My Last Duchess – Robert Browning
Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech – (which I have not)- to make your will
Quite clear to such as one, and say, ‘Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark’- and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
-E’en then would be some stooping; and made excuse,
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
When’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands
Then all smile stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
You’re – Sylvia Plath
Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moonskulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo’s mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
Trawling your dark as owls do.
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth
Of July to All Fool’s Day,
O high-riser, my little loaf.
Vague as fog and looked for like mail.
Farther off than Australia.
Bent-backed Atlas, our travelled prawn.
Snug as a bud and at home
Like a sprat in a pickle jug.
A creel of eels, all ripples.
Jumpy as a Mexican bean.
Right, like a well-done sum.
A clean slate, with your own face on.
Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers – Adrienne Rich
Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
The do not far the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.
Aunt Jennifer’s fingers fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand.
When Aunt is dead, her terrified hand will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.