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709
Publication—is the Auction
Of the Mind of Man
Poverty—be justifying
For so foul a thing
Possibly—but We—would rather
From Our Garret go
White—Unto the White Creator
Than invest—Our Snow | Thought belong to Him who gave it | Then—to Him Who bear
Its Corporeal illustration—Sell
The Royal Air | In the first few stanzas, Dickinson seems to scold those who publish their works of literature. In this line, she seems to say this is wrong because god, “him who gave it”, has planted ideas in our heads, therefore we owe our intelligence to him and him only. To publish these works would seem to take credit for the wor... | Emily Dickinson | Publication—is the Auction |
We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun
We are not afraid of the darkness, we trust that the moon shall guide us
We are determining the future at this very moment
We now know that the heart is the philosophers' stone
Our music is our alchemy
We stand as the manifested equivalent of 3 buckets of water... | Into songs, paintings, writings, dance, drama, photography, carpentry, crafts, love, and love | We enlist every instrument: Acoustic, electronic
Every so-called race, gender, and sexual preference
Every person as beings of sound to acknowledge their responsibility to uplift the consciousness of the entire fucking World | Use your creativity, your frequencies, to create something, whatever that something is. | Saul Williams | Coded Language |
For three days we waited,
a bowl of dull quartz for sky.
At night the valley dreamed of snow,
lost Christmas angels with dark-white wings
flailing the hills.
I dreamed a poem, perfect
as the first five-pointed flake,
that melted at dawn:
a Janus-time
to peer back at guttering dark days,
trajectories of the spent year.
... | Within an hour, a world immaculate
as January's new-hung page. | We breathe the radiant air like men new-born.
The children rush before us.
As in a dream of snow | This is a curious simile that doesn’t quite work. Horovitz compares the immaculate, snow covered world to… a calendar without anything written on it.
The idea seems to be to compare the wonder of nature to the possibilities open to humans. I’d have just stuck with the ‘world immaculate’, personally. | Frances Horovitz | New Year Snow |
Grey brick upon brick,
Declamatory bronze
On somber pedestals -
O'Connell, Grattan, Moore -
And the brewery tugs and the swans
On the balustraded stream
And the bare bones of a fanlight
Over a hungry door
And the air soft on the cheek
And porter running from the taps
With a head of yellow cream | And Nelson on his pillar
Watching his world collapse. | This never was my town,
I was not born or bred
Nor schooled here and she will not | Admiral Horatio Nelson (1758-1805), one of British history’s best known figures, is most celebrated for his daring naval victories during the Napoleonic Wars. Nelson’s Column was erected in order to commemorate the most famous of these, the battle of Trafalgar. It stands at Trafalgar Square, Central London.
Attempts... | Louis MacNeice | Dublin |
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. | null | Does the dark secret love of the worm destroy the the rose? The worm is viewed as the insidious, malevolent, engine of serpentine destruction in the poesy.
The clandestine romance is ruined — the crimson joy of the rose is ultimately destructive. .
We need to bear in mind that Blake believed in free love and was c... | William Blake | The Sick Rose |
What to do in this eventuality).
This announcement is ending. Our President
Has already given orders for
Massive retaliation - it will be
Decisive. Some of us may die.
Remember, statistically
It is not likely to be you.
All flags are flying fully dressed
On Government buildings - the sun is shining.
Death is the least ... | Now go quickly to your shelters. | null | Finally, after the doublespeak that forms the entire poem, it ends with a pompous imperative; the command a nursery teacher might give to a child. | Peter Porter | Your Attention Please |
null | [Instrumental] | [Outro]
I wish there was a treaty we could sign
It's over now, the water and the wine | The first and the major part is a slow violin-led piece for strings, that serves as an outro – a “grand finale” to the whole album.
The beat and haunting melody reminds one of a requiem , a conclusion to a full life to which there are many allusions in many of the album’s songs. | Leonard Cohen | String Reprise/Treaty |
XXX
Others, I am not the first,
Have willed more mischief than they durst:
If in the breathless night I too
Shiver now, 'tis nothing new.
More than I, if truth were told,
Have stood and sweated hot and cold,
And through their reins in ice and fire | Fear contended with desire. |
Agued once like me were they,
But I like them shall win my way | See Housman’s Introductory Lecture at University College, London, October 3rd, 1892: “…the pleasure of discovery differs from other pleasures in this, that it is shadowed by no fear of satiety on the one hand or frustration on the other. Other desires perish in their gratification, but the desire of knowledge never…” | A. E. Housman | Others I am not the first |
And is so, little by little
I begin to change my calypso ways
Never visiting nobody
Before giving them clear warning
And waiting me turn in queue
Now, after all this time
I get accustom to de English life
But I still miss back-home side
To tell you de truth
I don't know really where I belaang
Yes, divided to de ocean
D... | Wherever I hang me knickers - that's my home. | null | And yet, the resilience and humour of the speaker are at last conveyed to the reader. She parodies the 1940s song by Johnny Mercer, ‘Any Place I Hang my Hat is Home’, substituting ‘hat’ with ‘knickers’. The speaker is clearly a sexualised woman, capable of finding a sexual partner anywhere, and hence able to find enjo... | Grace Nichols | Wherever I Hang |
Have you dug the spill
Of Sugar Hill?
Cast your gims
On this sepia thrill:
Brown sugar lassie, | Caramel treat, | Honey-gold baby
Sweet enough to eat.
Peach-skinned girlie, |
Throughout the poem, Hughes is referring to the skin tones of African American women in Harlem. He uses beautiful and tasty words to describe them as he alludes to how much he wants them. | Langston Hughes | Harlem Sweeties |
When I was young my teachers were the old. | I gave up fire for form till I was cold. | I suffered like a metal being cast.
I went to school to age to learn the past.
Now when I am old my teachers are the young. | Frost on verse: “…it oftener comes to nothing in youth before experience has filled the mind with thought. It may be a big emotion then and yet finds nothing it can embody in.”
Frost forsook the fire of his youthful passion till he could put it in the proper form. See also: Fire and Ice | Robert Frost | What Fifty Said |
TO show the lab'ring bosom's deep intent,
And thought in living characters to paint, | When first thy pencil did those beauties give, | And breathing figures learnt from thee to live,
How did those prospects give my soul delight,
A new creation rushing on my sight? | In this line of the poem Phillis Wheatley shows what a pencil is in the eyes of the artist. When she states “Thy pencil did those beauties give” it shows how the artist and the pencil are one. The pencil will never be able to show what it could do without the artist. The artist is what creates the “beauty” with the pen... | Phillis Wheatley | To S. M. a young African Painter on seeing his Works |
Heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage;
Her sheep still graze above the sea.
Her son's a bishop. Her farmer
Is first selectman in our village;
She's in her dotage.
Thirsting for
The hierarchic privacy
Of Queen Victoria's century,
She buys up all
The eyesores facing her shore,
And lets them fall.
The ... | We've lost our summer millionaire,
Who seemed to leap from an L. L. Bean
Catalogue. His nine-knot yawl
Was auctioned off to lobstermen. | A red fox stain covers Blue Hill.
And now our fairy
Decorator brightens his shop for fall; | Robert Lowell is describing the scenery and the economic downturn of Castine, Maine, a place he lived and owned a house with his wife, reference (My Old Flame) A once wealthy millionaire is selling off his yawl (sail boat), L.L Bean is a popular retail store that delivered catalogues. | Robert Lowell | Skunk Hour |
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed
By the stream and o'er the mead; | Gave thee clothing of delight | Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice
Making all the vales rejoice? | The creator of the lamb is credited with giving the lamb what is good, in this case, “clothing of delight” (wool). The meaning of the word “delight” has connotations of innocent joy, appropriate to the innocence of “The Lamb.”
| William Blake | The Lamb |
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild. | The jar was round upon the ground | And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion every where.
The jar was gray and bare. | Even though the jar was round, man-made with perfect proportions not found in nature, it depends on nature to have a place to rest. No matter what man imposes on nature, he depends on it.
The internal rhyme underscores the jar’s synthetic nature— contrast the coherence and simplicity of these monosyllabic words w... | Wallace Stevens | Anecdote of the Jar |
Thank you so much friends | I was, I was having a drink with my old teacher | He is 102 now
And this was, he was just, about 97 at the time
And I poured him a drink and | Kyozan Joshu Sasaki , Leonard Cohen’s Zen teacher, died in 2014 aged 107 so he was 101 years old in July 2008 when Cohen played the concert.
| Leonard Cohen | Introduction Live in London |
I love to rise in a summer morn
When the birds sing on every tree
The distant huntsman winds his horn | And the sky-lark sings with me | O! what sweet company
But to go to school in a summer morn
O! it drives all joy away | Blake is attuned to the childish imagination, where birds and animals become ‘friends’. Sky-larks in particular are associated with joy and freedom.
| William Blake | The Schoolboy |
null | Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy; | My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day. | Jonson seems to be saying farewell to a child, although “child of my right hand” is a similar to the translation behind the Hebrew name Benjamin.
The “child of my right hand” could also allude to a work by Jonson and not an actual child, as a poem can be “born” as it is written by the hand. | Ben Jonson | On My First Son |
No hot water, no toilets, no lights
But whitey's on the moon
I wonder why he's upping me?
Cause whitey's on the moon?
Well I was already giving him fifty a week
With whitey on the moon
Taxes taking my whole damn check
Junkies making me a nervous wreck
The price of food is going up
And as if all that shit wasn't enough:... | Her face and arm began to swell | And whitey's on the moon
Was all that money I made last year
For whitey on the moon? | Swelling is one of the symptoms associated to rat-bite fever. This occurs particularly in the lymph nodes located in the neck, and underarms of someone infected from the bacteria of a rat
| Gil Scott-Heron | Whitey on the Moon |
I empty myself of the names of others. I empty my pockets.
I empty my shoes and leave them beside the road.
At night I turn back the clocks;
I open the family album and look at myself as a boy. | What good does it do? The hours have done their job. | I say my own name. I say goodbye.
The words follow each other downwind.
I love my wife but send her away. | Is it a good thing to reminisce on our past? There is no possible way we can take the hours back or change them for our personal liking so why should take the time away from our present to look back on the past.
| Mark Strand | The Remains |
And the more loitering are turned
To view once more the sacrifice
Of those who for some good discerned
Will gladly give up paradise.
And a white shimmering concourse rolls
Toward the throne to witness there
The speeding of devoted souls
Which God makes his especial care.
And none are taken but who will,
Having first he... | And very beautifully God limns, | And tenderly, life's little dream,
But naught extenuates or dims,
Setting the thing that is supreme. | that is: He represents or portrays it. Limn is also at the root of “illuminate.” The illumination of “life’s little dream” has been God’s business since Genesis 1 | Robert Frost | The Trial by Existence |
And all admired his priestly care.
And standing on the altar high,
‘Lo, what a fiend is here!' said he:
‘One who sets reason up for judge
Of our most holy mystery.'
The weeping child could not be heard,
The weeping parents wept in vain:
They stripped him to his little shirt,
And bound him in an iron chain,
And burned h... | Are such things done on Albion's shore? | null | The final line, a rhetorical question begs the response, ‘yes, of course’. The burning isn’t to be taken literally, but the punitive Church establishment was a fact.
The question is phrased mildly, with mock-innocence. The name Albion tends to be used in a romantic literary context, though its application here is... | William Blake | A Little Boy Lost |
Here come real stars to fill the upper skies, | And here on earth come emulating flies, | That though they never equal stars in size,
(And they were never really stars at heart)
Achieve at times a very star-like start. | The Stars of Earth
Though the firefly shares a name with the infamous fly, the two species are not in fact related. Indeed, fireflies are actually beetles.
Humans, regardless of the taxonomy of fireflies, tend to think of them as creatures beyond the realm of ordinary bugs. These “lightning bugs” captivate chil... | Robert Frost | Fireflies in the Garden |
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self. | Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart | to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart. | These are biblical images that refer to Jesus' last supper. Walcott makes “you” the Jesus figure. Therefore you should love yourself with the same intensity you might love Jesus and perhaps even implying that God is within us and to love yourself is part of loving God.
Note the three short, emphatic sentences beginn... | Derek Walcott | Love After Love |
null | Out of the church she followed them | With a lofty step and mien:
His bride was like a village maid,
Maude Clare was like a queen. | Rossetti begins abruptly, as if in the middle of a story, a device known as in medias res or in the middle of things; a hook to pull the reader in. The wedding is over, usually the place where the story ends.
The poem opens with a trochee , that is a metrical foot comprising one stressed followed by one unstressed... | Christina Rossetti | Maude Clare |
[Poem 1]
In youth before I waxed old,
The blynd boy Venus baby,
For want of cunning made me bold, | In bitter hyve to grope for honny. | But when he saw me stung and cry,
He tooke his wings and away did fly.
[Poem 2] | In this stanza, the poet is stung by the bee, and what follows is a story of Cupid being stung by the bee.
One presumes that the poet does not intend us to take this to mean that love made him go looking for actual bee-hives and honey. He is “groping” for love (honey) in the bitter bee-hive of his beloved’s heart… or... | Edmund Spenser | Anacreontics |
Since the waiter took my order.
Grimy little luncheonette,
The snow falling outside.
Seems like it has grown darker
Since I last heard the kitchen door
Behind my back
Since I last noticed
Anyone pass on the street.
A glass of ice-water
Keeps me company
At this table I chose myself
Upon entering. | And a longing,
Incredible longing
To eavesdrop
On the conversation
Of cooks. | null | He wants to know what the cooks are doing, what takes their time. | Charles Simic | The Partial Explanation |
null | This door you might not open, and you did; | So enter now, and see for what slight thing
You are betrayed…. Here is no treasure hid,
No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring | The poem starts when Bluebeard finds his wife in the one room within his house that he told her not to enter. | Edna St. Vincent Millay | Bluebeard Sonnet VI |
And then, prodigious, step
Around a pile of mountains
And, supercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of roads;
And then a quarry pare
To fit its sides, and crawl between
Complaining all the while
In horrid, hooting stanza;
Then chase itself down hill
And neigh like Boanerges;
Then, punctual as a star
Stop—docile and ... | At its own stable door. | null | The speaker admires the train as if it were a part of nature, but clearly there are hints of internal conflict. Though she claims to “like” to see the train lap the miles, she characterizes it as “supercilious” and “complaining”. It is ironic how she sees the train as a “prodigious”, unnatural technology, yet also comp... | Emily Dickinson | I like to see it lap the Miles 43 |
null | Foul is she and ill-favoured, set askew: | Gaze not upon her till thou dream her fair,
Lest she should mesh thee in her wanton hair,
Adept in arts grown old yet ever new. | The opening line is dense and uncompromising. Rossetti uses anastrophe to start, that is, she inverts the usual word order to place the key adjective first. ‘Foul’ is hard-hitting, with a fricative ‘f’. The next adjective, ‘ill-favoured’, is an archaic form of ‘ugly’. That she is ‘set askew’ could refer to the sinf... | Christina Rossetti | Babylon the Great |
Calliope;
As ye may see,
Regent is she
Of poets all, | Which gave to me
The high degree
Laureate to be
Of fame royal; | Whose name enrolled
With silk and gold
I dare be bold |
Skelton was very proud of being poet laureate and took his position very seriously. The fact that Henry VII bestowed a garment with Calliope’s name to the poet gave him ample fame and poetic license to say what he pleased. This poetic license was used later in his life to harshly criticize the clergy and prominent st... | John Skelton | Why were ye Calliope embrawdered with letters of golde ? |
null | I am not de problem | But I bear de brunt
Of the silly playground taunts
An racist stunts, | This is the first of several repeats, forming a refrain or anaphora that sums up the poet’s argument and gives it emphasis. | Benjamin Zephaniah | No problem |
I look at the world
From awakening eyes in a black face—
And this is what I see:
This fenced-off narrow space
Assigned to me.
I look then at the silly walls
Through dark eyes in a dark face— | And this is what I know: | That all these walls oppression builds
Will have to go!
I look at my own body | A revelation is about to be made. | Langston Hughes | I Look At The World |
I don't like what happened to my sister
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
I'd really like to live beside you, baby
I love your body and your spirit and your clothes
But you see that line there moving through the station?
I told you, I told you, told you, I was one of those
And I thank you for those items tha... | Remember me, I brought your groceries in (ooh baby yeah) | Well it's Father's Day and everybody's wounded (baby)
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin | Again, once he has attained fame (or, taking a line from “The Future” – “power over every living soul”), he exhorts those who knew him to remember he came from a humble background – doing menial jobs like carrying people’s groceries. | Leonard Cohen | First We Take Manhattan |
null | Sombre the night is | And, though we have our lives, we know
What sinister threat lurks there
Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know | The brief opening line sets the ominous tone of the poem. The first word, “sombre” wouldn’t normally start the sentence. The unusual syntax gives emphasis to the pervasive dark fears, a device known as anastrophe . | Isaac Rosenberg | Returning We Hear the Larks |
I could hav been a builder
A painter or a swimmer
I dreamt of being a Rasta writer,
I fancied me a farmer
I could never be a barber | Once I was not sure about de future, | Got a sentence an I done it
Still me angry feelings groweth
Now I am jus a different fighter, | Given the range of possibilities he cites, this is clearly the case.
Zephaniah uses the phonetic spelling ‘de’ for ‘the’. This reinforces his identity as an English Afro-Caribbean man. | Benjamin Zephaniah | Its Work |
null | Once upon a schooltime | He did Something Very Wrong
(I forget what it was).
And She said he'd done | The poem begins like a fairy story, though it is specifically ‘schooltime’. This gives us the essence of the story that will follow, in the childish language appropriate to a small boy. | U. A. Fanthorpe | Half-past Two |
null | The rain and wind, the rain and wind, raved endlessly. | On me the Summer storm, and fever, and melancholy
Wrought magic, so that if I feared the solitude
Far more I feared all company: too sharp, too rude, | The opening line is one, short, startling sentence, with the repetition of “rain and wind” and the violence of “raved endlessly”. Note that “rain” and “raved” are assonant . The reader is immediately drawn in and curious.
Some readers might be reminded of the storm scenes in King Lear and the disturbing impact on ... | Edward Thomas | Melancholy |
Show'rs may descend, and dews their gems disclose,
And nectar sparkle on the blooming rose.
Such is thy pow'r, nor are thine orders vain,
O thou the leader of the mental train:
In full perfection all thy works are wrought,
And thine the sceptre o'er the realms of thought.
Before thy throne the subject-passions bow,
Of ... | From Tithon's bed now might Aurora rise, | Her cheeks all glowing with celestial dies,
While a pure stream of light o'erflows the skies.
The monarch of the day I might behold, | In Roman mythology, Tithon was the lover of Aurora, the dawn, who woke from his bed every morning and flew across the sky to herald the arrival of the sun. | Phillis Wheatley | On Imagination |
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill. | The wilderness rose up to it, | And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air. | The wilderness is now rising up to the jar, meaning Stevens has officially established nature’s position below humanity’s handiwork. The wilderness is attempting to reach the level of a perfect creation –a standard that nature simply cannot meet. | Wallace Stevens | Anecdote of the Jar |
He led him by his little coat,
And all admired his priestly care.
And standing on the altar high,
‘Lo, what a fiend is here!' said he:
‘One who sets reason up for judge
Of our most holy mystery.'
The weeping child could not be heard,
The weeping parents wept in vain:
They stripped him to his little shirt,
And bound him... | The weeping parents wept in vain. | Are such things done on Albion's shore? | This repeats the second line of the previous stanza, serving as a refrain to add emphasis. | William Blake | A Little Boy Lost |
Still set to scratch a laughter from my lung,
I would not fear the apple nor the flood
Nor the bad blood of spring.
Shall it be male or female? say the cells,
And drop the plum like fire from the flesh.
If I were tickled by the hatching hair,
The winging bone that sprouted in the heels,
The itch of man upon the baby's ... | I would not fear the muscling-in of love | If I were tickled by the urchin hungers
Rehearsing heat upon a raw-edged nerve.
I would not fear the devil in the loin | The, ahem, thrust, of this stanza is the speaker opining that if they were just masturbating (“rehearsing heat”), then they wouldn’t fear sex. The phrasing “muscling-in of love” makes it clear that sex exists across both carnal desires and human self-awareness.
| Dylan Thomas | If I Were Tickled by the Rub of Love |
Axes
After whose stroke the wood rings,
And the echoes!
Echoes traveling
Off from the center like horses.
The sap
Wells like tears, like the
Water striving
To re-establish its mirror
Over the rock
That drops and turns,
A white skull, | Eaten by weedy greens. | Years later I
Encounter them on the road---
Words dry and riderless, | This line brings to mind the idiom “eating at me,” meaning the cruel words are continually troubling.
The “weedy greens” also suggest slime or something fungus-like, perhaps because of the previous reference to water. The long vowels, and assonant ‘ee’ sounds reinforce this rather repulsive idea.
| Sylvia Plath | Words |
null | So, we'll go no more a-roving | So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright. | The “So” that begins the opening line points to questions relating to the refrain , ‘go a-roving’, that lie at the heart of this poem. Assonant “o"s in the opening line creates moaning effect, impl poet is weary
What is the circumstance that has led to the proclamation that they will “go no more a-roving”? The poe... | Lord Byron | So well go no more a-roving |
The Nurse's Song of Innocence | WHEN the voices of children are heard on the green, | And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast,
And everything else is still. | This line is paralleled by a matching line in ‘The Nurse’s Song in Songs of Expereince | William Blake | Nurses Song Songs of Innocence |
He's gone, and all our plans
Are useless indeed.
We'll walk no more on Cotswold
Where the sheep feed
Quietly and take no heed.
His body that was so quick
Is not as you
Knew it, on Severn river
Under the blue
Driving our small boat through. | You would not know him now ... | But still he died
Nobly, so cover him over
With violets of pride | The third stanza touches on the suffering of the soldier and his disfigurement, but the line ends with an ellipsis , as if to veer away from reality. This creates a dramatic pause or caesura , a moment of thought and a decision not to describe his friend’s injuries to his lover. | Ivor Gurney | To his love |
Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
And some are treasured for their markings--
They cause the eyes to melt
Or the body to shriek without pain
I have never seen one fly, but
Sometimes they perch on the hand
Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
And rests its soft machine on the ground:
Then the world is dim ... | Model T is a room with the lock inside --
A key is turned to free the world | For movement, so quick there is a film
To watch for anything missed
But time is tied to the wrist | The Model T car did indeed free the world. No more trains for the masses
| Craig Raine | A Martian Sends a Postcard Home |
But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal | And a flower-head not tall, but more startling, | And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.
Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors. | The flower she’s comparing herself is of average, height but it does call attention, unlike her. | Sylvia Plath | I Am Vertical |
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice. | From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire. | But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice | “Fire and Ice” was written in the aftermath of World War I, and Frost may be referring to humanity’s relentless competitive striving as a potential factor in a doomsday scenario. With every nation working to attain its selfish ends or “desires,” eventually we may reach the point at which using extraordinarily destructi... | Robert Frost | Fire and Ice |
Of West Moor and Palmersville.
There are guttering cap-lamps bound up in the roots
Where the coal is beginning again.
They are sinking slowly further
In between the shiftless seams,
To black pools in the bed of the world.
In their long home the miners are labouring still -
Gargling dust, going down in good order,
Their... | We hardly hear of them. | There are the faint reports of spent economies,
Explosions in the ocean floor,
The thud of iron doors sealed once for all | This is a key line; an important reference to the poet’s protest that these men shouldn’t be forgotten. | Sean O'Brien | Fantasia on a Theme of James Wright |
Funky, down
Nasty
Hey! Listen to the man
Rap, Godfather
Payback!
Cold blooded
People, people, we've got to get over
Before we go under
Yeah, Lord
People, people, we've got to get over
Before we go under | Hey, country, you didn't say what you meant | You just changed, a brand new funky president
Hah
Stock market going up, jobs going down | James is referring here to the country of the United States, not to his former guitar player Alphonso “Country” Kellum | James Brown | Funky President People Its Bad |
To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance | Till the white day is done. | Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently, | Throughout the poem, the speaker identifies with the night and “claims” it as his own.
The 19th-century American poet Walt Whitman, whose work Hughes admired, also liked to identify himself (and poetry) with nighttime:
This is thy hour O Soul… Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lov... | Langston Hughes | Dream Variations |
943
A Coffin — is a small Domain
Yet able to contain | A Citizen of Paradise | In it diminished Plane
A Grave — is a restricted Breadth
Yet ampler than the Sun | A deceased person or a indivisual shielded by a coffin doesn’t feel the weight of humanity or the pain of life.
| Emily Dickinson | A Coffin — is a small Domain |
And takes the rain from his face with the edge of his hand,
As torrents fall.
The wool of the ewes is like a sponge
With the daylong rain:
Jammed tight, to turn, or lie, or lunge,
They strive in vain.
Their horns are soft as finger-nails,
Their shepherds reek against the rails,
The tied dogs soak with tucked-in tails,
... | POSTSCRIPT | Time has trailed lengthily since met
At Pummery Fair
Those panting thousands in their wet | The postscript is an unusual feature. Hardy, in his bleak mood, felt the need to add a comment on the ultimate fate of humans and animals. | Thomas Hardy | A Sheep Fair |
I too beneath your moon, almighty Sex,
Go forth at nightfall crying like a cat,
Leaving the lofty tower I laboured at
For birds to foul and boys and girls to vex
With tittering chalk; and you, and the long necks
Of neighbours sitting where their mothers sat
Are well aware of shadowy this and that | In me, that's neither noble nor complex. | Such as I am, however, I have brought
To what it is, this tower; it is my own;
Though it was reared To Beauty, it was wrought | There’s a prominent trend in Western thought (quoting Tocqueville but it’s much older, to Aristotle, etc.) that human beings have “noble passions” and “base passions”, and that we should cultivate the former and suppress the latter.
“Noble” or complex passions, are things like appreciation for poetry, fine wines,... | Edna St. Vincent Millay | I Too Beneath Your Moon Almighty Sex |
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot; | Though they go mad they shall be sane, | Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion. | This line and the two succeeding it are paradoxes that are used to describe how people are remembered in retrospect. The three lines use the idea of mythology and the constellations as a lens through which to understand these apparent paradoxes.
This first line may be a reference to Hercules, who went mad and killed... | Dylan Thomas | And Death Shall Have No Dominion |
When they made you
It was probably the wisest thing to do
Cause heavenly moulds lead to heavenly forms
And heavenly forms lead to devilish woes
And this is hell nor we are out of it
Oh, those devilish woes
I don't want to end up like Kolly Kibber
From a ghost train into the
Beautiful briny
Beautiful briny sea
One way, ... | Liebling, die Form zerbrach | Noch in der ersten Nacht
Die Nacht des ersten Lichts
Danach kommt nichts, oder? | This roughly translates as “Darling, the mould broke” | Pete Doherty | Kolly Kibber |
Her bare
Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.
Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little
Pitcher of milk, now empty.
She has folded
Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden
Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.
The moon h... | Staring from her hood of bone. | She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag. | A possible allusion to motherhood, this new feminist-hood that has only the bones, or the framework, to create life, but rejects it.
The “hood of bone” could also be a reference to Adam’s rib , in Genesis 2:18-24, where God was said to have created woman out of man, to be man’s “help meet” . This has been taken in ... | Sylvia Plath | Edge |
Fair linèd slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
Thy silver dishes for thy meat
As precious as the gods do eat,
Shall on an ivory table be
Prepared each day for the... | If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love. | null | The poem finishes with two lines which echo earlier ones in the poem: there is the change from physical to mental movement in the penultimate line, then a near-repetition of the first line (which has already been repeated two stanzas previously).
The effect is bind the poem up into a neat circle: far too neat, obvi... | Christopher Marlowe | The Passionate Shepherd to His Love |
All I know is a door into the dark.
Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting; | Inside, the hammered anvil's short-pitched ring, | The unpredictable fantail of sparks
Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.
The anvil must be somewhere in the centre, | The older outdated and rusted tools are contrasted with the continuing work in the blacksmith’s shop. Though times change and new equipment is developed the work continues.
Note the strong, hard consonants throughout the first quatrain . Notably effective is the compound adjective “short-pitched ring” which, while ... | Seamus Heaney | The Forge |
null | From the hodge porridge
of their country lust, | their local life in Illinois,
where all their acres look
like a sprouting broom factory, | The word hodge is used as a name for a typical English agricultural laborer. Such “hodge porridge” is a description used to depict the sometimes dissatisfying way of living. This can be supported by the pitchfork in the man’s hand, signifying hard and continual labor. In addition, the small pot of flowers located abo... | Anne Sexton | The Farmers Wife |
Lincoln?
He was a mystery in smoke and flags
Saying yes to the smoke, yes to the flags,
Yes to the paradoxes of democracy,
Yes to the hopes of government
Of the people by the people for the people,
No to debauchery of the public mind,
No to personal malice nursed and fed,
Yes to the Constitution when a help,
No to the ... | Which of the faiths and illusions of mankind
Must I choose for my own sustaining light
To bring me beyond the present wilderness? | Lincoln? Was he a poet?
And did he write verses?
“I have not willingly planted a thorn | Sandburg uses these lines to explore deeper the meaning of one’s life and to wander away from the theme of Lincoln. He illustrates and highlights the struggle and question one is faced with their life; the question of what to do with their lives which will take their life into a new chapter and for some even up the sta... | Carl Sandburg | The People Yes |
null | A Requiem | Skimming lightly, wheeling still,
The swallows fly low
Over the fields in cloudy days, | This “requiem” poem by Melville, is written, as the title suggests, to honor the those who fell during the Battle Of Shiloh, during the Civil War.
The Battle of Shiloh (aka Battle of Pittsburgh Landing) was fought on April 6–7, 1862, in southwestern Tennessee not far from Corinth, Mississippi. General Albert Sidney J... | Herman Melville | Shiloh |
O well for him who lives at ease | With garnered gold in wide domain, | Nor heeds the splashing of the rain,
The crashing down of forest trees.
O well for him who ne'er hath known | In Wilde’s time, Garnered could be used to describe “stored” as well as “collected”–giving one the image of tax collectors, notoriously rich figure of older times. This image is especially emphasized by the use of “domain”, seeing that it is used to describe territory owned by people of power.
This line also intent... | Oscar Wilde | Tristitiae |
The great Overdog
That heavenly beast
With a star in one eye
Gives a leap in the east.
He dances upright
All the way to the west
And never once drops
On his forefeet to rest.
I'm a poor underdog, | But to-night I will bark
With the great Overdog | That romps through the dark. | The speaker has been contemplating his position in the universe and now wants to rise to the same level as the great Overdog.
Alternatively, the speaker has been inspired to join the Overdog in truly living his life, without inhibitions.
| Robert Frost | Canis Major |
Nicolas Fouquet, Louis XIV's finance minister in the first years of his reign, was a generous man who loved lavish parties, pretty women, and poetry. He also loved money, for he led an extravagant lifestyle. Fouquet was clever and very much indispensable to the king, so when the prime minister, Jules Mazarin, died, in ... | After dinner there was a promenade through the chateau's gardens. The grounds and fountains of Vaux-le-Vicomte were to be the inspiration for Versailles. | Fouquet personally accompanied the young king through the geometrically aligned arrangements of shrubbery and flower beds. Arriving at the gardens' canals, they witness a fireworks display, which was followed by the performance of Moliere's play. The party ran well into the night and everyone agreed it was the most ama... | The famous gardens of Vaux-le-Vicomte were designed and built by Andre le Notre and stretched a mile and a half; it included many canals, fountains, statues, and gravel walkways. Some suggest the chateau cost between 10 million to 16 million to build. .
A famous piece of the garden, known as the anamorphosis absc... | Robert Greene | Law 1: Never Outshine the Master - Transgression Of The Law |
O what is that sound which so thrills the ear
Down in the valley drumming, drumming?
Only the scarlet soldiers, dear,
The soldiers coming.
O what is that light I see flashing so clear
Over the distance brightly, brightly?
Only the sun on their weapons, dear,
As they step lightly.
O what are they doing with all that gea... | Only their usual manoeuvres, dear, | Or perhaps a warning.
O why have they left the road down there,
Why are they suddenly wheeling, wheeling? | This line tells us the army are a familiar presence to the second speaker, since they identify ‘their usual manoeuvres’. The army has not suddenly arrived in the area, it has been there for some time. It is also the final time the second speaker reassures the first. | W. H. Auden | O What Is That Sound |
keen as midsummer's keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand
so strictly(over utmost him
so hugely)stood my father's dream
his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn't creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile
Scorning the Pomp of must and shall
my father moved ... | Septembering arms of year extend | Yes humbly wealth to foe and friend
Than he to foolish and to wise
Offered immeasurable is | Again, nature is given human-like traits –in this situation, September. The poem opened with April (Spring), touched on summer , and now it is September (autumn). The speaker seems to be mapping out his father’s life from birth (“spring”) to the incoming death (“winter”).
And through all of his aging, he still ke... | E. E. Cummings | My father moved through dooms of love |
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain. | I have outwalked the furthest city light. | I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. | The narrator has walked so far that he has walked out of the city or is at the very edge of the city. The distance he puts between himself and the people in the city refers to the emotional distance felt and also is a symptom of the narrator’s depression. However since the narrator chose to walk the distance, he chose ... | Robert Frost | Acquainted with the Night |
null | The census man, | The day he came round,
Wanted my name
To put it down. | Hughes speaks of the decennial survey conducted by the United States government. This survey or census seeks to account for every person living on U.S. soil, so that taxes and congressional districts(and thereby number of seats each state gets within the house of representatives) can be appropriated to each state wit... | Langston Hughes | Madam and the Census Man |
As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away —
Too imperceptible, at last
To seem like Perfidy — | A Quietness distilled | As Twilight long begun
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon — | Stanzas two and three depict personified Nature in late summer/early autumn, a time for quiet contemplation — hence “A Quietness distilled” — with the Twilight lasting longer as the nights draw in. There is a cosiness about Nature indulging herself in the solitude of a “Sequestered” — meaning secretive and isolate... | Emily Dickinson | As Imperceptibly as Grief |
A shilling life will give you all the facts:
How Father beat him, how he ran away,
What were the struggles of his youth, what acts
Made him the greatest figure of his day;
Of how he fought, fished, hunted, worked all night,
Though giddy, climbed new mountains; named a sea:
Some of the last researchers even write | Love made him weep his pints like you and me. | With all his honours on, he sighed for one
Who, say astonished critics, lived at home;
Did little jobs about the house with skill | Now, there is also intense emotion in the “him” the speaker speaks of, making him more “like you and me”.
The phrase “Like you and me” may reveal to us who the “he” in this poem might possibly be: Anyone . Anyone has suffered love, climbed metaphorical mountains, and struggled in youth.
The use of “me” also brin... | W. H. Auden | Whos Who |
This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me
The simple News that Nature told,
With tender Majesty
Her Message is committed
To Hands I cannot see
For love of Her — Sweet — countrymen | Judge tenderly — of Me | null | Here Dickinson is requesting that her audience judge her “tenderly,” recalling the “tender majesty” of the fourth line.
The poem opens and closes with an introspective manner– though Dickinson is addressing the world at large, it’s her own concept of self which is really under the microscope. | Emily Dickinson | This is My Letter to the World |
Drink to me only with thine eyes, | And I will pledge with mine; | Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I'll not look for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise | Their relationship, he hopes, is reciprocal. This is ironic, as the second stanza leaves the speaker disappointed. | Ben Jonson | Song To Celia |
Come on boys you gotta choose your weapon | J-45 or AK-47 | There's hell to pay at the gates of heaven
And the whole show it comes tumbling down
There's hell to pay at the gates of heaven | J-45 is a famous Gibson guitar used by John Lennon. Obviously AK-47 is the assault rifle so he is asking the ‘boys’ (presumably a reference to the young age of enlistment in world war one) to choose between violence or love/melody. | Pete Doherty | Hell To Pay At The Gates Of Heaven |
[Published with "Alastor", 1816.]
We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly!—yet soon | Night closes round, and they are lost for ever: | Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings | Quite creepy and dark to compare “we” (humankind, perhaps?) to dark clouds that suddenly vanish due to the forces of Time and Nature. This may be a metaphor for how death comes unexpectedly yet stealthily–and is permanent.
As stated in the first line , humankind may be viewed as a menace towards Nature, but Nature g... | Percy Bysshe Shelley | Mutability |
I love to rise in a summer morn
When the birds sing on every tree
The distant huntsman winds his horn
And the sky-lark sings with me | O! what sweet company | But to go to school in a summer morn
O! it drives all joy away
Under a cruel eye outworn | The exclamatory ‘O’ is a common device used by Romantic poets to achieve emphasis.
Note that this line is catalectic or shortened in terms of metre. It suggests the emphatic joy of the schoolboy.
Note the word ‘company’; the child feels he has a special personal relationship with wild creatures; they are imaginar... | William Blake | The Schoolboy |
Oh where are the winds of morning?
Oh where is love at first sight?
A man comes out of nowhere.
Maybe he's Mr. Right.
How does one find the answer,
If one has waited so long?
A man comes out of nowhere,
He's probably Mr. Wrong.
Jane imagines the future,
And almost loses heart.
She sees herself as Europe
And John as Bon... | They walk to the end of the platform.
They stumble down to the tracks.
They stand among the wrappers
And empty cigarette packs. | The wind blows through the tunnel.
They listen to the sound.
The way it growls and whistles | This imagery represents Jane and John “stumbling” down into the railroad tracks.
At many railroad stations, especially in big cities, people will throw their used cigarettes/cigarette packs and their old food wrappers into the tracks.
| Mark Strand | The Couple |
Call him old fashioned, but in the 'little mag
He edits for his sins' stuff rhymes – oh, he's no sympathiser
With this modern stuff! Is it prose? What is it?
Perhaps the poet can enlighten him this visit?
– For which his lady-wife's made up a futon hard as boulders
In the boxroom. 'So much friendlier than a hotel!'
Wil... | But it's real hell for real poets when love goes right | When the war is over and the blood, the mud, the Muse depart
Requited love, gratified desire 'write white'
And suffering's the sweetest source for the profoundest art. | When a poet has everything going for them in life they have no worries or pained emotions to draw upon and write about. | Liz Lochhead | Hell For Poets |
Still to be neat, still to be dressed,
As you were going to a feast;
Still to be powdered, still perfumed:
Lady, it is to be presumed,
Though art's hid causes are not found,
All is not sweet, all is not sound.
Give me a look, give me a face,
That makes simplicity a grace;
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free:
Such sweet... | They strike mine eyes, but not my heart. | null | The ideal present throughout Jonson’s poem is his preference over a woman who appears naturally, without make-up, and is accepting of her flaws. Compared to the polished woman who fears her imperfections.
These polished women, though they may appear more attractive on the surface, will only capture Jonson’s eyes comp... | Ben Jonson | Simplex Munditiis Still to be neat |
null | A smile because the nights are short! | And every morning brings such pleasure
Of sweet love-making, harmless sport:
Love that makes and finds its treasure; | The opening is abrupt and spare and fast-paced. The sentence has no verb — the speaker seems not to have the time — and the exclamation mark emphasises her happiness. The nights are short because the speaker is loved and can smile.
Note that the first line of the second stanza echoes and inverts this. | Christina Rossetti | A Smile And A Sigh |
Children of the future age,
Reading this indignant page, | Know that in a former time | Love, sweet love, was thought a crime.
In the age of gold,
Free from winter's cold, | The tone suggests that the present is more enlightened and that the story being told is of an absurd societal attitude. | William Blake | A Little Girl Lost |
Driver drive faster and make a good run
Down the Springfield Line under the shining sun.
Fly like an aeroplane, don't pull up short
Till you brake for Grand Central Station, New York.
For there in the middle of the waiting-hall
Should be standing the one that I love best of all. | If he's not there to meet me when I get to town
I'll stand on the side-walk with tears rolling down. | For he is the one that I love to look on,
The acme of kindness and perfection.
He presses my hand and he says he loves me, | The playfully maudlin sweetness of these lines seems a fair indication that the speaker’s not really worried. | W. H. Auden | Calypso |
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind. | Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black | And the dark street winds and bends,
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow, | The images of smokestacks and industry evoke the adult world of work and responsibility, which in both a literal and figurative sense pollutes the simpler world of childhood.
| Shel Silverstein | Where the Sidewalk Ends |
null | Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me – | The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality
We slowly drove – He knew no haste | This line of the poem immediately portrays death in a somewhat positive light. Death here is not described as painful or mean,but a gentleman who kindly stops for the speaker. Though there is a sense that the speaker is not ready for death, one can assume that because death is this kind gentleman that comes to pick the... | Emily Dickinson | Because I Could Not Stop for Death |
And you, Helen | And you, Helen, what should I give you? | So many things I would give you
Had I an infinite great store
Offered me and I stood before | At this stage it is not clear whether Helen is a listener or if Thomas is writing this as an abstract exercise, expressing feelings he found difficult to convey to her face-to-face. He clearly doesn’t expect an answer, so the question may be rhetorical , something he is asking himself rather than his wife. However, th... | Edward Thomas | And you Helen |
This new Daks suit, greeny-brown,
Oyster-coloured buttons, single vent, tapered
Trousers, no waistcoat, hairy tweed - my own:
A suit to show responsibility, to show
Return to life - easily got for two pounds down
Paid off in six months - the first stage in the change. | I am only the image I can force upon the town. | The town will have me: I stalk in glass,
A thin reflection in the windows, best
In jewellers' velvet backgrounds - I don't pass, | The concluding line of the stanza confirms that he has created an ‘image’. The word ‘only’ is sadly significant, implying there is nothing substantial beneath it. Morever, he has to ‘force’ the ‘town’ to accept this image. The verb ‘force’ implies that this is not natural for him, and those he meets may not be convince... | Peter Porter | Metamorphosis |
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting —
I know why he beats his wing!
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his... | I know why the caged bird sings! | null |
Maya Angelou wrote a book called that. | Paul Laurence Dunbar | Sympathy |
But lo! the morning peeps
Over the eastern steeps,
And the rustling birds of dawn
The earth do scorn.
Lo! to the vault
Of paved heaven,
With sorrow fraught
My notes are driven:
They strike the ear of night,
Make weep the eyes of day;
They make mad the roaring winds,
And with tempests play. | Like a fiend in a cloud | With howling woe,
After night I do croud,
And with night will go; | He compares himself to an evil spirit or devil in a cloud. | William Blake | Mad Song |
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand, | Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay. | Remember me when no more, day by day,
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand | This shows her hesitation, or reluctance to go to the ‘silent land’. At this stage the speaker is not reconciled to death. Life was fragile in Victorian times; even wealthy people died of infection and illnesses now treatable. Death occupied their minds and dominated their lives. | Christina Rossetti | Remember |
null | You did not come, | And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb,—
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make | The stanza begins with a four-monosyllable, stark, declarative statement. There is an accusing tone, depending on how one interprets it. A monosyllabic string , if read aloud in performance, can subtly change meaning according to the speaker’s emphasis. Given what follows this can be interpreted as flat and expressio... | Thomas Hardy | A Broken Appointment |
null | A still—Volcano—Life— | That flickered in the night—
When it was dark enough to do
Without erasing sight— | The first line of the poem initiates the juxtaposition of opposites — oxymoron — that is used at the beginning of each stanza. Here, we have “still” and “Volcano,” with volcano possibly functioning in noun form (to represent Dickinson’s inner self), and also as an adjective (to describe “Life”). The word “Volcano,” ... | Emily Dickinson | A still—Volcano—Life 601 |
Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
Then with cracked hands that ached
From labor in the weekday weather made
Banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
And slowly I would rise and dress... | Speaking indifferently to him,
Who had driven out the cold
And polished my good shoes as well. | What did I know, what did I know
Of love's austere and lonely offices? | The son does not express gratitude or appreciation for his father’s efforts. Though his father tried to demonstrate his love through his labor, the son takes it for granted. The phrase ‘driven out the cold’ is, of course, a metaphor for the cold feelings his father tried so hard to banish from the family.
We may assu... | Robert Hayden | Those Winter Sundays |
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.
The convenience of the high trees!
The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth's face upward for my inspection.
My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my ... | My manners are tearing off heads - | The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living. | The hawk has a callous view of the world. The broken line conveys violence and speed of attack. Its ‘manners’ is an ironic comment, an oxymoron , as killing and good manners are mutually exclusive.
Note also, the terminal caesura could resemble the quick beheading of the hawk’s prey | Ted Hughes | Hawk Roosting |
Do Sluggo's kinks make him a refugee from Mandingo?
What does Webster's say about soul?
I say you silly chipe motherfucker, your great grandfather
Tied a ball and chain to my balls
And bounced me through a cotton field
While I lived in an unflushable toilet bowl
And now you want me to help you overthrow what?
The only ... | After all is said and done build a new route to China if they'll have you | Who will survive in America? | Quand tout sera dit et fait, construis une nouvelle route vers la Chine s'ils veulent bien de toi.
GSH fait ici référence à la popularité grandissante du Maoïsme . Mao Zedong avec son Petit Livre Rouge fût une grande influence sur les mouvements étudiants contestataires à la fin des années 1960, même en France c... | Gil Scott-Heron | Comment 1 Version Française |
I was born in the Congo
I walked to the Fertile Crescent and built
The Sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
That only glows every one hundred years falls
Into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad
I sat on the throne
Drinking nectar with Allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to Europe
To cool my thi... | The tears from my birth pains
Created the Nile
I am a beautiful woman | I gazed on the forest and burned
Out the Sahara desert
With a packet of goat's meat | An unending source of sustenance, the Nile River provided a crucial role in the development of Egyptian civilization. The Nile was an important part of ancient Egyptian spiritual life. The Nile was considered to be a causeway from life to death and the afterlife.
Up until this point, the sex of the speaker has been... | Nikki Giovanni | Ego-Tripping there may be a reason |
A little black thing in the snow
Crying "weep! weep!" in notes of woe!
"Where are thy father and mother? Say!"
"They are both gone up to the church to pray
"Because I was happy upon the heath
And smiled among the winter's snow
They clothed me in the clothes of death
And taught me to sing the notes of woe
"And because I... | And are gone to praise God and his priest and king | Who make up a heaven of our misery." | Blake calls attention to the institutions that played a large role in British upper and middle class life: religion and royalty.
Although the English people are faithful churchgoers and are loyal to the crown, they fail to pay attention to the lowest, most innocent members of society. The institutions themselves may ... | William Blake | The Chimney Sweeper Songs of Experience |
But comfortless sneezers puddle in pubs.
The robin looks in at the kitchen window
But all care huddles to hearths and kettles.
The sun lobs one wet snowball feebly
Grim and blue
The dusk of the coombe
And the swamp woodland
Sinks with the wren.
See old lips go purple and old brows go paler.
The stiff crow drops in the ... | You wake with the shakes and watch your breathing
Smoke in the moonlight – silent, silent. | Your anklebone
And your anklebone
Lie big in the red. | Again, the terms of address to the reader are slightly strange. It’s not quite an imperative this time, but more of a forcing of a common experience onto the reader. It’s evidently a moment which the speaker of the poem has experienced, and in a way, the poem has been written to compel readers to this sort of realizati... | Ted Hughes | Christmas Card |
But whatsoever else it may secrete,
Its flowers' distilled honey is so sweet
It makes the butterflies intemperate.
There is no slumber in its juice for them.
One knocks another off from where he clings.
They knock the dyestuff off each other's wings -
With thirst on hunger to the point of lust.
They raise in their inte... | In our three hundred days and sixty five
One day too sweet for beings to survive. | Many shall come away as struggle worn
And spent and dusted off of their regalia
To which at daybreak they were freshly born |
an alluring resource can stir creatures to uncouth behavior, especially when there’s a high concentration of that creature where the alluring resource is available. what seems sweet leads to excess and ugliness.
It seems that the time when the milkweed is in bloom or whatever (i.e. when the milkweed is attractive t... | Robert Frost | Pod of the Milkweed |
After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,'
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before'?
The Feet, mechanical, go round –
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone –
This is the Hour ... | As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow – | First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go – | A person who is freezing or in pain remembers what caused them to freeze; the snow (or in Dickinson’s case, the pain). Someone who is grieving is thinking about what caused them to feel their pain. | Emily Dickinson | After great pain a formal feeling comes J341 F372 |
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