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Behind a pot of ferns the wagging clock Tells me the hour's word, the neural meaning Flies on the shafted disk, declaims the morning And tells the windy weather in the cock. Some let me make you of the meadow's signs; The signal grass that tells me all I know Breaks with the wormy winter through the eye. Some let me tell you of the raven's sins. Especially when the October wind (Some let me make you of autumnal spells, The spider-tongued, and the loud hill of Wales) With fists of turnips punishes the land,

Some let me make you of the heartless words.

The heart is drained that, spelling in the scurry Of chemic blood, warned of the coming fury. By the sea's side hear the dark-vowelled birds.

Here the ‘some let me make you’ mantra is the correlative (that is the ‘then’ to the ‘when’), whereas in the first stanza it was: ‘My busy heart… sheds blood.’ That is to say: ‘When the autumn wind is up, [then] let me make you some of the heartless words.’ A desolating end to the sentence. For both tone & theme, one cannot help but recall the monumental The Waste Land , by T.S. Eliot, which, if Thomas hadn’t read, he would not have been considered a serious poet. The injunction to let the audience be shown/told an awful thing in a deathly, desolate place is reminiscent of the poem’s most famous lines: And I will show you some thing different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you I will show you fear in a handful of dust .

Dylan Thomas

Especially when the October wind

And a hush falls for all acclaim. And God has taken a flower of gold And broken it, and used therefrom The mystic link to bind and hold Spirit to matter till death come. ‘Tis of the essence of life here, Though we choose greatly, still to lack The lasting memory at all clear, That life has for us on the wrack Nothing but what we somehow chose; Thus are we wholly stripped of pride In the pain that has but one close,

Bearing it crushed and mystified.

A melding of “crushed and mystified” might be “crucified,” malaprop-riately. Below is Titian’s rendering:

Robert Frost

The Trial by Existence

Yes, I remember Adlestrop --- The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.

No one left and no one came On the bare platform. What I saw Was Adlestrop -- only the name

The harsh sound of the train and the man clearing his throat compare to the song of the blackbird in the last stanza. By extension, the acts and motives of man and his machines are harsh, compared to to tranquility of nature. The two short simple sentences reinforce this contrast. Note the sibilant, alliterative ’s’s in ‘steam’ and ‘hissed’.

Edward Thomas

Adlestrop

I will put Chaos into fourteen lines And keep him there; and let him thence escape

If he be lucky; let him twist, and ape

Flood, fire, and demon — his adroit designs Will strain to nothing in the strict confines Of this sweet Order, where, in pious rape,

Through poetry, she is restraining Chaos, as one would a violent natural force like a flood or fire. Through the verb she is also subtly comparing him to an ape–another strong natural force.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

I will put Chaos into fourteen lines

Panoramas are not what they used to be. Claude has been dead a long time

And apostrophes are forbidden on the funicular. Marx has ruined Nature, For the moment.

Claude Lorrain was a 17th century French painter who created hazy landscape vistas. His work was wildly popular and because he was quite specific about the location of the vistas he painted, and because his popularity coincided with the height of the “Grand Tour” craze, he inspired his own kind of tourism. Not only did people traveling around Europe include sites Claude painted on their itineraries, they brought along a special apparatus called the Claude glass. The Claude glass was essentially a tinted convex mirror that could be held up to a real-life landscape to achieve a view that mimicked the soft framing that the painter rendered in his works.

Wallace Stevens

Botanist on Alp No. 1

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind − As if my Brain had split − I tried to match it − Seam by Seam − But could not make them fit.

The thought behind, I strove to join Unto the thought before − But Sequence raveled out of Sound

Dickinson uses a domestic metaphor, almost pushing the speaker of the poem into the position of a seamstress. The metaphor continues, comparing the speaker’s “Brain” to cloth that would not “fit” together. When sewing, one of the most important things is to make sure the patterns and seams line up together flawlessly. No matter what, however, something sewn together is always going to be the product of two things fused into one. Due to the “Cleaving [of the] Mind,” the speaker has, unarguably, two separate parts of the “Mind”. It becomes evident that there is a strong yearn to “make them fit” together, flawlessly, as if a way to ignore the initial “split” and view the “Mind” as one. Here, the speaker has a conscious awareness of the situation; he/she does not reject any notions of a mental breakdown or a psychological collapse, but rather so works for a solution. The effort into fixing the problem at hand implies that he/she desires normalcy and sanity. Structurally, the stanza ends with a concise and direct phrase; the period also adds to the bluntness of the line, which emphasizes the fixed nature of the “Mind”. Dickinson suggests that no matter what factors come into play, there will always be a “Cleaving in [the] Mind — As if [the] Brain had split”.

Emily Dickinson

937

The sun does arise And make happy the skies The merry bells ring To welcome the spring The skylark and thrush The birds of the bush Sing louder around To the bell's cheerful sound While our sports shall be seen

On the Ecchoing Green

Old John with white hair Does laugh away care Sitting under the oak

The first appearance of the refrain or anaphora . This will reappear at the end of the three stanzas, though slightly altered in the last one. Appropriately, it is ‘the Echoing Green’, appropriately given that it is named for the endless cycle of life..

William Blake

The Echoing Green

My mother christened me Alberta K. You leave my name Just that way! He said, Mrs., (With a snort) Just a K Makes your name too short. I said, I don't Give a damn! Leave me and my name Just like I am!

Furthermore, rub out That MRS., too--

I'll have you know I'm Madam to you!

Here she means erase the mrs .

Langston Hughes

Madam and the Census Man

Morning And Island man wakes up To the sound of blue surf In his head The steady breaking and wombing Wild seabirds And fisherman pulling out to sea

The sun surfacing defiantly

From the east Of his small emerald island He always comes back groggily groggily

The alliterative ’s’s in ‘sea’, ‘sun’ and ‘surfacing’ imitate the sound of the sea, an illusion that stays in the Island man’s mind. The ‘sun’ is personified ; its image persists and the man has no control over it, as indicated by the adverb ‘defiantly’.

Grace Nichols

Island Man

With tiles duskily glowing, entertainеd The mid-day sun; and up and down the roof White pigеons nestled. There was no sound but one. Three cart-horses were looking over a gate Drowsily through their forelocks, swishing their tails Against a fly, a solitary fly. The Winter's cheek flushed as if he had drained Spring, Summer, and Autumn at a draught And smiled quietly. But 'twas not Winter— Rather a season of bliss unchangeable Awakened from farm and church where it had lain Safe under tile and thatch for ages since

This England, Old already, was called Merry.

The final line is a reference that soldiers in the trenches might well have appreciated when they found this in their poetry anthology. England is “Old already” and “Merry”. The latter is an important cultural trope and, of course, a myth. Life for the majority of the population was unrelentingly hard — grinding poverty and unremitting work, far from “merry”. The idea, however, for many, was comforting and reassuring.

Edward Thomas

The Manor Farm

I hear the noise of my own voice: The painter's vision is not a lens, it trembles to caress the light. But sometimes everything I write with the threadbare art of my eye seems a snapshot, lurid, rapid, garish, grouped, heightened from life, yet paralyzed by fact. All's misalliance. Yet why not say what happened? Pray for the grace of accuracy

Vermeer gave to the sun's illumination

stealing like the tide across a map to his girl solid with yearning. We are poor passing facts,

Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch master painter known for his attention to detail and his exceptionally sensitive handling of light.

Robert Lowell

Epilogue

The white cock's tail Tosses in the wind. The turkey-cock's tail Glitters in the sun. Water in the fields. The wind pours down. The feathers flare And bluster in the wind. Remus, blow your horn! I'm ploughing on Sunday, Ploughing North America. Blow your horn!

Tum-ti-tum, Ti-tum-tum-tum! The turkey-cock's tail

Glitters in the sun. Water in the fields. The wind pours down.

Musical hummings by the speaker, dancing around in his joy of Sunday social taboos.

Wallace Stevens

Ploughing on Sunday

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie O, what panic's in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hasty Wi' bickering brattle! I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee Wi' murd'ring pattle!

I'm truly sorry Man's dominion Has broken Nature's social union An' justifies that ill opinion

Rough English translation: Small, crafty, cowering, timorous little beast, O, what a panic is in your little breast! You need not start away so hasty With argumentative chatter! I would be loath to run and chase you, With murdering plough-staff. Burns, while plowing his field, has turned over the nest of a mother mouse. This poem is his apology for doing so; he assures the mouse he didn’t mean to disturb her and that she need not fear him. The impact of this is strong; Burns has the imagination to address the mouse in the second person as if he is talking to her and understands what the creature feels, and the compassion to identify with its suffering. Burns' launches him poem with lush, memorable adjectives to describe the mouse. One student commented that the words are ‘so expressive you can taste them!’. Not only is this line wonderfully effective as a hook, it is one of Burns' most famous lines. Note also that the first three lines and the fifth line are consonantly rhymed. The fourth and sixth lines are perfect rhymes. This gives the poem drama and emphasis. Also note the alliterative and plosive ‘b’s and 'p’s, which, if spoken with exaggerated expression, make this work so well in performance. Burns introduces his mouse using the diminutive ‘beastie’, a mark of almost affection.

Robert Burns

To a Mouse

There was never a sound beside the wood but one, And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground. What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself; Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun, Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound— And that was why it whispered and did not speak. It was no dream of the gift of idle hours, Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:

Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak

To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows, Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers (Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.

Many of Frost’s contemporaries toyed with the idea of fantasy, presenting unrealistic solutions to even more unrealistic situations. Magic was commonplace and realism was a thing of privilege. However, Frost often represents a shift from, what he seems to think as, ridiculousness to a more humble representation of what should be thought of as an heroic story; a laboring man. Here, Frost says “anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak,” revealing that any over-the-top fantasy would not do the laboring man justice. Later, Frost goes on to say “The fit is the sweetest dream that labor knows.” In “Mowing,” one of Frost’s most glaring arguments is for humble simplicity to rule over unnatural stretches of imagination that seem to plague satisfaction with mere human existence. So, do we conclude that poetry works toward an articulation of truth; of facts and simplicity? If so, there is a paradox, because poetry is about imagination. Without a poet to listen for ‘whispers’ there is no poem. Without the labor of the poem, there can be no expression of the ‘sweet dream’ of fact.

Robert Frost

Mowing

When I go up through the mowing field, The headless aftermath,

Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,

Half closes the garden path. And when I come to the garden ground, The whir of sober birds

A tatch is straw or a similar material used for a roof covering, wich in this sense, can be used as a metaphor for the brain. His understanding. A dew can be tiny drops of water that form on cool surfaces at night, when atmospheric vapor condenses. With that being said, the tiny drops here can be used as his Words. The Heavy part explains that his Words had huge impact on his surface /his appearance or face .

Robert Frost

A Late Walk

Ful streite y-teyd, and shoels ful moyste and new Boold was hir face and fair and reed of hewe. She was a worthy womman al hir lyve, Housbondes at chirche dore she hadde fyve, Withouten oother compaignye in youthe,— But ther-of nedeth nat to speke as nowthe,— And thries hadde she been at Jerusalem; She hadde passed many a straunge strem; At Rome she hadde been and at Boloigne, In Galice at Seint Jame, and at Coloigne, She koude muchel of wandrynge by the weye. Gat-tothed was she, soothly for to seye.

Upon an amblere esily she sat,

Ywympled wel, and on hir heed an hat As brood as is a bokeler or a targe; A foot mantel aboute hir hipes large,

Upon an ambler she sat easily An ambler was a horse that was trained to walk putting both feet forward on the same side at once – more comfortable to ride. Particularly for women (who rode side saddle) on long journeys.

Geoffrey Chaucer

The Wife of Baths Portrait

Fle fro the pres, and dwelle with sothefastnesse, Suffise thin owen thing, thei it be smal; For hord hath hate, and clymbyng tykelnesse, Prees hath envye, and wele blent overal. Savour no more thanne the byhove schal; Reule weel thiself, that other folk canst reede; And trouthe schal delyvere, it is no drede. Tempest the nought al croked to redresse, In trust of hire that tourneth as a bal. Myche wele stant in litel besynesse; Bywar therfore to spurne ayeyns an al;

Stryve not as doth the crokke with the wal.

Daunte thiself, that dauntest otheres dede; And trouthe shal delyvere, it is no drede. That the is sent, receyve in buxumnesse;

in this line, the speaker urges the addressee not to struggle as crockery does with a wall, because pottery thrown against a wall would break. this, along with the following lines, suggests avoiding conflict through self-reflection and subsequent change, so that the ensuing interaction will be less harsh than the interaction of a pot and a wall.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Truth

Seeking with memories grown dim o'er night Some resting flower of yesterday's delight. And once I marked his flight go round and round, As where some flower lay withering on the ground. And then he flew as far as eye could see, And then on tremulous wing came back to me. I thought of questions that have no reply, And would have turned to toss the grass to dry; But he turned first, and led my eye to look At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook, A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.

I left my place to know them by their name, Finding them butterfly weed when I came.

The mower in the dew had loved them thus, By leaving them to flourish, not for us, Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him.

The persona follows the butterfly’s signals towards the flowers. Suggesting to ‘know them by their name’ may be suggesting to give respect. As he comes, he finds the butterfly and the flowers. In Frost’s poetry, names are associated with spells and magic. The narrator has the power to connect the flowers with the butterfly’s experience, and his own; they act as spiritual invocations, allows the flowers to become individual and particular “butterfly weed”, and are no long invisible or ordinary.

Robert Frost

The Tuft of Flowers

Fat back boiled to submission, Tender evening poignancies of Magnolia and the great green Smell of fresh sweat. In Southern fields, The sound of distant Feet running, or dancing, And the liquid notes of Sorrow songs, Waltzes, screams and French quadrilles float over The loam of Georgia.

Sing me to sleep, Savannah.

Clocks run down in Tara's halls and dusty Flags droops their unbearable Sadness.

The city of Savannah has been known to be one of the most recognized cities in the state of Georgia. It is also known to produce great musicians and provide great soulful music, and Maya asks for it to serenade her to sleep in the city.

Maya Angelou

A Georgia Song

But the traveller, travelling through it, May not — dare not openly view it! Never its mysteries are exposed To the weak human eye unclosed; So wills its King, who hath forbid The uplifting of the fringed lid; And thus the sad Soul that here passes Beholds it but through darkened glasses. By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright,

I have wandered home but newly

From this ultimate dim Thule.

This is the only time the speaker uses “I”. Up until this point, people could have thought that this was all a tale that the speaker is musing, but now, we know that he himself has traveled there before.

Edgar Allan Poe

Dream-Land

I dwelt alone In a world of moan, And my soul was a stagnant tide, Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride— Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride.

Ah, less, less bright

The stars of the night Than the eyes of the radiant girl! And never a flake

This hyperbole about stars not quite as bright as his lover is reused in Poe’s Annabelle Lee : And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee: —"

Edgar Allan Poe

Eulalie

And within it opens into a world And a little lovely moony night Another England there I saw Another London with its Tower Another Thames and other hills And another pleasant Surrey bower Another Maiden like herself, Translucent, lovely, shining clear Threefold each in the other clos'd O, what a pleasant trembling fear! O, what a smile! a threefold smile Fill'd me, that like a flame I burn'd

I bent to kiss the lovely Maid And found a threefold kiss return'd

I strove to seize the inmost form With ardor fierce and hands of flame But burst the Crystal Cabinet

This maiden would be the evil one. She offers Blake the chance to commit sin, which he does.

William Blake

The Crystal Cabinet

Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup, And I'll not look for wine. The thirst that from the soul doth rise Doth ask a drink divine; But might I of Jove's nectar sup, I would not change for thine. I sent thee late a rosy wreath, Not so much honouring thee As giving it a hope, that there It could not withered be.

But thou thereon didst only breathe, And sent'st it back to me;

Since when it grows, and smells, I swear, Not of itself, but thee.

The connective word ‘But’ is pivotal. It is the moment in the poem that tells the reader that this love affair is doomed. That Celia only ‘breathed’ on the wreath implies disdain or rejection. She doesn’t even trouble to touch the flowers. The speed and seeming flippancy with which Celia ‘sent'st it back’ reflects her lack of feeling for the speaker. We can assume she deliberately breathed on the flowers to create the supernatural effect of leaving her scent … and does this deliberately to torment him

Ben Jonson

Song To Celia

And if that at myn owene lust I brenne, From whennes cometh my wailing and my plainte? If harm agree me, wherto plaine I thenne? I noot, ne why unwery that I fainte. O quikke deeth, O sweete harm so quaintitee, But if that I consente that it be? And if that I consente, I wrongfully Complaine: ywis, thus possed to and fro All stereless within a boot am I Amidde the see, bitwixen windes two, That in contrarye stonden everemo. Allas, what is this wonder maladye?

For hoot of cold, for cold of hoot I die.

At this rate, the conflict will kill me. ( dies instantaneously ) Because of the type of conflict exhibited in the play and the strong feelings that Troilus reveals in his song, it is not uncommon for scholars to argue that this play is a tragedy. There is a lot of goriness and death in the play but fortunately for Troilus, he does not actually die. In a tragedy, Troilus, the tragic hero, would have died. Furthermore, Criseyde, the tragic heroine, would have died or had some terrible fate, as well. Neither of those things occur in this play. Troilus lives, though heartbroken and in anguish. Criseyde, unlike most tragic heroines, opts to default on her allegiance to Troilus by living in lust with Diomedes and not choosing to be with her first love, even if that means death. Because of this, the play cannot technically be deemed a tragedy. Source:

Geoffrey Chaucer

Troiluss Song

Ornette and consternation Claim attention from the papers That have no news that day of Moscow. In the pot behind the Paper doors what's cooking? What's smelling, Leontyne? Lieder, lovely Lieder And a leaf of collard green, Lovely Lieder Leontyne. In the shadow of the negroes Nkrumah In the shadow of the negroes

Nasser Nasser

In the shadow of the negroes Zik Azikiwe Cuba Castro Guinea touré

Gamal Abdel Nasser was Egypt’s most influential politicial figure from the 50s to his death in ‘70. His idea of a panarabic, socialist nation shaped Eqypt and the whole arabic world.

Langston Hughes

Cultural Exchange

All I do these drawn-out days Is sit in my kitchen at Pheasant Ridge Where there are no pheasants to be seen And last time I looked, no ridge I could drive over to Quail Falls And spend the day there playing bridge But the lack of a falls and the absence of quail Would only remind me of Pheasant Ridge I know a widow at Fox Run And another with a condo at Smokey Ledge

One of them smokes, and neither can run

So I'll stick to the pledge I made to Midge Who frightened the fox and bulldozed the ledge? I ask in my kitchen at Pheasant Ridge

Unlike the free-spirited creatures that once inhabited Fox Run, the new residents of this area choose to pursue destructive habits. Harmless animals were forced out in favor of humans who side-step Nature’s wishes and instead disregard keeping the sanctity of Nature intact.

Billy Collins

The Golden Years

Your Momma took to shouting Your Poppa's gone to war, Your sister's in the streets Your brother's in the bar. The thirteens. Right On. Your cousin's taking smack Your Uncle's in the joint,

Your buddy's in the gutter

Shooting for his point The thirteens. Right on. And you, you make me sorry

The person’s friend in this story has been down in the gutter. This means they are either having a rough situation or are having to struggling with depression.

Maya Angelou

The Thirteens Black

It sifts from Leaden Sieves - It powders all the Wood It fills with Alabaster Wool The Wrinkles of the Road - It makes an Even Face Of Mountain, and of Plain - Unbroken Forehead from the East Unto the East again - It reaches to the Fence - It wraps it Rail by Rail Till it is lost in Fleeces - It deals Celestial Veil

To Stump, and Stack - and Stem -

A Summer's empty Room - Acres of Joints, where Harvests were Recordless, but for them -

The snow veils trees and stumps (“Stump”), haystacks (“Stack”), and grass and plants (“Stem”) alike. Stump and stack and stem are what is left of the harvest from “summer’s empty room,” which are the farms and fields after harvest season. Note the heavy alliteration.

Emily Dickinson

It sifts from Leaden Sieves - 311

Those that we identify with Which then take the form of beliefs Beliefs are the police of the mind Beliefs are the police of the mind Beliefs are the police of the mind Beliefs are the police of the mind They are either uniform or universal, armed or unarmed They hold the power to confiscate material they consider hazardous or incredible They profile experience as bullshit, nonsense, get the fuck out of here They convene regularly with the thought Security Council And act according to their Constitution of what is real or unreal, possible or impossible And they are sometimes, and often, mistaken

My question to you today is what is your mind's immigration policy?

Do you detain foreign thoughts that may have entered your mind illegally Against the wishes of your parents, pastors, teachers, leaders Or perhaps simply against the security of your own comfort? Are there other thoughts that you have perhaps allowed to go unchecked, unquestioned

Likely meant as a nod to the ongoing political battle over immigration reform in the United States. Williams suggests that this battle, like all political issues, begins in the individual mind and conscience.

Saul Williams

FCK THE BELIEFS

1545 The Bible is an antique Volume Written by faded men At the suggestion of Holy Spectres Subjects—Bethlehem Eden—the ancient Homestead Satan—the Brigadier Judas—the Great Defaulter David—the Troubadour

Sin—a distinguished Precipice

Others must resist Boys that "believe" are very lonesome Other Boys are "lost"

A sin is any act regarded as such a transgression, especially a willful or deliberate violation of some religious or moral principle, but Dickinson describes it as a steep cliff which means it was something very high up that we all have reached.

Emily Dickinson

The Bible Is An Antique Volume

Crimson is the slow smolder of the cigar end I hold,

Gray is the ash that stiffens and covers all silent the fire. (A great man I know is dead and while he lies in his coffin a gone flame I sit here in cumbering shadows and smoke and watch my thoughts come and go.)

Crimson, a deep red (like blood) and the slow burning – life is long , not short; though inevitably it does come to an end Cigars are the perfect tobacco product for this poem: cigarettes burn too quickly, Black & Milds bring along the notion of poverty, and blunts are for rappers

Carl Sandburg

Crimson

Very quietly Our toes, our noses Take hold on the loam, Acquire the air. Nobody sees us, Stops us, betrays us; The small grains make room. Soft fists insist on Heaving the needles, The leafy bedding, Even the paving. Our hammers, our rams,

Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless, Widen the crannies, Shoulder through holes. We

‘Earless and eyeless’ needs interpreting. It suggests that women are prepared to disregard the clamour of resistance from men and traditionally-minded women. The women refuse to or hear arguments that continue to oppress them. A comparison has been made to earthworms moving underground, that are important to the eco-balance of nature and society. They move silently and unseen.

Sylvia Plath

Mushrooms

Outhouse of bureaucracy, surrounded by a moat Citizens of poverty are barely out of sight Overlords escape in the evening with people of the night Morning brings the tourists, peering eyes and rubber necks To catch a glimpse of the cowboy making the world a nervous wreck It's a mass of irony for all the world to see It's the nation's capital, it's Washington D.C It's the nation's capital It's the nation's capital It's the nation's capital, it's Washington D.C (mmmm-hmmm) May not have the glitter or the glamour of L.A

May not have the history or the intrigue of Bombay

But when it comes to making music, and sure enough making news People who just don't make sense and people making do Seems a ball of contradictions, pulling different ways

D.C. has its history, but it was not always the nation’s capital.

Gil Scott-Heron

Washington D.C.

A hundred, a thousand to one; even so; Not a hope in the world remained: The swarming, howling wretches below Gained and gained and gained.

Skene looked at his pale young wife:--

"Is the time come?"--"The time is come!"-- Young, strong, and so full of life: The agony struck them dumb.

The gender imbalance is appropriate for the time; Skene’s name is included, but not his wife. She is described as ‘pale, young wife’ to stimulate the reader’s sympathy. She is young and therefore her impending death is a tragedy. The description ‘pale’ suggests fear. She is also clearly new to India and the fierce climate hasn’t yet affected her English complexion.

Christina Rossetti

In The Round Tower At Jhansi June 8 1857

There was never a sound beside the wood but one, And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground. What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself; Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun, Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound— And that was why it whispered and did not speak. It was no dream of the gift of idle hours, Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf: Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows, Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers (Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.

The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.

My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

On a literal level, productive work feeds self esteem. But also, unadorned ‘facts’, the uninterpreted essence of life, is ‘the sweetest dream’. Therefore, the poem seems to be ending with an oxymoron .

Robert Frost

Mowing

The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung And cut a flower beside a ground bird's nest Before it stained a single human breast. The stricken flower bent double and so hung. And still the bird revisited her young. A butterfly its fall had dispossessed A moment sought in air his flower of rest, Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung. On the bare upland pasture there had spread O'ernight 'twixt mullein stalks a wheel of thread And straining cables wet with silver dew.

A sudden passing bullet shook it dry.

The indwelling spider ran to greet the fly, But finding nothing, sullenly withdrew.

The serenity is, as the reader no doubt anticipates, broken by the shot described in this snappy line. The dryness may represent the loss of a source of life that invigorates the natural — and human — worlds.

Robert Frost

Range-finding

Barque of phosphor On the palmy beach, Move outward into heaven, Into the alabsters And night blues. Foam and cloud are one. Sultry moon-monsters Are dissolving. Fill your black hull With white moonlight.

There will never be an end To this droning of the surf.

Again, a beautifully ambiguous line: the surf will go on and on, both in human experience, and outside of it.

Wallace Stevens

Fabliau of Florida

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee. One clover, and a bee, And revery.

The revery alone will do, If bees are few.

A comforting thought, as we face the possible extinction of honeybees. Dickinson credits the imagination with so much power to extrapolate from meager reality that it barely needs any reality to work with in the first place. Coming from her, this inspiring message (“Who needs wide-open spaces when I’ve got my mind?”) has a sad tinge: you need an imagination like that if you don’t leave the house much. Then again, she seems to have lived more intensely than most people who do.

Emily Dickinson

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee

I have never seen one fly, but Sometimes they perch on the hand Mist is when the sky is tired of flight And rests its soft machine on the ground: Then the world is dim and bookish Like engravings under tissue paper Rain is when the earth is television It has the properites of making colours darker Model T is a room with the lock inside -- A key is turned to free the world For movement, so quick there is a film To watch for anything missed

But time is tied to the wrist Or kept in a box, ticking with impatience

In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps That snores when you pick it up If the ghost cries, they carry it

An Audemar or a Patek Philippe ? Due to the other historical references, this is probably a reference to one of these early watchmakers

Craig Raine

A Martian Sends a Postcard Home

CLXXVIII. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar: I love not Man the less, but Nature more,

This is almost a reference to the Bible. As the title is Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage , the narrator is speaking about the peacefulness of being alone. In the line before Byron speaks about how a woods that is pathless and unexplored. Most people may find a quote like this confusing as a pathless woods seems scary and exploration alone is fearful. Byron uses this line to show that coming upon an explored or pathless area is like a rapture. The narrator is being saved from society and humanity in order to be at bliss in solitude.​

Lord Byron

Childe Harolds Pilgrimage Canto 4 Stanzas 178-186

His malice was a pimple down his good Big face, with its sly eyes. I must be sorry Mr Frost has left: I like it so less I don't understood— He couldn't hear or see well—all we sift— But this is a bad story. He had fine stories and was another man In private; difficult, always. Courteous, On the whole, in private. He apologize to Henry, off & on,

For two blue slanders; which was good of him.

I don't know how he made it. Quickly, off stage with all but kindness, now. I can't say what I have in mind. Bless Frost,

This line morphs from “for a blue slander” in the earlier version of the poem to “two blue slanders” in the later version. One wonders whether Frost had managed to slander Berryman from the grave.

John Berryman

Dream Song 37

For I would hear the murmuring of my thoughts; And more of voice than of that other music That grows around the strings of quivering lutes; But most of thought; for with my mind I listen, And when the leaves of sound are shed upon it, If there's no seed remembrance grows not there. So life, so death; a song, and then a dream! Begin before another dewdrop fall From the soft hold of these disturbed flowers, For sleep is filling up my senses fast, And from these words I sink. Song.

How many times do I love thee, dear?

Tell me how many thoughts there be In the atmosphere Of a new-fall'n year,

This theme of enumerating the innumerable to quantify love goes all the way back to Roman times, specifically, the incredibly beautiful and refined Catullus 7 with which Beddoes definitely would have been familiar. (Please excuse the rather silly and archaic translation, you can find the Latin here Catullus begins: How many of your kisses, you ask, would be enough and more, my Lesbia? As great as the number of Lybian sands… and continues: Or as the multitudes of stars, that in silent night, look down on furtive lovers…

Thomas Lovell Beddoes

From Torrismond Garden Scene

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! —John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale” 1. Beat it, bird. We've heard enough about the charms of elsewhere. While you poured forth your soul like a poet hidden in the light of thought, blithe spirit, we grew tired of the whole immortal business. Each of us has drunk from the cup of sorrows and of boredom, too. So I've wandered out here onto the front lawn half-dressed, picked up a chunk of gravel, and I'm aiming it at you.

A nice tune, but we'd rather you were gone.

2. Most mornings here I take the trash outside and haul it to the curb. I know you're there—

Creech, in his annotation above, mentions the bird as a “sublime symbol of art far removed from the painful realm of human anxieties and suffering”, used in the writing of Keats and Shelley. Here, that sentiment is crystallized. The bird’s song is beautiful (a symbol of art), but it’s not in tune (pun intended) with the realistic human experience. While it’s beautiful, it must go.

Morri Creech

Song and Complaint

Go, little book, To him who, on a lute with horns of pearl,

Sang of the white feet of the Golden Girl:

And bid him look Into thy pages: it may hap that he May find that golden maidens dance through thee.

Justin McCarthy, whom Wilde wrote this poem for, wrote a poem titled “The Golden Girl” in his collection Serapion and Other Poems .

Oscar Wilde

With a Copy of A House of Pomegranates An Inscription

One Flesh was call'd, who had her eye On worldly wealth and vanity; The other Spirit, who did rear Her thoughts unto a higher sphere. "Sister," quoth Flesh, "what liv'st thou on Nothing but Meditation? Doth Contemplation feed thee so Regardlessly to let earth go? Can Speculation satisfy Notion without Reality? Dost dream of things beyond the Moon And dost thou hope to dwell there soon?

Hast treasures there laid up in store That all in th' world thou count'st but poor?

Art fancy-sick or turn'd a Sot To catch at shadows which are not? Come, come. I'll show unto thy sense,

This reference to riches in Heaven appears throughout Bradstreet’s work, including her poem “Verses upon the Burning of Our House” in which she writes “With glory richly furnished/Stands permanent, though this be fled.” These two lines describe the everlasting richness of God’s house in contrast with the finiteness of Bradstreet’s (or the speaker’s) own “mortal” house. In both poems, she represents the Puritan’s ideals of piety on earth and riches in Heaven. Those of earth are not everlasting, hence “all in th' world thou count'st but poor?” Compared to the riches of Heaven, earthly desires are but a trifle.

Anne Bradstreet

Flesh and the Spirit The

O Rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm

That flies in the night

In the howling storm Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy

The word “flies” implies that her love is ‘in the air’ and is constantly on her mind and she is frightened of it becoming publicly known. The word “night” could be seen to be when sexual intercourse usually takes place and therefore could be referring the sexual theme of the poem. Also it is dark at night and things can be easily hidden, so the secret affair between the two lovers is kept under lock and key whilst in the privacy of each other, at night.

William Blake

The Sick Rose

There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons − That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes −

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us − We can find no scar, But internal difference, Where the Meanings, are −

None may teach it − Any − 'Tis the Seal Despair − An imperial affliction

Dickinson emphasizes the definition of grief over someone’s death. She sheds light on the mental and emotional scars that are etched into one’s heart, despite being hidden from others by superficial expressions. Through her use of religious imagery and diction, Dickinson employs an incredibly poignant tone, ultimately implying that divinity pinpoints the transformative essence that also exists while mourning. Handling death, as Dickinson would suggest, is a full-mind-and-body experience; it does not leave a “scar” physically, but changes a person “internal[ly]”. The impact resonates from mind to heart to soul. In addition, by choosing to use the word “gives,” Dickinson implies that the mental effect is undeniable, ultimately eliminating the option of rejection. Dickinson emphasizes the pain and emotional distress that the death of a loved one brings.

Emily Dickinson

258

And drop the plum like fire from the flesh. If I were tickled by the hatching hair, The winging bone that sprouted in the heels, The itch of man upon the baby's thigh, I would not fear the gallows nor the axe Nor the crossed sticks of war. Shall it be male or female? say the fingers That chalk the walls with green girls and their men. I would not fear the muscling-in of love If I were tickled by the urchin hungers Rehearsing heat upon a raw-edged nerve. I would not fear the devil in the loin

Nor the outspoken grave.

If I were tickled by the lovers' rub That wipes away not crow's-foot nor the lock Of sick old manhood on the fallen jaws,

We think of the “mouth” of a grave as passively receiving things (bodies), but Thomas reverses the image to one of an overly active (outspoken) mouth–perhaps suggesting that death is all too active and forceful a part of our world.

Dylan Thomas

If I Were Tickled by the Rub of Love

I O GOAT-FOOT God of Arcady! This modern world is grey and old,

And what remains to us of thee?

No more the shepherd lads in glee Throw apples at thy wattled fold, O goat-foot God of Arcady!

If the world is old and grey, the poem asks, then how can the rustic and natural god Pan be remembered? What remains of the free-spirited and nature bound deity? Asking this question in the first part of the poem sets up the answer in the second part: Pan as a concept at least is needed as a counterpoint to the modern world that does not seem to value or need the natural. What remains is the need for a natural belief to contrast with the ongoing industrialization of the world.

Oscar Wilde

Pan: A Double Villanelle

Some Kind of love, Some Say

Is it true the ribs can tell The kick of a beast from a Lover's fist? The bruised

Maya states the title of the poem, hinting at what might come, as there is love, but she also says that only some say it is love. Some people are caught in an abusive relationship.

Maya Angelou

Some Kind of Love Some Say

Till the white day is done. Then rest at cool evening Beneath a tall tree While night comes on gently, Dark like me-- That is my dream! To fling my arms wide In the face of the sun, Dance! Whirl! Whirl! Till the quick day is done. Rest at pale evening . . . A tall, slim tree . . .

Night coming tenderly Black like me.

“But, to my mind, it is the duty of the younger Negro artist, if he accepts any duties at all from outsiders, to change through the force of his art that old whispering ‘I want to be white,’ hidden in the aspirations of his people, to ‘Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro—and beautiful!’” –Hughes This couplet expresses the intrinsic beauty and naturalness in darkness–not a thing to be feared, but embraced.

Langston Hughes

Dream Variations

I

O GOAT-FOOT God of Arcady!

This modern world is grey and old, And what remains to us of thee? No more the shepherd lads in glee

Pan is the goat-footed god in classical mythology. His hand quarters and really everything below the waist is goat-like. Hence, he is the goat-footed god. Pan was not worshiped in temples of built structures, but outside in caves and grottoes: he is a natural god.

Oscar Wilde

Pan: A Double Villanelle

After great pain, a formal feeling comes – The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs – The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,' And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before'? The Feet, mechanical, go round – A Wooden way

Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –

Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone – This is the Hour of Lead –

“Ground” and “Air” may be references to the life of the narrator, that continue regardless of the tragedy. Life goes on, physically stifling and freezing the narrator in this feeling of loss because it cannot be similarly felt by others. “Ought” suggests that the speaker is stuck, woodenly going through the tasks she “ought” to be doing. It is also a homophone with “aught,” meaning nothing. This image of zero recalls the circular motion of the feet in line one.

Emily Dickinson

After great pain a formal feeling comes J341 F372

And when they bombed other people's houses, we protested but not enough, we opposed them but not enough. I was in my bed, around my bed America was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.

I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

In the sixth month of a disastrous reign in the house of money in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,

This is open to interpretation. Having started with the collective “we” the poet now uses the first person singular pronoun. He does this to narrow down the focus to the individual and personal responsibility. One may visualise the speaker taking the chair on to the porch and watching the sunset, a cliche certainly. It suggests rest and contentment; failure to recognise danger elsewhere.

Ilya Kaminsky

We Lived Happily During the War

I looked out of my window in the dark At waves with diamond quills and combs of light That arched their mackerel-backs and smacked the sand

In the moon's drench, that straight enormous glaze,

And ships far off asleep, and Harbour-buoys Tossing their fireballs wearily each to each, And tried to hear your voice, but all I heard

The reflection of the moon shining on the ocean creates a straight line – ‘a straight enormous glaze’ – and the idea of ‘drenching’ connects with the weight of water throughout the poem:

Kenneth Slessor

Extract from Five Bells

Rid of the world's injustice, and his pain, He rests at last beneath God's veil of blue; Taken from life when life and love were new The youngest of the martyrs here is lain, Fair as Sebastian, and as early slain. No cypress shades his grave, no funeral yew, But gentle violets weeping with the dew Weave on his bones an ever-blossoming chain. O proudest heart that broke for misery!

O sweetest lips since those of Mitylene!

O poet-painter of our English Land! Thy name was writ in water—it shall stand; And tears like mine will keep thy memory green,

Mitylene could be referring to either the city, or the character from Greek Mythology. Mitylene was an Amazon, and the sister of Myrina. The city was named in her honour, and in it inhabited some of the greatest minds in Greek history; including Aristotle, Alcaeus, and Sappho. Though the city was never mentioned in Keats' poems, Wilde himself had a strong passion for Greek Mythology and Greece’s great poets and philosophers.

Oscar Wilde

The Grave of Keats

And you, Helen

And you, Helen, what should I give you? So many things I would give you Had I an infinite great store

The title can be interpreted as understated concern and love. But it should be noted that it comes at the end of a series of poems about relationships and giving. There could be said to be a casualness that is disturbing. Like many of Thomas’s poems it is ambiguous.

Edward Thomas

And you Helen

I KNOW what the caged bird feels, alas! When the sun is bright on the upland slopes; When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass, And the river flows like a stream of glass; When the first bird sings and the first bud opes, And the faint perfume from its chalice steals — I know what the caged bird feels! I know why the caged bird beats his wing Till its blood is red on the cruel bars; For he must fly back to his perch and cling When he fain would be on the bough a-swing; And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars

And they pulse again with a keener sting —

I know why he beats his wing! I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—

The dash at the end of this line serves as a voluntary return to the irregular, inverted rhythm. Again, the rhythmic delineation of the lines reflects their content: At the end of the second stanza, the pathetic fantasy is over, but not because it’s unsustainable within the cage: The bird beats its wing to renew and refresh its pain, to ward of complacency and confront its reality.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Sympathy

The two executioners stalk along over the knolls,

Bearing two axes with heavy heads shining and wide, And a long limp two-handled saw toothed for cutting great boles,

And so they approach the proud tree that bears the death-mark on its side. Jackets doffed they swing axes and chop away just above ground, And the chips fly about and lie white on the moss and fallen leaves;

To cut down the tree, the workmen have brought with them each a large and reliable ax, along with a single large saw that is to be used by two people, as a team. Boles : tree trunks.

Thomas Hardy

Throwing a Tree

Christ is a Nigger,

Beaten and black-- O, bare your back.

Mary is His Mother Mammy of the South, Silence your Mouth.

Hughes continues the opening metaphor with the image of both Christ and the African American slave being whipped, beaten, and abused:

Langston Hughes

Christ in Alabama

It is the pain, it is the pain endures.

Your chemic beauty burned my muscles through. Poise of my hands reminded me of yours. What later purge from this deep toxin cures?

[Refrain 1] The two repeated lines have been dancing around each other throughout the tercets, and here they finally meet at the quatrain, after serving their purpose of repetition to reiterate the cyclical nature of pain.

William Empson

Villanelle It is the pain...

Thy various works, imperial queen, we see,

How bright their forms! how deck'd with pomp by thee! Thy wond'rous acts in beauteous order stand, And all attest how potent is thine hand.

Wheatley delivers an apostrophe to the imagination, personifying it as a “queen” among the wits, or mental faculties.

Phillis Wheatley

On Imagination

Some laborer found one faded and stone-cold And saving that its weight suggested gold And tugged it from his first too certain hold He noticed nothing in it to remark He was not used to handling stars thrown dark And lifeless from an interrupted arc He did not recognize in that smooth coal The one thing palpable besides the soul To penetrate the air in which we roll He did not see how like a flying thing It brooded ant eggs, and had one large wing One not so large for flying in a ring

And a long Bird of Paradise's tail

(Though these when not in use to fly and trail It drew back in its body like a snail); Nor know that be might move it from the spot—

Family: Paradisaeidae, Order: Passeriformes

Robert Frost

A Star in a Stone-Boat

About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; how well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

The short line gives emphasis. The painters saw their task to reveal truths, to provide a moral commentary on humanity. The technique of varying short and long lines gives shape and variation to the verse, creating interest in the long, discursive lines, and resolving suspense in the short, snappy ones. Most of all, short lines encapsulate meaning that impacts on the reader.

W. H. Auden

Musée des Beaux Arts

Little Lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee?

Gave thee life, and bid thee feed By the stream and o'er the mead; Gave thee clothing of delight

The speaker is questioning the origin of the lamb, but not only the origin of the lamb itself. He is trying to determine the origin of the lamb’s intrinsic qualities.

William Blake

The Lamb

I know why the caged bird beats his wing Till its blood is red on the cruel bars; For he must fly back to his perch and cling When he fain would be on the bough a-swing; And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars And they pulse again with a keener sting — I know why he beats his wing! I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,— When he beats his bars and he would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,

But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings —

I know why the caged bird sings!

This is the climax of the three-line rhythmic buildup. While it technically fits into the anapest / anapest / anapest / iamb pattern introduced by the prior line, it is most comfortably read as anapest / dactyl / dactyl / iamb (although this scheme doesn’t accomodate the word “that) The dactyls in this line are essentially the earlier anapests with their stress moved up. This change encourages the upward-moving focus of the final lines, and also possibly hints at a kernel of optimism that song (or poetry) can inspire and maintain.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Sympathy

And who by fire, who by water Who in the sunshine, who in the night time Who by high ordeal, who by common trial Who in your merry merry month of May Who by very slow decay

And who shall I say is calling?

And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate Who in these realms of love, who by something blunt And who by avalanche, who by powder

Whereas the original liturgical poem underscores the role of God as the force that decides at the beginning of each year who lives and who dies, and by what means, at the end of every verse, Cohen drops an innocent colloquial telephone response to turn the tables and question: who is actually calling for these events to happen? Is there a God? Cohen stated in 1979: But of course, the conclusion of the song, as I write it, is somewhat different: “Who shall I say is calling?” Well, that is what makes the song into a prayer for me in my terms, which is who is it or what is it that determine who will live and who will die? What is the source of this great furnace of creation? Who lights it? Who extinguishes it?

Leonard Cohen

Who by Fire

Cupid, if storying Legends tell aright,

Once fram'd a rich Elixir of Delight. A Chalice o'er love-kindled flames he fix'd, And in it Nectar and Ambrosia mix'd:

If the stories about Cupid, the God of Love, are true/real, then…

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Kisses

I'm a riddle in nine syllables,

An elephant, a ponderous house,

A melon strolling on two tendrils. O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers! This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.

The speaker continues gently poking fun at herself, this time alluding to her body size and awkward movement. Of course a pregnant woman is also metaphorically a house for a growing fetus. One could also see this as a literary allusion, for example, to the Ernest Hemingway short story “Hills like White Elephants,” though in that case the use of the word elephant probably has much more to do with expressions such as “white elephant” and “elephant in the room,” rather than the more straightforward usage in the poem.

Sylvia Plath

Metaphors

Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup, And I'll not look for wine. The thirst that from the soul doth rise Doth ask a drink divine; But might I of Jove's nectar sup, I would not change for thine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath, Not so much honouring thee As giving it a hope, that there It could not withered be.

But thou thereon didst only breathe, And sent'st it back to me; Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,

The drinking metaphor is changed to one of flowers and the ‘wreath’ to symbolise his love. He sends it, not so much to honour her, but to give the flowers ‘hope’ that her divine effect will preserve them foreover. In other words, the speaker views Celia as some sort of enchanted figure that can keep things alive that will normally wither and die. A wreath, a circle of flowers, could symbolise everlasting love. However, a ‘wreath’ also has associations with death. It could be that the speaker suspects all isn’t well with the relationship.

Ben Jonson

Song To Celia

We on thy pinions can surpass the wind, And leave the rolling universe behind: From star to star the mental optics rove, Measure the skies, and range the realms above. There in one view we grasp the mighty whole, Or with new worlds amaze th' unbounded soul. Though Winter frowns to Fancy's raptur'd eyes The fields may flourish, and gay scenes arise; The frozen deeps may break their iron bands, And bid their waters murmur o'er the sands. Fair Flora may resume her fragrant reign, And with her flow'ry riches deck the plain;

Sylvanus may diffuse his honours round, And all the forest may with leaves be crown'd:

Show'rs may descend, and dews their gems disclose, And nectar sparkle on the blooming rose. Such is thy pow'r, nor are thine orders vain,

Sylvanus (also “Silvanus”) was an ancient Roman divinity and guardian keeper of fields and woods . The name is derived from the Latin noun “silva,” meaning woods/forest. Though “Winter frowns” at the change into spring, Sylvanus diffuses “his honours round,” bringing life and greenery back to the trees left barren from the previous season. The forest will again “with leaves be crown’d,” or canopied. #Fun Fact (albeit, somewhat non sequitur): The State of Pennsylvania, founded by 17th-century entrepreneur/writer/philosopher William Penn , is so named because: Penn = William Penn Sylvannia = wooded place SO Pennsylvannia = Penn’s Woods #Good Times

Phillis Wheatley

On Imagination

I know I am but summer to your heart, And not the full four seasons of the year;

And you must welcome from another part Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear. No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell

She knows she isn’t everything to her lover: just a phase in his or her life, or a certain kind of love that doesn’t exclude others .

Edna St. Vincent Millay

I know I am but summer to your heart Sonnet XXVII

Two boys uncoached are tossing a poem together, Overhand, underhand, backhand, sleight of hand, everyhand, Teasing with attitudes, latitudes, interludes, altitudes,

High, make him fly off the ground for it, low, make him stoop, Make him scoop it up, make him as-almost-as possible miss it,

Fast, let him sting from it, now, now fool him slowly, Anything, everything tricky, risky, nonchalant, Anything under the sun to outwit the prosy,

If we imagine that that a poem needs to be a ball in a game of catch between the poet and the reader, then the poet should pitch the poem as to have the reader catch it in a different way every time he reads it. The poet does this in order to challenge the reader and create a deeper level of interest. This particular excerpt of the poem describes how a poet-reader relationship should be, in regards to a game of catch. If we take a closer look at the poem, when the poem reads, “Make him as-almost-as possible miss it,” “It” refers to the meaning of the poem that the poet conveys to the reader. Every time the reader reads the poem, he should find another meaning that he/she did not see the first read. This feeling that this idea gives can be related to the feeling that a catcher of a ball might get when diving and just barely catching a high fly ball.

Robert Francis

Catch

Onyx-eyed Odalisques And ornithologists Observe The flight Of Eros obsolete And "Immortality" Mildews... In the museums of the moon "Nocturnal cyclops" "Crystal concubine" ------- Pocked with personification

The fossil virgin of the skies

Waxes and wanes----

In Greek mythology the moon was associated with the virgin goddess Artemis (Roman: Diana). Like Artemis, Loy’s moon-world is superficially sexy but inwardly empty of desire.

Mina Loy

Lunar Baedeker

It comes blundering over the Boulders at night, it stays Frightened outside the Range of my campfire

I go to meet it at the Edge of the light

This has an echo of two famous quotes: I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it. - Hemingway It grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mold of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps. No doubt there is much personal selection, as with a gardener: what one throws on one’s personal compost-heap; and my mold is evidently made largely of linguistic matter. - J. R. R. Tolkien

Gary Snyder

How Poetry Comes to Me

Barque of phosphor On the palmy beach,

Move outward into heaven, Into the alabsters And night blues.

“Barque” is quite a loaded word, when it read aloud it recalls in the first instance the bark of a palm tree– in Florida, presumably. Stevens’s meaning is probably closer to the boat in Ancient Egypt that would carry the dead toward the afterlife.

Wallace Stevens

Fabliau of Florida

VERONICA, ELVIRA and other female attendants. Veron. Come then, a song; a winding, gentle song, To lead me into sleep.Let it be low As zephyr, telling secrets to his rose, For I would hear the murmuring of my thoughts; And more of voice than of that other music That grows around the strings of quivering lutes; But most of thought; for with my mind I listen, And when the leaves of sound are shed upon it, If there's no seed remembrance grows not there.

So life, so death; a song, and then a dream!

Begin before another dewdrop fall From the soft hold of these disturbed flowers, For sleep is filling up my senses fast,

A fine example of Beddoes' suavity. The line is also indicative of his one main obsession: to say, “Beddoes was much possessed by death” is to understate. The idea haunted him all his life; he even once pursued a career in medicine, in an attempt to find a part of the body that would survive after death, specifically, a seed shaped bone mentioned in the rabbinical doctrine Luz (ed. Sieburth R. Ezra Pound: The Pisan Canto’s . New Directions: 2003 pg. 146) Not surprisingly, Beddoes never found said bone and only became increasingly morbid until his suicide at age 45. To give a better idea of his thanataphilia/phobia, his most popular work is a posthumous drama is called Death’s Jest Book and Pound called him, in Catno LXXX “Prince of morticians.”

Thomas Lovell Beddoes

From Torrismond Garden Scene

We talked with each other about each other Though neither of us spoke —

We were listening to the seconds' Races And the Hoofs of the Clock —

Pausing in Front of our Palsied Faces Time compassion took — Arks of Reprieve he offered to us —

The ticking clock and the beating pendulum stand in for verbal conversation that the narrator is not having. These signals of the passage of time are more important than any other observations that the two might have about each other.

Emily Dickinson

We talked with each other about each other

(but you're killing said she but it's life said he but your wife said she now said he) ow said she (tiptop said he don't stop said she oh no said he) go slow said she (cccome?said he ummm said she) you're divine!said he

(you are Mine said she)

“Mine” has the only capital letter in this entire poem and by putting this line in parenthesis, it creates a sense of female empowerment. Usually, sex is depicted, viewed, and shown as a symbol of male power, but e. e. cummings turns the tables here making the woman in the poem the one in power in the end.

E. E. Cummings

May i feel said he

I was a cottage maiden Hardened by sun and air, Contented with my cottage mates, Not mindful I was fair. Why did a great lord find me out, And praise my flaxen hair? Why did a great lord find me out To fill my heart with care? He lured me to his palace home—

Woe's me for joy thereof—

To lead a shameless shameful life, His plaything and his love. He wore me like a silken knot,

This implies that she was dazzled by the man’s ‘palace home’, found temporary ‘joy’ in his attention, but this led to unhappiness, hence the archaic ‘Woe’s me’. As she goes on to explain the result was social shame.

Christina Rossetti

Cousin Kate

How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him Shedding white rings of tumult, building high Over the chained bay waters Liberty-- Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes As apparitional as sails that cross Some page of figures to be filed away;

--Till elevators drop us from our day . .

I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene Never disclosed, but hastened to again

An image of everyday life in the modern city: the office workers descending in an elevator at the end of the day.

Hart Crane

To Brooklyn Bridge

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.

Life is full of miracles, some big, and some small. Even in the depths of our darkest despair, we can look around to other human beings, to nature and animals, to the mechanisms of physics and the universe, to the mind-boggling complexity of the chain of probability and causality that led to you being here, and to God, and see that life even at its worst is a miracle worth celebrating. As the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins said in his book, Unweaving the Rainbow : We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?

Kahlil Gibran

On Pain

It was not a figure of fun. Too dead now to pity. To remember its life, din, stronghold Of earthly pleasure as it had been, Seemed a false effort, and off the point. Too deadly factual. Its weight Oppressed me—how could it be moved? And the trouble of cutting it up! The gash in its throat was shocking, but not pathetic. Once I ran at a fair in the noise To catch a greased piglet That was faster and nimbler than a cat,

Its squeal was the rending of metal.

Pigs must have hot blood, they feel like ovens. Their bite is worse than a horse's— They chop a half-moon clean out.

Line four describes the terror of the piglet, using a disturbing metaphor … “the rending of metal”. But this is in the past and unrelated the present dead pig.

Ted Hughes

View of a Pig

White workers of the South Miners, Farmers, Mechanics, Mill Hands, Shop girls, Railway men, Servants, Tobacco workers, Sharecroppers, GREETINGS!

I am the black worker,

Listen: That the land might be ours, And the mines and the factories and the office towers

This title, “the black worker”, contrasts the long list of occupations that he gave the white workers of the South. The “black worker” is not given the specific title of the miner, farmer, mechanic, etc…, but is reduced to this simple title. This could be to show the lack of opportunity the black community is given in the South.

Langston Hughes

Open Letter to the South

I'm a riddle in nine syllables, An elephant, a ponderous house,

A melon strolling on two tendrils.

O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers! This loaf's big with its yeasty rising. Money's new-minted in this fat purse.

The speaker refers to her enlarged belly in an exaggerated way, suggesting that her legs are like tendrils on growing melon plants, also giving the impression her movement is precarious.

Sylvia Plath

Metaphors

When I go up through the mowing field, The headless aftermath, Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew, Half closes the garden path. And when I come to the garden ground,

The whir of sober birds Up from the tangle of withered weeds Is sadder than any words

A tree beside the wall stands bare, But a leaf that lingered brown, Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,

Now the birds here in this context, is a metaphor for humans. Now that we got that cleared up, the withered weeds can be a metaphor for what has happend to Robert Frost’s appearance. His outer if you will. (One of weeds many diffeent meanings are:(obsolete) Clothes.) so the clothes are his appearance.

Robert Frost

A Late Walk

Queen Victoria My father and all his tobacco loved you I love you too in all your forms The slim and lovely virgin floating among German beer

The mean governess of the huge pink maps

The solitary mourner of a prince Queen Victoria I am cold and rainy

“Traditionally, pieces of the British Empire were colored pink on maps. This was a bit of a compromise because red was really the color associated with the Empire. But if the colonies, protectorates and mandates were also printed in red on a world globe, it was tricky to read the place names within them.” From “The British Empire Pink Bits”

Leonard Cohen

Queen Victoria

A married state affords but little ease: The best of husbands are so hard to please This in wifes Carefull faces you may spell, Tho they desemble their misfortunes well A virgin state is crown'd with much content, It's allways happy as it's inocent No Blustering husbands to create your fears, No pangs of child birth to extort your tears, No children's crys for to offend your ears,

Few worldly crosses to distract your prayers

Thus are you freed from all the cares that do Attend on matrymony and a husband too. Therefore, madam, be advised by me:

This is a religious reference to Jesus carrying the cross, and has become embedded in the English language. Having a ‘cross to bear’ (John 11:17)means having a lifelong problem which one just has to live with.

Katherine Philips

A Married State

Well, son, I'll tell you: Life for me ain't been no crystal stair. It's had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor— Bare.

But all the time I'se been a-climbin' on, And reachin' landin's, And turnin' corners, And sometimes goin' in the dark Where there ain't been no light.

So, boy, don't you turn back. Don't you set down on the steps. Cause you finds it's kinder hard.

Even though her life has not been the best, she keeps moving on and refuses to gives up (lines 8-11), even when perseverance seems like the worst idea (lines 12-13). The image of life as a staircase implies a constant movement – for to get further on stairs, you must climb. The repetition of action verbs here – “climbin'”, “reachin'”, “turnin'”, “goin'”, etc. – further connects her actions to that of climbing a staircase, as well as characterizing her journey as one of constant movement. To participate in life, you must keep climbing – the movements of life force you to persevere.

Langston Hughes

Mother to Son

All I know is a door into the dark. Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting; Inside, the hammered anvil's short-pitched ring, The unpredictable fantail of sparks Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water. The anvil must be somewhere in the centre, Horned as a unicorn, at one end and square, Set there immoveable: an altar Where he expends himself in shape and music.

Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,

He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows; Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and flick

On a practical level the blacksmith/poet isn’t a romantic figure. Heaney moves from flights of imagination — the religious alter and the unicorn — to reality. His subject, the two blended characters who create metal artefacts and spectacular poetry, are ordinary men.

Seamus Heaney

The Forge

Mad Song by William Blake The wild winds weep, And the night is a-cold; Come hither, Sleep, And my griefs infold: But lo! the morning peeps Over the eastern steeps, And the rustling birds of dawn The earth do scorn.

Lo! to the vault

Of paved heaven, With sorrow fraught My notes are driven:

Lo draws attention to an interesting event. In this case, it is drawing attention to the sky which is being lit by the rising sun. Despite the positive words being used, such as heaven, the speaker cries out with sorrow. The vault brings to mind a vaulted ceiling such as would be seen in a Cathedral.

William Blake

Mad Song

Time will say nothing but I told you so, Time only knows the price we have to pay; If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,

If we should stumble when musicians play, Time will say nothing but I told you so. There are no fortunes to be told, although,

The Clowns may be a metaphor for joy; which would mean that in this situation, we are weeping in an inappropriate time, or we are not able to feel happy when in a happy environment.

W. H. Auden

If I Could Tell You

So sweet the hour, so calm the time, I feel it more than half a crime, When Nature sleeps and stars are mute, To mar the silence ev'n with lute. At rest on ocean's brilliant dyes An image of Elysium lies: Seven Pleiades entranced in Heaven, Form in the deep another seven: Endymion nodding from above

Sees in the sea a second love.

Within the valleys dim and brown, And on the spectral mountain's crown, The wearied light is dying down,

This is one of the most poetic lines in this poem: there is alliteration ( S ee S , S ea, S econd), as well as a homophone (“sea” and “see”). Not to mention, it is also in perfect iambic tetrameter form.

Edgar Allan Poe

Serenade

Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me –

The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality We slowly drove – He knew no haste

The speaker felt she wasn’t ready to die, that her life wasn’t over yet, but personified Death — clearly a polite gentleman — had other plans for her and felt that her time had come. Dickinson pointedly intertwines the themes of love and death by portraying a man’s courtship as nothing short of death for the female speaker. As the following stanza explains, the woman waits to be called upon, but once chosen must give up both her work and leisure; in short, her identity. Note that ‘Death’ is capitalized, as are the nouns throughout the poem. This gives them added significance, an abstract meaning beyond the everyday definitions. This opening may also reflect the poet’s time and place. Dickinson’s New England would have been a bastion of the severe old-school “Protestant work ethic” ; perhaps the poet implies ironically that she as a member of this society can’t even stop for the strongest force, death. (Notice that death, by contrast, knows “no haste.”) Dickenson introduces a pattern of hyphens that create caesurae , forming breaks in the rhythm that may be an expression of fear or uncertainty.

Emily Dickinson

Because I Could Not Stop for Death

One is a creeper who's sleepy in his shell Two is a hopper and he hops very well Three is a flopper and his flippers flap Four is a jumper with a jump-in lap

Five is a drinker with a dip-in nose

Six is a flapper with flippers on his toes Seven is a tapper with a tripper in his beak Eight is a nutter with a nut sack in his cheek

A pelican, whose bill can hold up to three gallons of water:

John Ciardi

Guess

This tribute to thy glory. I know the pangs which thou didst feel, When Slavery crushed thee with its heel, With thy dear blood all gory. Sad days were those-ah, sad indeed! But through the land the fruitful seed Of better times was growing. The plant of freedom upward sprung, And spread its leaves so fresh and young- Its blossoms now are blowing. On every hand in this fair land, Proud Ethiope's swarthy children stand

Beside their fairer neighbor;

The forests flee before their stroke, Their hammers ring, their forges smoke,- They stir in honest labour.

Here, the word fair could be a double-entendre . A more powerful, superior neighbor. Fairer skin complexion, as in the white skin of a slave master.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Ode To Ethiopia

All I know is a door into the dark. Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting; Inside, the hammered anvil's short-pitched ring, The unpredictable fantail of sparks Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water. The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,

Horned as a unicorn, at one end and square,

Set there immoveable: an altar Where he expends himself in shape and music. Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,

A unicorn is a mythological creature, a one-horned horse, an ancient symbol of virginity. The comparison suggests the exotic, something mysterious and unknowable and uncontainable, just as the soul is a mystery. This flight of fancy contrasts with the literal “at one end and square”, which returns the reader to the practical task of the blacksmith.

Seamus Heaney

The Forge

Oh, the blithery, blathery pirate

(His name, I believe, is Claude), His manner is sullen and irate, And his humor is vulgar and broad.

As with many of Silverstein poems, he hits us with some nonsense words –in this case, blithery , in order to create a pararhyme with blathery , a term used to describe trashiness or deception.

Shel Silverstein

The Pirate

The Prologe of the Reves Tale Whan folk hadde laughen at this nyce cas Of Absolon and hende Nicholas,

Diverse folk diversely they seyde,

But for the moore part they loughe and pleyde. Ne at this tale I saugh no man hym greve, But it were oonly Osewold the Reve.

“Diverse folk diversely they seyde.” With Chaucer’s repetition of the word “diverse” within the same line, it demands attention and analysis. Although modern historians view Medieval England to be quite historically white, as this NPR interview ( ) states, there were more POC (people of color) in Medieval England than was previously expected. With Islam expanding throughout the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, people of Chaucer’s time had to be confronted with diverse groups of people. Though a question of diversity would seem strangely positioned in this section immediately following the bawdy Miller’s Tale, perhaps Chaucer wanted to describe the actual people who travelled or lived in England.

Geoffrey Chaucer

The Reeves Prologue in Middle English

When night's black Mantle could most darkness prove,

And sleepe (deaths Image) did my senses hyre,

From Knowledge of my selfe, then thoughts did move Swifter than those, most switnesse neede require? In sleepe, a chariot drawn by wind'd Desire,

The speaker, Pamphilia (Meaning all-loving) the Queen of Pamphilia, has fallen asleep, and her senses have been taken over, most likely through dreams. However, through reminding us that sleep is the ‘cousin of death’ we can assume that sleep and dreams have negative connotations.

Lady Mary Wroth

When nights black mantle could most darkness prove