferent filling dark
eyes on font

subtle soft like chalk

a dampness clinging
full of illusions

the pains of growth
healed and broken

I remember our river
chilled with the spring
the slush flowing swift
like blossoms of winter

gardens of lush
knowing

By Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know
His house is in the village though
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake

Here the walker suddenly meets the giant
oak tree, like a petrified elk whose crown is
furlongs wide before the September ocean's
murky green fortress.

Northern storm. The season when rowanberry
clusters swell. Awake in the darkness, listen:
constellations stamping in their stalls, high
over tree tops

Home-Thoughts, from Abroad a poem by Robert Browning.
It was written in 1845 while Browning was on a visit to northern Italy,

OH, to be in England
Now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!