Poem FInal

Amoretti 75 Edmund Spenser

"Sonnet 75," also called "Amoretti 75," was published by English poet Edmund Spenser in 1595 as part of Amoretti, a cycle of 89 sonnets that recounted Spenser's courtship and marriage to his second wife, Elizabeth Boyle. The poem explores the power of poetry to immortalize its subjects, presenting this sonnet itself as bestowing Boyle's name with a kind of eternal life. The poem also showcases Spenser's unique stanza and sonnet style, which would later be named after him. He first perfected the Spenserian stanza in The Faerie Queen, his most famous work and the first epic poem to be written in modern English.

An Exequy to His Matchless, Never-to-Be-Forgotten Friend Henry King

"The Exequy" is an elegy of 120 lines of iambic tetrameter couplets, a verse form popular in a wide variety of early seventeenth century English lyrics. The second line fittingly designates the poem a "complaint" (or lament), and it appropriately sustains a tone of grief over a personal loss throughout....

A Marriage by R. S. Thomas

A Marriage by R. S. Thomas focuses on love and how love can endure over decades of life. Yet, at some point in everyone's life, death will come and end all human connections. It is this moment of death that Thomas focuses on within the poem, depicting Death as a device that finally ends his lifelong relationship. Time passes incredibly quickly in the poem, suggesting that even with all the time they have spent together, it still seems too short for Thomas, wanting more time with his lover.

Courtyards in Delft Derek Mahon

Courtyards in Delft" comprises five stanzas, each of eight lines. The rhyme scheme varies between the stanzas, with only the fourth and fifth stanzas having the same pattern. Most of the rhymes are half rhymes (such as tile/pail, verse/gorse, there/war) and some are not even that (e.g. coal/table, bird/made). Rhyming is therefore used in the poem to provide only a loose connection between the lines, which fits the theme of the poem which is the relationship between order and chaos.

"Love me little, love me long"

Do not let your passion for a person become too strong, for it may soon burn itself out. Mild affection is more likely to be long-lived. In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Father Laurence advises Romeo:

For the Union Dead Robert Lowell

For the Union Dead', narrated by a first-person speaker, starts with Lowell's reminiscence of his childhood memory of the Boston Aquarium. It commemorates the sacrifice of Colonel Robert Shaw, a Union officer killed while leading a regiment of black troops during the Civil War. Lowell connects his childhood and a Civil War memorial to contemporary life, including progress and civil rights. He laments the erosion of heroic idealism and increasing self-interest and greed in contemporary American society, contrasting the historic past and present. He deliberates on missing idealism as being dead among the people of America of 1963 and in the modern culture in general.

There is a sweet lady and kind

I also took note of how this poem says, "And yet, I'll love her till I die." at the end of every stanza. This goes to show that his love will go on forever. He will love her unconditionally, despite not knowing a single thing about her. He is listening to what his heart is telling him to feel. Towards the end of the poem he says, " But change she earth, or change she sky, yet, I will lover her till I die." I think he is trying to say that even if everything on Earth changes, his love for her will never change.

Recalling War Robert Graves

In the fourth stanza of "Recalling War", the war is over and the war has turn earth to ugly earth and death is seen everywhere. The line also suggest that the soldiers who were living in the earth now went to ugly earth. Here the term ugly earth means that so many people were dead. "War was return of earth to ugly earth, War was foundering of sublimities, Extinction of each happy art and faith". The war was the main reason submilities, happy art and faith. The tone of the poem is really tragic because the hope turned into fear and then it make readers feel little bit happy in third stanza as the soldiers get motivated and then its finally again collapse.

To Rosemounde- Geoffery Chaucer

Love, maiden, beauty, courtship. Pay attention to the line "Never was pike so imbued in galantine"; it is an allusion to the 15th-century habit of drenching the fish in sauce.😀 There are also references to the epic Tristan and Isolde. The narrator identifies himself as Tristan. Notice how he signs the Ballad with his own name, sweet.

Neutral Tones Thomas Hardy

Neutral Tones" is a bleak and pessimistic poem that depicts the end of a love affair and the psychological aftereffects. Thomas Hardy wrote the poem in 1867, though it was not published until 1898 in the collection Wessex Poems and Other Verses. The poem's tone reflects the general skepticism that runs throughout Hardy's work; his novels, such as Jude the Obscure and Tess of the D'Urbervilles, are renowned for their unflinching look at the realities of Victorian life.

Gascoigne's Lullaby George Gascoigne

The lulling of sexual energies leads the poet to suggest that he has become womanly as well as babyish (and old). But, whatever the state of his hormones, the speaker draws on other sources of creative energy. Gascoigne's line, despite the consonantal brake pads, never loses its robustness. There is no flaccidity, even if "little Robin" has gone to sleep.

The Circus Animals' Desertion WB Yeats

The poem begins with the speaker describing how he has had a hard time of late figuring out what to write about. He feels as if he has exhausted all of his themes and is going to be forced to turn to his own "heart" and emotions for inspiration. In the next sections, the speaker goes through myths and plays he has experimented with and how each time he dedicates himself to something he becomes obsessed. His subjects are more real, and more pleasing to him, than his own life. It is due to this, and his own need for new material, that he is going to dig down to the bottom of his heart and figure out what it is he truly wants to write about.

Shine, Perishing Republic by Robinson Jeffers

The poem depicts America in the first lines as rotting fruit. It was a flower, but now it's filled to the brim with corrupt people and intentions. It is am empire that is doomed to rot away as others have before it. The speaker mourns this fact, but he realizes that its all part of a natural cycle of life, death, and a return to mother earth. In the last lines, he addresses his children, telling them not to get too attached to humankind or they'll follow in the footsteps of Christ.

September Song by Geoffrey Hill

The poem is short, lasting for only fourteen lines, many of which are only two or three words. Within it, the speaker moves through depictions of loss, memory, and the terrible regulation of murder within Nazi Germany. The poet has interwoven within the text references to himself and what elegies There are allusions at the end of the poem to the possibilities of poetry and what it is and is not capable of.

The Mower Against Gardens Andrew Marvell

The speaker in the poem is a Mower, who criticizes "Luxurious man" for seducing and perverting the power of Nature, which is otherwise plain and pure. Men divide up fields, and enclose a "dead and standing pool of air" within their gardens, which stifles the free growth of Nature. He replaces Nature's innate power with a "more luscious earth" that feeds the plants of the garden, such that man's "nutriment [does] change the kind."

Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries AE Housman

This is a poem in praise of the 'Old Contemptibles', the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) of 1914— the professional British army that existed before the advent of Kitchener's 'New Army' of volunteers. The BEF was sent to France at the end of that year to fight against the Germans. AE Housman: Housman was a famous late Victorian poet, who wrote the renowned pastoral collection, 'A Shropshire Lad'. He wrote this poem in 1917.

Amoretti 15 Edmund Spenser

This poem details the second year of the courtship between Edmund Spenser and Elizabeth Boyle. It uses the linked quatrain pattern of the Spenserian sonnet and blends the poet's love for the three Elizabeths in his life: his mother, his queen, and his beloved. The speaker begins the first quatrain with a paean to the letters that make up the name of Elizabeth, because three women bearing that name have made him happy, giving him gifts "of body, fortune and of mind" (l. 4). The second quatrain announces that the first gift came from his mother, who gave him life, while the second gift came from the queen, who has honored him and given him riches. The third quatrain is dedicated to his beloved, who has raised his spirit out of the dust of his widowhood; therefore, of all the people alive, she is most deserving of his praise and glorifying. The final couplet, then, hopes that the three Elizabeths might live forever for giving him those graces.

The Three Ravens Anonymous

This well-known English ballad contains a conversation between three birds, ravens about eating. One speaks about a recently killed knight, but they discover that hawks and hounds protect the body. Then, a doe comes to the body, an image that has been interpreted as representing the knight's pregnant lover. She kisses his wounds and buries him. The ravens end the poem without a meal.

The Darkling Thrush Thomas Harding

"The Darkling Thrush" is a poem by the English poet and novelist Thomas Hardy. The poem describes a desolate world, which the poem's speaker takes as cause for despair and hopelessness. However, a bird (the "thrush") bursts onto the scene, singing a beautiful and hopeful song—so hopeful that the speaker wonders whether the bird knows something that the speaker doesn't. Written in December 1900, the poem reflects on the end of the 19th century and the state of Western civilization. The desolation of the scene the speaker sees serves as an extended metaphor for the decay of Western civilization, while the thrush is a symbol for its possible rebirth through religious faith.

Blame not my Lute! by Sir Thomas Wyatt

'Blame not my Lute!' by Sir Thomas Wyatt talks about not blaming the poet's lute if its sound reminds the lady of her passivity for the poet. The lute, being an instrument, sounds how the user uses it. Therefore, it will be the lady's mistake if she thinks the lute itself is making such heart-wrenching sounds. However, the poet makes it clear why he uses his lute in such a manner. The lady who has broken his heart is the sole cause for giving birth to the spiteful emotions in the poet's naive heart. Moreover, the poet is giving an exact answer to the lady's cruel response. At last, the poet tells the lady to rectify her arrogance to change the tune of the poet's verse. Apart from that, if she likes the poet's songs, she can blush expressing her true feelings for the poet and his works.

Tichborne's Elegy by Chidiock Tichborne

'Tichborne's Elegy' by Chidiock Tichborne is a three-stanza poem which is separated into sets of six lines, or sestets Each of these sestets follows a pattern of ababcc. The first four lines of the stanza alternate in their end rhymes, while the concluding couplets adhere to the end sound, "-un." One should also take note of the fact that each stanza ends with the same line. This refrainemphasizes the fact that the speaker's life will soon end. Its appearance three times does not allow a reader to forget what is at stake for the writer. Unlike most poems, it is a well-known fact that the speaker of 'Tichborne's Elegy' is in fact the poet himself. Chidiock Tichborne was born into a Catholic family in the year 1558. It was also around this time that Elizabeth I made Catholicism illegal. He and his father rebelled against this practice and joined the Babington Plot. The group's goal was to assassinate the queen and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots.

"Adieu, Farewell Earth's Bliss" by Thomas Nashe

A lyric is a type of poetry in which the voice of the poem (in this case, the narrator) expresses personal feelings or perspectives. In this poem, the voice is clearly religious and is criticizing the rich, the vain, and the ignorant.Nashe seems to be communicating that no matter how rich, strong, beautiful, or witty, everyone must eventually succumb to death, so we should pray for God's mercy.

Fern Hill Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas based his 1945 poem "Fern Hill" on childhood experiences at his aunt's farm in Wales, where he grew up. The poem is filled with intensely lyrical language and rich metaphorical descriptions that capture the excitement and joy of playing outside as a child and feeling in harmony with the natural world. The result is a hymn to the wonder and grace of childhood and the pain of its eventual loss.

I felt a Funeral Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson wrote "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" in 1861, the beginning of what is regarded as her most creative period. The poem employs Dickinson's characteristic use of metaphor and rather experimental form to explore themes of madness, despair, and the irrational nature of the universe. Dickinson depicts an unnerving series of events based around a "funeral" that unfolds within the speaker. Starting out deep within the speaker's mind, the poem gradually expands to probe cosmic mysteries whose answers only come in the form of silence.

MEMENTOS, 1' BY W.D SNODGRASS

Mementos, 1' was written by W.D Snodgrass in the 1960s. I could go through how the 'old clippings' represent memories past, or how the subject concerns his divorce; however, the strongest point here lies in the poem's relationship with the Second World War, which like the speaker's marriage, is but a collection of memories. Snodgrass notes this with 'Through the war... the Japanese dead in their shacks'. World wars hold immense significance, namely because the entire globe was involved. Consequently, the worldwide perception of warfare was changed. Gone were the 19th century ideals of honour, valour and dying for your country no longer seemed like such a great idea after the advent of tanks, machine guns, nuclear bombs; instead, the people's will to maintain world peace has been very prevalent since 1945. Effectively, we have had to divorce ourselves from society's previous perceptions of war; we had to divorce ourselves from our past.

To Aunt Rose Allen Ginsberg

The one line in this entire poem that struck me the most and that my eye is continuously drawn to is line twenty eight. In this very line it is stated that "...I an ignorant girl of family silence on the thin pedestal". When I first read that my mind immediately connected the speaker to be someone who is a homosexual. Allen Ginsberg was gay and had a life long partner whom he met and fell in love with in San Francisco. Whether the poet and speaker have some type of connection because they are both homosexuals is to my knowledge not touched upon in this particular poem.

Dream Song 1 John Berryman

The poem Dream Song 1 is from a book called The Dream Songs, consisting of 385 poems about Henry, and according to the author "people don't like him and, and he doesn't like himself." This particular poem tells a story about Henry being unimpressed and uninterested in the world and the experiences he is having in it. While it seems that life was once on his side, some unspecified event happened to Henry that soured him towards the whole experience of living, and he was never able to enjoy life to the fullest after the "departure." When things were going well for Henry, the world is described as "a woolen lover," which is interesting because wool is a warm yet scratchy material, which suggests that prior to the departure happening Henry's life was not perfect, but it was generally good. The lines saying I don't see how Henry, pried / open for all the world to see, survived suggest that at some point in his life, Henry was hurt or embarrassed by somebody, and this experience is what caused his outlook on life to completely change.

Modern Love VI- George Meredith

The poem begins with the speaker observing a private moment. He is spying on the woman he loves and sees her with another man. This man kisses her forehead and he knows that she has moved on from him. She has found another, and from the slant of her eyes to the floor, knows she is only a little ashamed of it. This shame tells him the new love is real. She might cry in happiness or perhaps in mourning over what she has done to the speaker, but he cries in earnest and the tears are like blood drops. They have come painfully. He cries over a love lost, but, it is not lost. It is still here it has just moved on to someone else. In the final stanza, he tells the reader what he wants to say to his ex-lover. He wants to insult her and to demand that she tell him who this new man is. He does none of this but continues to watch them in the corner of the room as they speak to one another and she laughs at something the new man says. All of his anguish is contained and he will not act on it.

Badger John Clare

The poem is written in three stanzas the first two consists of fourteen lines and the last stanza of twelve. The poem is written in iambic pentameter with a consistent rhyming pattern, using couplets (AABBCC...) although rhyme in contemporary poetry is often used to denote humor or joy, it was more frequently used in classical poetry, even in more somber poetry as is the case with this poem. This is somewhat bleak and chronicles the story of animals being used in badger baiting. A cruel blood sport where a badger is pulled from its home and repeatedly attacked by large dogs is a practice that, whilst illegal, is still occasionally practiced today.

The Pomegranate Eavan Boland

The poem takes the reader through distorted scenes from the myth. These collide and transform the speaker's own life. The imagined and the real worlds come together as the speaker tries to sort out what it means to grow up with the legend and then raise her daughter. She contends with the passage of time and the choices her daughter is going to have to make. By the end of the poem, she comes to accept the fact that she needs to share the legend with her daughter. Together they can know it, understand, and relate to it, without having to speak about it.

Sailing to Byzantium WB Yeats

The speaker, referring to the country that he has left, says that it is "no country for old men": it is full of youth and life, with the young lying in one another's arms, birds singing in the trees, and fish swimming in the waters. There, "all summer long" the world rings with the "sensual music" that makes the young neglect the old, whom the speaker describes as "Monuments of unageing intellect." An old man, the speaker says, is a "paltry thing," merely a tattered coat upon a stick, unless his soul can clap its hands and sing; and the only way for the soul to learn how to sing is to study "monuments of its own magnificence." Therefore, the speaker has "sailed the seas and come / To the holy city of Byzantium." The speaker addresses the sages "standing in God's holy fire / As in the gold mosaic of a wall," and asks them to be his soul's "singing-masters." He hopes they will consume his heart away, for his heart "knows not what it is"—it is "sick with desire / And fastened to a dying animal," and the speaker wishes to be gathered "Into the artifice of eternity."

Corson's Inlet AR Ammons

The stanza formation ripples, rises, and falls like waves. The poem both speaks about and performs the movement of the sea, dunes, reeds, birds, and fish at the same time. Form yields to the material process of undulation and continuous deformation. Life and death become the Janus faces of entropy.

The Sun RIsing by John Donne

The structure of The Sun Rising is noticeably unusual. Although it does rhyme, it does not follow any particular pattern from beginning to end. The first four lines, for instance, follow an ABBA pattern, but each line has a different syllable count. The result is a poem that does not flow especially well, but does properly convey the frustrated mindset of the narrator who only wants to be with his beloved.

A Supermarket in California Allen Ginsberg

"A Supermarket in California" is a poem by Allen Ginsberg, one of the foremost poets of mid-20th century America. The poem's speaker—generally read as Ginsberg himself—enters the garish, brightly-lit supermarket and has a vision of Walt Whitman, a 19th-century American poet, whose work he has been reading. Whitman, for his part, acts almost like an alien placed on Earth from outer space; the supermarket environment doesn't make sense to his 19th-century perspective. The speaker imagines playfully tasting the produce and not paying for any of it, before asking more searching and philosophical questions of his poet guide. He wonders whether America has grown too preoccupied with consumerism and a money-orientated way, and in doing so if the country has lost its way and its capacity to love. The poem ends with an image of Whitman in the underworld, suggesting that Whitman's idealistic and romantic vision of America is probably already dead.

An Arundel Tomb Philip Larkin

"An Arundel Tomb" was written in 1956 by the British poet Philip Larkin. It was included as the final poem in his 1964 collection, The Whitsun Weddings, and is also one of his best known works. In the poem, the speaker is looking at stone effigies of a medieval earl and countess. Surprised to see that they are depicted holding hands, the speaker sets off a complex meditation about the nature of time, mortality, and love. The tomb of the title refers to a real monument found in the Chichester Cathedral, which Larkin visited with his longtime lover Monica Jones before writing the poem. The poem is also essentially an example of ekphrasis—writing that focuses on a visual object or work of art.

Lines [Tintern Abbey] William Wordsworth

"Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798"— commonly known as "Tintern Abbey"— is a poem written by the British Romantic poet William Wordsworth. Wordsworth had first visited the Wye Valley when he was 23 years old. His return five years later occasioned this poem, which Wordsworth saw as articulating his beliefs about nature, creativity, and the human soul. "Tintern Abbey" was included as the final poem in Lyrical Ballads, a 1798 collection of poems by Wordsworth and his friend and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

To His Mistress- Andrew Marvell

"To His Coy Mistress" is a poem by the English poet Andrew Marvell. Most likely written in the 1650s in the midst of the English Interregnum, the poem was not published until the 1680s, after Marvell's death. "To His Coy Mistress" is a carpe diem poem: following the example of Roman poets like Horace, it urges a young woman to enjoy the pleasures of life before death claims her. Indeed, the poem is an attempt to seduce the titular "coy mistress." In the process, however, the speaker dwells with grotesque intensity on death itself. Death seems to take over the poem, displacing the speaker's erotic energy and filling the poem with dread.

TO His Mistress Going to Bed- John Donne

"To His Mistress Going to Bed" was written by the English poet John Donne, most likely between 1593 and 1596. The poem plays on the traditions of love poetry. The speaker offers elegant and elaborate compliments for his mistress, praising her beauty. But unlike other love poems of its era, "To His Mistress Going to Bed" doesn't beat around the bush—the speaker wants to have sex with his mistress, preferably as soon as possible. As the speaker articulates his erotic desire, the poem exposes some dynamics between speaker and mistress: he not only wants to sleep with her, he also wants to possess and dominate her.

Incident Countee Cullen

Countee Cullen, one of the best known poets of the Harlem Renaissance, published "Incident" in his first collection, Color, in 1925. The poem recalls a childhood "incident" in which the speaker's life is forever altered when another child uses a racist slur against him in public. The poem's carefree beginning contrasts with the sudden, horrific reality of this moment, which intrudes on the speaker's otherwise happy memory of this time in his life. Through this "incident," the poem illustrates the visceral horror and lasting impact of racism.

I Dreamed I Moved among the Elysian Fields- Edna St Vincent Millay

Disney movies may want us to believe that Greek Mythology is all about heroes defeating the villains and that the Gods are the good guys. However, minimal research will reveal that this isn't the case. In Edna St. Vincent Millay's sonnet "I Dreamed I Moved among the Elysian Fields" she intertwines the allusions to mythological Greek woman with the speaker 's own experience to make a powerful statement on the sexual objectification and victimization of women in the 1930s. The speaker begins the poem an ethereal tone masking the violent nature of her subject matter. The poem is set in the Elysian Fields, a paradise where the souls of the heroic and virtuous were sent (cite). Through her use of the words "dreamed", "sweet women", "blossoms"

"John Anderson, My Jo" (Robert Burns)

John Anderson, My Jo' is one of Robert Burns's finest love poems or love songs. A brief note; 'jo' is slang for 'sweetheart', and the speaker of the poem is a woman addressing her ageing husband, reassuring him that although his hair may be greying (what remains of it), he is still her 'jo' and they will go 'hand in hand' together through life. There was also a bawdy version, which Burns probably knew - though it's the clean version that tends to get anthologised.

Dorothy Parker- Unfortunate Coincidence

Many of Dorothy Parker's poems are remembered for their cynical assessment of modern romance, and "Unfortunate Coincidence" is no exception. This six-line poem offers a poetic syllogism in which the first two lines state one condition (a woman's passionate declaration of love), the next two lines state a second condition (a man's passionate declaration of love), and the last two lines offer what, for Parker, is the only possible logical conclusion: either the woman or the man "is lying." To read this strategy as simply clever, light-verse composition obscures much of Parker's genius. The poem's rhetorical structure is in keeping with the traditions of satiric and epigrammatic wit found in classical, Renaissance, and eighteenth-century poets. And like all masters of form, Parker's sense seldom occurs without its appropriate sound. One of the most fascinating and overlooked aspects of this poem concerns its combination of formal verse metrics and everyday speech. Parker's conversational, accessible language at times adheres to a formal metric, and at other times strains against it. The poem's ABABAB rhyme scheme is matched by the regularity of the poem's syllable count. Lines 1, 3, and 5 each have seven syllables, an uneven number of syllables in the uneven-numbered lines. The even-numbered lines -- 2, 4, and 6 -- have an even six syllables per line.

Pamphilia to Amphilanthus - Mary Wroth

Mary Wroth's sonnet sequence, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus (1621) evokes the persona's love melancholy as she is faced with her lover's inconstancy. Pamphilia writes to herself rather than to her lover, trying to find some poetic measure that would contain her melancholy - a disease which was defined by excess. With its fixed boundaries and specific aesthetic codes, the choice of the Neopetrarchan sonnet can be viewed as an attempt to oppose poetic measure and melancholic excess. The tension between measure and excess appears in the very structure of Wroth's work, especially in the corona, which might appear as a triumph of measure as opposed to excess, since the last line repeats the first - except that it repeats the persona's predicament. Wavering between measure and excess, Mary Wroth's sonnet sequence illustrates her aporetic vision of melancholy, which appears as the source of poetic creation, but cannot be relieved by writing.

Epitaph on a Tyrant WH Auden

Reading this poem also brought to my mind the idea of a tyrannical God (those who have read the late Christopher Hitchens' explosively erudite and enjoyableGod Is Not Great will be familiar with the notion of God as a dictator. Hitchens memorably described a world in which God exists as a 'celestial North Korea'.) Although I am by no means an atheist, I find this image fascinating, Hitchens' argument compelling, and would like to stretch it further while reflecting on this poem. I think that the tyrant in this poem can encompass the political dictator, a tyrannical deity, but also the Artist (i.e. poet, writer, painter, composer etc.), and even the scientist (whose intellectual quest to understand all can lead him at times to "play God").

Sonnet 5- Shakespeare

Sonnet 5 compares nature's four seasons with the stages of the young man's life. Although the seasons are cyclical, his life is linear, and hours become tyrants that oppress him because he cannot escape time's grasp. Time might "frame / The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell," meaning that everyone notices the youth's beauty, but time's "never-resting" progress ensures that this beauty will eventually fade.

Delia 6 Samuel Daniel

Sonnet 6 ("Fair is my love, and cruel as she's fair") Samuel Daniel (1592) Delia's character is depicted in Sonnet 6 of Samuel Daniel's sonnet sequence. The poet pauses and reflects on a number of contrasts found within Delia's character and between the poet-speaker and his beloved. The first quatrain opens with a standard conceit: "Fayre is my love, and cruell as sh'is fayre," evoking the emotion the speaker feels for Delia alongside the notion of Delia as his love (l. 1). This is a problematic opening, but it is probably intentional. The poet directs the reader's gaze from himself to Delia and then back to himself as the abject lover in the sonnet. A number of contrasts are drawn between cruelty and the many 16th-century definitions of fair: physically beautiful; of the female sex; a form of respectful address; blonde; untainted. Notably, "faire" as coupled with cruelty suggests that Samuel Daniel was also using the word with the meaning "just." The sonnet draws more contrasts between her "sunny" eyes and "frownes" which her forehead "shades" (l. 2) by playing with the order in which her positive qualities appear. The first and fourth lines of the first quatrain list a negative quality first, followed by a positive one, while the second and third lines reverse that order.

Advice to Young Ladies AD Hope

The theme of the poem "Advice to Young Ladies" is that everyone should be treated equally and fairly and should be recognized for their own unique talents. In the poem, Postumia was persecuted for having her own ideas and wearing the clothes that she wanted to.

Musée des Beaux Arts WH Auden

W. H. Auden wrote "Musée des Beaux Arts" in December 1938 following a visit to the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique (a.k.a. Belgium's Royal Museums of Fine Arts). The poem's speaker walks through a gallery, contemplating various paintings and admiring their ability to convey the "human position" towards suffering—that is, indifference. The poem is an example of ekphrasis: the speaker coolly describes the paintings, calling attention to figures carrying on with their lives in the face of violence and disaster. The speaker focuses specifically on Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, in which Icarus, the mythical figure famous for flying too close to the sun and then drowning, appears only in the corner of the painting as a pair of legs sticking out from the water's surface.

O Mistress Mine- Shakespeare

"O Mistress Mine" is a poem written by William Shakespeare. Despite being a popular Shakespeare poem, this is *not* a sonnet of any kind. It only has twelve lines and a sonnet needs fourteen. Of course, this poem isn't even written in iambic-pentameter! It's rhyme scheme is AABCCB-DDEFFE. This poem is about Shakespeare telling a mistress that she should stop waiting for the right man to come along and sweep her off her feet and instead settle for him because he's there right now. "What's to come is still unsure: / In delay there lies not plenty;". Besides, he says, maybe they will turn out to love each other anyway, "Journeys end in lovers meeting".

Ode on a Grecian Urn John Keats

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" was written by the influential English poet John Keats in 1819. It is a complex, mysterious poem with a disarmingly simple set-up: an undefined speaker looks at a Grecian urn, which is decorated with evocative images of rustic and rural life in ancient Greece. These scenes fascinate, mystify, and excite the speaker in equal measure—they seem to have captured life in its fullness, yet are frozen in time. The speaker's response shifts through different moods, and ultimately the urn provokes questions more than it provides answers. The poem's ending has been and remains the subject of varied interpretation. The urn seems to tell the speaker—and, in turn, the reader—that truth and beauty are one and the same. Keats wrote this poem in a great burst of creativity that also produced his other famous odes (e.g. "Ode to a Nightingale"). Though this poem was not well-received in Keats' day, it has gone on to become one of the most celebrated in the English language.

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love Christopher Marlowe

"The Passionate Shepherd" is a poem written by the English poet Christopher Marlowe, likely in the early 1590s. It was one of the most popular and widely read poems of the English Renaissance; many poets, such as Sir Walter Ralegh, wrote responses praising, criticizing, and poking fun at it. In the poem, the speaker tries to seduce someone whom he refers to simply as his "love." In order to seduce this person, he describes a rural life full of intense sensual pleasure—but unpolluted by sin or sorrow. The resulting tableau is both beautiful and idealized: in his attempt to seduce his "love," the shepherd leaves out much of the complication and sorrow that mark real relationships.

The Shield of Achilles WH Auden

"The Shield of Achilles" is one of W. H. Auden best-known poems and appears in his 1955 collection of the same name. The poem reimagines a scene from the ancient Greek epic The Iliad in which the goddess Thetis watches Hephaestos (god of blacksmiths and metalworking, among other things) craft armor for her son, Achilles (of Trojan War fame). Thetis expects Hephaestos to forge a beautiful shield filled with romantic ornamentation that glorifies war and battle, as is the case in the original myth. In the poem, however, Thetis finds only images of bleak desolation and horror upon the shield. Written in the decade after World War II, the poem contains references to the events and technologies of 20th-century conflicts and explores the relationship between war and modern society. The collection in which it was published earned Auden a National Book Award.

Those Winter Sundays Robert Hayden

"Those Winter Sundays" is a poem by Robert Hayden written in 1962. In the poem, an adult speaker reflects on how, when he was a child, his father would get up early on Sunday mornings throughout the winter in order to light a fire and warm up the house before anyone else got out of bed. At the time the speaker failed to appreciate this, as well as the other ways his father expressed affection for his family. Only upon looking back at these memories as an adult does he understand the often selfless and thankless nature of love.

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time- Robert Herrick

"To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" is Robert Herrick's famous 1648 carpe diem poem, encouraging women (and readers in general) to make the most of their youths while they still can. Taking the posture of a wise counselor, the poem's speaker cautions "coy" women that youth comes to an end, death comes for everyone, and no one's sexual prime lasts forever—so they'd probably better take a lover while they still can! Beyond its cheekiness, this is a poem about enjoying life while it's there to be enjoyed.

Western Wind

"Western Wind" falls under the category of an apostrophe, meaning that it is a poem which is addressed to an inanimate object or an absent individual. In this particular case, the poem addresses the "Western wind" (Line 1). In Greek mythology, Zephyros (Zephyrus) is the god of the West wind, conceived as a "gentle" wind which ushers in spring and warmer weather. In Roman mythology, the god of the West wind was known as Favonius.

Wild Nights! -- Wild Nights!, Emily Dickinson

"Wild nights - Wild nights!" is a poem by Emily Dickinson, one of the most famous and original of American writers. In this brief but powerful poem, the speaker longs to share "wild nights" with an absent lover. She imagines herself as a sailor on a stormy sea, searching for the harbor of her love. The lover in the poem might reference the speaker's desire to be closer to God, or simply the desire to be intimate with another person. On that note, when the poem was first published in an 1891 collection of Dickinson's work, the publisher worried that the poem's eroticism might shock the general public!

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd Walt Whitman

'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd' following the death of Abraham Lincoln, comments on how the poet finds solace in the song (poem). The poem begins with the description of spring and blooming lilacs, which he thinks is a cycle that will remind him of his loved one. He picks a lilac to be offered to the coffin that has been moving around the city day and night. Further, the poet employed the "Lilac," "bird," and "drooping star" as recurrent symbols in the poem to deliberate on the impact of war and death, especially Abraham Lincoln's. While concluding the poem, the poet/speaker seems to be more at peace with death than his woeful complaint in the beginning. He concludes with the note of death being an inevitable part that comes eventually to everyone like a mother who comes to ease of the child from all suffering.

After Apple-Picking Robert Frost

After Apple-Picking" is a poem by Robert Frost. Rural New England is a common setting for many of Frost's early poems, and this one is no exception. The poem is set after the speaker has finished a seemingly ordinary day of apple picking, and is now halfway to sleep and dreaming. While many of Frost's poems use strict iambic pentameter and a formal rhyme scheme, "After Apple-Picking" defies such regular rhythm and rhyme as it mimics the often disorienting process of falling asleep. The poem was included in North of Boston, Frost's second poetry collection. Published in 1914, North of Boston was widely praised and advanced Frost's reputation as a major voice in American poetry.

At Luca Signorelli's Resurrection of the Body Jorie Graham

All the thirteen stanzas of the poem comprise instructions to the soul of the poet. The poem opens with "Go..." addressing the soul to seek the truth with each stanza ending on the refrain of "And give the world the lie" with slight changes in the wording. Different stanzas, then, present different things to the soul to seek the truth yet each stanza comprises the same paradox that truth is hard to come by. First, the poet asks the soul to see the court and the church to observe artificiality and pretension and explore the truth beneath the surface. Secondly, the poet asks the soul to find the same gentry, asking and meeting different people in the hierarchy, and in the fourth one, he asks the soul to go beneath the illusions such as zeal, love, and time and find out the truth. The final stanza ends these three-phased instructions, saying that the soul should stab the lie and that nobody or nothing can stab the soul.

Anecdote of the Jar Wallace Stevens

Anecdote of the Jar" was written by Wallace Stevens, an important figure in 20th-century American poetry. In the poem, an unnamed speaker places a jar on a hill in Tennessee. As the natural world continues to grow around the jar, the speaker declares that the object becomes a kind of king of the landscape, forcing the surrounding wilderness to rise to meet it. An ambiguous and enigmatic poem, "Anecdote of the Jar" has been subject to a wide range of interpretations in the decades since its publication. As with much of Stevens's work, it might be symbolic of any number of things—from the perils of modern industrialization to the nature of creativity and perspective. And, of course, the poem can also be taken at face value—as simply being about a jar on a hill. "Anecdote of the Jar" was published in Stevens's first book, Harmonium, in 1923.

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers Adrienne Rich

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" is a 1951 poem by American poet Adrienne Rich. It appeared in her first published book of poems, A Change of World. Told from the perspective of an anonymous speaker, the poem describes a woman, Aunt Jennifer, who crafts vibrant tapestry panels (depicting tigers) to escape—mentally, at least—her unhappy marriage. Written at a time when divorce was unacceptable, the poem criticizes the traditional institution of marriage, suggesting that it oppresses women.

To My Twenties Kenneth Koch

I'm in this weird state of feeling like I'm 30 but still technically being in my twenties. I'm caught in the middle, a girl/woman who's learning about her responsibilities while also learning how much control I have of my life. What does an actual age mean, you wonder? I don't know. Maybe it's just a mindset. But surely you must know even before reading Koch's words (again, I hate calling him by his last name, as if we do not know one another): "Twenties, my soul / Is yours for the asking / You know that, if you ever come back." Would Kenneth Koch give anything to be 20 again?

John Berryman- Dream Songs 4

It is Berryman's gaiety of writing, his joyous blasphemy of traditional love-poetry, that wins us in this Song. The parodic aspects are several: the planctus takes place in a restaurant; the lady is reduced to her body engaged in the inglorious act of eating; she is guarded not only by her husband but by a comic superfluity of 'four other people'; the Petrarchan lover's cry of adoration is debased to 'You are the hottest one . . . / Henry's dazed eyes /have enjoyed'; the lover continues to eat, and does not omit to notice that it is spumoni that he is, even if despairingly, eating; the lover's jealousy makes him cartoon the husband as 'The slob beside her'; the lover's admiration of the lady's beauty suddenly descends to a crude interest in her buttocks ('What wonders is / she sitting on, over there?'); and the conventional eloignement of the lady takes on tones of science fiction: 'She might as well be on Mars.' The lover's comment is of the fist-to-brow soap-opera kind—'Where did it all go wrong?'

The Canonization John Donne

John Donne's witty, punny, passionate "The Canonization" was first published in his posthumous 1633 collection, Poems. The poem's speaker, a middle-aged man who has fallen deeply in love, tells a mocking friend to leave him alone and "let him love" already. Love, this poem suggests, is timeless in more than one way: it can strike at any age, and (with a little help from poetry) it can help lovers to attain saint-like immortality.

When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats

Many see this poem as highlighting the unrequited love between the speaker, presumably Yeats, and his former lover. In this poem, the speaker, talking directly to his muse, instructs her to open the book in which this poem can be found and to re-read it. While re-reading, she should recall how many people loved her for both true and false reasons, namely because of her beauty. The speaker goes on to tell the lover that there was one man, probably the speaker, who loved her completely. In the final stanza, the speaker tells his former lover that she should remember that this love did not last, and she should be filled with regret because of it. To gather the full meaning of 'When You Are Old', a reader must understand the love life of Yeats. For many years, he was in love with a beautiful actress, Maud Gonne. Gonne would not (or could not) return his love. This was a bitter rejection for Yeats, whose heart was set on her. This poem is addressed to her. Here, Yeats specifically refers to himself as "Love". "Love", then, is personified in the form of the author himself. Yeats addresses Gonne, asking her to think about herself at the end of her life when all of her fame and beauty has faded into memory (Dwyer). His words resonate with the masses because all people young or old can relate. Those enjoying their youth can stop and picture themselves when they have aged. The elderly can reminisce on the days of their youth.

SOnnet 61- Michael Drayton

Sonnet 61 is considered his best. The language is plain and restrained for the most in the first eight lines, the emotion nicely controlled by a sense of resigned contentment and cordiality. Yet, what also comes through is the speaker's uncertainty—he can part amicably from his lover knowing he has given his all, but will he be 100% satisfied? Isn't there just a hint of desperation about the whole break-up? Will the love they shared and expressed make a last-minute comeback—courtesy of his lover? The idea that the speaker can easily give up on a lost love and save his heartbreak is questionable. A simple goodbye kiss is never, ever that straightforward—ask any thwarted lover. There are always complications and consequences, and some confusion to follow. With heavy use of personification towards the end, this traditional English sonnet (3 quatrains plus couplet) could have been inspired by a real person Michael Drayton knew—a certain Anne Goodere (or Goodyere, now modern Goodyear), eldest daughter of his benefactor Sir Henry Goodere, in whose household Michael Drayton was brought up, being from a poor background.

After great pain Emily Dickinson

The American poet Emily Dickinson wrote "After great pain, a formal feeling comes" around 1862. Like many of Dickinson's poems from this period, "After great pain" discusses the experience of emotional suffering—specifically, the numb paralysis that the speaker says follows intense shock or trauma. The poem's form, which is alternately rigid and irregular, reflects both the numbness and anguish of someone in this state.

The Trees Philip Larkin

The British poet Philip Larkin included "The Trees" in his book High Windows, which was published in 1974. The speaker sees spring's budding trees as "a kind of grief." The speaker says that this isn't borne from envy about the fact that the leaves are born anew each year while human beings get old; the trees themselves age, too, the speaker points out, even if their leaves re-bloom each year. Still, the fresh growth of spring reminds the speaker to cast of the past and live in the present—even in the face of inevitable mortality.

The Two Corbies Anonymous

The poem "Twa Corbies," is very interesting, but actually quite morbid. The title itself hints at this right from the start, translated to mean two ravens. Ravens tend to represent death and this gives the poem a more negative connotation and sets the tone to be ominous or evil. The poems title in my opinion is simple, but has a much deeper meaning behind it and is explored more in the poem through the theme. The poem is about a discussion between two ravens who stumble upon a "new slain knight." This section of the poem is important because it shows how this knight whoever he is has just recently been killed. He has not been in this place for a long time when the ravens stumble upon him. Then they talk about how no one even knows he there except for his hawk, his hound, and his lady fair. Then a shift occurs in the next stanza because the reader learns that the only ones who know he is there have abandoned him. His hound and hawk have both gone off to hunt and his lady has already found another man to replace him. To the ravens this means that they can eat his dead body and take what they please.

Introduction (Songs of Innocence) William Blake

The poem 'Introduction' introduces the poet's purpose and inspiration behind penning down poetry. In this poem, the narrator is described as a piper. He is happily piping when he sees a child on a cloud. The child asks him to pipe a song about a lamb, when he does sing, the child weeps on hearing it. Again, the child asks the piper to sing and he sings the same song. But now the child cries with joy when he hears it. Further, the child tells the narrator to write a book before he disappears. Inspired by the child, the piper takes a reed to make a pen. With it, he writes happy songs for children to bring them joy. Therefore, the voice of the poems is written as that of a child and/or accessible to children.

Spring and Fall Gerard Manley Hopkins

The poem opens with a question to a child: "Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving?" "Goldengrove," a place whose name suggests an idyllic play-world, is "unleaving," or losing its leaves as winter approaches. And the child, with her "fresh thoughts," cares about the leaves as much as about "the things of man." The speaker reflects that age will alter this innocent response, and that later whole "worlds" of forest will lie in leafless disarray ("leafmeal," like "piecemeal") without arousing Margaret's sympathy. The child will weep then, too, but for a more conscious reason. However, the source of this knowing sadness will be the same as that of her childish grief—for "sorrow's springs are the same." That is, though neither her mouth nor her mind can yet articulate the fact as clearly as her adult self will, Margaret is already mourning over her own mortality.

A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal William Wordsworth

These pieces are all focused on the idealized love of a speaker for a girl by the name of Lucy. In this particular piece, she is not named, but her story remains the same and the speaker is faced with her premature death for which he was unprepared. 'A Slumber did my Spirit Seal' is a short two stanza poem, made up of two quatrains, or sets of four lines. The stanzas are simple in their formation and follow the rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD. The rhythm and syllables of this piece are also constant. The second and fourth line of each stanza contains six syllables, while the first and third contain eight.

Sonnet 129 by William Shakespeare

This complex poem grapples with the idea of sexual desire as it exists in longing, fulfillment, and memory. (That is to say, it deals with lust as a longing for future pleasure; with lust as it is consummated in the present; and with lust as it is remembered after the pleasurable experience, when it becomes a source of shame.) At the beginning of the poem, the speaker says that "lust in action"—that is, as it exists at the consummation of the sexual act—is an "expense of spirit in a waste of shame." He then devotes the rest of the first quatrain to characterizing lust as it exists "till action"—that is, before the consummation: it is "perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame / Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust."

Vitae summa brevis Ernest Dowson

This is an aesthetic commentary on the condition of human transience and mortality. It is both hopeful and sad. It's brevity and meter symbolize the shortness of life. The Latin title foreshadows the ephemeral human condition. The days of wine and roses are but a temporary happiness that both generates from and fades into a dream of reality. Yep, totally making this up.

Talking in Bed by Philip Larkin

This poem was written in 1960 and later published in The Whitsun Weddings, in 1964. It is one of Larkin's most famous pieces and conforms to a particular style that he is known for. The subject matter is straightforward, but his exploration of it takes the reader deeper than one might normally go. He explores the relationship between two people and the larger world as they lay in bed together in 'Talking in Bed.' The lines of this piece are divided into tercets, or three-line stanzas. They follow a rhymingpattern of aba cac dcd eee. It is interesting to note the relationship between sets of three and the focus on a couple. There are an uneven number of lines in these sets, leaving them (possibly) incomplete.

Sonnet 130 William Shakespeare

This sonnet compares the speaker's lover to a number of other beauties—and never in the lover's favor. Her eyes are "nothing like the sun," her lips are less red than coral; compared to white snow, her breasts are dun-colored, and her hairs are like black wires on her head. In the second quatrain, the speaker says he has seen roses separated by color ("damasked") into red and white, but he sees no such roses in his mistress's cheeks; and he says the breath that "reeks" from his mistress is less delightful than perfume. In the third quatrain, he admits that, though he loves her voice, music "hath a far more pleasing sound," and that, though he has never seen a goddess, his mistress—unlike goddesses—walks on the ground. In the couplet, however, the speaker declares that, "by heav'n," he thinks his love as rare and valuable "As any she belied with false compare"—that is, any love in which false comparisons were invoked to describe the loved one's beauty.

Aubade by Philip Larkin

Throughout this poem, Larkin's speaker takes the reader into his darkest thoughts, those he has early in the morning before the sun comes up. There, he thinks about his future and the fact that death is always right there at the edge of his life. There is nothing in the world that can soothe the fear of death, he says. Religion tried, but it's useless in the face of what's to come. The speaker also notes how it's in these moments, when there is so "drink" or friendly faces as distractions, that the reality of death sets in. It's going to come for you whether you whine about it or show courage in the face of it.

William Butler Yeats' Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop

William Butler Yeats' "Crazy Jane Talks With the Bishop" is one of my favorite poems. The humor and wit are excellent and give one much to chew on. The interest of this analysis is to try and decipher whether Jane, Yeat's persona, is indeed crazy or mistakenly identified as such. The title expresses that one "Crazy Jane" has had a conversation with a bishop. Knowing that crazy is a term used to describe those who appear to us illogical, one might be prepared to assume Jane an erratic character. Of the bishop one might expect a sympathetic disposition, seeing as he is an ordained minister of the church. And Christ is all about loving one's neighbor as oneself (Matthew 22:39) and washing the feet of one's followers (John 13:1-17). But, of course, just because the title portrays one speaker as atypical and the other as respectable does not mean we ought to take the title's representation directly. Besides one does not even know what the title means. For instance, saying Jane talks with the bishop could be taken to mean that Jane mostly spoke and the bishop listened or pretended to listen or was in the vicinity as Jane spoke and no listening was done. And indeed one wonders about the sort of conversation that issues between a bishop and a crazy woman who might not even be able to grasp his point of view nor benefit from his wisdom.

The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd Sir Walter Ralegh

Written by Walter Raleigh in 1600, "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" is a parody of Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love." In Marlowe's poem, a shepherd propositions a young woman to be his "Love," offering her a happy, carefree life in the idyllic countryside. To sweeten the deal, he also promises her luxurious gifts (such as gowns of the finest wool, gold-clasped slippers, and so on). In Raleigh's poem, the young woman (now described as a nymph) gives her a reply: an emphatic, resounding no! In her view, the shepherd's vision is totally unrealistic, conveniently glossing over how nothing—not youth, love, nor "pretty" gifts—can escape the destructive forces of time.

As imperceptibly as Grief Emily Dickinson

"As imperceptibly as grief" is a deceptively simple meditation on the nature of time, written by Emily Dickinson. It compares grief to summer, suggesting that people don't always notice the way that everything undergoes gradual change—but that nothing in life stays still, and death always lurks in the background. As with most of Dickinson's roughly 1800 poems, this one was not published during her lifetime. The poem contains all of Dickinson's most notable traits—an apparent simplicity masking rigorous and complex thought; a sense of transition; and a deep questioning of what it means to be alive. Like most of her poems, it is written in common meter and employs dashes to mark stages of thought.

Because I could not stop for Death Emily Dickinson

"Because I could not stop for death" is one of Emily Dickinson's most celebrated poems and was composed around 1863. In the poem, a female speaker tells the story of how she was visited by "Death"—personified as a "kindly" gentleman—and taken for a ride in his carriage. This ride appears to take the speaker past symbols of the different stages of life, before coming to a halt at what is most likely her own grave—indeed, it seems she herself is already dead. Much of the poem's power comes from its refusal to offer easy or simplistic answers to life's greatest mystery—what happens when people die—and the poem can be read both as the anticipation of a heavenly Christian afterlife and as something altogether more bleak and down-to-earth.

Cross Langston Hughes

"Cross," by the American poet Langston Hughes (1902-1967), is a short poem about the challenges of being a biracial person in a racist society. The poem's speaker, who was born to a white father and a Black mother, feels deep uncertainty about life due to this biracial heritage. "Being neither white nor black," the speaker wonders what life holds in store and struggles to navigate the ambiguities of biracial identity in a prejudiced world. First published in The Weary Blues in 1926, during the artistic movement known as the Harlem Renaissance, "Cross" is a critique of racism and a poignant testament to complex racial experience.

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry Walt Whitman

"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" is Walt Whitman's reflection on the glory of the shared human experience. Crossing New York's East River one day, the poem's speaker is struck by the realization that the people of the past, present, and future are all deeply connected: one day, long after the speaker's gone, other people will stand just where he's standing, with the same thoughts and feelings he's having right now. Because all of humanity shares in existence and experience, this speaker joyfully concludes, no one is ever really alone: neither time nor space can truly separate people from each other. This poem first appeared in the 1856 second edition of Whitman's masterpiece, Leaves of Grass.

Digging Seamus Heaney

"Digging" is one of the most widely known poems by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney and serves as the opening poem of Heaney's debut 1966 poetry collection, Death of a Naturalist. It begins with the speaker hovering over a blank page with a pen, preparing to write. The speaker then reflects on the work ethic and skill of his father and grandfather, both of whom worked the land as farmers. Though the speaker is breaking with that specific familial tradition, the speaker presents writing as its own kind of labor, with speaker vowing to "dig" with the pen.

Dulce Et Decorum Est Wilfred Owen

"Dulce et Decorum Est" is a poem by the English poet Wilfred Owen. Like most of Owen's work, it was written between August 1917 and September 1918, while he was fighting in World War 1. Owen is known for his wrenching descriptions of suffering in war. In "Dulce et Decorum Est," he illustrates the brutal everyday struggle of a company of soldiers, focuses on the story of one soldier's agonizing death, and discusses the trauma that this event left behind. He uses a quotation from the Roman poet Horace to highlight the difference between the glorious image of war (spread by those not actually fighting in it) and war's horrifying reality.

Come In Robert Frost

"Home Burial," first published in 1914, is one of Robert Frost's longest poems. Written in blank verse, and mostly in dialogue, the poem centers on the peril and pain of miscommunication. The characters, a husband and wife who have recently buried their child, cope with grief very differently, and can't understand or respect each other's mourning process. By the poem's conclusion, the title has taken on double meaning, referring not only to the grave of the couple's dead son, but to the likely death of their love and their marriage.

I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed- Edna Millay

"I, Being born a Woman and Distressed" is a sonnet written by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay. Millay published "I, Being born a Woman and Distressed" in her collection The Harp-Weaver, and Other Poems in 1923. In the poem, Millay separates lust from rationality and, even, affection. Lust, Millay's speaker makes clear, can exist without either—a rather radical opinion for a female writer to take at the time. Although the poem is written using a classic form, its frank portrayal of lust and women's sexuality subverts many traditional expectations for sonnets as well as for depictions of women.

London William Blake

"London" is among the best known writings by visionary English poet William Blake. The poem describes a walk through London, which is presented as a pained, oppressive, and impoverished city in which all the speaker can find is misery. It places particular emphasis on the sounds of London, with cries coming from men, women, and children throughout the poem. The poem is in part a response to the Industrial Revolution, but more than anything is a fierce critique of humankind's failure to build a society based on love, joy, freedom, and communion with God.

Mourning Poem for the Queen of Sunday Robert Hayden

"Mourning Poem for the Queen of Sunday" by Robert Hayden is a narrative poem about a gospel singer that takes her own life. Hayden does not use straightforward language to communicate the narrative, yet the reader understands what has happened and can personally feel grief. We mourn the loss of the singer. It is as if she were someone that the reader was close to. The emotive quality of this poem showcases Hayden's gift as a writer.