Poetry Archives

A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

Christina Rossetti

A diamond or a coal?
  A diamond, if you please:
Who cares about a clumsy coal
  Beneath the summer trees?

A diamond or a coal?
  A coal, sir, if you please:
One comes to care about the coal
  What time the waters freeze.

Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book | 1893

What are tags?
Tags, sometimes called “folksonomies,” are words that describe or categorize a poem, like “20th century modernism” or “Italian sonnet”. Tags can help you find poems that have something in common, based on how other people classify them.

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