what is the best simple poem you have ever read?

Answer 1

Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost
used in the movie The Outsiders.

Answer 2

I'm not a big poetry fan but I LOVE this poem by Billy Collins. It's called The Country:

The Country

I wondered about you
when you told me
never to leave a box
of wooden strike-anywhere matches
just lying around the house
because the mice might get into them
and start a fire.

But your face was absolutely straight
when you twisted the lid down
on the round tin
where the matches, you said,
are always stowed.

Who could sleep that night?
Who could whisk away the thought
of the one unlikely mouse
padding along a cold water pipe
behind the floral wallpaper,
gripping a single wooden match
between the needles of his teeth.

Who could not see him rounding a corner,
the blue tip scratching
against a rough-hewn beam,
the sudden flare-- and the creature
for one bright shining moment
suddenly thrust ahead of his time,
now a fire-starter,
now a torch-bearer in a forgotten ritual,
little brown Druid
illuminating some ancient night.

And who could fail to notice,
lit up in the blazing insulation,
the tiny looks of wonderment
on the faces of his fellow mice,
one-time inhabitants
of what once was
your house in the country.

Answer 3

A Psalm of Life
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Answer 4

The False Heart, by Hillaire Belloc.

I said to Heart, "How goes it?"
Heart replied: "Right as a Ribstone Pippin!"
But it lied.

You can't get much more simple than that... except for

On the Antiquity of Microbes
Adam
Had'em

Answer 5

The Red Wheelbarrow--William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

Answer 6

Note, there's plenty of disturbing imagery in these:

Songs of Innocence and Experience, William Blake - most of that is simple.

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This Be the Verse, Philip Larkin (note, cursing aplenty, but it's still a fantastic and short poem - linked it due to the F-bomb): http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/this-be-the-verse/

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The Colonel, Carolyn Forche (quoted here, only change being the F-bomb cut out for the sake of Y! Answers):

What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go f--- themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of the wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.

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And for something just as strange and exquisite, but a little less morbid, some unfinished verse from Sappho:

He seems to me equal to gods that man
whoever he is who opposite you
sits and listens close
to your sweet speaking

and lovely laughing---oh it
puts the heart in my chest on wings
for when I look at you, even a moment, no speaking
is left in me

no: tongue breaks and thin
fire is racing under skin
and in eyes no sight and drumming
fills ears

and cold sweat holds me and shaking
grips me all, greener than grass
I am and dead---or almost
I seem to me.

But all is to be dared, because even a person of poverty