Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud by John Donne

Death, be not proud, though some have called theeMighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrowDie not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,And soonest our best men with thee do go,Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,And poppy or charms can make us sleep as wellAnd better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?One short sleep past, we wake eternallyAnd death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

- Sonnets from the Portuguese 43: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways by Elizabeth BrowningHow 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.- I love thee to the level of every day’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- 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.-

- The Tyger by William Blake-- Tyger! Tyger! burning bright- In the forests of the night,- What immortal hand or eye- Could frame thy fearful symmetry?- In what distant deeps or skies- Burnt the fire of thine eyes?- On what wings dare he aspire?- What the hand dare seize the fire?- And what shoulder, and what art,- Could twist the sinews of thy heart?- And when thy heart began to beat,- What dread hand? and what dread feet?- What the hammer? what the chain?- In what furnace was thy brain?- What the anvil? what dread grasp- Dare its deadly terrors clasp?- When the stars threw down their spears,- And watered heaven with their tears,- Did he smile his work to see?- Did he who made the Lamb make thee?- Tyger! Tyger! burning bright- In the forests of the night,- What immortal hand or eye,- Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?--

Facing It BY YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA

My black face fades,   hiding inside the black granite.   I said I wouldn't  dammit: No tears.   I'm stone. I'm flesh.   My clouded reflection eyes me   like a bird of prey, the profile of night   slanted against morning. I turn   this way—the stone lets me go.   I turn that way—I'm inside   the Vietnam Veterans Memorialagain, depending on the light   

to make a difference.   I go down the 58,022 names,   half-expecting to find   my own in letters like smoke.   I touch the name Andrew Johnson;   I see the booby trap's white flash.   Names shimmer on a woman's blouse   but when she walks away   the names stay on the wall.   Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's   wings cutting across my stare.   The sky. A plane in the sky.   A white vet's image floats   closer to me, then his pale eyes   look through mine. I'm a window.   He's lost his right arm   inside the stone. In the black mirror   a woman’s trying to erase names:   No, she's brushing a boy's hair.   

The End of Science Fiction BY LISEL MUELLERThis is not fantasy, this is our life.We are the characterswho have invaded the moon,who cannot stop their computers.We are the gods who can unmakethe world in seven days. Both hands are stopped at noon.We are beginning to live forever,in lightweight, aluminum bodieswith numbers stamped on our backs.We dial our words like Muzak.We hear each other through water. The genre is dead. Invent something new.Invent a man and a womannaked in a garden,invent a child that will save the world,a man who carries his fatherout of a burning city.Invent a spool of thread

that leads a hero to safety,invent an island on which he abandonsthe woman who saved his lifewith no loss of sleep over his betrayal. Invent us as we werebefore our bodies glitteredand we stopped bleeding:invent a shepherd who kills a giant,a girl who grows into a tree,a woman who refuses to turnher back on the past and is changed to salt,a boy who steals his brother’s birthrightand becomes the head of a nation.Invent real tears, hard love,slow-spoken, ancient words,difficult as a child’sfirst steps across a room.

Numbers BY MARY CORNISHI like the generosity of numbers.The way, for example,they are willing to countanything or anyone:two pickles, one door to the room,eight dancers dressed as swans.

I like the domesticity of addition—add two cups of milk and stir—the sense of plenty: six plumson the ground, three morefalling from the tree.

And multiplication’s schoolof fish times fish,whose silver bodies breedbeneath the shadowof a boat.

Even subtraction is never loss,just addition somewhere else:

five sparrows take away two,the two in someone else’sgarden now.

There’s an amplitude to long division,as it opens Chinese take-outbox by paper box,inside every folded cookiea new fortune.

And I never fail to be surprisedby the gift of an odd remainder,footloose at the end:forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,with three remaining.

Three boys beyond their mother’s call,two Italians off to the sea,one sock that isn't anywhere you look.

the trash men BY CHARLES BUKOWSKIhere they comethese guysgrey truckradio playing

they are in a hurry

it’s quite exciting:shirt openbellies hanging out

they run out the trash binsroll them out to the fork liftand then the truck grinds it upwardwith far too much sound . . .

they had to fill out application formsto get these jobsthey are paying for homes anddrive late model cars

they get drunk on Saturday night

now in the Los Angeles sunshinethey run back and forth with their trash bins

all that trash goes somewhere

and they shout to each other

then they are all up in the truckdriving west toward the sea

none of them knowthat I am alive

REX DISPOSAL CO.

Paradoxes and Oxymorons JOHN ASHBERY

This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level.Look at it talking to you. You look out a windowOr pretend to fidget. You have it but you don’t have it.You miss it, it misses you. You miss each other.

The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot.What’s a plain level? It is that and other things,Bringing a system of them into play. Play?Well, actually, yes, but I consider play to be

A deeper outside thing, a dreamed role-pattern,As in the division of grace these long August daysWithout proof. Open-ended. And before you knowIt gets lost in the steam and chatter of typewriters.

It has been played once more. I think you exist onlyTo tease me into doing it, on your level, and then you aren’t thereOr have adopted a different attitude. And the poemHas set me softly down beside you. The poem is you.

Theme for English B BY LANGSTON HUGHESThe instructor said,

      Go home and write      a page tonight.      And let that page come out of you—      Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it’s that simple?I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.   I went to school there, then Durham, then here   to this college on the hill above Harlem.   I am the only colored student in my class.   The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,   through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,   Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,   the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator   up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me   at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m whatI feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you.hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page.   (I hear New York, too.) Me—who?

Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.   I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.   I like a pipe for a Christmas present,or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach.I guess being colored doesn’t make me not likethe same things other folks like who are other races.   So will my page be colored that I write?   Being me, it will not be white.But it will bea part of you, instructor.You are white—yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.That’s American.Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.   Nor do I often want to be a part of you.But we are, that’s true!As I learn from you,I guess you learn from me—

although you’re older—and white—and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

Mending Wall BY ROBERT FROST

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,And spills the upper boulders in the sun;And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.The work of hunters is another thing:I have come after them and made repairWhere they have left not one stone on a stone,But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,No one has seen them made or heard them made,But at spring mending-time we find them there.I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;And on a day we meet to walk the lineAnd set the wall between us once again.We keep the wall between us as we go.To each the boulders that have fallen to each.And some are loaves and some so nearly ballsWe have to use a spell to make them balance:"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"We wear our fingers rough with handling them.Oh, just another kind of out-door game,One on a side. It comes to little more:There where it is we do not need the wall:He is all pine and I am apple orchard.My apple trees will never get acrossAnd eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonderIf I could put a notion in his head:"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't itWhere there are cows? But here there are no cows.Before I built a wall I'd ask to knowWhat I was walling in or walling out,And to whom I was like to give offence.Something there is that doesn't love a wall,That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd ratherHe said it for himself. I see him thereBringing a stone grasped firmly by the topIn each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.He moves in darkness as it seems to me,Not of woods only and the shade of trees.He will not go behind his father's saying,And he likes having thought of it so wellHe says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."

The Road Not Taken BY ROBERT FROSTTwo roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I couldTo 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 thereHad worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally layIn 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 sighSomewhere 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.

Sonnet 130 BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEAREMy mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;Coral is far more red than her lips' red;If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;And in some perfumes is there more delightThan in the breath that from my mistress reeks.I love to hear her speak, yet well I knowThat music hath a far more pleasing sound;I grant I never saw a goddess go;My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.   And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare   As any she belied with false compare.

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death by W.B. YeatsI know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate Those that I guard I do not love; My country is Kiltartan Cross,My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behindIn balance with this life, this death.

Musée des Beaux Arts by W. H. AudenAbout suffering they were never wrong,The old Masters: how well they understood.Its human position: how it takes placeWhile someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waitingFor the miraculous birth, there always must beChildren who did not specially want it to happen, skatingOn a pond at the edge of the wood:They never forgotThat even the dreadful martyrdom must run its courseAnyhow in a corner, some untidy spotWhere the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns awayQuite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman mayHave heard the splash, the forsaken cry,But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shoneAs it had to on the white legs disappearing into the greenWater, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seenSomething amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by William Carlos Williams

According to Brueghelwhen Icarus fellit was spring

a farmer was ploughinghis fieldthe whole pageantry

of the year wasawake tinglingnear

the edge of the seaconcerned with itself

sweating in the sunthat meltedthe wings’ wax

unsignificantlyoff the coastthere was

a splash quite unnoticedthis wasIcarus drowning

Caged Bird BY MAYA ANGELOUA free bird leapson the back of the wind   and floats downstream   till the current endsand dips his wingin the orange sun raysand dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalksdown his narrow cagecan seldom see throughhis bars of ragehis wings are clipped and   his feet are tiedso he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings   with a fearful trill   of things unknown   but longed for still   and his tune is heard   on the distant hill   for the caged bird   sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breezeand the trade winds soft through the sighing treesand the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawnand he names the sky his own

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams   his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream   his wings are clipped and his feet are tied   so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings   with a fearful trill   of things unknown   but longed for still   and his tune is heard   on the distant hill   

for the caged bird   sings of freedom.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening BY ROBERT FROSTWhose woods these are I think I know.   His house is in the village though;   He will not see me stopping here   To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   To stop without a farmhouse near   Between the woods and frozen lake   The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   To ask if there is some mistake.   The only other sound’s the sweep   Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   But I have promises to keep,   And miles to go before I sleep,   And miles to go before I sleep.

The Jaguar by Ted Hughes

The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun.

The parrots shriek as if they were on fire, or strut

Like cheap tarts to attract the stroller with the nut.

Fatigued with indolence, tiger and lion

Lie still as the sun.

The boa-constrictor’s coilIs a fossil.

Cage after cage seems empty, or

Stinks of sleepers from the breathing straw.

It might be painted on a nursery wall.

But who runs like the rest past these arrive

sAt a cage where the crowd stands, stares, mesmerized

,As a child at a dream, at a jaguar hurrying enrage

dThrough prison darkness after the drills of his eyes

On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom—

The eye satisfied to be blind in fire,

By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear—

He spins from the bars, but there’s no cage to him

More than to the visionary his cell:

His stride is wildernesses of freedom:

The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.

Over the cage floor the horizons come.

Still life by Elizabeth Daryush

Through the open French window the warm sun

lights up the polished breakfast-table, laid

round a bowl of crimson roses, for one -

a service of Worcester porcelain, arrayed

near it a melon, peaches, figs, small hot

rolls in a napkin, fairy rack of toast,

butter in ice, high silver coffee pot,

and, heaped on a salver, the morning’s post.

she comes over the lawn, the young heiress,

from her early walk in her garden-wood,

feeling that life’s a table set to bless

her delicate desires with all that’s good,

that even the unopened future lies

like a love-letter, full of sweet surprise.

Strawberries by Edwin Morgan

There were never strawberries

like the ones we hadthat sultry afternoon

sitting on the step

of the open french window

facing each other

your knees held in mine

the blue plates in our laps

the strawberries glistening

in the hot sunlightwe dipped them in sugar

looking at each othern

ot hurrying the feast

for one to come

the empty plates

laid on the stone together

with the two forks crossed

and I bent towards you

sweet in that air

in my arms

abandoned like a child

from your eager mouth

the taste of strawberries

in my memory

lean back againlet me love you

let the sun beat

on our forgetfulness

one hour of all

the heat intense

and summer lightning

on the Kilpatrick hills

let the storm wash the plates

Sea Canes by Derek Walcott

Half my friends are dead.

I will make you new ones, said earth

No, give me them back, as they were, instead,

with faults and all, I cried.

Tonight I can snatch their talk

from the faint surf's drone

through the canes, but I cannot walk

on the moonlit leaves of ocean

down that white road alone,

or float with the dreaming motion

of owls leaving earth's load.

O earth, the number of friends you keep

exceeds those left to be loved.

The sea-canes by the cliff flash green and silver;

they were the seraph lances of my faith,

but out of what is lost grows something stronger

that has the rational radiance of stone,

enduring moonlight, further than despair,

strong as the wind, that through dividing canes

brings those we love before us, as they were,

with faults and all, not nobler, just there.

from Sea Grapes, 1971

The Colonel by Carolyn Forché

WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went   out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck them- selves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.                                                                                      May 1978

What the chairman told Tom by Basil Bunting

Poetry? It’s a hobby.

I run model trains.

Mr Shaw there breeds pigeons.

It’s not work. You don’t sweat.

Nobody pays for it.

You could advertise soap.

Art, that’s opera; or repertory —

The Desert Song.

Nancy was in the chorus.

But to ask for twelve pounds a week —

married, aren’t you? —

you’ve got a nerve.

How could I look a bus conductor

in the face

if I paid you twelve pounds?

Who says it’s poetry, anyhow?

My ten year old

can do it and rhyme.

I get three thousand and expenses,

a car, vouchers,

but I’m an accountant.

They do what I tell them,

my company.

What do you do?

Nasty little words, nasty long words,

it’s unhealthy.

I want to wash when I meet a poet.

They’re Reds, addicts,

all delinquents.

What you write is rot.

Mr Hines says so, and he’s a schoolteacher,

he ought to know.

Go and find work.

The second coming by W.B. 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: somewhere in sands of the desert

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

Reel 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?

The Soldier by Rupert Brooke

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there's some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

A body of England's, breathing English air,

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

The Naming of Cats by T.S. Eliot

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,It isn't just one of your holiday games;You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatterWhen I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey—All of them sensible everyday names.There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter—But all of them sensible everyday names.But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum-Names that never belong to more than one cat.But above and beyond there's still one name left over,And that is the name that you never will guess;The name that no human research can discover—

But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.When you notice a cat in profound meditation,The reason, I tell you, is always the same:His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplationOf the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:His ineffable effableEffanineffableDeep and inscrutable singular Name.

Harlem [Dream Deferred] by Langston Hughes

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?

I, Too. by Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America.I am the darker brother.They send me to eat in the kitchenWhen company comes,But I laugh,And eat well,And grow strong.

Tomorrow,I'll be at the tableWhen company comes.Nobody'll dareSay to me,"Eat in the kitchen,"Then.

Besides,They'll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poemand hold it up to the lightlike a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poemand watch him probe his way out,or walk inside the poem's roomand feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterskiacross the surface of a poemwaving at the author's name on the shore.But all they want to dois tie the poem to a chair with ropeand torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hoseto find out what it really means.

The Bat by Theodore Roethke

By day the bat is cousin to the mouse.He likes the attic of an aging house.

His fingers make a hat about his head.His pulse beat is so slow we think him dead.

He loops in crazy figures half the nightAmong the trees that face the corner light.

But when he brushes up against a screen,We are afraid of what our eyes have seen:

For something is amiss or out of place

When mice with wings can wear a human face.

My Heart Leaps Up by William Wordsworth

My heart leaps up when I beholdA Rainbow in the sky:So was it when my life began;So is it now I am a man;So be it when I shall grow old,Or let me die!The Child is father of the man;

Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held highWhere knowledge is freeWhere the world has not been broken up into fragmentsBy narrow domestic wallsWhere words come out from the depth of truthWhere tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfectionWhere the clear stream of reason has not lost its wayInto the dreary desert sand of dead habitWhere the mind is led forward by theeInto ever-widening thought and actionInto that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's sizeBut when I start to tell them,They think I'm telling lies.I say,It's in the reach of my armsThe span of my hips,The stride of my step,The curl of my lips.I'm a womanPhenomenally.Phenomenal woman,That's me.

I walk into a roomJust as cool as you please,And to a man,The fellows stand orFall down on their knees.Then they swarm around me,A hive of honey bees.I say,It's the fire in my eyes,And the flash of my teeth,The swing in my waist,And the joy in my feet.I'm a woman

Phenomenally.Phenomenal woman,That's me.

Men themselves have wonderedWhat they see in me.They try so muchBut they can't touchMy inner mystery.When I try to show themThey say they still can't see.I say,It's in the arch of my back,The sun of my smile,The ride of my breasts,The grace of my style.I'm a woman

Phenomenally.Phenomenal woman,That's me.

Now you understandJust why my head's not bowed.I don't shout or jump aboutOr have to talk real loud.When you see me passingIt ought to make you proud.I say,It's in the click of my heels,The bend of my hair,the palm of my hand,The need of my care,

'Cause I'm a woman

Phenomenally.Phenomenal woman,That's me.

Roemeo and Juliet Act 2 scene 2 ShakespeareJULIET    O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?     Deny thy father and refuse thy name;     Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,     And I'll no longer be a Capulet.    Tis but thy name that is my enemy;    Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.    What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,    Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part    Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!    What's in a name? That which we call a rose    By any other name would smell as sweet;    So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd, Retain that dear perfection which he owes    Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,    And for that name which is no part of thee    Take all myself.

Money BY PHILIP LARKINQuarterly, is it, money reproaches me:    ‘Why do you let me lie here wastefully?I am all you never had of goods and sex.    You could get them still by writing a few cheques.’

So I look at others, what they do with theirs:       They certainly don’t keep it upstairs.By now they’ve a second house and car and wife:    Clearly money has something to do with life

—In fact, they’ve a lot in common, if you enquire:    You can’t put off being young until you retire,And however you bank your screw, the money you save    Won’t in the end buy you more than a shave.

I listen to money singing. It’s like looking down    From long french windows at a provincial town,   

The slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad    In the evening sun. It is intensely sad.

Digging by Seamus Heaney

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:   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.

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 deepTo scatter new potatoes that we picked,Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.   Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a dayThan any other man on Toner’s bog.Once I carried him milk in a bottleCorked sloppily with paper. He straightened upTo drink it, then fell to right awayNicking and slicing neatly, heaving sodsOver his shoulder, going down and downFor the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slapOf soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edgeThrough living roots awaken in my head.But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumbThe squat pen rests.I’ll dig with it.

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - BY EMILY DICKINSONI heard a Fly buzz - when I died -The Stillness in the RoomWas like the Stillness in the Air -Between the Heaves of Storm -

The Eyes around - had wrung them dry -And Breaths were gathering firmFor that last Onset - when the KingBe witnessed - in the Room -

I willed my Keepsakes - Signed awayWhat portion of me beAssignable - and then it wasThere interposed a Fly -

With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -Between the light - and me -And then the Windows failed - and thenI could not see to see –

I’m nobody! Who Are You? by Emily Dickinson

I’m Nobody! Who are you?Are you – Nobody – too?Then there’s a pair of us!Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!How public – like a Frog –  To tell one’s name – the livelong June –  To an admiring Bog!

Why Latin Should Still Be Taught in High School by Christopher Bursk

Because one day I grew so boredwith Lucretius,

I fell in lovewith the one object that seemed to be stationary,the sleeping kid two rows up,the appealing squalor of his drooping socks.While the author of De Rerum Natura was making funof those who fear the steep way and lose the truth,I was studying the unruly hairs on Peter Diamond’s right leg.Titus Lucretius Caro labored, dactyl by dactylto convince our Latin IV class of the atomiccomposition of smoke and dew,and I tried to make sense of a boy’s ankles,the calves’ intriguingresiliency, the integrity to the shank,the solid geometry of my classmate’s body.Light falling through blinds,a bee flinging itself into a flower,a seemingly infinite set of textsto translate and now this particular configuration of atoms

who was given a name at birth,Peter Diamond, and sat two rows in front of me,his long arms, his legs that like Lucretius’s hexametersseemed to go on forever, all this hurly-burlyof matter that had the goodness to settlelong enough to make a bodyso fascinating it got methrough fifty-five minutesof the nature of things.

Man Eating by Jane Kenyon

The man at the table across from mineis eating yogurt. His eyes, followingthe progress of the spoon, cross brieflyeach time it nears his face. Time,and the world with all its principalities,might come to an end as prophesiedby the Apostle John, but what aboutthis man, so completely presentto the little carton with its cool,

sweet food, which has caused no animalto suffer, and which he is eating

This Is Just To Say by William Carlos WilliamsI have eatenthe plumsthat were inthe icebox

and whichyou were probablysavingfor breakfast

Forgive methey were deliciousso sweetand so cold

"The English Are So Nice" - D.H. Lawrence

The English are so niceso awfully nicethey are the nicest people in the world.

And what's more, they're very nice about being niceabout your being nice as well!If you're not nice they soon make you feel it.

Americans and French and Germans and so onthey're all very wellbut they're not really nice, you know.They're not nice in our sense of the word, are they now?

That's why one doesn't have to take them seriously.We must be nice to them, of course,of course, naturally.But it doesn't really matter what you say to them,they don't really understandyou can just say anything to them:be nice, you know, just nice

but you must never take them seriously, they wouldn't understand,just be nice, you know! Oh, fairly nice,not too nice of course, they take advantagebut nice enough, just nice enoughto let them feel they're not quite as nice as they might be.