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“Mid-Term Break: by Seamus Heaney (1966)
“A Red, Red Rose” by Robert Burns (1796)
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O, my luve’s like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June.
O, my luve is like the melodie
That’s sweetly played in tune.
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As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang1 dry.
5
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o’clock our neighbors drove me home.
In the porch I met my father crying –
He had always taken funerals in his stride –
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By the old men standing up to shake my hand
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And tell me they were “sorry for my trouble,”
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only luve,
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my luve,
Though it were ten thousand mile.
In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o’clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.
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Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,
“A Minor Bird” by Robert Frost (1928)
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Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day;
Have clapped my hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear no more.
A four foot box, a foot for every year.
“Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost (1916)
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Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
5
The fault must partly have been in me.
The bird was not to blame for his key.
And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence any song.
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Gang: go
2
“Forgetfulness” by Hart Crane (1918)
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Forgetfulness is like a song
That, freed from beat and measure, wanders.
Forgetfulness is like a bird whose wings are reconciled,
Outspread and motionless, A bird that coasts the wind unwearyingly.
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Forgetfulness is rain at night,
Or an old house in a forest, - or a child.
Forgetfulness is white, - white as a blasted tree,
And it may stun the sybil into prophecy,
Or bury the Gods.
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I peek
in the other room senoras
in faded dresses stir sweet
milk coffee, laughter whirls
with steam from fresh tamales
sh, sh, mucho rido,2
they scold one another,
press their lips, trap smiles
in their dark, Mexican eyes.
“Break, Break, Break” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (ca. 1834)
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Break, break, break
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
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O, well for the fisherman’s boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
I can remember much forgetfulness.
“After a Death” by Roo Borson (1989)
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Seeing that there’s no other way,
I turn his absence into a chair.
I can sit in it,
gaze out through the window.
I can do what I do best
and then go out into the world.
And I can return then with my useless love,
to rest,
because the chair is there.
“Sonrisas” by Pat Mora (1986)
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5
I live in a doorway
between two rooms I hear
quiet clicks, cups of black
coffee, click, click like facts
budgets, tenure, curriculum
from careful women in crips beige
suits, quick beige smiles
that seldom sneak into their eyes.
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And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
2 a lot of noise
3
“Ozymandias”3 by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818)
“I’m Nobody” by Emily Dickinson (ca 1860s)
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I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you Nobody too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! They’d banish us, you know!
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How drear to be Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell your name to the livelong June
To an admiring Bog!
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I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand I the desert…Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my words, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
“An Ancient Gesture” by Edna St. Vincint Millay (1954)
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[When I consider how my light is spent] by John Milton (ca. 1652)
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When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide4
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
“Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?”
I fondly ask, but Patience to prevent5
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.”
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I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope6 did this too.
And more than once: you can’t keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don’t know where, for years,
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.
And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,
In the very best tradition, classic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture, - a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope…
Penelope, who really cried.
3 The Greek name for Ramses II, thirteenth-century B.C. pharaoh of Egypt. According to
a first-century B.C. Greek historian, Diodors Siculus, the largest statue in Egypt was
inscribed: “I am Ozymandias, king of kings; if anyone wishes to know what I am and
where I lie, let him surpass me in some of my exploits.”
4 In the parable of the talents (Matthew 25), the servants who earned interest on their
master’s money (his talents) while he was away were called “good and faithful;” the one
who hid the money and simply returned it was condemned and sent away.
5 Fondly: foolishly; prevent: forestall
6 In the epic poem “Odyssey,” Penelope’s husband Ulysses goes off to war for several
years, then disappears. When other men begin to woo her, Penelope promises she will
take a new husband when she finishes weaving a blanket. Each night she secretly
unweaves her work from the previous day, not wanting to betray her husband, whom
she still believes to be alive.
4
“beware : do not read this poem” by Ishmael Reed (1970)
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tonite
,
thriller was
abt an ol woman , so vain she
surrounded herself w/
many mirrors
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it got so bad that finally she
locked herself indoors & her
whole life became the
mirrors
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one day the villagers broke
into her house ,
but she was too
swift for them .
she disappeared
into a mirror
statistic :
the us bureau of missing persons reports
that in 1968 over 100,000 people disappeared
leaving no solid clues
nor trace
only
a space in the lives of their friends
“Sun” by Valerie Worth (1996)
each tenant who bought the house
after that
,
lost a loved one to
the ol woman in the mirror :
first a little girl
then a young woman
then the young woman / s husband
the hunger of this poem is legendary
it has taken in many victims
back off from this poem
it has drawn in yr feet
back off from this poem
it has drawn in yr legs
back off from this poem
it is a greedy mirror
you are into the this poem
.
the waist down
nobody can hear you can they
?
this poem has had you up to here
belch
this poem aint got no manners
you cant call out frm this poem
relax now & go w / this poem
move & roll on to this poem
do not resist this poem
this poem has yr eyes
this poem has his head
this poem has his arms
this poem has his fingers
this poem has his fingertips
this poem is the reader & the
reader this poem
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The sun
Is a leaping fire
Too hot
To go near,
5
But it will still
Lie down
In warm yellow squares
On the floor
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from
Like a flat
Quilt, where
The cat can curl
And purr.
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“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” Christopher Marlowe (1600)
“The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” by Sir Walter Raleigh (1600)
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Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
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If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd’s tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.
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And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
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Time drives the flocks from field to fold,
When rivers rage, and rocks grow cold,
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complain of cares to come.
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And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold;
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy buds
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For they delight each May morning:
If these delights they mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.
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The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields:
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall,
Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten;
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no mean can move
To come to thee and be thy love.
But could youth last, and love still breed,
Had joys no date, nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.
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“This is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams (1934)
Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare (1609)
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I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
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and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
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forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
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Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! It is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests,7 and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man every loved.
“Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams” by Kenneth Koch (1962)
“Death, Be Not Proud” by John Donne (1635)
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I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.
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2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.
3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten
years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.
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Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but they picture be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow;
And soonest our best men with thee do go –
Rest of their bones and souls’ delivery!
Thou’rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke. Why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die.
4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy, and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!
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storms
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“She Walks in Beauty” by George Gordon, Lord Byron (1814)
“Home They Brought” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1847)
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Home they brought her warrior dead:
She nor swooned, nor uttered cry:
All her maidens, watching, said,
“She must weep or she will die.”
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Then they praised him, soft and low,
Called him worthy to be loved,
Truest friend and noblest foe;
Yet she neither spoke nor moved.
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She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress
Or softly lightens o’er her face,
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek and o’er that brow
So soft so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below
A heart whose love is innocent.
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Stole a maiden from her place,
Lightly to the warrior slept,
Took the face-cloth from the face;
Yet she neither moved nor wept.
Rose a nurse of ninety years,
Set his child upon her knee –
Like summer tempest came her tears –
“Sweet my child, I live for thee.”
“Sonnet 8” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1845)
“Sonnet 43” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1846)
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What can I give thee back, O liberal
And princely giver, who has brought the gold
And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold,
And laid them on the outside of the wall
For such as I to take or leave withal,
In unexpected largesse? Am I cold,
Ungrateful, that for these most manifold
High gifts, I render nothing back at all?
Not so; not cold, - but very poor instead.
Ask God who knows. For frequent tears have run
The colours from my life, and left so dead
And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done
To give the same as pillow to thy head.
Go farther! Let it serve to trample on.
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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, - I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
8
“To an Athlete Dying Young” by A.E. Housman (1896)
“Grass” by Carl Sandburg (1918)
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The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
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5
Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
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Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
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Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.8
Shovel them under and let me work –
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. 9
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.
“Richard Cory” by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1897)
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Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lad that wore their honors out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes face,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
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And round that early-laureled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.
1
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
5
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good morning,” and he glittered when he walked.
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And he was rich – yes, richer than a kin,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we though that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
8 Austerlitz: a concentration camp; Waterloo: the site of the 3-day battle to defeat
Napoleon in which over 40,000 soldiers died
9 Ypres and Verdun: battle fronts of WWI in which both sides suffered heavy losses (over
1,000,000 combined causualties)
9
“Apology” by Amy Lowell (1916)
“Patterns” by Amy Lowell (1915)
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Be not angry with me that I bear
Your colors everywhere,
All through each crowded street,
And meet
The wonder-light in every eye,
As I go by.
Each plodding wayfarer looks up to gaze,
Blinded by rainbow haze,
The stuff of happiness,
No less,
Which wraps me in its glad-hued folds
Of peacock golds.
Before my feet the dusty, rough-paved way
Flushes beneath its gray.
My steps fall ringed with light,
So bright,
It seems a myriad suns are strown
About the town.
Around me is the sound of steepled bells,
And richly perfumed smells
Hang like a wind-forgotten cloud,
And shroud
Me from close contact with the world.
I dwell impearled.
You blazon me with jeweled insignia.
A flaming nebula
Rims my life. And yet
You set
The world upon me, unconfessed
To go unguessed.
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I walk down the garden paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jeweled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden paths.
My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whalebone and brocade10.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime-tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.
And the plashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden-paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
As basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
10 whalebone: traditionally the supports used in corsets; brocade: a richly decorated
fabric, often made from silk with gold or silver thread
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Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.
I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles on his
shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover.
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoonI am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.
Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.
“Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday sen-night.”11
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
“Any answer, Madam?” said my footman.
“No,” I told him.
“See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
“No, no answer.”
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
11 a week from Thursday
80
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I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown;
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.
In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.”
Now he is dead.
In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called war.
Christ! What are patterns for?
11
“Saying Yes” Diana Chang (1991)
“who knows if the moon’s” e.e. cummings (1925)
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who knows if the moon’s
a balloon, coming out of a keen city
in the sky – filled with pretty people?
(and if you and i should
5
get into it, if they
should take me and take you into their balloon,
why then we’d go up higher with all the pretty people
“Are you Chinese?”
“Yes.”
“American?”
“Yes.”
5
“Really Chinese?”
“No...not quite.”
“Really American?”
“Well, actually, you see...”
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But I would rather say
yes.
Not neither-nor,
not maybe,
but both, and not only
The homes I’ve had,
the ways I am
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than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen
city which nobody’s ever visited, where
always
it’s
Spring) and everyone’s
In love and flowers pick themselves
“[Buffalo Bill
‘s]” by e.e. cummings (1923)
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Buffalo Bill
‘s
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
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“Not Waving But Drowning” by Stevie Smith (1957)
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
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he was a handsome man
I’d rather say it
twice,
Yes.
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Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been to cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
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and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death
Jesus
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“I’ll Stay” by Gwnedolyn Brooks (2000)
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“Fireflies” by Paul Fleischman (1988)
I like the plates on the ledge
of the dining room wall (to the north)
standing on edge,
standing as if they thought they could stay
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Confident things can stand and stay!
5
I am confident.
I always thought there was something
To be done about everything.
I’ll stay.
I’ll not go pouting and shouting out of the city.
I’ll stay.
10
I’ll stay.
Fine artists in flight
adding dabs of light
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It SUSHES
It hushes
The loudness in the road.
It flitter-twitters,
And laughs away from me.
It laughs a lovely whiteness,
And whitely whirs away,
To be,
Some otherwhere,
Still white as milk or shirts.
So beautiful it hurts.
Signing the June nights
as if they were paintings
flickering
fireflies
fireflies.
20
“Cynthia in the Snow” by Gwendolyn Brooks (1956)
1
glowing
insect calligraphers
practicing penmanship
Six-legged scribblers
of vanishing messages,
15
25
30
Light
is the ink we use
Night
We’re
fireflies
flickering
flashing
fireflies
gleaming
Insect calligraphers
copying sentences
Six-legged scribblers
fleeting graffiti
Fine artists in flight
fireflies
flitting
fireflies
glimmering
My name will be Up in Lights!
I believe it!
They will know me as Nora-the-Wonderful!
It will happen!
I’ll stay.
Mother says, “You rise in the morning –
You must be the Sun!
For wherever you are there is Light
And those who are near you are warm,
Feel Efficient.”
Light
Night
is our parchment
35
40
bright brush strokes
Signing the June nights
as if they were paintings
we’re
Fireflies
flickering
Fireflies.