Poetry

Desert Places by Robert Frost Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast In a field I looked into going past, And the ground almost covered smooth in snow, But a few weeds and stubble showing last. The woods around it have it–it is theirs. All animals are smothered in their lairs. I am too…

Sailing to Byzantium By William Butler Yeats I That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees, —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all…

Among School Children By William Butler Yeats I I walk through the long schoolroom questioning; A kind old nun in a white hood replies; The children learn to cipher and to sing, To study reading-books and history, To cut and sew, be neat in everything In the best modern way—the children’s eyes In momentary wonder…

This moment yearning and thoughtful By Walt Whitman This moment wishing and thoughtful sitting alone, It seems to me there are other men in other lands wishing and thoughtful, It seems to me I can look over and look/see them in Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Or far, far away, in China, or in Russia or…

“Are you the new person drawn toward me?” By Walt Whitman Are you the new person drawn toward me? To begin with, take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose; Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal? Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?…

As I ponder’d in silence By Walt Whitman As I ponder’d in silence, Returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long, A Phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect, Terrible in beauty, age, and power, The genius of poets of old lands, As to me directing like flame its eyes, With finger pointing to many immortal…

Dry loaf By Wallace Stevens It is equal to living in a tragic land To live in a tragic time. Regard now the sloping, the mountainous rocks And the river that batters its way over stones, Regard the hovels of those that live in this land. That was what I painted behind the loaf, The…

Continual Conversation With A Silent Man By Wallace Stevens The old brown hen and the old blue sky, Between the two we live and die– The broken cartwheel on the hill. As if, in the presence of the sea, We dried our nets and mended sail And talked of never-ending things, Of the never-ending storm…

A Postcard from the Volcano By Wallace Stevens Children picking up our bones Will never know that these were once As quick as foxes on the hill; And that in autumn, when the grapes Made sharp air sharper by their smell These had a being, breathing frost; And least will guess that with our bones…

The Trees By Philip Larkin The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief. Is it that they are born again And we grow old? No, they die too, Their yearly trick of looking new Is written down in rings…

Continuing To Live By Philip Larkin Continuing to live — that is, repeat A habit formed to get necessaries — Is nearly always losing, or going without. It varies. This loss of interest, hair, and enterprise — Ah, if the game were poker, yes, You might discard them, draw a full house! But it’s chess….

Maturity By Philip Larkin A stationary sense… as, I suppose, I shall have, till my single body grows Inaccurate, tired; Then I shall start to feel the backward pull Take over, sickening and masterful – Some say, desired. And this must be the prime of life… I blink, As if at pain; for it is…

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock By T. S. Eliot S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo. Let us go then, you and I,…

The Waste Land By T. S. Eliot FOR EZRA POUND IL MIGLIOR FABBRO I. The Burial of the Dead April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with…

The Second Coming By 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…

A Dialogue of Self and Soul By William Butler Yeats I My Soul. I summon to the winding ancient stair; Set all your mind upon the steep ascent, Upon the broken, crumbling battlement, Upon the breathless starlit air, Upon the star that marks the hidden pole; Fix every wandering thought upon That quarter where all…

The Lady of Shalott (1832) By Alfred Lord Tennyson Part I On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky; And thro’ the field the road runs by To many-tower’d Camelot; The yellow-leaved waterlily The green-sheathed daffodilly Tremble in the water chilly Round…

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…

To Autumn By John Keats 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, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and…

Ode to a Nightingale By John Keats My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: ‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness,— That…