Poetry

Mending Wall by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs.  The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side.  It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors?  Isn't it
Where there are cows?  But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.'  I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself.  I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

 

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

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;

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,

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.

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.

Because I could not stop for Death (712) by Emily Dickinson

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
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –  
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –  
We passed the Setting Sun –  

Or rather – He passed us – 
The Dews drew quivering and chill – 
For only Gossamer, my Gown – My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground – 
The Roof was scarcely visible – 
The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads 
Were toward Eternity –

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (Sonnet 18) by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.     
     So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,     
     So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather'd every rack, 
     the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
     While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart
     O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.  
     O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up- for you the flag is flung- for 
     you the bugle trills,

For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths- for you the shores
      a-crowding,    For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;             
      Here Captain! dear father!               
        This arm beneath your head!                 
          It is some dream that on the deck,                   
            You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,          
         My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will                
         The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,          
           From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;               
               Exult O shores, and ring O bells!                 
                   But I with mournful tread,                 
                   Walk the deck my Captain lies,                     
                     Fallen cold and dead.

Eleanor Rigby Lyrics by Beatles. Written by Lennon/McCartney

Ah, look at all the lonely people
Ah, look at all the lonely people

Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from ?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong ?

Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near.
Look at him working. Darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there
What does he care ?

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from ?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong ?

Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name
Nobody came
Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave
No one was saved

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from ?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong ?

 

Elegy by Dylan Thomas

Too proud to die; broken and blind he died
The darkest way, and did not turn away,
A cold kind man brave in his narrow pride On that darkest day, Oh, forever may
He lie lightly, at last, on the last, crossed
Hill, under the grass, in love, and there grow Young among the long flocks, and never lie lost
Or still all the numberless days of his death, though
Above all he longed for his mother's breast Which was rest and dust, and in the kind ground
The darkest justice of death, blind and unblessed.
Let him find no rest but be fathered and found, I prayed in the crouching room, by his blind bed,
In the muted house, one minute before
Noon, and night, and light. the rivers of the dead Veined his poor hand I held, and I saw
Through his unseeing eyes to the roots of the sea.
(An old tormented man three-quarters blind, I am not too proud to cry that He and he
Will never never go out of my mind.
All his bones crying, and poor in all but pain, Being innocent, he dreaded that he died
Hating his God, but what he was was plain:
An old kind man brave in his burning pride. The sticks of the house were his; his books he owned.
Even as a baby he had never cried;
Nor did he now, save to his secret wound. Out of his eyes I saw the last light glide.
Here among the light of the lording sky
An old man is with me where I go Walking in the meadows of his son's eye
On whom a world of ills came down like snow.
He cried as he died, fearing at last the spheres' Last sound, the world going out without a breath:
Too proud to cry, too frail to check the tears,
And caught between two nights, blindness and death. O deepest wound of all that he should die
On that darkest day. oh, he could hide
The tears out of his eyes, too proud to cry. Until I die he will not leave my side.)

Ghost House by Robert Frost

I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow. O'er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed. I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart; The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out. It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me--
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar. They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,--
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.

Identity by Julio Noboa Polanco

Let them be as flowers,

always watered, fed, guarded, admired,

but harnessed to a pot of dirt.

 

I would rather be a tall, ugly weed,

clinging on cliffs, like an eagle

wind-wavering above high, jagged rocks.

 

To have broken through the surface of stone,

to live, to feel exposed to the madness

of the vast, eternal sky.

To be swayed by the breezes of an ancient sea,

carrying my soul, my seed,

beyond the mountains of time or  into the abyss of the bizarre.

 

I'd rather be unseen, and if

then shunned by everyone,

than to be a pleasant-smelling flower,

growing in clusters in the fertile valley,

where they're praised, handled, and Plucked

by greedy, human hands.

 

I'd rather smell of musty, green stench

than of sweet, fragrant lilac.

If I could stand alone, strong and free,

I'd rather be a tall, ugly weed.

 

Mooses by Ted Hughes

The goofy Moose, the walking house frame,
Is lost
In the forest. He bumps, he blunders, he stands. With massy bony thoughts sticking out near his ears –
Reaching out palm upwards, to catch whatever might be
falling from heaven –
He tries to think,
Leaning their huge weight
On the lectern of his front legs. He can't find the world!
Where did it go? What does a world look like?
The Moose
Crashes on, and crashes into a lake, and stares at the
mountain and cries:
'Where do I belong? This is no place!' He turns dragging half the lake out after him
And charges the crackling underbrush – He meets another Moose
He stares, he thinks: 'It's only a mirror!'
'Where is the world?' he groans. 'O my lost world!
And why am I so ugly?
And why am I so far away from my feet?' He weeps.
Hopeless drops drip from his droopy lips. The other Moose just stands there doing the same. Two dopes of the deep woods.

 

the lesson of the moth by don marquis

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself

 

 

Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at the close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Those wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sand the sun in flight
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 

return to top | previous page | next page