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Meeting At Night

by Robert Browning.

I. The grey sea and the long black land; And the yellow half-moon large and low; And the startled little waves that leap In fiery ringlets from their sleep, As I gain the cove with pushing prow, And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

II. Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach; Three fields to cross till a farm appears; A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch And blue spurt of a lighted match, And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears, Than the two hearts beating each to each!

Spring

by GerardHopkins

NOTHING is so beautiful as spring—

 When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;  
 Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing; 5

 The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush  
 The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?

 A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning         10

In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,

 Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,

 Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

I felt a funeral in my brain

 by Emily Dickinson (1830–86)

I FELT a funeral in my brain,

 And mourners, to and fro,

Kept treading, treading, till it seemed

 That sense was breaking through.

And when they all were seated, 5

 A service like a drum

Kept beating, beating, till I thought

 My mind was going numb.

And then I heard them lift a box,

 And creak across my soul         10

With those same boots of lead, again.

 Then space began to toll

As all the heavens were a bell,

 And Being but an ear,

And I and silence some strange race, 15

 Wrecked, solitary, here.

To Autumn

 John Keats (1795–1821).

1.

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

 Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

 With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, 5

 And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;  
   To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

 And still more, later flowers for the bees,  
 Until they think warm days will never cease,         10 
   For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

 Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

 Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;         15

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

 Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook  
   Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

 Steady thy laden head across a brook;         20 
 Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,  
   Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

 Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 25

 And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

 Among the river sallows, borne aloft  
   Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; 30

 Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft  
 The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;  
   And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

The guitarist tunes up by Frances Darwin Cornford)

With what attentive courtesy he bent Over his instrument; Not as a lordly conquerer who could Command both wire and wood, But as a man with a loved woman might, Inquiring with delight What slight essential things she had to say Before they started, he and she, to play."

WESTERN WIND ( The Lover in Winter Plaineth for the Spring )

O WESTERN wind, when wilt thou blow

 That the small rain down can rain?

Christ, that my love were in my arms

 And I in my bed again!

DREAM DEFERRED Langston Hughes (1902–67)

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 lead.

Or does it explode?

Valediction, Forbidding Mourning

 John Donne (1573–1631)

AS virtuous men pass mildly away,

 And whisper to their souls to go;

While some of their sad friends do say,

 Now his breath goes, and some say, No;

So let us melt, and make no noise, 5

 No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;

’Twere profanation of our joys

 To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears

 Men reckon what it did and meant;         10

But trepidations of the spheres,

 Though greater far, are innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers’ love,

 Whose soul is sense, cannot admit

Absence; for that it doth remove 15

 Those things which elemented it.

But we, by a love so far refined,

 That ourselves know not what it is,

Inter-assurèd of the mind,

 Careless, eyes, lips and hands to miss,         20

—Our two souls therefore, which are one,

 Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

 Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so 25

 As stiff twin compasses are two;

Thy soul, the fixt foot, makes no show

 To move, but doth if th’ other do.

And though it in the centre sit,

 Yet when the other far doth roam,         30

It leans and hearkens after it,

 And grows erect as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,

 Like th’ other foot, obliquely run;

Thy firmness makes my circles just, 35

 And makes me end where I begun.

Metaphors

 By Sylvia Plath

I'm a riddle with nine syllables, An elephant, a ponderous house, A melon strolling on two tendrils, O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers! This loaf's big with its yeasty rising. Money's new-minted in this fat purse. I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf. I've eaten a bad of green apples, Boarded the train there's no getting off.

Toads -- Philip Larkin

Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life? Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork And drive the brute off?

Six days of the week it soils With its sickening poison - Just for paying a few bills! That's out of proportion.

Lots of folk live on their wits: Lecturers, lispers, Losers, loblolly-men, louts- They don't end as paupers;

Lots of folk live up lanes With fires in a bucket, Eat windfalls and tinned sardines- They seem to like it.

Their nippers have got bare feet, Their unspeakable wives Are skinny as whippets - and yet No one actually _starves_.

Ah, were I courageous enough To shout, Stuff your pension! But I know, all too well, that's the stuff That dreams are made on:

For something sufficiently toad-like Squats in me, too; Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck, And cold as snow,

And will never allow me to blarney My way of getting The fame and the girl and the money All at one sitting.

I don't say, one bodies the other One's spiritual truth; But I do say it's hard to lose either, When you have both.

The Road Not Taken (1915) Robert Frost

    This poem is usually interpreted as an assertion of individualism, but critic Lawrence Thompson has argued that it is a slightly mocking satire on a perennially hesitant walking partner of Frost's who always wondered what would have happened if he had chosen their path differently.

What evidence can you find in the poem to support each of these views?

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 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 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, 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, And that has made all the difference.

A Noiseless Patient Spider by Walt Whitman.

A noiseless, patient spider, I mark'd, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated; Mark'd how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding, It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself; Ever unreeling them--ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand, Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space, Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,--seeking the spheres, to connect them; Till the bridge you will need, be form'd--till the ductile anchor hold; Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.

"The Sick Rose"

  William Blake

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.

Summary

   The speaker, addressing a rose, informs it that it is sick. An "invisible" worm has stolen into its bed in a "howling storm" and under the cover of night. The "dark secret love" of this worm is destroying the rose's life.

Form

The two quatrains of this poem rhyme ABCB. The ominous rhythm of these short, two-beat lines contributes to the poem's sense of foreboding or dread and complements the unflinching directness with which the speaker tells the rose she is dying.

Commentary

  While the rose exists as a beautiful natural object that has become infected by a worm, it also exists as a literary rose, the conventional symbol of love. The image of the worm resonates with the Biblical serpent and also suggests a phallus. Worms are quintessentially earthbound, and symbolize death and decay. The "bed" into which the worm creeps denotes both the natural flowerbed and also the lovers' bed. The rose is sick, and the poem implies that love is sick as well. Yet the rose is unaware of its sickness. Of course, an actual rose could not know anything about its own condition, and so the emphasis falls on the allegorical suggestion that it is love that does not recognize its own ailing state. This results partly from the insidious secrecy with which the "worm" performs its work of corruption--not only is it invisible, it enters the bed at night. This secrecy indeed constitutes part of the infection itself. The "crimson joy" of the rose connotes both sexual pleasure and shame, thus joining the two concepts in a way that Blake thought was perverted and unhealthy. The rose's joyful attitude toward love is tainted by the aura of shame and secrecy that our culture attaches to love.

TO THE VIRGINS, TO MAKE MUCH OF TIME. by Robert Herrick

GATHER ye rosebuds 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.

An Analysis of To the Virgins to make much of Time

     Robert Herrick's poem, "To the Virgins to make much of Time," focuses upon the idea of carpe diem. More specifically, in this poem the idea of marriage while love and flesh are still young should be heeded or one may suffer in their later years alone and loveless. Herrick believes this gift of virginity to be a great waste if not given while it is still desirable. Virginity is a gift for the simple reason that it can only be given once to the taker of the prize, which he believes should be the husband. Therefore, he says to go out and find husbands, for youth is not perpetual and will eventually succumb to old age and loneliness. Through Herrick's use of colorful imagery and personification, the reader detects a sense of urgency and duty for the virgins to go forth and marry while time is still at hand and love is bountiful, thus creating the overall idea of carpe diem.

The first stanza of the poem opens to the personification of the flowers as the virgins:

Gather ye Rose-buds while ye may,

ULysses

 by Alfred Lord Tennyson

      Ulysses is a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, written in 1833 but not published until 1842. It is narrated by an aged Ulysses (the Latin form of Odysseus) who has become dissatisfied with his life as king of Ithaca. Ulysses had spent years fighting the Trojans (as described in the Iliad) and trying to return home (which is the subject of The Odyssey); but now that his journey is complete he feels restless and yearns to get back out into the world.
      Tennyson is questioning what becomes of the hero after the quest. Even a man as clever as Ulysses could not outwit the Fates and, like everyone else, he grew old. Although many readers have accepted the last lines of the poem as inspirational, it is not clear that Tennyson intended them as such. Ulysses's call to action is suicidal and proud. He intends to die contending, rather than in peace.

The figure of Ulysses was not particularly praised in the Victorian era. While he was a hero, Tennyson's Ulysses is prideful. As with the Byronic hero, Ulysses allows his personal pride to endanger lives. It has been theorized (by Dorothy L. Sayers among others) that Tennyson's conception of Ulysses is based more on Dante's depiction of him in the Divine Comedy (Canto XXVI of the Inferno) than on the character presented by Homer.

ULysses

 by Alfred Lord Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honoured of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers; Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breath were life. Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this grey spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle — Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and through soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail: There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me — That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads — you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Much Madness is divinest Sense Analysis(435)

  of Emily Dickinson

Much Madness is divinest Sense— To a discerning Eye— Much Sense—the starkest Madness— 'Tis the Majority In this, as All, prevail— Assent—and you are sane— Demur—you're straightway dangerous— And handled with a Chain—