She Walks in Beauty
She walks in Beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
George Gordon, Lord Byron
(from Anthology: An Introduction to Literature, 1977, by Lynn Altenbernd)
Saying Dante Aloud
You can feel the muscles and veins rippling in widening and rising
circles,
like a bird in flight under your tongue.
James Wright
(from Contemporary American Poetry, 1991, by A. Poulin, Jr.)
The Year's at the Spring
The year's at the spring
And the day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn:
God's in his heaven
All's right with the world!
Robert Browning
(from The Random House Treasury of Best-Loved Poems, 1990, edited by Louis
Phillips)
Reunion
Already one day has detached itself from all the rest up ahead.
It has my photograph in its soft pocket.
It wants to carry my breath into the past in its bag of wind.
I write poems to untie myself, to do penance and disappear
Through the upper right-hand corner of things, to say grace.
Charles Wright
(from Contemporary American Poetry, 1991, by A. Poulin, Jr.)
The Eagle
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in the lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
(from Anthology: An Introduction to Literature, 1977, by Lynn Altenbernd)
The Portrait
My mother never forgave my father
for killing himself,
especially at such an awkward time
and in a public park,
that spring
when I was waiting to be born.
She locked his name
in her deepest cabinet
and would not let him out,
though I could hear him thumping.
When I came down from the attic
with the pastel portrait in my hand
of a long-lipped stranger
with a brave moustache
and deep brown level eyes,
she ripped it into shreds
without a single word
and slapped me hard.
In my sixty-fourth year
I can feel my cheek
still burning.
Stanley Kunitz
(from Contemporary American Poetry, 1991, by A. Poulin, Jr.)
The Germ
A mighty creature is the germ,
Though smaller than the pachyderm.
His customary dwelling place
Is deep within the human race.
His childish pride he often pleases
By giving people strange diseases.
Do you, my poppet, feel infirm?
You probably contain a germ.
Ogden Nash
(from Anthology: An Introduction to Literature, 1977, by Lynn Altenbernd)
Monet's "Waterlilies"
(for Bill and Sonja)
Today as the news from Selma and Saigon
poisons the air like fallout,
I come again to see
the serene great picture that I love.
Here space and time exist in light
the eye like the eye of faith believes.
The seen, the known
dissolve in iridescence, become
illusive flesh of light
that was not, was, forever is.
O light beheld as through refracting tears.
Here is the aura of that world
each of us has lost.
Here is the shadow of its joy.
Robert Hayden
(from Contemporary American Poetry, 1991, by A. Poulin, Jr.)
The Sick Rose
O rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
William Blake
(from Anthology: An Introduction to Literature, 1977, by Lynn Altenbernd)
We Real Cool
The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.
We real cool. We
Left School. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. we
Die soon.
Gwendolyn Brooks
(from Contemporary American Poetry, 1991, by A. Poulin, Jr.)
Outwitted
He drew a circle that shut me out
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
Edwin Markham
(from The Random House Treasury of Best-Loved Poems, 1990, edited by Louis
Phillips)
Snow
If we, as we are, are dust, and dust, as it will, rises,
Then we will rise, and recongregate
In the wind, in the cloud, and be their issue,
Things in a fall in a world of fall, and slip
Through the spiked branches and snapped joints of the evergreens,
White ants, white ants, and the little ribs.
Charles Wright
(from Contemporary American Poetry, 1991, by A. Poulin, Jr.)
Falls, Leaves, Fall
Fall, leaves, fall: die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me,
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night's decay
Ushers in a drearier day.
Emily Brontk
(from The Random House Treasury of Best-Loved Poems, 1990, edited by Louis
Phillips)
Watermelons
Green Buddhas
On the fruit stand.
We eat the smile
and spit out the teeth.
Charles Simic
(from Contemporary American Poetry, 1991, by A. Poulin, Jr.)
Dream Deferred
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Langston Hughes
(from The Random House Treasury of Best-Loved Poems, 1990, edited by Louis
Phillips)
The Premonition
Walking this field I remember
Days of another summer.
Oh that was long ago! I kept
Close to the heels of my father,
Matching his stride with half-steps
Until we came to a river.
He dipped his hand in the shallow:
Water ran over and under
Hair on a narrow wrist bone;
His image kept following after,
Flashed with the sun in the ripple.
But when he stood up, that face
Was lost in a maze of water.
Theodore Roethke
(from Contemporary American Poetry, 1991, by A. Poulin, Jr.)
I May, I Might, I Must
If you will tell me why the fen
appears impassible, I then
will tell you why I think that I
can get across it if I try.
Marianne Moore
(from The Random House Treasury of Best-Loved Poems, 1990, edited by Louis
Phillips)
Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard
Stuff of the moon
Runs on the lapping sand
Out to the longest shadows.
Under the curving willows,
And round the creep of the wave line,
Fluxions of yellow and dusk on the waters
Make a wide dreaming pansy of an old pond in the night.
Carl Sandburg
(from Anthology: An Introduction to Literature, 1977, by Lynn Altenbernd)
Mother o' Mine
If I were hanged on the highest hill,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
I know whose love would follow me still,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
If I were drowned in the deepest sea,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
I know whose tears would come down to me,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
If I were damned by body and soul,
I know whose prayers would make me whole,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
Rudyard Kipling
(from The Random House Treasury of Best-Loved Poems, 1990,
edited by Louis Phillips)
The Mirror
Watching you in the mirror I wonder
what it is like to be so beautiful
and why you do not love
but cut yourself, shaving
like a blind man. I think you let me stare
so you can turn against yourself
with greater violence,
needing to show me how you scrape the flesh away
scornfully and without hesitation
until I see you correctly,
as a man bleeding, not
the reflection I desire.
Louise Gl|ck
(from Contemporary American Poetry, 1991, by A. Poulin, Jr.)