POETRY

• The Darkling Thrush - Thomas Hardy
• I leant upon a coppice gate 

  When Frost was spectre-grey,

  And Winter's dregs made desolate 

  The weakening eye of day.

  The tangled bine-stems scored the sky 

  Like strings of broken lyres,

  And all mankind that haunted nigh 

  Had sought their household fires.
• The land's sharp features seemed to be

  The Century's corpse outleant,

  His crypt the cloudy canopy,

  The wind his death-lament.

  The ancient pulse of germ and birth

  Was shrunken hard and dry,

  And every spirit upon earth

  Seemed fervourless as I.
• At once a voice arose among

  The bleak twigs overhead

  In a full-hearted evensong

  Of joy illimited;

  An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

  In blast-beruffled plume,

  Had chosen thus to fling his soul

  Upon the growing gloom.
• So little cause for carolings

  Of such ecstatic sound

  Was written on terrestrial things

  Afar or nigh around,

  That I could think there trembled through

  His happy good-night air

  Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

  And I was unaware.
• Birches - Robert Frost
• When I see birches bend to left and right

  Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

  I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.

  But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay

  As ice-storms do.
• Often you must have seen them

  Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

  After a rain. They click upon themselves

  As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored

  As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
• Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells

  Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—

  Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away

  You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
• They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,

  And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed

  So low for long, they never right themselves:

  You may see their trunks arching in the woods

  Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground

  Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair

  Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
• But I was going to say when Truth broke in

  With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm

  I should prefer to have some boy bend them

  As he went out and in to fetch the cows—

  Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,

  Whose only play was what he found himself,

  Summer or winter, and could play alone.
• One by one he subdued his father's trees

  By riding them down over and over again

  Until he took the stiffness out of them,

  And not one but hung limp, not one was left

  For him to conquer. 
• He learned all there was

  To learn about not launching out too soon

  And so not carrying the tree away

  Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise

  To the top branches, climbing carefully

  With the same pains you use to fill a cup

  Up to the brim, and even above the brim.

  Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,

  Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
• So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

  And so I dream of going back to be.

  It’s when I’m weary of considerations,

  And life is too much like a pathless wood

  Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

  Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

  From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
• I'd like to get away from earth awhile

  And then come back to it and begin over.

  May no fate willfully misunderstand me

  And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

  Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:

  I don’t know where it's likely to go better.
• I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,

  And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

  Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

  But dipped its top and set me down again.

  That would be good both going and coming back.

  One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
• The Dolphins - Carol Ann Duffy
• World is what you swim in, or dance, it is simple.

  We are in our element but we are not free.

  Outside this world you cannot breathe for long.

  The other has my shape. The other's movement

  forms my thoughts. And also mine. There is a man

  and there are hoops. There is a constant flowing guilt.
• We have found no truth in these waters,

  no explanations tremble on our flesh.

  We were blessed and now we are not blessed.

  After travelling such space for days we began

  to translate. It was the same space. It is

  the same space always and above it is the man.
• And now we are no longer blessed, for the world

  will not deepen to dream in. The other knows

  and out of love reflects me for myself.

  We see our silver skin flash by like memory

  of somewhere else. There is a coloured ball

  we have to balance till the man has disappeared.
• The moon has disappeared. We circle well-worn grooves

  of water on a single note. Music of loss forever

  from the other's heart which turns my own to stone.

  There is a plastic toy. There is no hope. We sink

  to the limits of this pool until the whistle blows.

  There is a man and our mind knows we will die here.
• John Brown - Bob Dylan
• John Brown went off to war to fight on a foreign shore

  His mama sure was proud of him!

  He stood straight and tall in his uniform and all

  His mama’s face broke out all in a grin
• “Oh son, you look so fine, I’m glad you’re a son of mine

  You make me proud to know you hold a gun

  Do what the captain says, lots of medals you will get

  And we’ll put them on the wall when you come home”
• As that old train pulled out, John’s ma began to shout

  Telling’ everyone in the neighborhood:

  “That’s my son that’s about to go, he’s a soldier now, you know”

  She made well sure her neighbors understood
• She got a letter once in a while and her face broke into a smile

  As she showed them to the people from next door

  And she bragged about her son with his uniform and gun

  And these things you called a good old-fashioned war
• Then the letters ceased to come, for a long time they did not come

  They ceased to come for about ten months or more

  Then a letter finally came saying, “Go down and meet the train

  Your son’s a-coming home from the war”
• She smiled and went right down, she looked everywhere around

  But she could not see her soldier son in sight

  But as all the people passed, she saw her son at last

  When she did she could hardly believe her eyes
• Oh his face was all shot up and his hand was all blown off

  And he wore a metal brace around his waist

  He whispered kind of slow, in a voice she did not know

  While she couldn’t even recognize his face!
• “Oh tell me, my darling son, pray tell me what they done

  How is it you come to be this way?

  ”He tried his best to talk but his mouth could hardly move

  And the mother had to turn her face away
• “Don’t you remember, Ma, when I went off to war

  You thought it was the best thing I could do?

  I was on the battleground, you were home. Acting proud

  You wasn’t there standing in my shoes”
• “Oh, and I thought when I was there, God, what am I doing here?

  I’m a-tryin’ to kill somebody or die tryin’

  But the thing that scared me most was when my enemy came close

  And I saw that his face looked just like mine”
• “And I couldn’t help but think, through the thunder rolling and stink

  That I was just a puppet in a play

  And through the roar and smoke, this string is finally broke

  And a cannon ball blew my eyes away”
• As he turned away to walk, his Ma was still in shock

  At seeing’ the metal brace that helped him stand

  But as he turned to go, he called his mother close

  And he dropped his medals down into her hand
• Dover Beach - Matthew Arnold
• The sea is calm tonight.

  The tide is full, the moon lies fair

  Upon the straits; on the French coast the light

  Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

  Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

  Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!

  Only, from the long line of spray

  Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

  Listen! you hear the grating roar

  Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

  At their return, up the high strand,

  Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

  With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

  The eternal note of sadness in.
• Sophocles long ago

  Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought

  Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

  Of human misery; we

  Find also in the sound a thought,

  Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
• The Sea of Faith

  Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore

  Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

  But now I only hear

  Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

  Retreating, to the breath

  Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

  And naked shingles of the world.
• Ah, love, let us be true

  To one another! for the world, which seems

  To lie before us like a land of dreams,

  So various, so beautiful, so new,

  Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

  Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

  And we are here as on a darkling plain

  Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

  Where ignorant armies clash by night.