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Katharine, Lady Dyer, “My dearest dust could not thy hasty day”
My dearest dust could not thy hasty dayAfford thy drowzy patience leave to stayOne hower longer; so that we might either Sate up, or gone to bedd together?But since thy finisht labor hath possest Thy weary limbs with early rest,Enjoy it sweetly; and thy widdowe brideShall soone repose her by thy slumbring side;Whose business, now… →
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Henry King, “A Contemplation upon Flowers”
Brave flowers – that I could gallant it like you, And be as little vain!You come abroad, and make a harmless show, And to your beds of earth again.You are not proud: you know your birth:For your embroider’d garments are from earth.You do obey your months and times, but I Would have it ever Spring:My… →
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George Herbert, “The Pearl”
Matthew 13I know the ways of learning; both the headAnd pipes that feed the press, and make it run;What reason hath from nature borrowèd,Or of itself, like a good huswife, spunIn laws and policy; what the stars conspire,What willing nature speaks, what forc’d by fire;Both th’old discoveries and the new-found seas,The stock and surplus, cause… →
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William Cartwright, “No Platonique Love”
Tell me no more of minds embracing minds, And hearts exchang’d for hearts;That Spirits Spirits meet, as Winds do Winds, And mix their subt’lest parts;That two unbodi’d Essences may kiss,And then like Angels, twist and feel one Bliss.I was that silly thing that once was wrought To practice this thin Love;I climb’d from Sex to… →
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Ralph Knevet, “The Vote”
The Helmett now an hive for Bees becomes,And hilts of swords may serve for Spiders’ loomes; Sharp pikes may make Teeth for a rake;And the keene blade, th’arch enemy of life,Shall bee digraded to a pruneing knife. The rusticke spade Which first was madeFor honest agriculture, shall retakeIts primitive imployment, and forsake The rampire’s steep… →
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2 Anonymous Poems from 1600
“The lowest trees have tops, the Ant her gall”The lowest trees have tops, the Ant her gall,the flie her spleene, the little sparke his heate,and slender haires cast shadowes though but small,and Bees have stings although they be not great.Seas have their source, and so have shallowe springs,and love is love in beggers and in… →
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Thomas Randolph, “Upon His Picture”
When age hath made me what I am not now,And every wrinkle tells me where the plowOf time hath furrowed; when an ice shall flowThrough every vein, and all my head wear snow;When death displays his coldness in my cheek,And I myself in my own picture seek,Not finding what I am, but what I was,In… →
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John Milton, from “Paradise Lost”
Of Mans First Disobedience, and the FruitOf that Forbidd’n Tree, whose mortal tastBrought Death into the World, and all our woe,With loss of Eden, till one greater ManRestore us, and regain the blissful Seat,Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret topOf Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspireThat Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,In the… →
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Richard Crashaw, from “The Flaming Heart. Upon the Book and Picture of the Seraphicall Saint Teresa”
O sweet incendiary! shew here thy art,Upon this carcasse of a hard, cold, hart,Let all thy scatter’d shafts of light, that playAmong the leaves of thy larg Books of day,Combin’d against this BREST at once break inAnd take away from me my self and sin,This gratious Robbery shall thy bounty be;And my best fortunes such… →
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John Bunyan, “Valiant-for-Truth’s Song”
Who would true Valour seeLet him come hither;One here will Constant be,Come Wind, come Weather.There’s no Discouragement,Shall make him once Relent,His first avow’d Intent,To be a Pilgrim.Who so beset him round,With dismal Storys,Do but themselves Confound;His Strength the more is.No Lyon can him fright,He’l with a Gyant Fight,But he will have a right,To be a… →
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Andrew Marvell, “The Garden”
How vainly men themselves amazeTo win the Palm, the Oke, or Bayes;And their uncessant Labours seeCrown’d from some single Herb or Tree.Whose short and narrow vergèd ShadeDoes prudently their Toyles upbraid;While all Flow’rs and all Trees do closeTo weave the Garlands of repose.Fair quiet, have I found thee here,And Innocence thy Sister dear!Mistaken long, I… →
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Katharine Philips, “To My Excellent Lucasia, on Our Friendship. 17th. July 1651”
I did not live until this time Crown’d my felicity,When I could say without a crime, I am not Thine, but Thee.This Carkasse breath’d, and walk’d, and slept, So that the world believ’dThere was a soule the motions kept; But they were all deceiv’d.For as a watch by art is wound To motion, such was… →
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Thomas Traherne, “The Preparative”
1My Body being Dead, my Lims unknown;Before I skild to prizeThose living Stars mine Eys,Before my Tongue or Cheeks were to me shewn, Before I knew my Hands were mine,Or that my Sinews did my Members joyn, When neither Nostril, Foot, nor EarAs yet was seen, or felt, or did appear; I was withinA House… →
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Richard Leigh, “Greatness in Little”
In spotted globes, that have resembled allWhich we or beasts possess to one great ballDim little specks for thronging cities stand,Lines wind for rivers, blots bound sea and land.Small are those spots which in the moon we view,Yet glasses these like shades of mountains shew;As what an even brightness does retain,A glorious level seems, and… →
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Anne Finch, “A Nocturnal Reverie”
In such a Night, when every louder WindIs to its distant Cavern safe confin’d;And only gentle Zephyr fans his Wings,And lonely Philomel, still waking, sings;Or from some Tree, fam’d for the Owl’s delight,She, hollowing clear, directs the Wand’rer right:In such a Night, when passing Clouds give place,Or thinly vail the Heav’ns mysterious Face;When in some… →
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Alexander Pope, from “An Essay on Man”
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man. Plac’d on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise, and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the sceptic side, With too much weakness for the stoic’s pride, He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;… →
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James Thomson, from “Summer”
The daw,The rook, and magpie, to the grey-grown oaks(That the calm village in their verdant arms,Sheltering, embrace) direct their lazy flight;Where on the mingling boughs they sit emboweredAll the hot noon, till cooler hours arise.Faint underneath the household fowls convene;And, in a corner of the buzzing shade,The house-dog with the vacant greyhound liesOut-stretched and sleepy.… →
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Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,The plowman homeward plods his weary way,And leaves the world to darkness and to me.Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,And all the air a solemn stillness holds,Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,And drowsy tinklings lull the distant… →
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Christopher Smart, from “Jubilate Agno”
For the doubling of flowers is the improvement of the gardners talent.For the flowers are great blessings.For the Lord made a Nosegay in the meadow with his disciples and preached upon the lily.For the angels of God took it out of his hand and carried it to the Height.For a man cannot have publick spirit,… →
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William Cowper, “The Contrite Heart”
Isaiah lvii.15The LORD will happiness divine On contrite hearts bestow:Then tell me, gracious GOD, is mine A contrite heart, or no?I hear, but seem to hear in vain, Insensible as steel;If ought is felt, ’tis only pain, To find I cannot feel.I sometimes think myself inclin’d To love thee, if I could;But often feel another… →
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Work Without Hope”
All Nature seems at work – slugs leave their lair,The bees are stirring, birds are on the wing,And Winter slumbering in the open air,Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring!And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing,Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,Have… →
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William Blake, “Thou hearest the Nightingale begin the Song of Spring” (from “Milton”)
Thou hearest the Nightingale begin the Song of Spring;The Lark sitting upon his earthy bed: just as the mornAppears; listens silent; then springing from the waving Corn-field! loudHe leads the Choir of Day! trill, trill, trill, trill,Mounting upon the wings of light into the Great Expanse:Reecchoing against the lovely blue & shining heavenly Shell:His little… →
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Mary Robinson, “A London Summer Morning”
Who has not waked to list the busy sounds Of summer’s morning in the sultry smoke Of noisy London? On the pavement hot The sooty chimney-boy, with dingy face And tattered covering, shrilly hawks his trade, Rousing the sleepy housemaid. At the door The milk-pail rattles, and the tinkling bell Proclaims the dustman’s office, while… →
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William Wordsworth, “Was it for this”
Was it for thisThat one, the fairest of all rivers, lovedTo blend his murmurs with my nurse’s song,And from his alder shades and rocky falls,And from his fords and shallows, sent a voiceThat flowed along my dreams? For this didst thou,O Derwent, travelling over the green plainsNear my ‘sweet birthplace’, didst thou, beauteous stream,Make ceaseless… →
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Walter Savage Landor, “The leaves are falling; so am I”
The leaves are falling; so am I;The few late flowers have moisture in the eye; So have I too. Scarcely on any bough is heard Joyous, or even unjoyous, bird The whole wood through. Winter may come: he brings but nigherHis circle (yearly narrowing) to the fire Where old friends meet: Let him; now heaven… →
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Percy Bysshe Shelley, from “Adonais”
The One remains, the many change and pass;Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly;Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,Stains the white radiance of Eternity,Until Death tramples it to fragments. – Die,If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!Follow where all is fled! – Rome’s azure sky,Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weakThe… →
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John Clare, “Mouse’s Nest”
I found a ball of grass among the hay And progged it as I passed and went away;And when I looked I fancied something stirred, And turned again and hoped to catch the bird – When out an old mouse bolted in the wheatsWith all her young ones hanging at her teats; She looked so… →
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John Keats, “When I have fears that I may cease to be”
When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,Before high-pilèd books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;When I behold, upon the night’s starred face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows with… →
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Edward Fitzgerald, from “The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam”
25Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss’dOf the Two Worlds so learnedly, are thrust Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to ScornAre scatter’d, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust. 26Oh, come with old Khayyám, and leave the WiseTo talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies; One thing is certain, and the Rest… →
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Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”
It little profits that an idle king,By this still hearth, among these barren crags,Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and doleUnequal laws unto a savage race,That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.I cannot rest from travel: I will drinkLife to the lees: All times I have enjoy’dGreatly, have suffer’d greatly, both… →
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Emily Brontë, “Remembrance”
Cold in the earth – and the deep snow piled above thee,Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,Severed at last by Time’s all-severing wave?Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hoverOver the mountains, on that northern shore,Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves coverThy noble… →
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Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach”
The sea is calm to-night.The tide is full, the moon lies fairUpon the straits; – on the French coast the lightGleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!Only, from the long line of sprayWhere the sea meets the moon-blanch’d land,Listen!… →
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Christina Rossetti, “Up-Hill”
Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end.Will the day’s journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend.But is there for the night a resting-place? A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.May not the darkness hide it from my face? You cannot miss that… →
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William Morris, “Pomona”
I am the ancient Apple-Queen,As once I was so am I now.For evermore a hope unseen,Betwixt the blossom and the bough.Ah, where’s the river’s hidden Gold!And where the windy grave of Troy?Yet come I as I came of old,From out the heart of Summer’s joy. William Morris, 1834-1896 – “Pomona” from Selected Poems →
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Thomas Hardy, “The Man He Killed”
“Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn,We should have sat us down to wet Right many a nipperkin! “But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face,I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place. “I shot him dead because – Because he was my foe,Just… →
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Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Pied Beauty”
Glory be to God for dappled things – For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough; And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is… →
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A. Mary F. Robinson, “Twilight”
When I was young the twilight seemed too long, How often on the western window seat I leaned my book against the misty pane And spelled the last enchanting lines again, The while my mother hummed an ancient song, Or sighed a little and said: “The hour is sweet!” When I, rebellious, clamoured for the… →
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E. Nesbit, “The Things That Matter”
Now that I’ve nearly done my days, And grown too stiff to sweep or sew,I sit and think, till I’m amaze, About what lots of things I know:Things as I’ve found out one by one– And when I’m fast down in the clay,My knowing things and how they’re done Will all be lost and thrown… →
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A. E. Housman, “Loveliest of trees, the cherry now”
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide. Now, of my threescore years and ten,Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more. And since to look at things in bloom… →
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May Kendall, “The Lay of the Trilobite”
A mountain’s giddy height I sought, Because I could not findSufficient vague and mighty thought To fill my mighty mind;And as I wandered ill at ease, There chanced upon my sightA native of Silurian seas, An ancient Trilobite.So calm, so peacefully he lay, I watched him even with tears:I thought of Monads far away In… →
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Walter de la Mare, “The Railway Junction”
From here through tunnelled gloom the track Forks into two; and one of these Wheels onward into darkening hills, And one toward distant seas. How still it is; the signal light At set of sun shines palely green; A thrush sings; other sound there’s none, Nor traveller to be seen –Where late there was a… →
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Charlotte Mew, “À quoi bon dire”
Seventeen years ago you said Something that sounded like Good-bye; And everybody thinks that you are dead, But I.So I, as I grow stiff and cold To this and that say Good-bye too; And everybody sees that I am old But you.And one fine morning in a sunny lane Some boy and girl will meet… →
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Laurence Binyon, from “The Burning of the Leaves”
Now is the time for the burning of the leaves.They go to the fire; the nostril pricks with smokeWandering slowly into a weeping mist.Brittle and blotched, ragged and rotten sheaves!A flame seizes the smouldering ruin and bitesOn stubborn stalks that crackle as they resist.The last hollyhock’s fallen tower is dust;All the spices of June are… →
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John Masefield, “Sea-Fever”
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking. I must… →
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Edward Thomas, “Digging”
To-day I think Only with scents, – scents dead leaves yield, And bracken, and wild carrot’s seed, And the square mustard field; Odours that rise When the spade wounds the root of tree, Rose, currant, raspberry, or goutweed, Rhubarb or celery; The smoke’s smell, too, Flowing from where a bonfire burns The dead, the waste,… →
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T. E. Hulme, “Image”
Old houses were scaffolding once and workmen whistling. T. E. Hulme, 1883-1917 – “Image” from Selected Writings →
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D. H. Lawrence, “The Piano”
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;Taking me back down the vista of years, till I seeA child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling stringsAnd pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of songBetrays me back,… →
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Siegfried Sassoon, “Attack”
At dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun In the wild purple of the glow’ring sun, Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one, Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire. The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed With bombs and guns and shovels and… →
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Rupert Brooke, “The Soldier”
If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign fieldThat 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,… →
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T. S. Eliot, from “Burnt Norton”
Footfalls echo in the memoryDown the passage which we did not takeTowards the door we never openedInto the rose-garden. My words echoThus, in your mind. But to what purposeDisturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leavesI do not know. Other echoesInhabit the garden. Shall we follow?Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,Round the corner.… →
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C. Day-Lewis, “My Mother’s Sister”
I see her against the pearl sky of Dublin Before the turn of the century, a young woman With all those brothers and sisters, green eyes, hair She could sit on; for high life, a meandering sermon (Church of Ireland) each Sunday, window-shopping In Dawson Street, picnics at Killiney and Howth … To know so… →
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V. Sackville-West, “Craftsmen”
All craftsmen share a knowledge. They have heldReality down fluttering to a bench;Cut wood to their own purposes; compelledThe growth of pattern with the patient shuttle;Drained acres to a trench.Control is theirs. They have ignored the subtleRelease of spirit from the jail of shape.They have been concerned with prison, not escape;Pinioned the fact, and let… →
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Wilfred Owen, “Disabled”
He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn, Voices of play and pleasure after day, Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him. *About this time Town used to swing so gay… →
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Ruth Pitter, “But For Lust”
But for lust we could be friends, On each other’s necks could weep: In each other’s arms could sleep In the calm the cradle lends: Lends awhile, and takes away. But for hunger, but for fear, Calm could be our day and year From the yellow to the grey: From the gold to the grey… →
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Stevie Smith, “Dirge”
From a friend’s friend I taste friendship, From a friend’s friend love, My spirit in confusion, Long years I strove, But now I know that never Nearer I shall move, Than a friend’s friend to friendship, To love than a friend’s love. Into the dark night Resignedly I go, I am not so afraid of… →
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Kathleen Raine, “Two Invocations of Death”
I Death, I repent Of these hands and feet That for forty years Have been my own And I repent Of flesh and bone, Of heart and liver, Of hair and skin – Rid me, death, Of face and form, Of all that I am. And I repent Of the forms of thought, The habit… →
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Stephen Spender, “I think continually of those who were truly great”
I think continually of those who were truly great. Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns, Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition Was that their lips, still touched with fire, Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song. And who hoarded… →
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Laurie Lee, “Milkmaid”
The girl’s far treble, muted to the heat, calls like a fainting bird across the fields to where her flock lies panting for her voice, their black horns buried deep in marigolds. They climb awake, like drowsy butterflies, and press their red flanks through the tall branched grass, and as they go their wandering tongues… →
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Charles Causley, “Eden Rock”
They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock: My father, twenty-five, in the same suit Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack Still two years old and trembling at his feet. My mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dress Drawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat, Has spread the stiff white cloth over… →
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Philip Larkin, “Here”
Swerving east, from rich industrial shadows And traffic all night north; swerving through fields Too thin and thistled to be called meadows, And now and then a harsh-named halt, that shields Workmen at dawn; swerving to solitude Of skies and scarecrows, haystacks, hares and pheasants, And the widening river’s slow presence, The piled gold clouds,… →
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Karen Gershon, “I Was Not There”
The morning they set out from home I was not there to comfort them the dawn was innocent with snow in mockery – it is not true the dawn was neutral was immune their shadows threaded it too soon they were relieved that it had come I was not there to comfort them One told… →
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Molly Holden, “Photograph of a Haymaker, 1890”
It is not so much the image of the man that’s moving – he pausing from his work to whet his scythe, trousers tied below the knee, white shirt lit by another summer’s sun, another century’s – as the sight of the grasses beyond his last laid swathe, so living yet upon the moment previous… →
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George Theiner, “The Fly”
translated from the original by Miroslav Holub She sat on a willow-trunk watching part of the battle of Crécy, the shouts, the gasps, the groans, the tramping and the tumbling. During the fourteenth charge of the French cavalry she mated with a brown-eyed male fly from Vadincourt. She rubbed her legs together as she sat… →
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Peter Porter, “Eat Early Earthapples”
There were boys at my Prep. School my own age And three stone heavier, who made fifty pounds Over the holidays selling kangaroo hides They’d skinned and pegged out themselves On their fathers’ stations. Many shaved, several Slept with the maids – one I remember Running his hand up the Irish maid’s leg At breakfast… →
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Roy Fisher, “The Entertainment of War”
I saw the garden where my aunt had died And her two children and a woman from next door; It was like a burst pod filled with clay. A mile away in the night I had heard the bombs Sing and then burst themselves between cramped houses With bright soft flashes and sounds like banging… →
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Derek Walcott, “Tales of the Islands #10”
“adieu foulard…” I watched the island narrowing the fine Writing of foam around the precipices, then The roads as small and casual as twine Thrown on its mountains; I watched till the plane Turned to the final north and turned above The open channel with the grey sea between The fishermen’s islets until all that… →
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Ted Hughes, “Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days”
She gives him his eyes, she found themAmong some rubble, among some beetles He gives her her skinHe just seemed to pull it down out of the air and lay it over herShe weeps with fearfulness and astonishment She has found his hands for him, and fitted them freshly at the wristsThey are amazed at… →
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Sean O’Brien, “Cousin Coat”
You are my secret coat. You’re never dry.You wear the weight and stink of black canals.Malodorous companion, we know whyIt’s taken me so long to see we’re pals,To learn why my acquaintance never sniffOr send me notes to say I stink of stiff. But you don’t talk, historical bespoke.You must be worn, be intimate as… →
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Alice Oswald, “Various Portents”
Various stars. Various kings. Various sunsets, signs, cursory insights. Many minute attentions, many knowledgeable watchers, Much cold, much overbearing darkness. Various long midwinter Glooms. Various Solitary and Terrible Stars. Many Frosty Nights, many previously Unseen Sky-flowers. Many people setting out (some of them kings) all clutching at stars. More than one North Star, more than… →