Anguish

 

Keep thou.
Thy tearless watch.
All night but when blue-dawn.
Breathes on the silver moon, then weep!
Then weep!

 Adelaide Crapsey

Messy Room

Whosever room this is should be ashamed!
His underwear is hanging on the lamp.
His raincoat is there in the overstuffed chair,
And the chair is becoming quite mucky and damp.
His workbook is wedged in the window,
His sweater's been thrown on the floor.
His scarf and one ski are beneath the TV,
And his pants have been carelessly hung on the door.
His books are all jammed in the closet,
His vest has been left in the hall.
A lizard named Ed is asleep in his bed,
And his smelly old sock has been stuck to the wall.
Whosever room this is should be ashamed!
Donald or Robert or Willie or--
Huh? You say it's mine? Oh, dear,
I knew it looked familiar!

Shel Silverstein

Mistress Towl

There was an Old Woman named Towl
Who went out to Sea with her Owl,
But the Owl was Sea-sick
And scream'd for Physic;
Which sadly annoy'd Mistress Towl.

Edward Lear

"Gather ye rose-buds" by Robert Herrick

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day,
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious Lamp of Heaven, the Sun,
The higher he's a-getting
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer:
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times, still succeed the former.

Then, be not coy, but use your time;
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.

Excerpt from Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Excerpt from “The Lay of the Last Minstrel" by Sir Walter Scott

The way was long, the wind was cold,
The Minstrel was infirm and old;
His wither'd cheek, and tresses gray,
Seem'd to have known a better day;
The harp, his sole remaining joy,
Was carried by an orphan boy.

“The flee from me that sometime did me seek” by Sir Thomas Wyatt

They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild, and do not remember
That sometime they have put themselves in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range,
Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be to Fortune, it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once in special:
In thin array, after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown did from her shoulders fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small,
Therewith all sweetly did me kiss
And softly said, "Dear heart, how like you this?"

It was no dream, -I lay broad waking.
But all is turned, thorough my gentleness,
Into a strange fashion of forsaking:
And I have leave to go of her goodness,
And she also to use new-fangledness.
But since that I unkindly so am served,
I would fain know what hath she now deserved.

“Dying”by Emily Dickinson

I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable,-and then
There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.

“The Question.” by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets
Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth
Its mother's face with Heaven's collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.

And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured may,
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew, yet drained not by the day;
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,
With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;
And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold,
Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.

And nearer to the river's trembling edge
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked with white,
And starry river buds among the sedge,
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
With moonlight beams of their own watery light;
And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.

Methought that of these visionary flowers
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues, which in their natural bowers
Were mingled or opposed, the like array
Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours
Within my hand, and then, elate and gay,
I hastened to the spot whence I had come,
That I might there present it! Oh! to whom?

“The Three Ravens” by Thomas Ravenscroft

There were three ravens sat on a tree,

downe a downe, hay downe, hay downe

There were three rauens sat on a tree,

with a downe,

There were three rauens sat on a tree,

They were as blacke as they might be.

With a downe, derrie, derrie, derrie, downe, downe.

The one of them said to his mate,

Where shall we our breakfast take?

Downe in yonder greene field,

There lies a Knight slain under his shield,

His hounds they lie downe at his feete,

So well they can their Master keepe,

His Hawkes they flie so eagerly,

There's no fowle dare him come nie

Downe there comes a fallow Doe,

As great with yong as she might goe,

She lift up his bloudy head,

And kist his wounds that were so red,

She got him up upon her backe,

And carried him to earthen lake,

She buried him before the prime,

She was dead her self ere euen-song time.

God send euery gentleman,

Such haukes, such hounds, and such a Leman

Ode To Spring

SWEET daughter of a rough and stormy fire,
Hoar Winter's blooming child ; delightful Spring !
Whose unshorn locks with leaves
And swelling buds are crowned ;

From the green islands of eternal youth,
(Crown'd with fresh blooms, and ever springing shade,)
Turn, hither turn thy step,
O thou, whose powerful voice

More sweet than softest touch of Doric reed,
Or Lydian flute, can sooth the madding winds,
And thro' the stormy deep
Breathe thy own tender calm.

Thee, best belov'd ! the virgin train await
With songs and festal rites, and joy to rove
Thy blooming wilds among,
And vales and dewy lawns,

With untir'd feet ; and cull thy earliest sweets
To weave fresh garlands for the glowing brow
Of him, the favour'd youth
That prompts their whisper'd sigh.

Unlock thy copious stores ; those tender showers
That drop their sweetness on the infant buds,
And silent dews that swell
The milky ear's green stem.

And feed the slowering osier's early shoots ;
And call those winds which thro' the whispering boughs
With warm and pleasant breath
Salute the blowing flowers.

Now let me sit beneath the whitening thorn,
And mark thy spreading tints steal o'er the dale ;
And watch with patient eye
Thy fair unfolding charms.

O nymph approach ! while yet the temperate sun
With bashful forehead, thro' the cool moist air
Throws his young maiden beams,
And with chaste kisses woes

The earth's fair bosom ; while the streaming veil
Of lucid clouds with kind and frequent shade
Protect thy modest blooms
From his severer blaze.

Sweet is thy reign, but short ; The red dog-star
Shall scorch thy tresses, and the mower's scythe
Thy greens, thy flow'rets all,
Remorseless shall destroy.

Reluctant shall I bid thee then farewel ;
For O, not all the Autumn's lap contains,
Nor Summer's ruddiest fruits,
Can aught for thee atone

Fair Spring ! whose simplest promise more delights
Than all their largest wealth, and thro' the heart
Each joy and new-born hope
With softest influence breathes.

Anna Lætitia Barbauld

"Goose and Moose" by Denise Rodgers

It's hard to tell just what a goose
will have in common with a moose.
Or better yet, just what three geese
will have in common with three meese.
(Is that the plural for a mouse?
Is grice the plural for three grouse?)
I'll say this once, I'll say this thrice,
the plural for a moose is mice,
or plural for three mice is meeses.
I think that I may fall to pieces.
I feel my dizzy state increase
about the mice, the grice and geese.

                                                                                                             

Danny O'Dare

Danny O'Dare, the dancin' bear,
Ran away from the County Fair,
Ran right up to my back stair
And thought he'd do some dancin' there.
He started jumpin' and skippin' and kickin',
He did a dance called the Funky Chicken,
He did the Polka, he did the Twist,
He bent himself into a pretzel like this.
He did the Dog and the Jitterbug,
He did the Jerk and the Bunny Hug.
He did the Waltz and the Boogaloo,
He did the Hokey-Pokey too.
He did the Bop and the Mashed Potata,
He did the Split and the See Ya Later.
And now he's down upon one knee,
Bowin' oh so charmingly,
And winkin' and smilin'--it's easy to see
Danny O'Dare wants to dance with me.

Shel Silverstein

"Don Juan: Dedication" by Lord Byron

I

Bob Southey! You're a poet--Poet-laureate,
And representative of all the race;
Although 'tis true that you turn'd out a Tory at
Last--yours has lately been a common case;
And now, my Epic Renegade! what are ye at?
With all the Lakers, in and out of place?
A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye
Like "four and twenty Blackbirds in a pye;

II

"Which pye being open'd they began to sing"
(This old song and new simile holds good),
"A dainty dish to set before the King,"
Or Regent, who admires such kind of food;
And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing,
But like a hawk encumber'd with his hood,
Explaining Metaphysics to the nation--
I wish he would explain his Explanation.

III

You, Bob! are rather insolent, you know,
At being disappointed in your wish
To supersede all warblers here below,
And be the only Blackbird in the dish;
And then you overstrain yourself, or so,
And tumble downward like the flying fish
Gasping on deck, because you soar too high, Bob,
And fall, for lack of moisture quite a-dry, Bob!

IV

And Wordsworth, in a rather long "Excursion"
(I think the quarto holds five hundred pages),
Has given a sample from the vasty version
Of his new system to perplex the sages;
'Tis poetry--at least by his assertion,
And may appear so when the dog-star rages--
And he who understands it would be able
To add a story to the Tower of Babel.

V

You--Gentlemen! by dint of long seclusion
From better company, have kept your own
At Keswick, and, through still continu'd fusion
Of one another's minds, at last have grown
To deem as a most logical conclusion,
That Poesy has wreaths for you alone:
There is a narrowness in such a notion,
Which makes me wish you'd change your lakes for Ocean.

VI

I would not imitate the petty thought,
Nor coin my self-love to so base a vice,
For all the glory your conversion brought,
Since gold alone should not have been its price.
You have your salary; was't for that you wrought?
And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise.
You're shabby fellows--true--but poets still,
And duly seated on the Immortal Hill.

VII

Your bays may hide the baldness of your brows--
Perhaps some virtuous blushes--let them go--
To you I envy neither fruit nor boughs--
And for the fame you would engross below,
The field is universal, and allows
Scope to all such as feel the inherent glow:
Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore and Crabbe, will try
'Gainst you the question with posterity.

VIII

For me, who, wandering with pedestrian Muses,
Contend not with you on the winged steed,
I wish your fate may yield ye, when she chooses,
The fame you envy, and the skill you need;
And, recollect, a poet nothing loses
In giving to his brethren their full meed
Of merit, and complaint of present days
Is not the certain path to future praise.

IX

He that reserves his laurels for posterity
(Who does not often claim the bright reversion)
Has generally no great crop to spare it, he
Being only injur'd by his own assertion;
And although here and there some glorious rarity
Arise like Titan from the sea's immersion,
The major part of such appellants go
To--God knows where--for no one else can know.

X

If, fallen in evil days on evil tongues,
Milton appeal'd to the Avenger, Time,
If Time, the Avenger, execrates his wrongs,
And makes the word "Miltonic" mean " sublime ,"
He deign'd not to belie his soul in songs,
Nor turn his very talent to a crime;
He did not loathe the Sire to laud the Son,
But clos'd the tyrant-hater he begun.

XI

Think'st thou, could he--the blind Old Man--arise
Like Samuel from the grave, to freeze once more
The blood of monarchs with his prophecies
Or be alive again--again all hoar
With time and trials, and those helpless eyes,
And heartless daughters--worn--and pale--and poor;
Would he adore a sultan? he obey
The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh?

XII

Cold-blooded, smooth-fac'd, placid miscreant!
Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin's gore,
And thus for wider carnage taught to pant,
Transferr'd to gorge upon a sister shore,
The vulgarest tool that Tyranny could want,
With just enough of talent, and no more,
To lengthen fetters by another fix'd,
And offer poison long already mix'd.

XIII

An orator of such set trash of phrase
Ineffably--legitimately vile,
That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise,
Nor foes--all nations--condescend to smile,
Not even a sprightly blunder's spark can blaze
From that Ixion grindstone's ceaseless toil,
That turns and turns to give the world a notion
Of endless torments and perpetual motion.

XIV

A bungler even in its disgusting trade,
And botching, patching, leaving still behind
Something of which its masters are afraid,
States to be curb'd, and thoughts to be confin'd,
Conspiracy or Congress to be made--
Cobbling at manacles for all mankind--
A tinkering slave-maker, who mends old chains,
With God and Man's abhorrence for its gains.

XV

If we may judge of matter by the mind,
Emasculated to the marrow It
Hath but two objects, how to serve, and bind,
Deeming the chain it wears even men may fit,
Eutropius of its many masters, blind
To worth as freedom, wisdom as to Wit,
Fearless--because no feeling dwells in ice,
Its very courage stagnates to a vice.

XVI

Where shall I turn me not to view its bonds,
For I will never feel them?--Italy!
Thy late reviving Roman soul desponds
Beneath the lie this State-thing breath'd o'er thee--
Thy clanking chain, and Erin's yet green wounds,
Have voices--tongues to cry aloud for me.
Europe has slaves--allies--kings--armies still,
And Southey lives to sing them very ill.

XVII

Meantime--Sir Laureate--I proceed to dedicate,
In honest simple verse, this song to you,
And, if in flattering strains I do not predicate,
'Tis that I still retain my "buff and blue";
My politics as yet are all to educate:
Apostasy's so fashionable, too,
To keep one creed's a task grown quite Herculean;
Is it not so, my Tory, ultra-Julian?

Lord Byron

Ave, Maria

I

In the ages of Faith, before the day
When men were too proud to weep or pray,
There stood in a red-roofed Breton town
Snugly nestled 'twixt sea and down,
A chapel for simple souls to meet,
Nightly, and sing with voices sweet,
Ave, Maria!

II

There was an idiot, palsied, bleared,
With unkempt locks and a matted beard,
Hunched from the cradle, vacant-eyed,
And whose head kept rolling from side to side;
Yet who, when the sunset-glow grew dim,
Joined with the rest in the twilight hymn,
Ave Maria!

III

But when they up-got and wended home,
Those up the hillside, these to the foam,
He hobbled along in the narrowing dusk,
Like a thing that is only hull and husk;
On as he hobbled, chanting still,
Now to himself, now loud and shrill,
Ave Maria!

IV

When morning smiled on the smiling deep,
And the fisherman woke from dreamless sleep,
And ran up his sail, and trimmed his craft,
While his little ones leaped on the sand and laughed,
The senseless cripple would stand and stare,
Then suddenly holloa his wonted prayer,
Ave Maria!

V

Others might plough, and reap, and sow,
Delve in the sunshine, spin in snow,
Make sweet love in a shelter sweet,
Or trundle their dead in a winding sheet;
But he, through rapture, and pain, and wrong,
Kept singing his one monotonous song.
Ave Maria!

VI

When thunder growled from the ravelled wrack,
And ocean to welkin bellowed back,
And the lightning sprang from its cloudy sheath,
And tore through the forest with jagged teeth,
Then leaped and laughed o'er the havoc wreaked,
The idiot clapped with his hands, and shrieked,
Ave Maria!

VII

Children mocked, and mimicked his feet,
As he slouched or sidled along the street;
Maidens shrank as he passed them by,
And mothers with child eschewed his eye;
And half in pity, half scorn, the folk
Christened him, from the words he spoke,
Ave Maria!

IX

They stirred up the ashes between the dogs,
And warmed his limbs by the blazing logs,
Chafed his puckered and bloodless skin,
And strove to quiet his chattering chin;
But, ebbing with unreturning tide,
He kept on murmuring till he died,
Ave Maria!

X

Idiot, soulless, brute from birth,
He could not be buried in sacred earth;
So they laid him afar, apart, alone,
Without a cross, or turf, or stone,
Senseless clay unto senseless clay,
To which none ever came nigh to say,
Ave Maria!

XI

When the meads grew saffron, the hawthorn white,
And the lark bore his music out of sight,
And the swallow outraced the racing wave,
Up from the lonely, outcast grave
Sprouted a lily, straight and high,
Such as She bears to whom men cry,
Ave Maria!

XII

None had planted it, no one knew
How it had come there, why it grew;
Grew up strong, till its stately stem
Was crowned with a snow-white diadem--
One pure lily, round which, behold!
Was written by God in veins of gold,
"Ave Maria!"

XIII

Over the lily they built a shrine,
Where are mingled the mystic bread and wine;
Shrine you may see in the little town
That is snugly nestled 'twixt deep and down.
Through the Breton land it hath wondrous fame,
And it bears the unshriven idiot's name,
Ave Maria!

XIV

Hunchbacked, gibbering, blear-eyed, halt,
From forehead to footstep one foul fault,
Crazy, contorted, mindless-born,
The gentle's pity, the cruel's scorn,
Who shall bar you the gates of Day,
So you have simple faith to say,
Ave Maria?

Alfred Austin

The ring is on my hand,
And the wreath is on my brow;
Satin and jewels grand
Are all at my command,
And I am happy now.
And my lord he loves me well;
But, when first he breathed his vow,
I felt my bosom swell-
For the words rang as a knell,
And the voice seemed his who fell
In the battle down the dell,
And who is happy now.

But he spoke to re-assure me,
And he kissed my pallid brow,
While a reverie came o'er me,
And to the church-yard bore me,
And I sighed to him before me,
Thinking him dead D'Elormie,
"Oh, I am happy now!"

And thus the words were spoken,
And this the plighted vow,
And, though my faith be broken,
And, though my heart be broken,
Here is a ring, as token
That I am happy now!

Would God I could awaken!
For I dream I know not how!
And my soul is sorely shaken
Lest an evil step be taken,-

Lest the dead who is forsaken
May not be happy now.

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Robert Frost

“Turn back the heart you've turned away

Give back your kissing breath

Leave not my love as you have left

The broken hearts of yesterday

But wait, be still, don't lose this way

Affection now, for what you guess

May be something more, could be less

Accept my love, live for today.”

“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:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed,

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed.”

William Shakespeare

Dying
by
Emily Dickinson

"I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable,-and then
There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see."

“Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion; so the god prevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me, too, about all these things, O daughter of Jove, from whatsoever source you may know them.”

Homer

"Let Us make man in Our image,

according to Our likeness;

let them have dominion over the fish of the sea,

over the birds of the air, and over the cattle,

over all the earth and over every creeping thing

that creeps on the earth"

Genesis 26-27

I like to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, step

Around a pile of mountains,
And, supercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of roads;
And then a quarry pare

To fit its sides, and crawl between, Complaining all the while
In horrid, hooting stanza;
Then chase itself down hill
And neigh like Boanerges;
Then, punctual as a start its own,
Stop-docile and omnipotent-
A stable door.

Betty Botter bought some butter,
But, she said, The butter's bitter;
If I put it in my batter
It will make my batter bitter.
But, a bit of better butter
Will make my batter better.
So, she bought a bit of butter
Better than her bitter butter,
And she put it in her batter
And the batter was not bitter.
So, 'twas better Betty Botter
Bought a bit of better butter

The way was long, the wind was cold,
The Minstrel was infirm and old;
His wither'd cheek, and tresses gray,
Seem'd to have known a better day;
The harp, his sole remaining joy,
Was carried by an orphan boy.

(The Lay of the Last Minstel by Sir Walter Scotts

 Example-

The Bells
by
Edgar Allan Poe

Hear the mellow wedding bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And an in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats

 

 

 

Connotation - The emotional implications and associations that a word may carry in contrast to its denotative meanings.  

 

Example – “During rush hour traffic in a metropolis, cars creep along at agonizingly slow speed”

 

Diction - The choice of words and figures in poetry.

 

Image - The pattern of related comparative aspects of language, particularly of images, in a literary work

Example of Image-

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

by
T. S. Eliot

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells

 

Irony - Irony illustrates a situation, or a use of language, involving some kind of discrepancy. The result of an action or situation is the reverse of what is expected.

 

Example -

 

Rime of the Ancient Mariner
by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.