Exercises
1. Sing a song of sixpence
A pocket full of rye;
Four and twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie.
2. Peas porridge hot,
Peas porridge cold,
Peas porridge in the pot,
Nine days old.
3. When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years
4. 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.
5. It seems that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
6. The king sits in Dumferline towne,
Drinking the blude-red wine:
‘O whar will I get a skeely skipper
To sail this ship of mine?’
7. I stood tip-toe upon a little hill;
8. By the Isar, in the twilight
9. The time is out of joint. O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
10. 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:
11. I waited for the train at Coventry.
Exercises
12. There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
13. I met a little cottage Girl:
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.
She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad:
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
Her beauty made me glad.
14. But oft, in lonely rooms, and ’mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood and felt along the heart.
15. The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
16. Ah, sunflower, weary of time
Who countest the steps of the sun
Seeking after that sweet, golden clime
Where the trav’lers journey is done.
17. Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,
And the sun looked over the mountain’s rim;
And straight was a path of gold for him,
And the need of a world of men for me.
18. My mother thinks us long away
’Tis time the field were mown.
19. Long for me the rick will wait
And long will wait the fold.
20. And all that mighty heart is lying still.
21. Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! And again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
22. Those rules of old discover’d, not devised,
Are Nature still, but Nature methodised:
23. If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this,
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
24. The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!
25. I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
26. I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
27. Just for a handful of silver he left us
Just for a riband to stick in his coat.
28. 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 every day’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.
29. My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak. Yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound.
I grant I never saw a goddess go:
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.