English III:
Language & Composition
Poetry Packet
Introduction to Poetry
by Billy Collins, (b., 1941)
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
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I. “How to read a poem” by Dr. Collins
II. List of Rhetorical Figures
III. Sample Paraphrases: 1.) Robert Frost, 2.) John Donne
IV. “In a Station of the Metro” – Ezra Pound
V. Student Memorization List
VI. Analysis of Sonnet 116
VII. Poems
The Touch of the Master’s Hand – Myra Brooks Welch
“The Highwayman” – Alfred Noyes
“The Spell of the Yukon” – Robert Service
“The Lanyard” – Billy Collins
“If” – Rudyard Kipling
“My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose” – Robert Burns
“A Drinking Song” – W.B. Yeats
“To Daffodils” – Robert Herrick
“The Little Boy Blue” – Eugene Field
“On My First Son” – Ben Jonson
“When You are Old” – W.B. Yeats
“The Sorrow of Love” – W.B. Yeats
“Pied Beauty” – Gerard Manley Hopkins
“Spring” – Gerard Manley Hopkins
“Spring and Fall” – Gerard Manley Hopkins
“Death, be not proud” (Holly Sonnet 10) – John Donne
“At the round earth’s imagined corners” (Holy Sonnet 7)
“Batter my heart, three person’d God” (Holy Sonnet 14)
“Solace” – Dorothy Parker
“Piano” – D. H. Lawrence
“The Day is Done” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow”
“Pippa’s Song” – Robert Browning
“Silences” – John Montague
“Love Recognized” – Robert Penn Warren
“Snow-Flakes” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“On His Blindness” – John Milton
“Patience” – Kay Ryan
“A Psalm of Life” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“Ulysses” – Alfred Lord Tennyson
“Dover Beach” – Matthew Arnold
“Ode to Autumn” – J. Keats
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Dr. Collins Guide on How to Begin Reading a Poem
1. Pen or pencil is in hand; a good dictionary is handy.
Reading poetry is mental exercise. But it is not exercise like lifting weights so much as
it is exercise like dancing your heart out.
2. Reading #1: read the poem from beginning to end without stopping.
Why? You need to know where a poem begins and ends before looking at it any further.
3. Reading #2: make notes as you go through.
Knowing where the poem begins and ends, you can now begin to see how different parts of
the poem are related. Make note of those relationships.
4. Mark sentence endings.
Put a slash mark where each sentence ends to be sure you know where the sentences
are. You read poems the same way you read prose—sentence by sentence complete thought
by complete thought. So you need to mark off all the complete sentences in the poem. You
cannot understand a poem if you read it line by line.
5. Identify the subject and verb of each sentence. Put an “s” over the subject, a “v” over the
verb.
Poetry often shifts the usual word order in sentences. Sometimes this is done to create
certain metric patterns or rhyme patterns. Sometimes it’s done for other reasons. But you
cannot understand a sentence unless you read it with the word order in its usual order—
subject, verb, object. Establishing the usual word order can be the most difficult part of
reading some poems.
6. Circle all words that you do not understand or don’t make sense in context.
Poems are created out of words. If you do not understand every word, how can you
expect to understand the poem? Never assume you know what a word means. Look it up and
you may discover even more meanings for the same word.
7. Underline words and/or passages that you feel are important and, in the margin, explain
why that passage or word is important or ask a relevant question about that passage or
word.
You need to enter into a conversation with the poem. If you come across a striking
image or an intriguing thought, make note of it. Explore your thoughts and reactions.
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8. After the second reading, go back and look at the title of the poem. In what way(s) does
the title help us to understand the poem? What is the significance of the title? Write it out
next to the title.
The title is often the first clue to what the poet wants the poem to do. If the poet goes to the
trouble of giving the poem a title, it must have some significance. Talk to that title; what is it
trying to tell you?
9. Reading #3: note the poetic devices. Highlight or underline those devices (alliteration,
assonance, metaphor, simile, hyperbole, synechdoche, metonymy, etc.) In the margin, write
the name of the poetic device.
Why? In good poems, form and content are related. How the poem says what it says helps
us understand what the poem says. We need to be aware of how and why the poet uses these
techniques.
10. Readings #4  ∞: After you have taken care of all the above, the paper on which the
poem is printed should be covered with your writing and notations. You have entered into
an active conversation with this poem and now you are ready to discuss what this poem
says and how it says it. If it is a great poem, the more times you read the poem, the more
you will likely see in the poem for great poetry rewards further study.
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SCHEMES: artful variation of arrangement of
words
Parallelism – using similar structure in phrases, words, or clauses that are paired or in a series.
As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I
honor him; but as he was ambitious, I slew him. There is tears for his love; joy for his
fortune; honor for his valor; and death for his ambition.
(William Shakespeare; Julius
Caesar, Act III)
Antithesis – placing contrasts side by side, usually in parallel statements.
Give me liberty or give me death! (Patrick Henry)
Male and female are the distinctions of nature, good and bad the distinctions of heaven...
(Thomas Paine; Common Sense)
...one day little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and
white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. (Martin Luther King; “I Have a
Dream”)
Asyndeton – piling up words and phrases without intervening conjunctions.
Every Thursday night you will be stimulated, motivated, excited, intrigued, exasperated,
educated, shocked, rocked, provoked, inspired, moved, amused, enlightened and
entertained. (ABC News 20/20)
Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in
distresses... (St. Paul; II Corinthians 12:10)
Polysyndeton – using many conjunctions. (Replace every comma in asyndeton with “and” and you
will have polysyndeton.)
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping
things, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion
over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the
earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. (Genesis 1:24; 26)
Anaphora – repeating the same word at the beginning of a sequence of sentences or clauses.
Now is the time to make real the promises of Democracy. Now is the time to rise from the
dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to
open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children. Now is the time to lift out nation
from the quicksands of racial injustices to the solid rock of brotherhood.
(Martin Luther King; “I Have a Dream”)
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I’m not a politician, not even a student of politics; in fact, I’m not a student of much of
anything. I’m not a Democrat, I’m not a Republican, and I don’t even consider myself an
American.
(Malcolm X; The Ballot or the Bullet)
Epistrophe – repeating the same word or group of words at the end of a sequence of sentences or
clauses. (Epistrophe is anaphora in reverse.)
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. (St. Paul; I
Corinthians 13:11)
I’m a Pepper, she’s a Pepper, we’re a Pepper, wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper, too?
...and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the
earth. (Abraham Lincoln)
Antimetabole – repetition of words in reverse grammatical order in successive clauses.
Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country. (John F.
Kennedy; Inaugural address)
I am stuck on Bandaids and Bandaid’s stuck on me.
Alliteration – repeating initial or middle consonants in two or more successive words.
The chefs and shepherds have shot themselves.
The dowagers dropped in their Dutch ovens... (W.H. Auden: The Age of Anxiety)
The cavity creeps are coming – help! Call Crest.
Assonance – frequent and intentional repetition of a vowel sound in a phrase or sentence
But passions lends them power, time means to meet,
Temp’ring extremeties with extreme sweet. (Romeo and Juliet, Prologue to Act II)
Polyptoton – repeating a word from the same root but in a different form.
On the evolutionary basis you may be inhumane, or you may be absurdly humane; but you
cannot be human. (G.K. Chesterton; Orthodoxy)
He may be friendly; but he’s not your friend. (Malcolm X; The Ballot or the Bullet)
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TROPES: change from the usual and primary
meaning of a word
Metaphor – implied comparison between two unalike things.
I can no more remember the books I have read than the meals I have eaten, but they have
made me. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Millions of Americans are digging their graves with their own teeth. (Diet advertisement)
Simile – explicit comparison between two unalike things. (unlike metaphor, simile uses “like” or
“as”)
Like a boxer rising groggily from a stunning roundhouse, a weakened administration got
back into the fight against inflation last week. (Time, June 19, 1979)
The knowledge gained at that time have ever since lain oddly around in a corner of his mind
like luggage left long ago in an emergency by some acquaintance and never reclaimed.
(W.H. Auden; The Age of Anxiety)
Metonymy – substituting one term for another that is closely related to it.
The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans. (John Kennedy; Inaugural
address)
The pen is mightier than the sword. (Thomas Paine)
The White House had no comment on the incident.
Pun – a play on words. (Three types are presented here)
Antanaclasis– repetition of a word in two different sense.
If we don’t hang together, we’ll hang separately. (Benjamin Franklin)
Paranomasia – use of words alike in sound but different in meaning.
The bustle: A deceitful seatful (Vladimir Nabokov; Lolita)
Syllepsis – use of a word differently in relation to two or more other words that it modifies or
governs.
The ink, like our pig, keeps running out of the pen.
Hyperbole – using exaggerated, even grotesque, terms to add emphasis or heighten effect.
It reminds me of a string of wet sponges, it reminds me of college yells, of stale bean soup, of
tattered washing on the line, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights, it is so bad a
certain grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish and crawls
insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is flap and doodle, it is rumble and bumble, it is
balder and dash. (H.L. Mencken; “On Harding’s Inaugural”)
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Litotes – understating a point as a means of drawing attention to its significance.
Yes, it rains in Tacoma.
Gus meets Julia and leaps with her: “Nothing had changed except that night had passed over
the earth and day had come. Nothing had changed except my life.” (Geoffrey Wolff; review
of John Wain’s The Pardoner’s Tale)
Oxymoron – connecting two contradictory terms.
Expressions such as: heated coolness, awfully beautiful, terribly nice
Paradox – an apparently contradictory statement which yet has a ring of truth.
We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not. (Heraclitus)
One’s breath is both hot (warm) and cold (cool).
He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it. (Mathew
10:39)
Taken from John A. Campbell’s Speech Preparation, Modcom (1981)
http://bellevuecollege.edu/artshum/materials/spch/Buxton/Schemes_Tropes.htm
Other Key Terms / Ideas:
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juxtaposition
tone
rhythm
prosody
stress
emphasis
repetition
connotation
denotation
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“Nothing Gold Can Stay,” by Robert Frost
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
1. Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold.
The first growths in Spring are more golden in color than green, but this golden shade
doesn’t last very long.
2. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour.
The first sprouts on the branches are actually flower blossoms, but they remain only
for a very short time.
3. Then leaf subsides to leaf.
Soon, the buds and blossoms give way to green leaves. “Subsides” has a sense of
sinking, dropping, lowering.
4. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day.
The beauty of Paradise also quickly faded away, and the golden rays of dawn are daily
replaced by harsh daylight (reality?). Notice the religious connotation of Eden. Is
Frost talking about the effects of original sin? Of all human sins? Also, notice how
dawn goes DOWN to day – normally we say the sun RISES. Time is not given a
positive connotation here.
5. Nothing gold can stay.
The poet seems to be saying that nothing in Nature (life itself?) can retain its initial
beauty. The “gold” – the highly-valued and beautiful things – of dawn, flowers, youth,
etc. all fade away. However, gold does not rust. Gold DOES stay gold for a very long
time… What does this mean?
Thoughts / Reflections: This poem is quietly dark and, although the images are
beautiful, it is a lament. It is a reflection about nature as we see it when we go
outdoors, but it is also a reflection on the nature of all material reality. As the poet
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sees it, NOTHING in nature can retain its most beautiful and perfect form. – an the
entire universe itself is a victim of entropy. Mortality is the fate of all material being.
HOLY SONNETS.
V.
I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements, and an angelic sprite ;
But black sin hath betray'd to endless night
My world's both parts, and, O, both parts must die.
You which beyond that heaven which was most high
Have found new spheres, and of new land can write,
Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might
Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,
Or wash it if it must be drown'd no more.
But O, it must be burnt ; alas ! the fire
Of lust and envy burnt it heretofore,
And made it fouler ; let their flames retire,
And burn me, O Lord, with a fiery zeal
Of Thee and Thy house, which doth in eating heal.
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An Acceptable Paraphrase of Donne’s Holy Sonnet V
Sentence #1: “I AM a little world made cunningly Of Elements, and an Angelike
spright, But black sinne hath betraid to endlesse night My worlds both parts, and (oh)
both parts must die.”
My Paraphrase: I am a small planet cleverly made up of both matter and spirit. Sin,
however, has damned both my body and soul, and they both have to die.
Sentence #2: You which beyond that heaven which was most high Have found new
sphears, and of new lands can write, Powre new seas in mine eyes, that so I might
Drowne my world with my weeping earnestly, Or wash it if it must be drown’d no
more:
My Paraphrase: You, God, Who were above the skies of my little planet-self (before it
was banished from the Sun of your presence by sin), and have the power to create
new planets – you who know all there is to know about the ones you have created –
create in my eyes oceans of repentant tears that will drown my world. Or, if my selfworld cannot be drowned anymore, such tears might at least cleanse me.
Sentence #3: But oh it must be burnt! alas the fire Of lust and envie have burnt it
heretofore, And made it fouler; Let their flames retire, And burne me, O Lord, with a
fiery zeale Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heale.
My Paraphrase: But my world-self must be burned by fire! Sadly, lust and envy, like
fire, have left me for the worse. Please, God, let those kinds of fires go away and
instead let me burn with passionate enthusiasm for you and your kingdom. Such
“fiery zeal” for you will consume me (like sin does), but, paradoxically, will heal me and
make me better (which is the opposite of what sin does).
Thoughts and Reflections:
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In a Station of the Metro
THE apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
-
Ezra Pound
1. Rewrite the poem in your own words, using different synonymous nouns, verbs, etc.:
2. How does rewriting the poem change the meaning?
3. Put a dash over all stressed syllables: Do you notice anything unusual?
4. Complete the following imagist couplets with a metaphor of your own:
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
The face of that old silent woman;
The dreaded words come at last;
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Write down a list of 10 poems that you would like to memorize:
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Sonnet 116
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 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 ever loved.
Scene: There has been a fight.
Two lovers are talking.
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Audience: The audience for this sonnet has just told the poet, “Um, I’m
sorry. You’ve changed. And when people change, feelings change. So… I’m
really sorry, but this whole we’re-so-alike-we’re-just-perfect-for-each-other
thing… well, we’re not married!!! I mean, I know we talked about how we were
‘one soul in two bodies’ and all that, but let’s face it: in nature, when a
thing changes, the relationship of another thing to it changes. And when
Point B moves away from Point A, they get further from each other. You’ve
changed, moved away… And, therefore, our relationship is NOT the same.”
Speaker (in angry, then increasingly frantic and upset and sad tone of voice)
replies:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments.
Well, you might say that our love is facing serious obstacles, but I do not
think so! Don’t let me admit that those are good reasons for us to part!
Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds,Or bends with the
remover to remove:
No, I’m sorry. Love does NOT change when the beloved changes, or become
distant from Point B when Point B moves away. (You are invoking laws of
PHYSICAL nature, to justify the fact that your feelings have changed!)
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
No… Love – REAL love -- is other-earthly. Like a star, it is above – and
therefore does withstand -- storms and problems.
It is the star to every wandering
height be taken.
Love is like the North star! It…
reliable! And nobody appreciates
love, even though you have relied
just how true love always is!)
bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his
it matters! It is a guide! It is
it’s real value! (You don’t appreciate my
upon it. But that’s okay, because that’s
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending
sickle's compass come:
LOVE – real love – does not change even though people become less beautiful
than they were before. (And maybe I am less beautiful, but if you really had
loved me that wouldn’t have mattered!)
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the
edge of doom.
Love doesn’t change because of an insignificant little thing like “the
passage of Time.” REAL love is … no. It’s not some other-worldly symbol.
It’s not a cold, remote star. It’s inside a human being, and it is a choice
to stay, to endure, to be faithful no matter what. For forever!
If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
And if I am wrong about all of this, and…
Option 1.) … you take back your love, and “upon me prove” that that’s what
love is, then I take back everything I ever wrote (to you)!, and love is just
a big lie!!!
Option 2.) … if I don’t live up to this ideal of love, then I never wrote
(but I have!), and no man ever loved (but surely some man has!). … So,
clearly, since I have written, and since surely there is such a thing as true
love in the world, then I’ve got to be right about what love really is. And
you never really loved me, but I did really love you.
HELEN VENDLER’s ANALYSIS
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NOTICE WHAT’s KIND OF… WEIRD…
1. The “let me not” … that’s sort of puzzling… why this sense of resistance…
of fight?
2. The “marriage of true minds” – that’s sort of strange too… PEOPLE get
married, not minds. So what are we really talking about? What kind of
“marriage”? What kind of a relationship is being discussed here?
3. It’s a funny thing to define love by first of all emphasizing what love
is NOT. Is that the first thing we do when we talk about love?
4. The images don’t really match. The poet says love is not subject to the
laws of nature… then that it’s an abstract mark… then that it is the NORTH
STAR (a common symbol of ideal romantic love in Italian / Petrarchan poetry…
kind of like saying “but lovers always get back together because they always
do in the movies!”)… then he switches completely and says love is NOT some
abstract sign or perfect thing, but just a matter of a human enduringly
staying faithful no matter what. (It’s worth noting here that irrationality
and inconsistency in something so tight and perfect as a sonnet is
significant!)
5. The images are – well… dark! We’ve got things changing and leaving.
Storms. Lost ships. The grim reaper, cutting down youthful beauty. The
edge of doom. Errors and proofs and admitting things and impediments and “I
never wrote!” and “Nobody has ever loved!” This is not a normal love poem!!!
CLUES….
1. Notice all the negatives (line 1, 2, 5, 6, 9, 10, 14).
in negatives so much? … when we’re upset and fighting!
When do we speak
2. The sense of “proving” something… or disproving something…
line 1… “proved” in line 13.
“admit” in
3. Look again at those images. The poet says love is not subject to the
laws of nature (as if answering somebody who has suggested that it is)… then
that it’s an abstract mark (and one that’s not appreciated… hmmm!)… that it
is the NORTH STAR (a common symbol of ideal romantic love in Italian /
Petrarchan poetry… as if the poet is saying, “No, love is like THIS! Like how
the poets say it is! Not how you are behaving!”)… then he switches
completely and says love is NOT some abstract sign or perfect thing, but just
a matter of a human enduringly staying faithful no matter what. (The shift
suggests irrationality and inconsistency, always a sign of emotional
turbulence. When we start to read the poem this way, we also begin to hear a
note of desperation in the speaker’s voice.)
4. The next sonnet in the sequence says “Accuse me not…” (and is obviously
part of a fight) – suggesting that in this part of the sequence we’re reading
the poet’s side of his squabble with his lover.
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The Touch of the Master's Hand
'Twas battered and scarred,
And the auctioneer thought it
hardly worth his while
To waste his time on the old violin,
but he held it up with a smile.
"What am I bid, good people", he cried,
"Who starts the bidding for me?"
"One dollar, one dollar, Do I hear two?"
"Two dollars, who makes it three?"
"Three dollars once, three dollars twice, going
for three,"
But, No,
From the room far back a gray bearded man
Came forward and picked up the bow,
Then wiping the dust from the old violin
And tightening up the strings,
He played a melody, pure and sweet
As sweet as the angel sings.
The music ceased and the auctioneer
With a voice that was quiet and low,
Said "What now am I bid for this old violin?"
As he held it aloft with its' bow.
"One thousand, one thousand, Do I hear two?"
"Two thousand, Who makes it three?"
"Three thousand once, three thousand twice,
Going and gone", said he.
The audience cheered,
But some of them cried,
"We just don't understand."
"What changed its' worth?"
Swift came the reply.
"The Touch of the Masters Hand."
And many a man with life out of tune
All battered with bourbon and gin
Is auctioned cheap to a thoughtless crowd
Much like that old violin
A mess of pottage, a glass of wine,
A game and he travels on.
He is going once, he is going twice,
He is going and almost gone.
But the Master comes,
And the foolish crowd never can quite
understand,
The worth of a soul and the change that is
wrought
By the Touch of the Masters' Hand.
Myra Brooks Welch
-------------------------------------------------------------1. This is a narrative poem. Summarize, in
your own words, what this poem is about:
2. Identify the main structural parts of the
poem.
3. Identify the rhetorical figures the poet has
used.
4. What is the tone of this poem?
5. How does the poet create suspense in the 3rd
stanza?
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The Highwayman
PART ONE
I
THE wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.
II
He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;
They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.
III
Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
IV
And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's red-lipped daughter,
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—
V
"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize to-night,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."
VI
He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
(Oh, sweet, black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonliglt, and galloped away to the West.
PART TWO
I
He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon;
And out o' the tawny sunset, before the rise o' the moon,
When the road was a gypsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor,
A red-coat troop came marching—
Marching—marching—
King George's men came matching, up to the old inn-door.
II
18
They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,
But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
There was death at every window;
And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.
III
They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;
They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
"Now, keep good watch!" and they kissed her.
She heard the dead man say—
Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for me by moonlight;
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!
IV
She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years,
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!
V
The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more for the rest!
Up, she stood up to attention, with the barrel beneath her breast,
She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins in the moonlight throbbed to her love's refrain .
VI
Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding,
Riding, riding!
The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still!
VII
Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.
VIII
He turned; he spurred to the West; he did not know who stood
Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!
Not till the dawn he heard it, his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.
IX
Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
19
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.
*
*
*
*
*
*
X
And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding—
Riding—riding—
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.
XI
Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard;
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
-
Alfred Noyes
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
This is a narrative poem. Summarize, in your own words, what this poem is about:
What is the tone of this poem? What words does the poet, Noyes, use to convey this tone?
Point to instances of parallel structure in the poem:
20
The Spell of the Yukon
I wanted the gold, and I sought it,
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy — I fought it;
I hurled my youth into a grave.
I wanted the gold, and I got it —
Came out with a fortune last fall, —
Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it,
And somehow the gold isn't all.
No! There’s the land. (Have you seen it?)
It’s the cussedest land that I know,
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it
To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Some say God was tired when He made it;
Some say it’s a fine land to shun;
Maybe; but there’s some as would trade it
For no land on earth — and I'm one.
You come to get rich (damned good reason);
You feel like an exile at first;
You hate it like hell for a season,
And then you are worse than the worst.
It grips you like some kinds of sinning;
It twists you from foe to a friend;
It seems it’s been since the beginning;
It seems it will be to the end.
I've stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow
That’s plumb-full of hush to the brim;
I've watched the big, husky sun wallow
In crimson and gold, and grow dim,
Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming,
And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop;
And I've thought that I surely was dreaming,
With the peace o' the world piled on top.
The summer — no sweeter was ever;
The sunshiny woods all athrill;
The grayling aleap in the river,
The bighorn asleep on the hill.
The strong life that never knows harness;
The wilds where the caribou call;
The freshness, the freedom, the farness —
O God! how I'm stuck on it all.
The winter! the brightness that blinds you,
The white land locked tight as a drum,
The cold fear that follows and finds you,
The silence that bludgeons you dumb.
The snows that are older than history,
21
The woods where the weird shadows slant;
The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,
I've bade 'em good-by — but I can't.
There’s a land where the mountains are nameless,
And the rivers all run God knows where;
There are lives that are erring and aimless,
And deaths that just hang by a hair;
There are hardships that nobody reckons;
There are valleys unpeopled and still;
There’s a land — oh, it beckons and beckons,
And I want to go back — and I will.
They're making my money diminish;
I'm sick of the taste of champagne.
Thank God! when I'm skinned to a finish
I'll pike to the Yukon again.
I'll fight — and you bet it’s no sham-fight;
It’s hell! — but I've been there before;
And it’s better than this by a damsite —
So me for the Yukon once more.
There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting;
It’s luring me on as of old;
Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting
So much as just finding the gold.
It’s the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder,
It’s the forests where silence has lease;
It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Robert Service
Write a list of words that describe the various key subjects of this poem:
In one sentence, what is the main idea of this poem?
What is the poet’s attitude toward his subject?
Find and identify where the poet has used rhetorical devices:
22
The Lanyard
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to
piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the
dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she
whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us
even.
- Billy Collins
-------------------------------------------------------------1. What is this poem about?
2. What is the poet’s attitude toward his
subject? Circle all the words that reveal tone.
3. What makes this piece of writing a poem?
4. Does hearing Billy Collins read the poem
change how you read it?
5. If yes, how so?
23
If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
-
Rudyard Kipling, 1895
24
My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose
O my Luve's like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve's like the melodie
That’s sweetly play'd in tune.
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 gang dry:
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare thee well, my only Luve
And fare thee well, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.
- Robert Burns, 1794
A Drinking Song
WINE comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.
- W.B. Yeats, 1916.
5
25
TO DAFFODILS
FAIR daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon ;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain'd his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the evensong ;
And, having prayed together, we
Will go with you along.
We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring ;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.
We die,
As your hours do, and dry
Away,
Like to the summer's rain ;
Or as the pearls of morning's dew,
Ne'er to be found again.
- Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
26
Little Boy Blue
The little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and stanch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
And his musket moulds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new,
And the soldier was passing fair;
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
Kissed them and put them there.
"Now, don't you go till I come," he said,
"And don't you make any noise!"
So, toddling off to his trundle-bed,
He dreamt of the pretty toys;
And, as he was dreaming, an angel song
Awakened our Little Boy Blue--Oh! the years are many, the years are long,
But the little toy friends are true!
Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,
Each in the same old place--Awaiting the touch of a little hand,
The smile of a little face;
And they wonder, as waiting the long years through
In the dust of that little chair,
What has become of our Little Boy Blue,
Since he kissed them and put them there.
- Eugene Field, 1888
27
On My First Son
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy ;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
Oh, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,
And if no other misery, yet age!
Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say, Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such
As what he loves may never like too much.
– Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
28
When You are Old
by W. B. Yeats
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
The Sorrow of Love
by W. B. Yeats
The quarrel of the sparrows in the eaves,
The full round moon and the star-laden sky,
And the loud song of the ever-singing leaves,
Had hid away earth's old and weary cry.
And then you came with those red mournful lips,
And with you came the whole of the world's tears,
And all the sorrows of her labouring ships,
And all the burden of her myriad years.
And now the sparrows warring in the eaves,
The curd-pale moon, the white stars in the sky,
And the loud chaunting of the unquiet leaves
Are shaken with earth's old and weary cry.
29
Pied Beauty
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Glory be to God for dappled things-For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.
Spring
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Nothing is so beautiful as spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.
30
Spring and Fall
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
to a young child
Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Death, be not proud (Holy Sonnet 10)
by John Donne
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are 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 thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'art 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.
31
At the round earth's imagined corners (Holy Sonnet 7)
by John Donne
At the round earth's imagined corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go,
All whom the flood did, and fire shall, o'erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance, hath slain, and you whose eyes,
Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space;
For, if above all these, my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace,
When we are there. Here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent; for that's as good
As if thou'hadst seal'd my pardon with thy blood.
Batter my heart, three person'd God (Holy Sonnet 14)
by John Donne
Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
32
Solace
There was a rose that faded young;
I saw its shattered beauty hung
Upon a broken stem.
I heard them say, "What need to care
With roses budding everywhere?"
I did not answer them.
There was a bird, brought down to die;
They said, "A hundred fill the skyWhat reason to be sad?"
There was a girl, whose lover fled;
I did not wait, the while they said,
"There's many another lad."
- Dorothy Parker
PIANO
By D.H. Lawrence
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
1918
33
For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
And to-night I long for rest.
The Day is Done
THE DAY is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.
I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me
That my soul cannot resist:
A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.
Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.
Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.
Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;
5
10
15
20
Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.
Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.
Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.
25
30
35
40
And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (18071882)
34
Pippa’s Song
THE year 's at the spring,
And day 's at the morn;
Morning 's at seven;
The hill-side 's dew-pearl'd;
The lark 's on the wing;
The snail 's on the thorn;
God 's in His heaven—
All 's right with the world!
-
Robert Browning (1812-1889)
Silences
for Elizabeth
1
Poetry is a weapon, and should be used,
though not in the crudity of violence.
It is a prayer before an unknown altar,
a spell to bless the silence.
2
There is a music beyond all this,
beyond all forms of grievance,
where anger lays its muzzle down
into the lap of silence.
3
Or some butterfly script,
fathomed only by the other,
as supple fingers draw
a silent message from the tangible.
-
John Montague
35
Love Recognized
There are many things in the world and you
Are one of them. Many things keep happening and
You are one of them, and the happening that
Is you keeps falling like snow
On the landscape of not-you, hiding hideousness, until
The streets and the world of wrath are choked with snow.
How many things have become silent? Traffic
Is throttled. The mayor
Has been, clearly, remiss, and the city
Was totally unprepared for such a crisis. Nor
was I — yes, why should this happen to me?
I have always been a law-abiding citizen.
But you, like snow, like love, keep falling.
And it is not certain that the world will not be
Covered in a glitter of crystalline whiteness.
Silence.
- Robert Penn Warren
36
Snow-Flakes
Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.
Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.
This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
37
On His Blindness
WHEN I consider how my light is spent
E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide,
Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
5
My true account, least he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd,
I fondly ask; But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts, who best
10
Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite.
- John Milton
38
Patience
Patience is
wider than one
once envisioned,
with ribbons
of rivers
and distant
ranges and
tasks undertaken
and finished
with modest
relish by
natives in their
native dress.
Who would
have guessed
it possible
that waiting
is sustainable—
a place with
its own harvests.
Or that in
time's fullness
the diamonds
of patience
couldn't be
distinguished
from the genuine
in brilliance
or hardness.
5
10
15
20
25
- Kay Ryan
39
A PSALM OF LIFE
WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN
SAID TO THE PSALMIST
TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream ! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal ;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way ;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and
brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(1807-1882)
40
Alfred,Lord Tennyson (1809-92), Ulysses (1833)
It little profits that an idle king1,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an agèd wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades2
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy3.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
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When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought
with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles4,
And see the great Achilles5, whom we knew
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
FOOTNOTES
1 In this poem, Ulysses (the Roman for Odysseus and the
hero of Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey), now an old man,
having returned to Ithaca after twenty years absence and
much adventure, has grown restless, and is now
contemplating setting out with his crew again;
2 a constellation of stars associated with rain;
3 site of the Trojan wars of which Ulysses was a hero;
4 the Elysian Fields, believed by some to be the resting
place of heroes after death;
5 Greek hero of the Trojan wars who suffered an early
death
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DOVER BEACH
By Matthew Arnold
The sea is calm tonight,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Agean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
1867
43
J. Keats
CCLV. Ode
to Autumn
SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease;
For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river-sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
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