The Compact Muse

This post is a collection of poems that I like and that have nothing else in common except that they are short.

There was a young lady named Bright,
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day,
In a relative way,
And returned on the previous night.
— Anon.

This Humanist whom no beliefs constrained
Grew so broad-minded he was scatter-brained.
— J. V. Cunningham.

Love without hope as when the young bird catcher
Swept off his tall hat to the squire’s own daughter
So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly
Singing about her head as she drove by.
–Robert Graves

Here lies the preacher, judge, and poet, Peter,
Who broke the laws of God, and man, and metre.
— Lord Jeffries

The old dog barks backward without getting up.
I can remember when he was a pup.
— Robert Frost

I stole forth dimly in the dripping pause
Between two downpours to see what there was.
And a masked moon had spread down compass rays
To a cone mountain in the midnight haze,
As if the final estimate were hers,
The mountain stood exalted in its place.
So love will take between the hands a face . .
–Robert Frost

Hi! handsome hunting man
Fire your little gun.
Bang! Now the animal is dead and dumb and done.
Nevermore to peep again, creep again, leap again,
Eat or sleep or drink again. Oh, what fun!”
— Walter de la Mare

If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,
When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,
One may say, “He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm,
But he could do little for them; and now he is gone.”
—Thomas Hardy

No dust have I to cover me,
My grave no man may show;
My tomb is this unending sea,
And I lie far below.
My fate, O stranger, was to drown;
And where it was the ship went down
Is what the sea-birds know.
— Edwin Arlington Robinson

Animula vagula blandula
Hospes comesque corporis
Quae nunc abibis in loca?
Pallidula rigida nudula
Nec ut soles dabis ioco
–Hadrian

Underneath this sable hearse
Lies the subject of all verse
Sydney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother
Death, ere thou hast slain another,
Fair and learned and good as she
Time shall throw a dart at thee.
–William Browne of Tavistock