1 The Eagle BY: Alfred, Lord Tennyson He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ring'd with the azure world, he stands. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls. The Winter By: William Shakespeare When icicles hang by the wall And Dick the shepherd blows his nail And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When Blood is nipped and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-who; Tu-whit, tu-who: a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. When all aloud the wind doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson's saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian's nose looks red and raw When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-who; Tu-whit, tu-who: a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
2 The Man He Killed BY: Thomas Hardy "Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, We should have sat us down to wet Right many a nipperkin! "But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place. "I shot him dead because Because he was my foe, Just so: my foe of course he was; That's clear enough; although "He thought he'd 'list, perhaps, Off-hand like just as I Was out of work had sold his traps No other reason why. "Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You'd treat if met where any bar is, Or help to half-a-crown."
3 Mirror By: Sylvia Plath I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. Whatever I see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful, The eye of a little god, four-cornered. Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers. Faces and darkness separate us over and over. Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, Searching my reaches for what she really is. Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon. I see her back, and reflect it faithfully. She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. I am important to her. She comes and goes. Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness. In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish. There is no frigate like a book BY: Emily Dickinson 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.
4 Cross BY: Langston Hughes My old man's a white old man And my old mother's black. If ever I cursed my white old man I take my curses back. If ever I cursed my black old mother And wished she were in hell, I'm sorry for that evil wish And now I wish her well My old man died in a fine big house. My ma died in a shack. I wonder where I'm going to die, Being neither white nor black? Meeting at Night BY: ROBERT BROWNING The grey sea and the long black land; And the yellow half-moon large and low; And the startled little waves that leap In fiery ringlets from their sleep, As I gain the cove with pushing prow, And quench its speed i' the slushy sand. Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach; Three fields to cross till a farm appears; A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch And blue spurt of a lighted match, And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears, Than the two hearts beating each to each!
5 Parting at Morning BY ROBERT BROWNING Round the cape of a sudden came the sea, And the sun looked over the mountain's rim: And straight was a path of gold for him, And the need of a world of men for me Metaphors By Sylvia Plath I m a riddle in nine syllables, An elephant, a ponderous house, A melon strolling on two tendrils. O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers! This loaf s big with its yeasty rising. Money s new-minted in this fat purse. I m a means, a stage, a cow in calf. I ve eaten a bag of green apples, Boarded the train there s no getting off. Shall I compare thee to a summer s day? (Sonnet 18) By William Shakespeare Shall I compare thee to a summer s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer s lease hath all too short a date. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature s changing course, untrimmed; But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow st, Nor shall death brag thou wand rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to Time thou grow st. So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee
6 The Road Not Taken BY ROBERT FROST Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood 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 trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. 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. Fire and Ice BY ROBERT FROST 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.
7 Because I could not stop for Death BY EMILY DICKINSON Because I could not stop for Death He kindly stopped for me The Carriage held but just Ourselves And Immortality. We slowly drove He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess in the Ring We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain We passed the Setting Sun Or rather He passed Us The Dews drew quivering and Chill For only Gossamer, my Gown My Tippet only Tulle We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground The Roof was scarcely visible The Cornice in the Ground Since then 'tis Centuries and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses' Heads Were toward Eternity Much Madness is divinest Sense BY EMILY DICKINSON Much Madness is divinest Sense - To a discerning Eye - Much Sense - the starkest Madness - Tis the Majority In this, as all, prevail - Assent - and you are sane - Demur - you re straightway dangerous - And handled with a Chain
8 Ozymandias BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY I met a traveler 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 shattered 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 things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; 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 Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening BY ROBERT FROST Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods, fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
9 Loveliest of trees, the cherry now BY A. E. HOUSMAN Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide. Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more. And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow.