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Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream; | Come back in tears, | O memory, hope, love of finished years.
O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise, | ‘Come back’ continues the refrain. The ‘stream’ of the previous line is echoed in the ‘tears’. Water imagery is picked up later in ‘brimful’ in stanza two. | Christina Rossetti | Echo |
[Published in part (lines 7-24) by Medwin (under the title, "An Ariette for Music. To a Lady singing to her Accompaniment on the Guitar"), "The Athenaeum", November 17, 1832; reprinted by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 1st edition. Republished in full (under the title, To —.), "Poetical Works", 1839, 2nd edition... | The guitar was tinkling, | But the notes were not sweet till you sung them
Again.
2. | The guitar is fortuitously an instrument that modern young readers relate to. There is something erotic in the way a guitar is held close to the body and the player wraps their arms around it, which may have appealed to Shelley.
| Percy Bysshe Shelley | To Jane: The Keen Stars Were Twinkling |
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed | To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need | Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag to-day
Can tell the definition | Although “nectar” goes hand in hand with sweetness, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is sweet. However, it represents something desirable, and that desire is stimulated by the greatest need.
Although Dickinson doesn’t name the bee, the implication is that the bee seeks nectar because it “requires sorest need”. So... | Emily Dickinson | Success is counted Sweetest |
Yes
Glad to get high and see the slow-motion world
Just to reach and touch the half notes floating
World spinning, orbit quicker than 9/8th Dave Brubeck
We come now frantically searching for Thomas More, rainbow villages
Upon suddenly Charlie Mingus and Ahmed Abdul-Malik | To add base to a bottomless pit of insecurity | You may be plastic because you never meditate about the bottom of glasses,
The third side of your universe
Add on Alice Coltrane and her cosmic strains | # DOUBLE ENTENDRE ALERT
Relating to the previous line, which references two highly influential jazz double bassists, Gil Scott drops a mind-bending bomb of double the regular entendre.
Gil Scott plays with his words like a 5-year old plays with his spaghetti , seeing the opportunity to match the two homophones ... | Gil Scott-Heron | Plastic Pattern People |
He sang of life, serenely sweet,
With, now and then, a deeper note.
From some high peak, nigh yet remote, | He voiced the world's absorbing beat. | He sang of love when earth was young,
And Love, itself, was in his lays.
But, ah, the world, it turned to praise | He used his words to express the feeling of the world.
| Paul Laurence Dunbar | The Poet |
I felt a Cleaving in my Mind −
As if my Brain had split −
I tried to match it − Seam by Seam −
But could not make them fit.
The thought behind, I strove to join
Unto the thought before −
But Sequence raveled out of Sound | Like Ball − upon a Floor. | null | “Like Ball” suggests a metaphor of a ball of yarn. When the yarn is not unraveled, it symbolizes the stability in one’s mind to think and put the thoughts together. When it is unraveled, it signifies the mental instability of the speaker, implying over thinking and a mental breakdown. This connects to the mourning of a... | Emily Dickinson | 937 |
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 ... | Which I find an admirable peculiarity. | The woods are bright green on both sides of the line,
The trees have their loves though they're different from mine.
But the poor fat old banker in the sun-parlour car | Auden’s English accent probably would have elided a couple syllables here (“pe-kyule-yare-tee”)–but still, this line has a lot of syllables!
Auden’s decision to vary syllable count line by line, while keeping up a basic rhythm (approximately four beats per line), contributes to the poem’s loose, funky “calypso” sound... | W. H. Auden | Calypso |
null | Dear March - Come in - | How glad I am -
I hoped for you before -
Put down your Hat - | As is often true in Dickinson poems, the abstract is personified. Here, March is likened to an old friend coming to visit, and the speaker welcomes her guest warmly.
| Emily Dickinson | Dear March - Come in - 1320 |
Dismembered, to a tod of ivy.
So much for the charioteers, the outriders, the Grand Army!
A red tatter, Napoleon!
The last badge of victory.
The swarm is knocked into a cocked straw hat.
Elba, Elba, bleb on the sea!
The white busts of marshals, admirals, generals
Worming themselves into niches.
How instructive this is!... | An ivory palace, a crotch pine. | The man with gray hands smiles--
The smile of a man of business, intensely practical.
They are not hands at all | This is obscure, but suggests buildings that are symbolically outdated; impossible to live in. An ‘ivory palace’ is something out of a fairy tale. The crutch or crotch construction is a primitive architectural design, where a split tree is used as the prime means of support for a cottage. This seems to represent the fa... | Sylvia Plath | The Swarm |
As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole—
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the Boreal Pole.
Our talk had been serious and sober
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere—
Our memories were treacherous and sere;
For we knew not... | (Though once we had journeyed down here) | Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
And now, as the night was senescent | Here, the speaker first acknowledges (though passively) that he had been in this location before. It is a passive acknowledgment because it is in parentheses, indicating that, at the moment of the walk depicted in the poem, he had not remembered being there before. This acknowledgment is placed in such a stanza as it d... | Edgar Allan Poe | Ulalume |
"Hope" is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all - | And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard - | And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm - | The “Gale” is capitalised, the second abstract idea of the poem, representing the trials and storms that humans have to face. It is at these moments that the bird’s song of Hope is “sweetest”. The implication is that the most turbulant times are alleviated by the metaphorical bird.
The use of stormy weather and elem... | Emily Dickinson | Hope is the thing with feathers |
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 inn.
Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep ... | Yea, beds for all who come. | null | It is a powerful statement. It leaves no doubt that there is a place in heaven for everybody, if they seek it. The implication is that trust and faith are all that matter. | Christina Rossetti | Up-hill |
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;
In doubt to deem himself a God, or beast;
In doubt his mind and body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, hi... | Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all, | Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd;
The glory, jest and riddle of the world. | The “Great Lord of all things” is not in reference to God, but to actual men. Man is given the earth to rule over, but yet they die from floods and drought. | Alexander Pope | Riddle of the World |
Because I feel that, in the Heavens above,
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of "Mother," | Therefore by that dear name I long have called you— | You who are more than mother unto me,
And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you
In setting my Virginia's spirit free. | More specifically, Poe called her “Muddy.” | Edgar Allan Poe | To My Mother |
Tell you jes' one? Lem me see
Whut dat one's a-gwine to be.
When you 's ole, yo membry fails;
Seems lak I do' know no tales.
Well, set down dah in dat cheer,
Keep still ef you wants to hyeah.
Tek dat chin up off yo' han's,
Set up nice now. Goodness lan's!
Hol' yo'se'f up lak yo' pa.
Bet nobidy evah saw
Him scrunched do... | Once dey was a ole black bah,
Used to live ‘roun' hyeah some whah
In a cave. He was so big
He could ca'y off a pig
Lak you picks a chicken up, | Er yo' leetles' bit o' pup.
An' he had two gread big eyes,
Jes' erbout a saucer's size. | The narrator, speaking in vernacular English, begins the tale of a “black bah” or bear with much power over the weasel, signifying who the “young master” is in relation to the bear and the young masters father, who he will take after.
| Paul Laurence Dunbar | A Cabin Tale |
Victoria Clementina, negress,
Took seven white dogs
To ride in a cab.
Bells of the dog chinked.
Harness of the horses shuffled
Like brazen shells.
Oh-hé-hé! Fragrant puppets
By the green lake-pallors,
She too is flesh, | And a breech-cloth might wear,
Netted of topaz and ruby
And savage blooms; | Thridding the squawkiest jungle
In a golden sedan,
White dogs at bay. | A breech-cloth is a loin-cloth, though this one is embroidered with topaz and ruby. It’s a ridiculous image.
| Wallace Stevens | Exposition of the Contents of a Cab |
A Wife in London | December 1899 | I--The Tragedy
She sits in the tawny vapour
That the City lanes have uprolled, | The poem was written during the Second Boer War (1899-1902) fought between the British and Boer settlers in South Africa. Though the war is never specified, the reference to the ‘far South Land’ identifies it. Even so, the vagueness may indicate Hardy’s intention that this should be any war in any era. | Thomas Hardy | A Wife in London |
Holding its inverted poise –
Between the clang and clang a flower,
A brazen calyx of no noise:
The bell was silent in the air.
The camels crossed the miles of sand
That stretched around the cups and plates;
The desert was their own, they planned
To portion out the stars and dates:
The camels crossed the miles of sand.
... | Came out like water from a rock: | Time was away and somewhere else.
Her fingers flicked away the ash
That bloomed again in tropic trees: | This transports us back to the desert, but also back thousands of years. It is a reference that appears several times in the Bible, but notably to Moses leading the exodus of the Jews from slavery to the Promised Land. When they were thirsty Moses struck a rock and water gushed out.
Why did MacNeice choose this? ... | Louis MacNeice | Meeting Point |
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,... | He was my North, my South, my East and West, | My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. | The tone shifts from one of sorrow and mourning to sorrow and love. The reference to the points of the compass indicate the all encompassing nature of his love.
It is worth noting that the structure of the poem represents the stages of mourning; firstly the inner feelings of grief, then the activity involved in th... | W. H. Auden | Funeral Blues Stop all the clocks |
null | The door was shut. I looked between | Its iron bars; and saw it lie,
My garden, mine, beneath the sky,
Pied with all flowers bedewed and green: | The poem opens abruptly, the first sentence unequivocal in meaning and made up of monosyllables so the reader is drawn in. The full stop creates a break, a caesura , to emphasise the poet’s alienation. | Christina Rossetti | Shut out |
For this your mother sweated in the cold,
For this you bled upon the bitter tree:
A yard of tinsel ribbon bought and sold;
A paper wreath; a day at home for me.
The merry bells ring out, the people kneel;
Up goes the man of God before the crowd;
With voice of honey and with eyes of steel
He drones your humble gospel to... | Nobody listens. Less than the wind that blows | Are all your words to us you died to save.
O Prince of Peace! O Sharon's dewy Rose!
How mute you lie within your vaulted grave. | This line sonically breaks an otherwise perfectly metered, sing-song sonnet. The iambic pentameter gives way to a far more somber sound when Millay introduces a dactylic foot (“Nobody”) followed by a trochee (“listens”). With this harsh accent and the caesura that follows Millay asserts her message about hypocrisy – an... | Edna St. Vincent Millay | To Jesus on His Birthday |
I. | Two in Campagna | I wonder do you feel to-day
As I have felt since, hand in hand,
We sat down on the grass, to stray | The “Campagna” refers to the countryside around Rome. Until the middle of the twentieth century it grew fairly wild and unclaimed. Because its swampy areas nurtured mosquitoes carrying malaria, the conventional English tourist largely avoided the Campagna, leaving it to the Italian peasants, who farmed sections of it. ... | Robert Browning | Two in Campagna |
I embraced a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained.
3
That's funny! there's blood on my chest
oh yes, I've been carrying bricks
what a funny place to rupture!
and now it is raining on the ailanthus
as I step out onto the window ledge
the tracks below me are smoky and
glistening with a passion for running
I leap into the l... | 4 | Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again, | For the fourth section of the poem, O'Hara seems to be having a dialog with “Past One O'Clock …” by Vladimir Myakovsky
So but this poem, “Mayakovsky”, got its title from James Schuyler , who found two two-section poems by O'Hara (that became sections 1 and 2, sections 3 and 4) and decided to combine them into one p... | Frank O'Hara | Mayakovsky |
It is the pain, it is the pain endures.
Your chemic beauty burned my muscles through. | Poise of my hands reminded me of yours. | What later purge from this deep toxin cures?
What kindness now could the old salve renew?
It is the pain, it is the pain endures. | [Refrain 2] Poise of my hands reminded me of your…
stare
deep beauty
beauty
heart
poison
poison draught
draught
Notice how the previous line poisons this line as the similar sounds are echoed–“poison” and “poise of.”
The proximity of hands and draught could suggest the poise to be pictured... | William Empson | Villanelle It is the pain... |
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.
No, they ... | We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round. | null |
Humans claim power and purport to take charge and control the world in whatever way we deem fit. But we remain at the at the mercy of nature’s phenomena; we are unable to prevent earthquakes, volcanoes, typhoons etc. The allegorical forces speak for themselves, they have sufficient power for their ‘whisper’ to be hea... | Margaret Atwood | The Moment |
This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
Your destination and your destiny's
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,
Too lofty and original to rage.
(We know the valley streams that when aroused
Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)
I have kept hidden in the... | (I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.) | Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion. | The goblet was stolen from a children’s playhouse–an imaginary house as opposed to the “house in earnest.” Frost’s “wholeness” (see final line) thereby encompasses the mental as well as the physical.
The goblet is a cheap toy; perhaps a fake spiritual journey is as good as a real one. Or perhaps we are being misled: ... | Robert Frost | Directive |
‘Good-morning; good-morning!' the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,
And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine. | ‘He's a cheery old card,' grunted Harry to Jack | As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
But he did for them both by his plan of attack. | ‘Harry and Jack’, are standard throwaway names, which represent all the men. They grumble to each other about the General’s jovilaity, because he remains “cheery” in this joyless environment; the General clearly doesn’t understand the life a soldier. Or it could be interpreted that, in their naivety, they were impress... | Siegfried Sassoon | The General |
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees | Is my destroyer. | And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks | All stanzas (except the last stanza) consist of five lines, with the middle shorter than the rest. Also what makes it different from the rest of the lines is the form: most lines are iambic pentameters, however, the third lines have two metrical feet. | Dylan Thomas | The Force That through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower |
They fuck you up, your mum and dad. | They may not mean to, but they do. | They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn | Parents don’t realize how cruel they are in bringing a child into a broken world.
Note: The caesura in these two opening lines lend the poem a simplicity that borders on innocence. Larkin is passing comment on capital L Life, but does so with an honest, open flatness.
The repetition of ‘They’ also helps to achieve... | Philip Larkin | This Be The Verse x |
These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.
The trees that have it in their pent-up buds | To darken nature and be summer woods -- | Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers | Frost injects a sense of melancholy with this line, as the trees sprout and cover everything else below; but this is not a death of nature–simply a covering of it. | Robert Frost | Spring Pools |
O GOAT-FOOT God of Arcady!
This modern world is grey and old,
And what remains to us of thee?
No more the shepherd lads in glee
Throw apples at thy wattled fold,
O goat-foot God of Arcady!
Nor through the laurels can one see
Thy soft brown limbs, thy beard of gold,
And what remains to us of thee?
And dull and dead our ... | Then keep the tomb of Helice, | Thine olive-woods, thy vine-clad wold,
And what remains to us of thee?
Though many an unsung elegy | According to Greek Myth Index , Helice was:
A daughter of Lycaon, was beloved by Zeus, but Hera, out of jealousy, metamorphosed her into a she-bear, whereupon Zeus placed her among the stars, under the name of the Great Northern Bear. (Serv. ad Virg. Georg. i. 138, 246.) When Demeter invoked her, asking for info... | Oscar Wilde | Pan: A Double Villanelle |
Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?
And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists?
And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air?
Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.
'Tis a shame to human nature, such a head of hair as his; | In the good old time 'twas hanging for the colour that it is; | Though hanging isn't bad enough and flaying would be fair
For the nameless and abominable colour of his hair.
Oh a deal of pains he's taken and a pretty price he's paid | The whole poem uses hair color as a metaphor for sexuality, and having the “wrong” hair color as a metaphor for being gay. Being convicted of sodomy, then defined as a sex act between two men, carried the death penalty in England from 1533 until 1861. By the time Oscar Wilde was convicted, the sentence was two years of... | A. E. Housman | Oh Who Is That Young Sinner |
The medieval town, with frieze
Of boy scouts from Nagoya? The snow | That came when we wanted it to snow? | Beautiful images? Trying to avoid
Ideas, as in this poem? But we
Go back to them as to a wife, leaving | Is the snow as beautiful as it seems?
| John Ashbery | What is Poetry? |
I wish I were close
To you as the wet skirt of
A salt girl to her body.
I think of you always. | Akahito | The white chrysanthemum
Is disguised by the first frost.
If I wanted to pick one | # Yamabe No Akahito
A poet of the Nara period, Akahito lived between 700 and 736 AD. He composed much of his work while traveling extensively with Emperor Shōmu .
| Kenneth Rexroth | Poems from the Japanese |
The end of the affair is always death.
She's my workshop. Slippery eye,
out of the tribe of myself my breath
finds you gone. I horrify
those who stand by. I am fed. | At night, alone, I marry the bed. | Finger to finger, now she's mine.
She's not too far. She's my encounter.
I beat her like a bell. I recline | Anne Sexton will repeat this sentence as a refrain at the end of each verse of this poem. It helps us to build a context while reading, and to understand all of her acts are directed toward the final stage of masturbating in her bed. In other words, this is what her love life has come to. | Anne Sexton | The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator |
null | Go, little book, | To him who, on a lute with horns of pearl,
Sang of the white feet of the Golden Girl:
And bid him look | Such a simple yet famous line in poetry that could be found in Byron’s Don Juan and famously in Southey’s “L'Envoy” , it actually traces back to Chaucer in Book V of his Troilus and Criseyde :
Go, litel book, go litel myn tregedie, Ther god thy maker yet, er that he dye, So sende might to make in som comedie! ... | Oscar Wilde | With a Copy of A House of Pomegranates An Inscription |
Cave Painting
Look there are dark hands in the black rock,
Man's hands, woman's hands, child's hands hiding in a cave,
Shadows of hands, but with such a living look
They seem to waver and beckon, they seem to move
In a language of gesture startling and piercing as speech.
Up from the green water here we clambered
Say t... | They seem to breathe and speak for all humanity | Who made their camp so, man and woman and child,
And flowed with the green river down to infinity;
And beautifully and terribly they wave | Personification: he says the hands transform into the people of the past, they are living beings that represent the strong feelings of the inhabitants of the cave | Douglas Stewart | Cave Painting |
A Route of Evanescence
With a revolving Wheel-- | A Resonance of Emerald-- | A Rush of Cochineal--
And every Blossom on the Bush
Adjusts its tumbled Head-- | Rather than saying “a blur of green”, Dickinson zooms in on the details, though hummingbirds fly so fast. To use Resonance and Emerald gives the scene a rather royal feeling. | Emily Dickinson | A Route of Evanescence |
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again. | (I think I made you up inside my head.) | The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. | The parentheses around this line contribute visually by acting as the sides of her head. She made her lover up in her (head), and therefore it exists in the parentheses. E. E. Cummings did similar things with his punctuation. | Sylvia Plath | Mad Girls Love Song |
null | The Combe was ever dark, ancient and dark. | Its mouth is stopped with bramble, thorn, and briar;
And no one scrambles over the sliding chalk
By beech and yew and perishing juniper | The opening sentence is spare and atmospheric. The repetition of “dark”, together with “ancient”, creates a sinister mood. There is a sense of timelessness.
Note that the pace is slow with elongated vowels in “Combe” and “dark”.
| Edward Thomas | The Combe |
After twenty-four hours of waiting,
I'm glad she turned out to be you."
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 fu... | She sees herself as Europe
And John as Bonaparte. | They walk to the end of the platform.
They stumble down to the tracks.
They stand among the wrappers | Bonaparte is the last name of French military and political leader Napoleon, who dominated European affairs for nearly two decades, leading France against a series of coalitions in the Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. He won the large majority of his battles and seized control of most of continental Europe. ... | Mark Strand | The Couple |
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need
Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag to-day
Can tell the definition
So clear, of Victory | As he, defeated, dying
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break, agonized and clear! | null | The second and third stanzas are enjambed , so the meaning of both are linked, one flowing from the other. The emphasis is increased by hard, thudding alliterative “d"s. This increases the pace, leading to the emphatic ending of the poem.
The stanza describes the defeated in this battle. The first line depicts ... | Emily Dickinson | Success is counted Sweetest |
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 | The constellation looks like a dog standing upright. Metaphorically, the speaker is admiring that the Overdog is always enjoying life and never lets the bumps in the road slow him down. | Robert Frost | Canis Major |
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, howeve... | And lust is there, and nights not spent alone. | null | A clever ending line. She leaves off the “lust” and “sex” parts of what goes into the poetry till the last line, revealing with a suggestive “nights not spent alone” a forthcoming truth: that living a promiscuous, sexual life directly helped make her good poems as good as they are. Other poets might say that God, or ha... | Edna St. Vincent Millay | I Too Beneath Your Moon Almighty Sex |
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 | And all the Seas He populates
And Lands He looks upon
To Him who on its small Repose | The grave site may be ampler than the sun in the mere fact that it serves as much more and has more meaning. The grave serves as the enternal resting place of a honorable human.
| Emily Dickinson | A Coffin — is a small Domain |
An imitation of a Light
That has so little Oil –
I wonder if when Years have piled –
Some Thousands – on the Harm –
That hurt them early – such a lapse
Could give them any Balm –
Or would they go on aching still
Through Centuries of Nerve –
Enlightened to a larger Pain –
In Contrast with the Love –
The Grieved – are ma... | Death – is but one – and comes but once – | And only nails the eyes –
There's Grief of Want – and grief of Cold –
A sort they call "Despair" – | You can be abandoned, wounded, and heartbroken over and over, but you can only die once. Grief accumulates and weighs you down, whereas Death just comes and never returns. | Emily Dickinson | I measure every Grief I meet 561 |
There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away,
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot | That bears a Human soul. | null | Emily Dickinson is writing that the soul is carried by literature. Literature picks up the frail soul of a human being, and makes it stronger. | Emily Dickinson | There is no frigate like a book 1263 |
As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions. As an old man, I still can't believe it. What do they do it for? Sex? TV? An automobile on monthly payments? Or children? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did?
Early on, when I was quite young and ... | To not to have entirely wasted one's life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself. | yr boy,
Hank | Alternatively:
“I don’t think we’re here for anything, we’re just products of evolution. You can say ‘Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don’t think there’s a purpose’ but I’m anticipating a good lunch.”
- Dr. James Watson | Charles Bukowski | Letter to John Martin 1986 |
I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes—
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love's frenzied stifled throes | And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed | Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys, | Taken literally, this line says that despite all of the previous woes (“I am the self-consumer of my woes”) what the poet shall cling to is the very fact that he lives even though this life is like “vapours tossed / Into the nothingness of scorn and noise.” What the poet claims is the proto-existentialist claim: that t... | John Clare | I Am |
I've stayed in the front yard all my life.
I want a peek at the back
Where it's rough and untended and hungry weed grows.
A girl gets sick of a rose.
I want to go in the back yard now
And maybe down the alley,
To where the charity children play.
I want a good time today. | They do some wonderful things.
They have some wonderful fun.
My mother sneers, but I say it's fine | How they don't have to go in at quarter to nine.
My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae
Will grow up to be a bad woman. | The kids with whom she has never played (only watched or heard about), and whom her mother views as lower-class, a bad influence, etc. | Gwendolyn Brooks | A Song in the Front Yard |
Maybe the source of noble such may come
Clearer to dazzled Henry. It may come
I'd say it will come with pain
In mystery. I'd rather leave it alone
I do leave it alone
And down with the listener
Now he has become, abrupt, an industry
Professional-Friends-Of-Robert-Frost all over
Gap wide their mouths
While the quirky me... | —while he begins to have it out with Horace | null | See Carpe Diem . Though others before had surely longed long for a diurnal embrace, Horace was first to put it in those words | John Berryman | Dream Song 38 |
She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling
boy till the stick breaks
in her hand. His tears are rainy weather
to woundlike memories:
My head gripped in bony vise
of knees, the writhing struggle
to wrench free, the blows, the fear
worse than blows that hateful
Words could bring, the face that I
no longer knew or loved... | And the woman leans muttering against
a tree, exhausted, purged—
avenged in part for lifelong hidings
she has had to bear. | null | Earlier in the poem, the speaker shows only hate for the woman beating the child, but towards this ending, he seems to mature and identifies with the woman a little bit better. He realizes that the woman may not be beating the kid for no reason, and instead may be perpetuating a cycle of abuse begun when she was a chil... | Robert Hayden | The Whipping |
null | Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art! | Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? | The poetic voice expresses here a certain dissatisfaction with the deromanticization of nature that the emergence of natural sciences in the early 19th century has brought with it. Science and its significance for the arts is something that would concern Poe throughout his life and work, for example in “Mesmeric Revela... | Edgar Allan Poe | Sonnet—To Science |
"Morning"—means "Milking"—to the Farmer—
Dawn—to the Teneriffe—
Dice—to the Maid—
Morning means just Risk—to the Lover—
Just revelation—to the Beloved— | Epicures—date a Breakfast—by it— | Brides—an Apocalypse—
Worlds—a Flood—
Faint-going Lives—Their Lapse from Sighing— | Epicure :
A person who cultivates a discriminating palate for good food and drink.
A person devoted to sensual pleasure.“ (Collins Concise Dictionary)
It is interesting that Dickinson uses this term because she lived a seemingly frugal lifestyle. She is clearly distancing herself from this particular grou... | Emily Dickinson | Morning—means Milking—to the Farmer 300 |
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed-- | I, too, am America. | null | Hughes repeats that crucial “too” again in the last line of the poem. Now the speaker, previously cast aside, not only sings of America but claims it as an identity. Over the course of the poem, the speaker articulates how he has been treated and how he feels about it, and sings of a different future. Through his song,... | Langston Hughes | I Too sing America |
null | 'Allo, I'm-a Giuseppe | I got-a something special-a for you, ready?
Uno, duo, tre, quatro!
When I was a boy just about the eighth-a grade | In 1978, Dolce moved to Australia and came up with a mixed cabaret act with his then-wife that included an Italian character named Giuseppe, who became the inspiration behind this song.
| Joe Dolce | Shaddap You Face |
Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,
Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like
When he's held by the sea's roar, motionless, there at the end,
Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he'll never go back.
When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,
When t... | Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing
When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end. | null | No one knows what is going to happen to us after death. No one knows what we are going to be thinking, or doing, or singing before death envelops our being.
| Mark Strand | The End |
null | A rowan like a lipsticked girl. | Between the by-road and the main road
Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance
Stand off among the rushes. | The poem starts with a vivid simile , the red berries on the rowan tree likened to a “lipsticked girl”. Immediately, Heaney’s imagination and inventiveness draws the reader in. Note that the rowan tree is native of Europe and the Uniked Kingdom.
| Seamus Heaney | Song |
Two virtues ride, by stallion, by nag,
To grind our knives and scissors:
Lantern-jawed Reason, squat Common Sense,
One courting doctors of all sorts,
One, housewives and shopkeepers.
The trees are lopped, the poodles trim,
The laborer's nails pared level
Since those two civil servants set
Their whetstone to the blunted... | Whose owl-eyes in the scraggly wood | Scared mothers to miscarry,
Drove the dogs to cringe and whine
And turned the farmboy's temper wolfish, |
Source: Pan Prstenu
This is conveying the stereotypical scary scene of eyes watching you in the forest. This idea is terrifying and this is how the devil/fantasy makes the reader feel, fear of being lost in the story and what awaits once it ends. | Sylvia Plath | The Death of Myth-Making |
null | Was it a dreame, or did I see it playne, | a goodly table of pure yvory:
all spred with juncats, fit to entertayne
the greatest Prince with pompous roialty. | The confusion of dream and real sight is important for… everything poetic? Compare the famous ending of Keats' Ode to a Nightingale :
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep? ― John Keats – Ode to a Nightingale
| Edmund Spenser | Amoretti: Sonnet 77 |
And could not hope for help and no help came:
What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.
She looked over his shoulder
For athletes at their games,
Men and women in a dance
Moving their sweet limbs
Quick, quick, to mus... | A ragged urchin, aimless and alone, | Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third, | The figure of the ‘ragged urchin’ is introduced, ‘aimless and alone’. It suggests poverty and child abandonment, the outcome of brutality and war. | W. H. Auden | The Shield of Achilles |
286
That after Horror—that 'twas us
That passed the mouldering Pier
Just as the Granite Crumb let go
Our Savior, by a Hair
A second more, had dropped too deep | For Fisherman to plumb | The very profile of the Thought
Puts Recollection numb
The possibility—to pass | Even Christ’s mettle was tested: “And he said unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” (Matthew 4:19) | Emily Dickinson | That after Horror—that twas us |
I am not de problem
If yu give I a chance
I can teach yu of Timbuktu
I can do more dan dance
I am not de problem
I greet yu wid a smile
Yu put me in a pigeon hole
But i am versatile
These conditions may affect me
As I get older,
An I am positively sure
I have no chips on my shoulders, | Black is not de problem | Mother country get it right
An juss fe de record,
Sum of me best friends are white. | The speaker asserts the idea, but this time openly and unequivocally. The frank use of the word ‘black’ is like a dramatic climax. This is a poem about racism. | Benjamin Zephaniah | No problem |
The frighted women take the boys away,
The blackguard laughs and hurries on the fray
He tries to reach the woods, and awkward race
But sticks and cudgels quickly stop the chase
He turns again and drives the noisy crowd
And beats the many dogs in noises loud
He drives away and beats them every one
And then they loose th... | Some keep a baited badger tame as hog | And tame him till he follows like the dog.
They urge him on like dogs and show fair play.
He beats and scarcely wounded goes away. | The last stanza shifts in mood, instead of the wild badger captured and forced to fight, it portrays those badgers that have been domesticated. It is interesting how Clare neither condemns nor pities the badger at any point in the poem. The poem has a noticeable lack of emotional commentary. | John Clare | Badger |
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
Thus for to wear. | Of her I hold
And her household;
Though I wax old |
Skelton himself created a character named Colin Cloute to mock typical and popular complaints against his poetry. The character describes his own Skeltonic verse as “ragged, tattered and jagged, rain-beaten, rusty and moth eaten.”
So as you can see, it’s quite bold for the developer of Skeltonic verse, a form of po... | John Skelton | Why were ye Calliope embrawdered with letters of golde ? |
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 f... | 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.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing. | The speaker wishes they had the stamina of the tree and the bold beauty of the flower. Implicitly, the human condition is suggested to be a fleeting, cowardly one by contrast. | Sylvia Plath | I Am Vertical |
The wild winds weep,
And the night is a-cold;
Come hither, Sleep,
And my griefs infold:
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. | His cries of sorrow are so loud that the night hears them. The use of the word strike implies a ferocity and violence.
Watch from 3:27-4:12 This clip, rather then being of anguish, is of laughter. They are both, however, are evoked by madness and weather.
| William Blake | Mad Song |
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 of Lead – | Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go – | The “Hour of Lead” is a succinct metaphor that sums up the journey to numbness. It is a reference to time; the gradual movement to hardness, darkness and heaviness. So the paradox is revealed, that great pain leads to an absence of pain, an abs pre-empted.
| Emily Dickinson | After great pain a formal feeling comes J341 F372 |
The crowd was famished by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heaped a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble br... | Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow | Famine had written Fiend. The World was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless— | Beholding how ugly man has become, they keeled over in shame. They have lost their sense of oneness and identity. This was the final blow to mankind when they realized what they have turned into. | Lord Byron | Darkness |
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. | When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose. | null | Here is the shift in agency in the poem. The “I” in the poem becomes a “me” when “they washed [him] out of the turret with a hose.”
“The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” also addresses the senseless death of young people who haven’t had a chance to live yet. The poem is so short because the gunner’s life was so sho... | Randall Jarrell | The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner |
There, Robert, you have kill'd that fly — ,
And should you thousand ages try
The life you've taken to supply,
You could not do it. | You surely must have been devoid
Of thought and sense, to have destroy'd
A thing which no way you annoy'd —
You'll one day rue it. | Twas but a fly perhaps you'll say,
That's born in April, dies in May;
That does but just learn to display | Robert must have been mentally imbalanced for destroying the fly because the fly did nothing to annoy him. He also says that one day he will regret it. Is killing a fly such a big, regretful mistake as Charles Lamb portray’s it to be?
| Charles Lamb | Thoughtless Cruelty |
null | Seems like a long time
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 | The speaker is in a restaurant during a cold weather. The speaker is waiting for long time since the waiter took his order, so the service is poor or slow. | Charles Simic | The Partial Explanation |
null | Who died on the wires, and hung there, one of two – | Who for his hours of life had chattered through
Infinite lovely chatter of Bucks accent;
Yet faced unbroken wires; stepped over, and went, | The poem begins ungrammatically, so that the reader has to fill in the beginning of the sentence. This could read “… it was the officer who died on the wires, and hung there, one of two”. The reader may feel they are entering in the midst of a conversation, an example of in medias res , literally in Latin “in the midd... | Ivor Gurney | The Silent One |
A deep, deep wound Adonis…
A deeper Venus bears upon her heart.
See, his beloved dogs are gathering round—
The Oread nymphs are weeping—Aphrodite
With hair unbound is wandering through the woods,
'Wildered, ungirt, unsandalled—the thorns pierce
Her hastening feet and drink her sacred blood.
Bitterly screaming out, she ... | Alas for Cytherea—the Loves mourn— | The lovely, the beloved is gone!—and now
Her sacred beauty vanishes away.
For Venus whilst Adonis lived was fair— | “Cytherea” is an alternative name for Aphrodite. | Percy Bysshe Shelley | Fragment of The Elegy On The Death Of Adonis |
I started Early - Took my Dog
And visited the Sea
The Mermaids in the Basement
Came out to look at me
And Frigates - in the Upper Floor
Extended Hempen Hands | Presuming Me to be a Mouse | Aground - upon the Sands
But no Man moved Me - till the Tide
Went past my simple Shoe | On a literal level a mouse may travel on a frigate and escape when in port. Hence the poet represents this abandoned — aground — creature.
However, there is another interpretation, a very subtle yet strongly feminist sentiment expressed in this one line. “Presuming” implies that the persons forming this judgement we... | Emily Dickinson | I Started Early - Took my Dog |
Love her he doesn't but the thought he puts
into that young woman
would launch a national product
complete with TV spots and skywriting
outlets in Bonn & Tokyo
I mean it
Let it be known that nine words have not passed
between herself and Henry;
looks, smiles. | God help Henry, who deserves it all | every least part of that infernal and unconscious
woman, and the pain.
I feel as if, unique, she...Biddable? | Henry is, at points, a fairly pathetic character. The narrator implores God to help poor Henry, as he obviously needs and deserves divine intervention.
How much irony should we read into this plea? Is Henry an actual believer in God, sin, etc.? A lapsed believer with a residual impulse toward belief? | John Berryman | Dream Song 69 |
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
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 t... | The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning: | If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love. | ‘Swain’ is an old, Norse-derived word meaning servant. This is a good example of meter influencing word choice– obviously there are different and more common words for servant, but Marlowe needed a monosyllable.
This is good time to think about meter and meaning– if the word you want is precluded my your rhythm, wh... | Christopher Marlowe | The Passionate Shepherd to His Love |
I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm | Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm | Yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new
In city and in forest they smiled like me and you
But now it's come to distances and both of us must try | Her hair is all wild after sleeping and probably, after sleeping after the sex. | Leonard Cohen | Hey Thats No Way to Say Goodbye |
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton... | Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; | Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good. | As well as conveying a lover’s loss these lines can be interpreted as a rejection of the Christian religion. or the ‘utter annihilation of creation’ (J.M. Pressley). The speaker therefore questions God’s existence.
Note also that stars, moon and sun are sources of light and their destruction signifies the end of the ... | W. H. Auden | Funeral Blues Stop all the clocks |
I kept my love for her locked deep inside
And I don't know what to do
To get it through to you
Get out of my life tonight
Get out of my life
Out of my life, out of my hair
Out of my mind, cause no lovin' fair
I move on, move on
She had nothing but time on her hands
Silver rings, turquoise stones and purple nails
I rub ... | Yay though I walked, I used to fly, and now we dance | I watch my toenails blacken and walk a deadened trance
'til she woke me with the knife edge of her glance
I have the scars to prove the clock strikes with her hands | Referring to the line before – “Yea though I walk” is a line from the well-known biblical Psalm 23 , and Saul modifies the line to indicate his independence in being able to fly, as he only walked before he got caught up with this woman. | Saul Williams | Fearless |
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said—"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . .Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless... | And on the pedestal these words appear: | My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay | The remains of the statue were propped on a pedestal, a large slab of rock that usually bears an inscription about the origin and purpose of the statue.
“pedestal” also suggests the Pharaoh’s elevated vision of himself. As one commentator neatly says ‘Ozy. is on his high horse …’ | Percy Bysshe Shelley | Ozymandias |
But he turned first, and led my eye to look
At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,
A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared
Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.
I left my place to know them by their name,
Finding them butterfly weed when I came.
The mower in the dew had loved them thus,
By leaving them ... | That made me hear the wakening birds around,
And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground, | And feel a spirit kindred to my own;
So that henceforth I worked no more alone;
But glad with him, I worked as with his aid, | The mower is associated with Death and the image of the reaper. His “long scythe whispering the ground" symbolically alludes to both his communion with nature, and recalls the battlefield of the “levelled scene”. Death never takes all life at once, and so he is a force of life as well as destruction. Frost explores a r... | Robert Frost | The Tuft of Flowers |
I LOOK into my glass,
And view my wasting skin,
And say, "Would God it came to pass
My heart had shrunk as thin!"
For then, I, undistrest
By hearts grown cold to me,
Could lonely wait my endless rest
With equanimity.
But Time, to make me grieve,
Part steals, lets part abide; | And shakes this fragile frame at eve
With throbbings of noontide. | null | The slow pace continues with the elongated vowels in line three — ‘shakes’, ‘frame’ and ‘eve’. The alliterative ‘fr’s in 'fragile frame’ also slow the pace. If spoken aloud this line is diffult to say, something of a tongue-twister.
The references to ‘noontide’ and ‘eve’ to represent the prime of life and the end o... | Thomas Hardy | I Look Into My Glass |
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, | And when he cried the little children died in the streets. | null | Here’s the poem’s tone shift. Every other line is (at least on the surface) a compliment of the tyrant. Here is the very harsh reality of who he really is and what he’s capable of.
Like line 4, the final line seems to depict the tyrant as a child himself, throwing the mother of all temper tantrums.
The final line... | W. H. Auden | Epitaph on a Tyrant |
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills? | And was Jerusalem builded here | Among these dark satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire! | The juxtaposition of this line between “divine countenance” and the “satanic mills” signifies Jerusalem’s history as a human construction, an ideological battle field (he later calls it a “mental fight”). It was fought over between empires for centuries and still is today.
This is linked to the Book Of Revelation (3:... | William Blake | And Did Those Feet In Ancient Time |
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had tr... | I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence: | Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. | As he accepts that this choice may ultimately define his life, he expects to feel a little melancholy about his decision. He is not completely confident and expects to feel some regrets that he didn’t go the other way. The tone here is gently comic or mock-melodramatic, but there’s a serious wistfulness behind it .
... | Robert Frost | The Road Not Taken |
null | The Brain – is wider than the Sky – | For – put them side by side –
The one the other will contain
With ease – and You – beside – | Dickinson suggests that the human mind is more capacious than the world it observes because it can perceive, and thereby “contain,” both an interior and exterior reality. She rejoices in creative possibility and freedom, not only for humans in general but for herself as a poet. | Emily Dickinson | The Brain – is wider than the Sky – |
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 old and rusting implements imply progress; with these objects unwanted and left behind. Though no longer practical, even for a traditional dying profession, they stand as a reminder of work done in the past that continues to build on today. As the ongoing sonnet will show, what he used to create and still does is o... | Seamus Heaney | The Forge |
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
Is also great | And would suffice. | null |
Frost’s ironic understatement reminds us that it doesn’t really matter how the world is brought down. “Hot” passion and “cold” hatred can be equally destructive, and once they’ve done their work, there’s no turning back.
Older ideas here prevail–more medieval associations: The idea of destructive punishments that f... | Robert Frost | Fire and Ice |
To thee my way in epigrams seems new,
When both it is the old way and the true.
Thou sayst that cannot be, for thou hast seen
Davies and Weever, and the best have been,
And mine come nothing like. I hope so; yet
As theirs did with thee, mine might credit get,
If thou'dst but use thy faith, as thou didst then
When thou ... | Prithee believe still, and not judge so fast; | Thy faith is all the knowledge that thou hast. | “Prithee” is an archaic English interjection formed from a corruption of the phrase “pray thee.”
This means, “Don’t judge too fast!” | Ben Jonson | Epigram XVIII. To My Mere English Censurer |
null | Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. | After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy | Thus begins one of Berryman’s best drunken dream song ramblings.
And the perfect irony of Berryman “saying so” before telling us “We must not say so.” | John Berryman | Dream Song 14 |
No crime is vulgar, but all vulgarity is crime. Vulgarity is the conduct of others.
Only the shallow know themselves.
Time is a waste of money.
One should always be a little improbable.
There is a fatality about all good resolutions. They are invariably made too soon.
The only way to atone for being occasionally a li... | One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art. | It is only the superficial qualities that last. Man's deeper nature is soon found out.
Industry is the root of all ugliness.
The ages live in history through their anachronisms. | Being a Belle Époque dandy , Wilde took great pride in his fashion sense; even creating lectures based around it . In fact, his over-flowery clothes and refined manners is why he is often misconceptioned as an aristocrat . His clothing is still relevant today – notably the green carnations he wore as art now bei... | Oscar Wilde | Phrases and Philosophies For the Use of the Young |
Your Momma took to shouting
Your Poppa's gone to war, | Your sister's in the streets | Your brother's in the bar.
The thirteens. Right On.
Your cousin's taking smack | This could be a very sly and lowkey reference to the sister being a stripper or prostitute and on the street looking to make money off of her body and for sex.
| Maya Angelou | The Thirteens Black |
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,
Dark like me--
That is my dream!
To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun, | Dance! Whirl! Whirl! | Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening . . .
A tall, slim tree . . . | Like a whirling dervish in an attempt to reach ecstasy, before the “day is done”
| Langston Hughes | Dream Variations |
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
With eyes no longer blind—
And I see that my own hands can make | Hughes is giving the readers a call to action about the changes the “world” must make. Oppression is what has made the buildings and segregation that infests the world, and to overcome this the separate theaters, bathrooms, classrooms, etc. must vanish, and equality must reign. Literally these walls between two races m... | Langston Hughes | I Look At The World |
What's smelling, Leontyne?
Lieder, lovely Lieder
And a leaf of collard green,
Lovely Lieder Leontyne.
In the shadow of the negroes
Nkrumah
In the shadow of the negroes
Nasser Nasser
In the shadow of the negroes
Zik Azikiwe
Cuba Castro Guinea touré
For need or propaganda | Kenyatta | And the Tom dogs of the cabin
The cocoa and the cane brake
The chain gang and the slave block | Jomo Kenyatta (1892 – 1978) is considered the founding father of the independent Kenyan state, serving first as the prime minister, then as the president of the African nation. Worked with Kwame Nkrumah to form the Pan-African Federation.
| Langston Hughes | Cultural Exchange |
Wire.
One flies
Off.
Then
Another.
One is left,
Then
It too
Is gone.
My typewriter is
Tombstone
Still. | And I am
Reduced to bird
Watching. | Just thought I'd
Let you
Know, | Again, with no one around and nothing to keep him company, when he wasn’t writing he would simply watch the birds outside his window. | Charles Bukowski | 8 Count |
null | I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs | By the known rules of ancient liberty,
When straight a barbarous noise environs me
Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes and dogs: | The age here refers to the popularly held ideology of the time.
A clog is a heavy block or piece of wood attached (like a ball and chain) to the leg or neck of a man or beast, to impede motion or prevent escape. From this meaning, the word came to mean an object that obstructs the motion or flow of something, like ... | John Milton | Sonnet 12: I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs |
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.
And then snow fell.
Within an hour, a world immaculate
as... | We breathe the radiant air like men new-born.
The children rush before us. | As in a dream of snow
we track through crystal fields
to the green horizon | ‘Men new-born’ is subtly rearranges the natural word order for a feeling of strangeness– newness, even. ‘Radiant’ is a prelude to the intense brightness that will be developed in the final lines. It normally applies to the look of something, but air is invisible. For the speaker, the New Year illuminates even things wh... | Frances Horovitz | New Year Snow |
To wield it;—they, too, who, of gentle mood,
Had watched all gentle motions, and to these
Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more wild,
And in the region of their peaceful selves;—
Now was it that both found, the meek and lofty
Did both find, helpers to their heart's desire,
And stuff at hand, plastic as they coul... | We find our happiness, or not at all! | null | Shows the divide that was created within French society: some people were very satisfied with the French Revolution while others were very dissatisfied.
This is most evident with the French political groups at the time, the Jacobins and the Girondins who had opposing political philosophies. | William Wordsworth | The French Revolution as It Appeared to Enthusiasts at Its Commencement |
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