LIBRARY BLOG

The Poetry Nook

Classic Poems About Animals

This summer we are celebrating all our dear animal friends with our Tails and Tales Summer Reading Program. Here, at the Poetry Nook, we are going to join in festivities by sharing with you four charming classic animal poems.

If you haven’t already, be sure to sign up for the reading program at mytpl.org/srp or stop by any of the nine library branches to do so. For every five days you reading in your library books for at least twenty minutes you earn an entry into our grand prize raffle. For kids in kindergarten through sixth grade there will be a bicycle raffle sponsored by the Kiwanis Club of Houma and the Friends of the Terrebonne Public Library, and seventh graders to adults will be entered in for a chance to win a Kindle Fire Tablet.

I hope the critter poems inspire you to write some of your own. If they do, I would love to read them. Please send me your work at nmagola@mytpl.org.

The Crocodile

 

How doth the little crocodile
     Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
     On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin,
     How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
     With gently smiling jaws!

Lewis Carroll

Crocodile
Eagle

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

-Alfred Lord Tennyson

The Dog

 

The truth I do not stretch or shove
When I state that the dog is full of love.
I’ve also found, by actual test,
A wet dog is the lovingest.

 

-Ogden Nash 

Dog in Lake
Cat

She Sights a Bird – She Chuckles

She sights a Bird—she chuckles—
She flattens—then she crawls—
She runs without the look of feet—
Her eyes increase to Balls—

Her Jaws stir—twitching—hungry—
Her Teeth can hardly stand—
She leaps, but Robin leaped the first—
Ah, Pussy, of the Sand …

 

-Emily Dickinson

Recommended Books

– Naomi Hurtienne Magola, Youth Services Librarian