Poetry Section
A Few Poems I love
Friday, September 20, 2002
POETRY SECTION!
ROBERT FROST (1874-1963)
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
1 Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
2 And sorry I could not travel both
3 And be one traveler, long I stood
4 And looked down one as far as I could
5 To where it bent in the undergrowth;
6 Then took the other, as just as fair,
7 And having perhaps the better claim,
8 Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
9 Though as for that the passing there
10 Had worn them really about the same,
11 And both that morning equally lay
12 In leaves no step had trodden black.
13 Oh, I kept the first for another day!
14 Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
15 I doubted if I should ever come back.
16 I shall be telling this with a sigh
17 Somewhere ages and ages hence:
18 Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
19 I took the one less traveled by,
20 And that has made all the difference.
STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING
1 Whose woods these are I think I know.
2 His house is in the village though;
3 He will not see me stopping here
4 To watch his woods fill up with snow.
5 My little horse must think it queer
6 To stop without a farmhouse near
7 Between the woods and frozen lake
8 The darkest evening of the year.
9 He gives his harness bells a shake
10 To ask if there is some mistake.
11 The only other sound's the sweep
12 Of easy wind and downy flake.
13 The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
14 But I have promises to keep,
15 And miles to go before I sleep,
16 And miles to go before I sleep.
MENDING WALL
1 Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
2 That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
3 And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
4 And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
5 The work of hunters is another thing:
6 I have come after them and made repair
7 Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
8 But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
9 To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
10 No one has seen them made or heard them made,
11 But at spring mending-time we find them there.
12 I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
13 And on a day we meet to walk the line
14 And set the wall between us once again.
15 We keep the wall between us as we go.
16 To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
17 And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
18 We have to use a spell to make them balance:
19 "Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
20 We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
21 Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
22 One on a side. It comes to little more:
23 There where it is we do not need the wall:
24 He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
25 My apple trees will never get across
26 And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
27 He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."
28 Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
29 If I could put a notion in his head:
30 "Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it
31 Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
32 Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
33 What I was walling in or walling out,
34 And to whom I was like to give offence.
35 Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
36 That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
37 But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
38 He said it for himself. I see him there
39 Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
40 In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
41 He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
42 Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
43 He will not go behind his father's saying,
44 And he likes having thought of it so well
45 He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807-1882)
A PSALM OF LIFE. WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST.
1 Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
2 Life is but an empty dream! --
3 For the soul is dead that slumbers,
4 And things are not what they seem.
5 Life is real! Life is earnest!
6 And the grave is not its goal;
7 Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
8 Was not spoken of the soul.
9 Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
10 Is our destined end or way;
11 But to act, that each to-morrow
12 Find us farther than to-day.
13 Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
14 And our hearts, though stout and brave,
15 Still, like muffled drums, are beating
16 Funeral marches to the grave.
17 In the world's broad field of battle,
18 In the bivouac of Life,
19 Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
20 Be a hero in the strife!
21 Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
22 Let the dead Past bury its dead!
23 Act, -- act in the living Present!
24 Heart within, and God o'erhead!
25 Lives of great men all remind us
26 We can make our lives sublime,
27 And, departing, leave behind us
28 Footprints on the sands of time;
29 Footprints, that perhaps another,
30 Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
31 A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
32 Seeing, shall take heart again.
33 Let us, then, be up and doing,
34 With a heart for any fate;
35 Still achieving, still pursuing,
36 Learn to labor and to wait.
When printed in the Knickerbocker Magazine, October, 1838 t bore as a motto the lines from Crashaw:
Life that shall send
A challenge to its end,
And when it comes, say, Welcome, friend."
13. "Ars longa vita brevis est" (an aphorism by Hippocrates).
THE ARROW AND THE SONG
1 I shot an arrow into the air,
2 It fell to earth, I knew not where;
3 For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
4 Could not follow it in its flight.
5 I breathed a song into the air,
6 It fell to earth, I knew not where;
7 For who has sight so keen and strong,
8 That it can follow the flight of song?
9 Long, long afterward, in an oak
10 I found the arrow, still unbroke;
11 And the song, from beginning to end,
12 I found again in the heart of a friend.
THERE WAS A LITTLE GIRL
1 There was a little girl,
2 Who had a little curl,
3 Right in the middle of her forehead.
4 When she was good,
5 She was very good indeed,
6 But when she was bad she was horrid.
e. e. cummings (1894-1962)
Edward Estlin Cummings
i like my body when it is with your
1 i like my body when it is with your
2 body. It is so quite new a thing.
3 Muscles better and nerves more.
4 i like your body. i like what it does,
5 i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
6 of your body and its bones, and the trembling
7 -firm-smooth ness and which i will
8 again and again and again
9 kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
10 i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
11 of your electric furr, and what-is-it comes
12 over parting flesh....And eyes big love-crumbs,
13 and possibly i like the thrill
14 of under me you so quite new
RAISE THE SHADE
1 raise the shade
2 will youse dearie?
3 rain
4 wouldn't that
5 get yer goat but
6 we don't care do
7 we dearie we should
8 worry about the rain
9 huh
10 dearie?
11 yknow
12 i'm
13 sorry for awl the
14 poor girls that
15 gets up god
16 knows when every
17 day of their
18 lives
19 aint you,
20 oo-oo. dearie
21 not so
22 hard dear
23 you're killing me
Hahah..and this one is about Little Effie
Here is little Effie's head
1 here is little Effie's head
2 whose brains are made of gingerbread
3 when the judgment day comes
4 God will find six crumbs
5 stooping by the coffinlid
6 waiting for something to rise
7 as the other somethings did--
8 you imagine His surprise
9 bellowing through the general noise
10 Where is Effie who was dead?
11 --to God in a tiny voice,
12 i am may the first crumb said
13 whereupon its fellow five
14 crumbs chuckled as if they were alive
15 and number two took up the song,
16 might i'm called and did no wrong
17 cried the third crumb, i am should
18 and this is my little sister could
19 with our big brother who is would
20 don't punish us for we were good;
21 and the last crumb with some shame
22 whispered unto God, my name
23 is must and with the others i've
24 been Effie who isn't alive
25 just imagine it I say
26 God amid a monstrous din
27 watch your step and follow me
28 stooping by Effie's little, in
29 (want a match or can you see?)
30 which the six subjunctive crumbs
31 twitch like mutilated thumbs:
32 picture His peering biggest whey
33 coloured face on which a frown
34 puzzles, but I know the way--
35 (nervously Whose eyes approve
36 the blessed while His ears are crammed
37 with the strenuous music of
38 the innumerable capering damned)
39 --staring wildly up and down
40 the here we are now judgment day
41 cross the threshold have no dread
42 lift the sheet back in this way.
43 here is little Effie's head
44 whose brains are made of gingerbread
"kitty". sixteen, 5' 11", white, prostitute
"kitty". sixteen, 5' 11", white, prostitute.
ducking always the touch of must and shall,
whose slippery body is Death's littlest pal,
skilled in quick softness. Unspontaneous. cute.
the signal perfume of whose unrepute
focusses in the sweet slow animal
bottomless eyes importantly banal,
Kitty. a whore. Sixteen
you corking brute
amused from time to time by clever drolls
fearsomely who do keep their sunday flower.
The babybreasted broad "kitty" twice eight
--beer nothing, the lady'll have a whiskey-sour--
whose least amazing smile is the most great
.: posted by Bing 12:13 AM
|
