AP Literature Poetry 2 – Huskisson
The Man He Killed
Thomas Hardy (1840 – 1928)
Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!
But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him and he at me,
And killed him in his place.
I shot him dead because –
Because he was my foe,
Just so – my foe of course he was;
That’s clear enough; although
He thought he’d ‘list perhaps,
Off hand like – just as I –
Was out of work – had sold his traps –
No other reason why.
Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You’d treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.
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AP Literature Poetry 2 – Huskisson
A Study of Reading Habits
Philip Larkin (1922 – 1985)
When getting my nose in a book
Cured most things short of school,
It was worth ruining my eyes
To know I could still keep cool,
And deal out the old right hook
To dirty dogs twice my size.
Later, with inch-thick specs,
Evil was just my lark:
Me and my coat and fangs
Had ripping times in the dark.
The women I clubbed with sex!
I broke them up like meringues.
Don't read much now: the dude
Who lets the girl down before
The hero arrives, the chap
Who's yellow and keeps the store
Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap.
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AP Literature Poetry 2 – Huskisson
Is my team plowing
A. E. Housman (1859 – 1936)
“Is my team plowing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?”
Aye, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plow.
“Is football playing
Along the river shore,
With lads to chase the leather,
Now I stand up no more?”
Aye, the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands up, the keeper
Stands up to keep the goal.
“Is my girl happy,
That I thought hard to leave,
And has she tired of weeping
As she lies down at eve?”
Aye, she lies down lightly,
She lies not down to weep:
Your girl is well contented.
Be still, my lad, and sleep.
“Is my friend hearty,
Now I am thin and pine,
And has he found to sleep in
A better bed than mine?”
Yes, lad, I lie easy,
I lie as lads would choose;
I cheer a dead man's sweetheart,
Never ask me whose.
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AP Literature Poetry 2 – Huskisson
Break of Day
John Donne (1572 – 1631)
'TIS true, 'tis day ; what though it be?
O, wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise because 'tis light?
Did we lie down because 'twas night?
Love, which in spite of darkness brought us hither,
Should in despite of light keep us together.
Light hath no tongue, but is all eye ;
If it could speak as well as spy,
This were the worst that it could say,
That being well I fain would stay,
And that I loved my heart and honour so
That I would not from him, that had them, go.
Must business thee from hence remove?
O ! that's the worst disease of love,
The poor, the foul, the false, love can
Admit, but not the busied man.
He which hath business, and makes love, doth do
Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.
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AP Literature Poetry 2 – Huskisson
There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House
Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)
There's been a Death in the Opposite house
As lately as Today –
I know it, by the numb look
Such Houses have - alway The Neighbors rustle in and out –
The Doctor - drives away –
A Window opens like a Pod –
Abrupt - mechanically –
Somebody flings a Mattress out –
The Children hurry by –
They wonder if it died - on that –
I used to – when a boy –
The Minister – goes stiffly in –
As if the House were His –
And He owned all the Mourners now –
And little Boys – besides –
And then the Milliner – and the Man –
Of the Appalling Trade –
To take the measure of the house –
There'll be that Dark Parade –
Of Tassels – and of Coaches – soon –
It's easy as a sign –
The Intuition of the News –
In just a Country Town –
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AP Literature Poetry 2 – Huskisson
When in Rome
Mari Evans
Mattie dear
the box is full
take
whatever you like
to eat . . .
(an egg
or soup
. . . there ain't no meat.)
there's endive there
and
cottage cheese
(whew! if I had some
black-eyed peas. . . )
there's sardines
on the shelves
and such
but
don't
get my anchovies
they cost
too much!
(me get the
anchovies indeed!
what she think, she got -a bird to feed?)
there's plenty in there
o fill you up.
(yes'm. just the
sight's
enough!
Hope I lives till I get
home
I'm tired of eatin'
what they eats in Rome . . .)
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AP Literature Poetry 2 – Huskisson
Animals Are Passing From Our Lives
Philip Levine (b. 1928)
It's wonderful how I jog
on four honed-down ivory toes
my massive buttocks slipping
like oiled parts with each light step.
I'm to market. I can smell
the sour, grooved block, I can smell
the blade that opens the hole
and the pudgy white fingers
that shake out the intestines
like a hankie. In my dreams
the snouts drool on the marble,
suffering children, suffering flies,
suffering the consumers
who won't meet their steady eyes
for fear they could see. The boy
who drives me along believes
that any moment I'll fall
on my side and drum my toes
like a typewriter or squeal
and shit like a new housewife
discovering television,
or that I'll turn like a beast
cleverly to hook his teeth
with my teeth. No. Not this pig.
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AP Literature Poetry 2 – Huskisson
Question
May Swenson (1919 – 1989)
Body my house
my horse my hound
what will I do
when you are fallen
Where will I sleep
How will I ride
What will I hunt
Where can I go
without my mount
all eager and quick
How will I know
in thicket ahead
is danger or treasure
when Body my good
bright dog is dead
How will it be
to lie in the sky
without roof or door
and wind for an eye
With cloud for shift
how will I hide?
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AP Literature Poetry 2 – Huskisson
Mirror
Sylvia Plath (1932 – 1963)
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately.
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful –
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
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AP Literature Poetry 2 – Huskisson
The Clod and the Pebble
William Blake (1757 – 1827)
"Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."
So sung a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattle's feet,
But a Pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet:
"Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a hell in heaven's despite."
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AP Literature Poetry 2 – Huskisson
Ethics
Linda Pastan (b. 1932)
In ethics class so many years ago
our teacher asked this question every fall:
if there were a fire in a museum
which would you save, a Rembrandt painting
or an old woman who hadn’t many
years left anyhow? Restless on hard chairs
caring little for pictures or old age
we’d opt one year for life, the next for art
and always half-heartedly. Sometimes
the woman borrowed my grandmother’s face
leaving her usual kitchen to wander
some drafty, half-imagined museum.
One year, feeling clever, I replied
why not let the woman decide herself?
Linda, the teacher would report, eschews
the burdens of responsibility.
This fall in a real museum I stand
before a real Rembrandt, old woman,
or nearly so, myself. The colors
within this frame are darker than autumn,
darker even than winter- the brown of the earth,
though earth’s most radiant elements burn
through the canvas. I know now that woman
and painting and season are almost one
and all beyond saving by children.
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AP Literature Poetry 2 – Huskisson
Storm Warnings
Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
The glass has been falling all the afternoon,
And knowing better than the instrument
What winds are walking overhead, what zone
Of grey unrest is moving across the land,
I leave the book upon a pillowed chair
And walk from window to closed window, watching
Boughs strain against the sky
And think again, as often when the air
Moves inward toward a silent core of waiting,
How with a single purpose time has traveled
By secret currents of the undiscerned
Into this polar realm. Weather abroad
And weather in the heart alike come on
Regardless of prediction.
Between foreseeing and averting change
Lies all the mastery of elements
Which clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter.
Time in the hand is not control of time,
Nor shattered fragments of an instrument
A proof against the wind; the wind will rise,
We can only close the shutters.
I draw the curtains as the sky goes black
And set a match to candles sheathed in glass
Against the keyhole draught, the insistent whine
Of weather through the unsealed aperture.
This is our sole defense against the season;
These are the things we have learned to do
Who live in troubled regions.
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AP Literature Poetry 2 – Huskisson
John Milton
When I consider how my life is spent
When I consider how my life is spent,
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve there with my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
“Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?”
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
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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AP Literature Poetry 2 – Huskisson
Sonnet 116
William Shakespeare
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-fixéd 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.
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AP Literature Poetry 2 – Huskisson
The Labyrinth
Robert P. Baird
Torn turned and tattered
Bowed burned and battered
I took untensed time by the teeth
And bade ir bear me banking
Out over the walled welter
cities and the sea
Through the lightsmocked birdpocked cloudclocked sky
To leave me light on a lilting planetisimal.
The stone walls wailed and whimpered
The bold stars paled and dimpled
Godgone time gathered to a grunt
And bore me bled and breaking
On past parted palisades
windows and the trees
Over a windcloaked nightsoaked starpoked sea
To drop me where? Deep in a decadent’s dream.
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