| Question | Answer |
| A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. | Leda and the Swan W.B. Yeats |
| How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies? | Leda and the Swan W.b. yeats |
| A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead. | leda and the swan w.b. yeats |
| Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop? | leda and the swan w.b. yeats |
| True Ease in Writing comes from Art, not Chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
‘Tis not enough no Harshness gives Offence,
The Sound must seem an Echo to the Sense.
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows, | True Ease in Writing Comes from Art, Not Chance by Alexander Pope |
| And the smooth Stream in smoother Numbers flows;
But when loud Surges lash the sounding Shore,
The hoarse, rough Verse should like the Torrent roar.
When Ajax strives, some Rock’s vast Weight to throw,
The line too labors, and the Words move slow; | True Ease in Writing Comes from Art, Not Chance by Alexander Pope |
| No so, when swift Camilla scours the Plain,
Flies o’er th’ unbending Corn, and skims along the Main.
Hear how Timotheus‘ varied Lays surprise,
And bid Alternate Passions fall and rise! | True Ease in Writing Comes from Art, Not Chance by Alexander Pope |
| While, at each Change, the Son of Lybian Jove
Now burns with Glory, and then melts with Love;
Now his fierce Eyes with sparkling Fury glow;
Now Sighs steal out, and Tears begin to flow: | True Ease in Writing Comes from Art, Not Chance by Alexander Pope |
| Persians and Greeks like Turns of Nature found,
And the World’s Victor stood subdued by Sound!
The Pow’rs of Music all our Hearts allow;
And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now. | True Ease in Writing Comes from Art, Not Chance by Alexander Pope |
| Who will go drive with Fergus now, And pierce the deep wood's woven shade, And dance upon the level shore? Young man, lift up your russet brow, And lift your tender eyelids, maid, And brood on hopes and fear no more. | Who Goes with fergus w.b. yeats |
| And no more turn aside and brood Upon love's bitter mystery; For Fergus rules the brazen cars, And rules the shadows of the wood, And the white breast of the dim sea And all dishevelled wandering stars. | who goes with fergus w.b. yeats |
| THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? | God's Grandeur Gerard Manley Hopkins |
| Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. | God's Grandeur Gerard Manley Hopkins |
| And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went | God's Grandeur Gerard Manley Hopkins |
| Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. | God's Grandeur Gerard Manley Hopkins |
| We real cool. We Left school. We
Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon. | We Real Cool Gwendolyn Brooks |
| I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light. | Acquainted with the night Robert Frost |
| I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. | Acquainted with the night Robert Frost |
| I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street, | Acquainted with the night Robert Frost |
| But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky | Acquainted with the night Robert Frost |
| Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night. | Acquainted with the night Robert Frost |
| SINCE there's no help, come let us kiss and part;
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me,
And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart
That thus so cleanly I myself can free; | Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part Michael Drayton |
| Shake hands forever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain. | Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part Michael Drayton |
| Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes, | Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part Michael Drayton |
| Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou mightst him yet recover. | Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part Michael Drayton |
| COME live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield. | Passionate Shepherd to his love Christopher Marlowe |
| There will we sit upon the rocks 5
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals. | Passionate Shepherd to his love Christopher Marlowe |
| There will I make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies, 10
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle. | Passionate Shepherd to his love Christopher Marlowe |
| A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
Fair linèd slippers for the cold, 15
With buckles of the purest gold. | Passionate Shepherd to his love Christopher Marlowe |
| A belt of straw and ivy buds
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my Love. | Passionate Shepherd to his love Christopher Marlowe |
| Thy silver dishes for thy meat
As precious as the gods do eat,
Shall on an ivory table be
Prepared each day for thee and me. | Passionate Shepherd to his love Christopher Marlowe |
| The shepherd swains shall dance and sing 25
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my Love. | Passionate Shepherd to his love Christopher Marlowe |
| If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every Shepherd’s tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move,
To live with thee, and be thy love. | The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd Sir Walter Raleigh |
| Time drives the flocks from field to fold,
When Rivers rage and Rocks grow cold,
And Philomel becometh dumb,
The rest complains of cares to come. | The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd Sir Walter Raleigh |
| The flowers do fade, and wanton fields,
To wayward winter reckoning yields,
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall. | The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd Sir Walter Raleigh |
| Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of Roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten:
In folly ripe, in reason rotten. | The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd Sir Walter Raleigh |
| Thy belt of straw and Ivy buds,
The Coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love. | The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd Sir Walter Raleigh |
| But could youth last, and love still breed,
Had joys no date, nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee, and be thy love. | The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd Sir Walter Raleigh |
| Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying; And this same flower that smiles today Tomorrow will be dying. | To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time Robert Herrick |
| The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, The higher he's a-getting, The sooner will his race be run, And nearer he's to setting. | To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time Robert Herrick |
| That age is best which is the first, When youth and blood are warmer; But being spent, the worse, and worst Times still succeed the former. | To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time Robert Herrick |
| Then be not coy, but use your time, And while ye may, go marry; For having lost but once your prime, You may forever tarry. | To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time Robert Herrick |
| Go, lovely Rose—
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be. | Go, Lovely Rose Edmund Walker |
| Tell her that’s young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung
In deserts where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died. | Go, Lovely Rose Edmund Walker |
| Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired:
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired. | Go, Lovely Rose Edmund Walker |
| Then die—that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee;
How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair! | Go, Lovely Rose Edmund Walker |
| Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide | To His Coy Mistress Andrew Marvell |
| Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow. | To His Coy Mistress Andrew Marvell |
| An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart. | To His Coy Mistress Andrew Marvell |
| For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate. | To His Coy Mistress Andrew Marvell |
| But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound | To His Coy Mistress Andrew Marvell |
| My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace. | To His Coy Mistress Andrew Marvell |
| Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour, | To His Coy Mistress Andrew Marvell |
| Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life. | To His Coy Mistress Andrew Marvell |
| Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run. | To His Coy Mistress Andrew Marvell |
| At length, by so much importunity press'd,
Take, C——, at once, the inside of my breast;
This stupid indiff'rence so often you blame,
Is not owing to nature, to fear, or to shame:
I am not as cold as a virgin in lead, | The Lover: A Ballad Lady Mary Wortley Montago |
| Nor is Sunday's sermon so strong in my head:
I know but too well how time flies along,
That we live but few years, and yet fewer are young. | The Lover: A Ballad Lady Mary Wortley Montago |
| But I hate to be cheated, and never will buy
Long years of repentance for moments of joy,
Oh! was there a man (but where shall I find
Good sense and good nature so equally join'd?) | The Lover: A Ballad Lady Mary Wortley Montago |
| Would value his pleasure, contribute to mine;
Not meanly would boast, nor would lewdly design;
Not over severe, yet not stupidly vain,
For I would have the power, tho' not give the pain. | The Lover: A Ballad Lady Mary Wortley Montago |
| No pedant, yet learned; no rake-helly gay,
Or laughing, because he has nothing to say;
To all my whole sex obliging and free,
Yet never be fond of any but me; | The Lover: A Ballad Lady Mary Wortley Montago |
| In public preserve the decorum that's just,
And shew in his eyes he is true to his trust;
Then rarely approach, and respectfully bow,
But not fulsomely pert, nor yet foppishly low. | The Lover: A Ballad Lady Mary Wortley Montago |
| But when the long hours of public are past,
And we meet with champagne and a chicken at last,
May ev'ry fond pleasure that moment endear;
Be banish'd afar both discretion and fear! | The Lover: A Ballad Lady Mary Wortley Montago |
| Forgetting or scorning the airs of the crowd,
He may cease to be formal, and I to be proud.
Till lost in the joy, we confess that we live,
And he may be rude, and yet I may forgive. | The Lover: A Ballad Lady Mary Wortley Montago |
| And that my delight may be solidly fix'd,
Let the friend and the lover be handsomely mix'd;
In whose tender bosom my soul may confide,
Whose kindness can soothe me, whose counsel can guide. | The Lover: A Ballad Lady Mary Wortley Montago |
| rom such a dear lover as here I describe,
No danger should fright me, no millions should bribe;
But till this astonishing creature I know,
As I long have liv'd chaste, I will keep myself so. | The Lover: A Ballad Lady Mary Wortley Montago |
| I never will share with the wanton coquette,
Or be caught by a vain affectation of wit.
The toasters and songsters may try all their art,
But never shall enter the pass of my heart. | The Lover: A Ballad Lady Mary Wortley Montago |
| I loath the lewd rake, the dress'd fopling despise:
Before such pursuers the nice virgin flies:
And as Ovid has sweetly in parable told,
We harden like trees, and like rivers grow cold. | The Lover: A Ballad Lady Mary Wortley Montago |
| THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape | Ode on a Grecian Urn John Keats |
| Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? | Ode on a Grecian Urn John Keats |
| Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: | Ode on a Grecian Urn John Keats |
| Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, | Ode on a Grecian Urn John Keats |
| Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! | Ode on a Grecian Urn John Keats |
| Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love! | Ode on a Grecian Urn John Keats |
| For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. | Ode on a Grecian Urn John Keats |
| Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore, | Ode on a Grecian Urn John Keats |
| Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. | Ode on a Grecian Urn John Keats |
| O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! | Ode on a Grecian Urn John Keats |
| When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.' | Ode on a Grecian Urn John Keats |
| My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, | Ode to a Nightingale JOHN KEATS |
| But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease. | Ode to a Nightingale JOHN KEATS |
| O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South, | Ode to a Nightingale JOHN KEATS |
| Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim: | Ode to a Nightingale JOHN KEATS |
| Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, | Ode to a Nightingale JOHN KEATS |
| Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. | Ode to a Nightingale JOHN KEATS |
| Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night, | Ode to a Nightingale JOHN KEATS |
| And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. | Ode to a Nightingale JOHN KEATS |
| I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; | Ode to a Nightingale JOHN KEATS |
| White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. | Ode to a Nightingale JOHN KEATS |
| Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die, | Ode to a Nightingale JOHN KEATS |
| To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod. | Ode to a Nightingale JOHN KEATS |
| Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path | Ode to a Nightingale JOHN KEATS |
| Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. | Ode to a Nightingale JOHN KEATS |
| Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf. | Ode to a Nightingale JOHN KEATS |
| Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep? | Ode to a Nightingale JOHN KEATS |
| In Brueghel's great picture, The Kermess,
the dancers go round, they go round and
around, the squeal and the blare and the
tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles
tipping their bellies (round as the thick-
sided glasses whose wash they impound) | The Dance William Carlos Williams |
| their hips and their bellies off balance to turn them. Kicking and rolling about the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those
shanks must be sound to bear up under such rollicking measures, prance as they dance in Brueghel's great picture, The Kermess. | The Dance William Carlos Williams |
| Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird. | I Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Wallace Stevens |
| I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds. | II Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Wallace Stevens |
| The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime. | III Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Wallace Stevens |
| A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one. | IV Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Wallace Stevens |
| I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after. | V Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Wallace Stevens |
| Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause. | VI Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Wallace Stevens |
| O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you? | VII Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Wallace Stevens |
| I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know. | VIII Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Wallace Stevens |
| When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles. | IX Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Wallace Stevens |
| At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply. | X Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Wallace Stevens |
| He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds. | XI Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Wallace Stevens |
| The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying. | XII Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Wallace Stevens |
| It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs. | XIII Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Wallace Stevens |
| I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. | The Negro Speaks of Rivers Langston Hughes |
| My soul has grown deep like the rivers. | The Negro Speaks of Rivers Langston Hughes |
| I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. | The Negro Speaks of Rivers Langston Hughes |
| I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset | The Negro Speaks of Rivers Langston Hughes |
| I've known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. | The Negro Speaks of Rivers Langston Hughes |
| By the road to the contagious hospital under the surge of the blue mottled clouds driven from the northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the waste of broad, muddy fields brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen | Spring and All William Carlos Williams |
| patches of standing water the scattering of tall trees | Spring and All William Carlos Williams |
| All along the road the reddish purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy stuff of bushes and small trees with dead, brown leaves under them leafless vines | Spring and All William Carlos Williams |
| They enter the new world naked, cold, uncertain of all save that they enter. All about them the cold, familiar wind | Spring and All William Carlos Williams |
| Now the grass, tomorrow the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf One by one objects are defined- It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf | Spring and All William Carlos Williams |
| But now the stark dignity of entrance-Still, the profound change has come upon them: rooted, they grip down and begin to awaken | Spring and All William Carlos Williams |
| Because tomorrow
I will turn 420 in dog years,
I have decided to take myself
for a long walk on the path around the lake, | Care and feeding Billy Collins |
| and when I get back to the house,
I will jump up on my chest
and lick my nose, my ears and eyelids
while I tell myself again and again to get down. | Care and feeding Billy Collins |
| Then I will replenish my bowl
with cold water from the tap
and hand myself a biscuit from the jar
which I will hold gingerly in my teeth. | Care and feeding Billy Collins |
| Then I will make three circles
and lie down on the wood floor at my feet
and close my eyes
as I type all morning and into the afternoon, | Care and feeding Billy Collins |
| checking every once in a while
to make sure I am still there,
reaching down with one hand
to stroke my furry, esteemed, venerable head. | Care and feeding Billy Collins |
| A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The was deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow. | The Journey of the Magi TS Eliot |
| There were times we regretted The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet. Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women | The Journey of the Magi TS Eliot |
| And the night-fires gong out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.:
A hard time we had of it. | The Journey of the Magi TS Eliot |
| At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly. | The Journey of the Magi TS Eliot |
| Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow. | The Journey of the Magi TS Eliot |
| Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel, Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver, And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued, | The Journey of the Magi TS Eliot |
| And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for | The Journey of the Magi TS Eliot |
| Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. | The Journey of the Magi TS Eliot |
| We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death. | The Journey of the Magi TS Eliot |
| The Lightning is a yellow Fork
From Tables in the sky
By inadvertent fingers dropt
The awful Cutlery | The Lightning is a yellow Fork Emily Dickinson |
| Of mansion never quite disclosed
And never quite concealed
The Apparatus of the Dark
To ignorance revealed. | The Lightning is a yellow Fork Emily Dickinson |
| Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; | The Road Not Taken Robert Frost |
| Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, | The Road Not Taken Robert Frost |
| And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. | The Road Not Taken Robert Frost |
| I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. | The Road Not Taken Robert Frost |
| The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; | The World is Too Much With Us William Wordsworth |
| The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; | The World is Too Much With Us William Wordsworth |
| So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn. | The World is Too Much With Us William Wordsworth |
| I had come to the house, in a cave of trees,
Facing a sheer sky.
Everything moved,—a bell hung ready to strike,
Sun and reflection wheeled by. | Medusa Louise Bogan |
| When the bare eyes were before me
And the hissing hair,
Held up at a window, seen through a door.
The stiff bald eyes, the serpents on the forehead
Formed in the air. | Medusa Louise Bogan |
| This is a dead scene forever now.
Nothing will ever stir.
The end will never brighten it more than this,
Nor the rain blur. | Medusa Louise Bogan |
| The water will always fall, and will not fall,
And the tipped bell make no sound.
The grass will always be growing for hay
Deep on the ground. | Medusa Louise Bogan |
| And I shall stand here like a shadow
Under the great balanced day,
My eyes on the yellow dust, that was lifting in the wind,
And does not drift away. | Medusa Louise Bogan |
| Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. | Nothing Gold Can Stay Robert Frost |
| Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, | The second coming william butler yeats |
| The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. | The second coming william butler yeats |
| Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; | The second coming william butler yeats |
| A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds. | The second coming william butler yeats |
| The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? | The second coming william butler yeats |
| I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it-- A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot A paperweight, My face a featureless, fine Jew linen. | Lady Lazarus sylvia plath |
| Peel off the napkin O my enemy. Do I terrify?-- The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth? The sour breath Will vanish in a day. Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be At home on me | Lady Lazarus sylvia plath |
| And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three. What a trash To annihilate each decade. What a million filaments. The peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see | Lady Lazarus sylvia plath |
| Them unwrap me hand and foot-- The big strip tease. Gentlemen, ladies These are my hands My knees. I may be skin and bone, Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman. The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident. | Lady Lazarus sylvia plath |
| The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut As a seashell. They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels li | Lady Lazarus sylvia plath |
| It's easy enough to do it in a cell. It's easy enough to do it and stay put. It's the theatrical Comeback in broad day To the same place, the same face, the same brute Amused shout: 'A miracle!' That knocks me out. There is a charge | Lady Lazarus sylvia plath |
| For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart-- It really goes. And there is a charge, a very large charge For a word or a touch Or a bit of blood Or a piece of my hair or my clothes. So, so, Herr Doktor. So, Herr Enemy. I am y | Lady Lazarus sylvia plath |
| That melts to a shriek. I turn and burn. Do not think I underestimate your great concern. Ash, ash-- You poke and stir. Flesh, bone, there is nothing there | Lady Lazarus sylvia plath |
| My father liked them separate, one there,
one here (allá y aquí), as if aware
that words might cut in two his daughter’s heart
(el corazón) and lock the alien part
to what he was—his memory, his name
(su nombre)—with a key he could not claim. | Billingual/Bilingue Rhina Espaillat |
| “English outside this door, Spanish inside,”
he said, “y basta.” But who can divide
the world, the word (mundo y palabra) from
any child? I knew how to be dumb
and stubborn (testaruda); late, in bed,
I hoarded secret syllables I read | Billingual/Bilingue Rhina Espaillat |
| until my tongue (mi lengua) learned to run
where his stumbled. And still the heart was one. I like to think he knew that, even when, proud (orgulloso) of his daughter’s pen,
he stood outside mis versos, half in fear of words he loved but wanted not to h | Billingual/Bilingue Rhina Espaillat |
| My black face fades, hiding inside the black granite. I said I wouldn't, dammit: No tears. I'm stone. I'm flesh. My clouded reflection eyes me like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. I turn this way--the stone lets me go. | Facing It Yusef Komunyakan |
| I turn that way--I'm inside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial again, depending on the light to make a difference. I go down the 58,022 names, half-expecting to find my own in letters like smoke. I touch the name Andrew Johnson; | Facing It Yusef Komunyakan |
| I see the booby trap's white flash. Names shimmer on a woman's blouse but when she walks away the names stay on the wall. Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's wings cutting across my stare. The sky. A plane in the sky. | Facing It Yusef Komunyakan |
| A white vet's image floats closer to me, then his pale eyes look through mine. I'm a window. He's lost his right arm inside the stone. In the black mirror a woman's trying to erase names: No, she's brushing a boy's hair. | Facing It Yusef Komunyakan |
| My three sisters are sitting
on rocks of black obsidian.
For the first time, in this light, I can see who they are. | Women Adrienne Rich |
| My first sister is sewing her costume for the procession.
She is going as the Transparent lady
and all her nerves will be visible. | Women Adrienne Rich |
| My second sister is also sewing,
at the seam over her heart which has never healed entirely,
At last, she hopes, this tightness in her chest will ease. | Women Adrienne Rich |
| My third sister is gazing
at a dark-red crust spreading westward far out on the sea.
Her stockings are torn but she is beautiful. | Women Adrienne Rich |
| That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, | Sailing to Byzantium W.B. Yeats |
| Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. | Sailing to Byzantium W.B. Yeats |
| An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, | Sailing to Byzantium W.B. Yeats |
| Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium. | Sailing to Byzantium W.B. Yeats |
| O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. | Sailing to Byzantium W.B. Yeats |
| Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity. | Sailing to Byzantium W.B. Yeats |
| Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing | Sailing to Byzantium W.B. Yeats |
| There ought to be capital punishment for cars
that run over rabbits and drive into dogs
and commit the unspeakable, unpardonable crime
of killing a kitty cat still in his prime. | Thoughts on Capital Punishment Rod McKuen |
| Those hurrying headlights coming out of the dark
that scatter the scampering squirrels in the park
should await the best jury that one might compose
of fatherless chipmunks and husbandless does. | Thoughts on Capital Punishment Rod McKuen |
| And then found guilty, after too fair a trial
should be caged in a cage with a hyena's smile
or maybe an elephant with an elephant gun
should shoot out his eyes when the verdict is done. | Thoughts on Capital Punishment Rod McKuen |
| There ought to be something, something that's fair
to avenge Mrs. Badger as she waits in her lair
for her husband who lies with his guts spilling out
cause he didn't know what automobiles were about. | Thoughts on Capital Punishment Rod McKuen |
| Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead. | Traveling Through the Dark William Stafford |
| By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly. | Traveling Through the Dark William Stafford |
| My fingers touching her side brought me the reason—
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated | Traveling Through the Dark William Stafford |
| The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen. | Traveling Through the Dark William Stafford |
