Welcome to Poems 4 free

A collection of poems free to use for whatever you want. Read, put on a card or mug, print on a t-shirt or just print off and share. Whatever you need a poem for you can find it at poems 4 free.

 

Love poems
Children poems
Children poems page 2
Friendship poems
Funeral poems
Funeral poems page 2
Short poems
Quotes and famous sayings
Quotes and famous sayings page 2
Poems A to Z
Funny poems

QUOTES FROM CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS

Quotes Count Grammont

Quotes From Memoirs of Louis XIV

Quotes From Christopher Columbus

THE JUMBLIES by Edward Lear

THE LAND OF STORY-BOOKS

THE POBBLE WHO HAS NO TOES by Edward Lear

Poems and poetry definitions

poem
• noun a literary composition in verse, typically concerned with the expression of feelings or imaginative description.

 

— ORIGIN Grek poema, variant of poiema ‘fiction, poem’, from poiein ‘create’.
Oxford English Dictionary

 

poem
Noun
1. a literary work, often in verse, usually dealing with emotional or descriptive themes in a rhythmic form
2. a literary work that is not in verse but deals with emotional or descriptive themes in a rhythmic form: a prose poem
3. anything like a poem in beauty or effect: his painting is a poem on creation [Greek poiema something created]
Collins Essential English Dictionary 2nd Edition 2006 © HarperCollins Publishers 2004, 2006

 

poem
1. an arrangement of words written or spoken: traditionally a rhythmical composition, sometimes rhymed, expressing experiences, ideas, or emotions in a style more concentrated, imaginative, and powerful than that of ordinary speech or prose: some poems are in meter, some in free verse
2. anything suggesting a poem in its effect

 

Etymology:
MFr poeme < L poema < Gr poiema, anything made, poem < poiein, to make < IE base *kwei-, to heap up, build, make > Sans cinoti, (he) arranges, OSlav ciniti, to arrange, form
Webster's New World College Dictionary Copyright © 2005 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

 

poetry
• noun 1 poems collectively or as a literary genre. 2 a quality of beauty and emotional intensity regarded as characteristic of poetry.
Oxford English Dictionary

 

Poems and poetry quotes

A poem should not mean
But be.
Archibald MacLeish 1892-1982: 'Ars Poetica' (1926)

 

Skilled or unskilled, we all scribble poems.
Horace 65-8 bc: Epistles

 

If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.
John Keats 1795-1821: letter to Taylor, 27 February 1818 All a poet can do today is warn.
Wilfred Owen 1893-1918: Poems (1963) preface (written 1918)

 

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being.
Robert Frost 1874-1963: Collected Poems (1939) 'The Figure a Poem Makes'

 

The difference between genuine poetry and the poetry of Dryden, Pope, and all their school, is briefly this: their poetry is conceived and composed in their wits, genuine poetry is conceived and composed in the soul.
Matthew Arnold 1822-88: Essays in Criticism (1888)

 

Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.
Gustave Flaubert 1821-80: letter to Louise Colet, 14 August 1853

 

Most people ignore most poetry
because
most poetry ignores most people.
Adrian Mitchell 1932- : Poems (1964)

 

Sir, what is poetry?
Why Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is.
Samuel Johnson 1709-84: James Boswell Life of Johnson (1791) 12 April 1776

 

Poems hand picked

Untitled poem - on travel

"It is a pleasant thing to roam abroad,
And gaze on scenes and objects strange and grand;
To sail in mighty ships o'er distant seas,
And roam the mountains of a foreign land."
Untitled, Eventide: A Series of Tales and Poems by Effie Afton

 

DID YOU EVER PLAY TAG WITH A TIGER?

Did you ever play tag with a tiger,
Or ever play boo with a bear;
Did you ever put rats in the rain-barrel
To give poor old Granny a scare?

 

It's fun to play tag with a tiger,
It's fun for the bear to say "boo,"
But if rats are found in the rain-barrel
Old Granny will put you in too.
The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymesby Leroy F. Jackson

Untitled poem - on work

"This work-day world, this work-day world,
How it doth plod along!"
Untitled, Eventide: A Series of Tales and Poems by Effie Afton

 © 2009 T Morphy.