This document provides summaries of 18 poems:
1) The Thought-Fox by Ted Hughes describes a fox entering a forest at midnight.
2) Digging by Seamus Heaney compares digging potatoes to his father and grandfather's manual labor.
3) Colonel Fazackerley by Charles Causley is a humorous poem about a colonel who befriends a ghost in his new home.
Finmeccanica Press Release 15 December 2011Leonardo
The Shareholders’ Meeting of SELEX Sistemi Integrati S.p.A., which met under the chairmanship of Giuseppe Veredice, acknowledged the resignation tendered by the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer Marina Grossi from all positions held within the Finmeccanica Group, and therefore from her roles as Director of the Board, CEO and COO of the company.
Theoretical Foundations for CTSO Learning OutcomesNate Cradit
Brief presentation of theoretical models for predicting and explaining learning outcomes in career-technical student organizations. Presented to Business Professionals of America State Association Advisory Council
Finmeccanica Press Release 15 December 2011Leonardo
The Shareholders’ Meeting of SELEX Sistemi Integrati S.p.A., which met under the chairmanship of Giuseppe Veredice, acknowledged the resignation tendered by the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer Marina Grossi from all positions held within the Finmeccanica Group, and therefore from her roles as Director of the Board, CEO and COO of the company.
Theoretical Foundations for CTSO Learning OutcomesNate Cradit
Brief presentation of theoretical models for predicting and explaining learning outcomes in career-technical student organizations. Presented to Business Professionals of America State Association Advisory Council
For Essay 1, write an explication of one of the assigned poe.docxRAJU852744
For Essay 1, write an
explication
of
one
of the assigned poems.
Choose to write about
only one
of the following:
"The Fish"
"A Blessing"
"My Papa's Waltz"
"Lady Lazarus"
"The Blue Bowl"
"Most Like an Arch This Marriage"
Unit 1 will cover, in detail, how to write an explication essay. In brief, "in an explication essay, you examine a work in much detail. Line by line, stanza by stanza...you explain each part as fully as you can and show how the author's techniques produce your response. An explication is essentially a demonstration of your thorough understanding of a work" (
Literature: The Human Experience
47).
For this particular essay, you will want to focus on the poetic techniques of diction, tone, image, and/or figurative language, which we will also cover in this unit.
Your essay should be between 500 and 750 words and adhere to MLA formatting. It needs to quote directly from your chosen text for support, but it should
not
use any secondary research.
Remember that the explication essay should
not just
summarize the poem.
It needs to look at the different elements of poetry used and offer a detailed
explanation
of the poem that also addresses the poem's overall effect and meaning.
The Fish
Elizabeth Bishop
,
1911
-
1979
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn’t fight.
He hadn’t fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
—the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly—
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
—It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
—if you could call it a lip—
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
fr ...
If You Forget Me,” Pablo NerudaI want you to knowone thing..docxwilcockiris
“If You Forget Me,” Pablo Neruda
I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.
“The Second Coming,” William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
We Are Seven
William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
A SIMPLE Child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?
I met a little cottage Girl:
5
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:
10
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
—Her beauty made me glad.
‘Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
How many may you be?’
‘How many? Seven in all,’ she said,
15
And wondering looked at me.
‘And where are they? I pray you tell.’
She answered, ‘Seven are we;
And two of us at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea.
20
‘Two of us in the church-yard lie,
My sister and my brother;
And, in the church-yard cottage, I
Dwell near them wi.
Neste trabalho, apresento alguns dados sobre a poesia de Lord Byron, seleciono alguns dos seus principais poemas para mostrar a importância de seu papel para a literatura Inglesa bem como o que caracteriza sua poesia como romântica.
If You Forget Me,” Pablo NerudaI want you to know one thing.docxnolanalgernon
“If You Forget Me,” Pablo Neruda
I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.
“The Second Coming,” William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
We Are Seven
William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
A SIMPLE Child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?
I met a little cottage Girl:
5
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:
10
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
—Her beauty made me glad.
‘Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
How many may you be?’
‘How many? Seven in all,’ she said,
15
And wondering looked at me.
‘And where are they? I pray you tell.’
She answered, ‘Seven are we;
And two of us at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea.
20
‘Two of us in the church-yard lie,
My sis.
2. The Thought-Fox 2
Ted Hughes
Digging3
Seamus Heaney
Colonel Fazackerley 4
Charles Causley
Everyone Sang 6
Siegfried Sassoon
And Still I Rise 7
MayaAngelou
How Do I Love Thee? 8
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Hope is the thing with feathers 9
Emily Dickinson
First Love 10
John Clare
Annabel Lee 11
EdgarAllan Poe
The Road Not Taken 13
Robert Frost
Variations on the word love 14
MargaretAtwood
City lilacs 15
Helen Dunmore
Last Lesson of the Afternoon 16
DH Lawrence
At Castle Boterel 17
Thomas Hardy
In Salutation to the Eternal Peace 18
Sarojini Naidu
1
U�een Poem
Preparation �nthology
3. 2
U�een Poem
Preparation �nthology
The Thought-Fox
I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.
5 Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:
Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
10 A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now
Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
15 Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come
Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
20 Coming about its own business
Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.
Ted Hughes
The Thought-Fox by Ted Hughes
4. 3
U�een Poem
Preparation �nthology Digging by Seamus Heaney
Digging
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
5 My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
10 The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
15 By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
20 Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
25 The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
30 The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
Seamus Heaney
5. 4
U�een Poem
Preparation �nthology
Colonel Fazackerley
Colonel Fazackerley Butterworth-Toast
Bought an old castle complete with a ghost,
But someone or other forgot to declare
To Colonel Fazack that the spectre was there.
5 On the very first evening, while waiting to dine,
The Colonel was taking a fine sherry wine,
When the ghost, with a furious flash and a flare,
Shot out of the chimney and shivered, 'Beware!'
Colonel Fazackerley put down his glass
10 And said, 'My dear fellow, that's really first class!
I just can't conceive how you do it at all.
I imagine you're going to a Fancy Dress Ball?'
At this, the dread ghost gave a withering cry.
Said the Colonel (his monocle firm in his eye),
15 'Now just how you do it I wish I could think.
Do sit down and tell me, and please have a drink.'
The ghost in his phosphorous cloak gave a roar
And floated about between ceiling and floor.
He walked through a wall and returned through a pane
20 And backed up the chimney and came down again.
Said the Colonel, 'With laughter I'm feeling quite weak!'
(As trickles of merriment ran down his cheek).
'My house-warming party I hope you won't spurn.
You must say you'll come and you'll give us a turn!'
Colonel Fazackerley by Charles Causley
continue
6. 5
U�een Poem
Preparation �nthology
25 Whereupon, the poor spectre - quite out of his wits -
Proceeded to shake himself almost to bits.
He rattled his chains and he clattered his bones
And he filled the whole castle with mumbles and moans.
But Colonel Fazackerley, just as before,
30 Was simply delighted and called out, 'Encore!'
At which the ghost vanished, his efforts in vain,
And never was seen at the castle again.
'Oh dear, what a pity!' said Colonel Fazack.
'I don't know his name, so I can't call him back.'
35 And then with a smile that was hard to define,
Colonel Fazackerley went in to dine.
Charles Causley
Colonel Fazackerley by Charles Causley
7. 6
U�een Poem
Preparation �nthology
Everyone Sang
Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
5 Orchards and dark-green fields; on–on–and out of sight.
Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away ... O, but Everyone
10 Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.
Siegfried Sassoon
Everyone Sang by Siegfried Sassoon
8. 7
U�een Poem
Preparation �nthology
And Still I Rise
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like the dust, I'll rise.
5 Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
10 With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
15 Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
20 Diggin' in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like the air, I'll rise.
25 Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history's shame
30 I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
35 Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
40 I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
MayaAngelou
And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
9. 8
U�een Poem
Preparation �nthology
How Do I Love Thee?
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.
5 I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
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
10 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.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How Do I Love Thee? by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
10. 9
U�een Poem
Preparation �nthology
Hope is the thing with feathers
'Hope' is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
5 And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –
I've heard it in the chillest land –
10 And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of Me.
Emily Dickinson
Hope is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson
11. 10
U�een Poem
Preparation �nthology
First Love
I ne'er was struck before that hour
With love so sudden and so sweet;
Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower
And stole my heart away complete.
5 My face turned pale as deadly pale
My legs refused to walk away
And when she looked, what could I ail –
My life and all seemed turned to clay.
And then my blood rushed to my face,
10 And took my eyesight quite away;
The trees and bushes round the place
Seemed midnight at noonday.
I could not see a single thing
Words from my eyes did start –
15 They spoke as chords do from the string
And blood burnt round my heart.
Are flowers the winter's choice?
Is love's bed always snow?
She seemed to hear my silent voice
20 Not love's appeals to know.
I never saw so sweet a face
As that I stood before;
My heart has left its dwelling-place
And can return no more.
John Clare
First Love by John Clare
12. 11
U�een Poem
Preparation �nthology
Annabel Lee
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;—
5 And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
10 I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs in Heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
15 A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulcher
20 In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me:—
Yes!— that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
25 That the wind came out of the cloud, by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe
continue
13. 12
U�een Poem
Preparation �nthology
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
30 And neither the angels in Heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:—
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
35 Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling,— my darling,— my life and my bride,
40 In the sepulcher there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
EdgarAllan Poe
Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe
14. 13
U�een Poem
Preparation �nthology
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
5 To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
10 Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
15 I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
20 And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
15. 14
U�een Poem
Preparation �nthology
Variations on the word love
This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
5 like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
10 magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn't what goes on at the cool
15 debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
20 their glittering knives in salute.
Variations on the word love by Margaret Atwood
Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
25 to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
30 This word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
35 and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.
MargaretAtwood
16. 15
U�een Poem
Preparation �nthology
City lilacs
In crack-haunted alleys, overhangs,
plots of sour earth that pass for gardens,
in the space between wall and wheelie bin,
where men with mobiles make urgent conversation,
5 where bare-legged girls shiver in April winds,
where a new mother stands on her doorstep and blinks
at the brightness of morning, so suddenly born —
in all these places the city lilacs are pushing
their cones of blossom into the spring
10 to be taken by the warm wind.
Lilac, like love, makes no distinction.
It will open for anyone.
Even before love knows that it is love
lilac knows it must blossom.
15 In crack-haunted alleys, in overhangs,
in somebody’s front garden
abandoned to crisp packets and cans,
on landscaped motorway roundabouts,
in the depth of parks
20 where men and women are lost in transactions
of flesh and cash, where mobiles ring
and the deal is done — here the city lilacs
release their sweet, wild perfume
then bow down, heavy with rain.
Helen Dunmore
City lilacs by Helen Dunmore
17. 16
U�een Poem
Preparation �nthology
Last Lesson of the Afternoon
When will the bell ring, and end this weariness?
How long have they tugged the leash, and strained apart,
My pack of unruly hounds! I cannot start
Them again on a quarry of knowledge they hate to hunt,
5 I can haul them and urge them no more.
No longer now can I endure the brunt
Of the books that lie out on the desks; a full threescore
Of several insults of blotted pages, and scrawl
Of slovenly work that they have offered me.
10 I am sick, and what on earth is the good of it all?
What good to them or me, I cannot see!
So, shall I take
My last dear fuel of life to heap on my soul
And kindle my will to a flame that shall consume
15 Their dross of indifference; and take the toll
Of their insults in punishment? — I will not!—
I will not waste my soul and my strength for this.
What do I care for all that they do amiss!
What is the point of this teaching of mine, and of this
20 Learning of theirs? It all goes down the same abyss.
What does it matter to me, if they can write
A description of a dog, or if they can't?
What is the point? To us both, it is all my aunt!
And yet I’m supposed to care, with all my might.
25 I do not, and will not; they won’t and they don’t; and that’s all!
I shall keep my strength for myself; they can keep theirs as well.
Why should we beat our heads against the wall
Of each other? I shall sit and wait for the bell.
DH Lawrence
Last Lesson of the Afternoon by DH Lawrence
18. 17
U�een Poem
Preparation �nthology
At Castle Boterel
As I drive to the junction of lane and highway,
And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette,
I look behind at the fading byway,
And see on its slope, now glistening wet,
5 Distinctly yet
Myself and a girlish form benighted
In dry March weather. We climb the road
Beside a chaise. We had just alighted
To ease the sturdy pony’s load
10 When he sighed and slowed.
What we did as we climbed, and what we talked of
Matters not much, nor to what it led, —
Something that life will not be balked of
Without rude reason till hope is dead,
15 And feeling fled.
At Castle Boterel by Thomas Hardy
It filled but a minute. But was there ever
A time of such quality, since or before,
In that hill’s story? To one mind never,
Though it has been climbed, foot-swift, foot-sore,
20 By thousands more.
Primaeval rocks form the road’s steep border,
And much have they faced there, first and last,
Of the transitory in Earth’s long order;
But what they record in colour and cast
25 Is - that we two passed.
And to me, though Time’s unflinching rigour,
In mindless rote, has ruled from sight
The substance now, one phantom figure
Remains on the slope, as when that night
30 Saw us alight.
I look and see it there, shrinking, shrinking,
I look back at it amid the rain
For the very last time; for my sand is sinking,
And I shall traverse old love’s domain
35 Never again.
Thomas Hardy
19. 18
U�een Poem
Preparation �nthology
In Salutation to the Eternal Peace
Men say the world is full of fear and hate,
And all life’s ripening harvest-fields await
The restless sickle of relentless fate.
But I, sweet Soul, rejoice that I was born,
5 When from the climbing terraces of corn
I watch the golden orioles of Thy morn.
What care I for the world’s desire and pride,
Who know the silver wings that gleam and glide,
The homing pigeons of Thine eventide?
10 What care I for the world’s loud weariness,
Who dream in twilight granaries Thou dost bless
With delicate sheaves of mellow silences?
Say, shall I heed dull presages of doom,
Or dread the rumoured loneliness and gloom,
15 The mute and mythic terror of the tomb?
For my glad heart is drunk and drenched with Thee,
O inmost wine of living ecstasy;
O intimate essence of eternity!
Sarojini Naidu
In Salutation to the Eternal Peace by Sarojini Naidu
