I Too by Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, 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. This poem was so controversial at the time, but is so true. The black nation had a huge impact on America and deserves the same respect as all other nations.

All The World's a Letter by William Shakespeare

All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms. And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side, His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Me, being a person of the theatre, really enjoys this poem. Shakespeare got it right!

Song of Myself 2 by Walt Whitman

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with
perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the
distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing
of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and
dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,

The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies of
the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields
and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising
from bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much?
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through
the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

Great use of body parts as symbols. Quite impressed!

Song of Myself 1 by Walt Whitman

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

I do not really understand this poem, but appreciate the imagery.

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;	5
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,	10
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.	15
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.	20

I have red this poem so many times in my life, and catch something new every time. I love it

Whatif by Shel Silverstein

Last night, while I lay thinking here,
some Whatifs crawled inside my ear
and pranced and partied all night long
and sang their same old Whatif song:
Whatif I'm dumb in school?
Whatif they've closed the swimming pool?
Whatif I get beat up?
Whatif there's poison in my cup?
Whatif I start to cry?
Whatif I get sick and die?
Whatif I flunk that test?
Whatif green hair grows on my chest?
Whatif nobody likes me?
Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me?
Whatif I don't grow talle?
Whatif my head starts getting smaller?
Whatif the fish won't bite?
Whatif the wind tears up my kite?
Whatif they start a war?
Whatif my parents get divorced?
Whatif the bus is late?
Whatif my teeth don't grow in straight?
Whatif I tear my pants?
Whatif I never learn to dance?
Everything seems well, and then
the nighttime Whatifs strike again!

What if I never found this poem? My life would never be changed

Sick by Shel Silverstein

"I cannot go to school today," Said little Peggy Ann McKay. "I have the measles and the mumps, A gash, a rash and purple bumps. My mouth is wet, my throat is dry, I'm going blind in my right eye. My tonsils are as big as rocks, I've counted sixteen chicken pox And there's one more--that's seventeen, And don't you think my face looks green? My leg is cut--my eyes are blue-- It might be instamatic flu. I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke, I'm sure that my left leg is broke-- My hip hurts when I move my chin, My belly button's caving in, My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained, My 'pendix pains each time it rains. My nose is cold, my toes are numb. I have a sliver in my thumb. My neck is stiff, my voice is weak, I hardly whisper when I speak. My tongue is filling up my mouth, I think my hair is falling out. My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight, My temperature is one-o-eight. My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear, There is a hole inside my ear. I have a hangnail, and my heart is--what? What's that? What's that you say? You say today is. . .Saturday? G'bye, I'm going out to play!"

What a deformed person that was made in this poem so it was kind of really interesting.

Fourth Portrait of Fire by Lorna Dee Cervantes

I am away from the knowledge

of animal mystics,

brujas and sorcerers

or the nudging chants

of a Tlingit Kachina.

I am frightened by regions

with wills of their own,

but when my people

die in the snow

I wonder

did the depths billow up

to reach them?

Going from magic to death. This woman;s poetry just confuses me and I would love to analyze it one day.

Third Portrait of Fire by Lorna Dee Cervantes

Last Christmas, a family of five

woke from their dreaming and

dreamed themselves over: the baby

in its pink pajamas, the boy

in the red flannel bathrobe

he grabbed from the door,

a mother, a father, and a sister

in curlers; all died

Very abrupt ending. Such hope accompanied by death is just insane

Second Portrait of Fire by Lorna Dee Cervantes

These were the nest builders;

I caught one last morning, I sang

so it fell down, stupid,

from the trees. They're so incorrect

in their dead skin. Witness their twig

feet, the mistake of their hands.

They will follow you. They yearn

pebbles for their gullets to grind

their own seed. They swallow

so selflessly and die

like patriots.

I like this take on birds, much different than common thought of their beauty.

First Portrait of Fire by Lorna Dee Cervantes

I find a strange knowledge of wind,

an open door in the mountain

pass where everything intersects.

Believe me. This will not pass.

This is a world where flags

contain themselves, and are still,

marked by their unfurled edges.

Lean stuff sways on the boughs

of pitch pine: silver, almost tinsel,

all light gone blue and sprouting

orange oils in a last bouquet.

Great use of color and use of metafiction in this poem.

A Letter to Her Husband by Anne Bradstreet

My head, my heart, mine eyes, my life, nay more,  My joy, my magazine, of earthly store,  If two be one, as surely thou and I,  How stayest thou there, whilst I at Ipswich lie?  So many steps, head from the heart to sever,  If but a neck, soon should we be together.  I, like the Earth this season, mourn in black,  My Sun is gone so far in's zodiac,  Whom whilst I 'joyed, nor storms, nor frost I felt,  His warmth such fridged colds did cause to melt.  My chilled limbs now numbed lie forlorn;  Return; return, sweet Sol, from Capricorn;  In this dead time, alas, what can I more  Than view those fruits which through thy heart I bore?  Which sweet contentment yield me for a space,  True living pictures of their father's face.  O strange effect! now thou art southward gone,  I weary grow the tedious day so long;  But when thou northward to me shalt return,  I wish my Sun may never set, but burn  Within the Cancer of my glowing breast,  The welcome house of him my dearest guest.  Where ever, ever stay, and go not thence,  Till nature's sad decree shall call thee hence;  Flesh of thy flesh, bone of thy bone,  I here, thou there, yet both but one. 

This is so cute once you get past the language. I can feel her love for her husband in every word.

Lullaby by W.H. Auden

Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm; Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral: But in my arms till break of day Let the living creature lie, Mortal, guilty, but to me The entirely beautiful.  Soul and body have no bounds: To lovers as they lie upon Her tolerant enchanted slope In their ordinary swoon, Grave the vision Venus sends Of supernatural sympathy, Universal love and hope; While an abstract insight wakes Among the glaciers and the rocks The hermit's carnal ecstasy.  Certainty, fidelity On the stroke of midnight pass Like vibrations of a bell, And fashionable madmen raise Their pedantic boring cry: Every farthing of the cost, All the dreaded cards foretell, Shall be paid, but from this night Not a whisper, not a thought, Not a kiss nor look be lost.  Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find the mortal world enough; Noons of dryness find you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love.

This lullaby is so pretty, I love it so much and want to one day use this lullaby possibly.

The Beautiful Change by Richard Wilbur

One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides
The Queen Anne's Lace lying like lilies
On water; it glides
So from the walker, it turns
Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of
you
Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.

The beautiful changes as a forest is changed
By a chameleon's tuning his skin to it;
As a mantis, arranged
On a green leaf, grows
Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves
Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.

Your hands hold roses always in a way that
says
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes
In such kind ways,
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things' selves for a second finding,
to lose
For a moment all that it touches back to
wonder.

I love the flowers in this, it reaches my sensitive side :)

The Kraken by A.L. Tennyson

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber’d and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

Being a fan of "The Pirates of the Caribbean," I very much so enjoy this imagery to this mythological creature.

At Galway Races by W.B. Yeats

HERE where the course is,

Delight makes all of the one mind,

The riders upon the galloping horses,

The crowd that closes in behind:

We, too, had good attendance once,

Hearers and hearteners of the work;

Aye, horsemen for companions,

Before the merchant and the clerk

Breathed on the world with timid breath.

Sing on: somewhere at some new moon,

We'll learn that sleeping is not death,

Hearing the whole earth change its tune,

Its flesh being wild, and it again

Crying aloud as the racecourse is,

And we find hearteners among men

That ride upon horses.

I think I would have been more interested with this poem if I did indeed ride horses, but it was still nice and I still have respect for the art.

A Wreath by George Herbert

A wreathed garland of deserved praise,
Of praise deserved, unto thee I give,
I give to thee, who knowest all my wayes,
My crooked winding wayes, wherein I live,
Wherein I die, not live : for life is straight,
Straight as a line, and ever tends to thee,
To thee, who art more farre above deceit,
Then deceit seems above simplicitie.
Give me simplicitie, that I may live,
So live and like, that I may know thy wayes,
Know them and practise them : then shall I give
For this poore wreath, give thee a crown of praise.

Love After Love by Derek Walcott

The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life. This poem really exudes the pain of the people that have lost loved ones, which although I am yet to experience this, will unfortunately experience sometime in the future.

Prosprice by Robert Browning

EAR death? -- to feel the fog in my throat,

The mist in my face,

When the snows begin, and the blasts denote

I am nearing the place,

The power of the night, the press of the storm,

The post of the foe;

Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,

Yet the strong man must go:

For the journey is done and the summit attained,

And the barriers fall,

Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,

The reward of it all.

I was ever a fighter, so -- one fight more,

The best and the last!

I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,

And bade me creep past.

No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers

The heroes of old,

Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears

Of pain, darkness and cold.

For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,

The black minute's at end,

And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,

Shall dwindle, shall blend,

Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,

Then a light, then thy breast,

O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,

And with God be the rest!

Although this language was very difficult to understand at first glance, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Very eery!

A City's Death by Fire by Derek Walcott

After that hot gospeller has levelled all but the churched sky,
I wrote the tale by tallow of a city's death by fire;
Under a candle's eye, that smoked in tears, I
Wanted to tell, in more than wax, of faiths that were snapped like wire.
All day I walked abroad among the rubbled tales,
Shocked at each wall that stood on the street like a liar;
Loud was the bird-rocked sky, and all the clouds were bales
Torn open by looting, and white, in spite of the fire.
By the smoking sea, where Christ walked, I asked, why
Should a man wax tears, when his wooden world fails?
In town, leaves were paper, but the hills were a flock of faiths;
To a boy who walked all day, each leaf was a green breath
Rebuilding a love I thought was dead as nails,
Blessing the death and the baptism by fire.

This is a very powerful peace and although it makes a reference to Christ, which I do not support, I do respect this work.

The World is too Much With Us by William Wordsworth

HE world is too much with us: late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. -- Great God! I'd rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

This poem is just great in its imagery and use of the greek gods.

Heaven by Cathy Song

He thinks when we die we’ll go to China.

Think of it—a Chinese heaven

where, except for his blond hair,

the part that belongs to his father,

everyone will look like him.

China, that blue flower on the map,

bluer than the sea

his hand must span like a bridge

to reach it.

An octave away.

I’ve never seen it.

It’s as if I can’t sing that far.

But look—

on the map, this black dot.

Here is where we live,

on the pancake plains

just east of the Rockies,

on the other side of the clouds.

A mile above the sea,

the air is so thin, you can starve on it.

No bamboo trees

but the alpine equivalent,

reedy aspen with light, fluttering leaves.

Did a boy in Guangzhou dream of this

as his last stop?

I’ve heard the trains at night

whistling past our yards,

what we’ve come to own,

the broken fences, the whiny dog, the rattletrap cars.

It’s still the wild west,

mean and grubby,

the shootouts and fistfights in the back alley.

With my son the dreamer

and my daughter, who is too young to walk,

I’ve sat in this spot

and wondered why here?

Why in this short life,

this town, this creek they call a river?

He had never planned to stay,

the boy who helped to build

the railroads for a dollar a day.

He had always meant to go back.

When did he finally know

that each mile of track led him further away,

that he would die in his sleep,

dispossessed,

having seen Gold Mountain,

the icy wind tunneling through it,

these landlocked, makeshift ghost towns?

It must be in the blood,

this notion of returning.

It skipped two generations, lay fallow,

the garden an unmarked grave.

On a spring sweater day

it’s as if we remember him.

I call to the children.

We can see the mountains

shimmering blue above the air.

If you look really hard

says my son the dreamer,

leaning out from the laundry’s rigging,

the work shirts fluttering like sails,

you can see all the way to heaven.

I really loved this poems take on heaven and how, according to the poet, it is not really a place with golden gates but where you imagine to be heaven on Earth.

The Definition of Love by Andrew Marvell

Y love is of a birth as rare

As 'tis for object strange and high;

It was begotten by Despair

Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone

Could show me so divine a thing

Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown,

But vainly flapp'd its tinsel wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive

Where my extended soul is fixt,

But Fate does iron wedges drive,

And always crowds itself betwixt.

For Fate with jealous eye does see

Two perfect loves, nor lets them close;

Their union would her ruin be,

And her tyrannic pow'r depose.

And therefore her decrees of steel

Us as the distant poles have plac'd,

(Though love's whole world on us doth wheel)

Not by themselves to be embrac'd;

Unless the giddy heaven fall,

And earth some new convulsion tear;

And, us to join, the world should all

Be cramp'd into a planisphere.

As lines, so loves oblique may well

Themselves in every angle greet;

But ours so truly parallel,

Though infinite, can never meet.

Therefore the love which us doth bind,

But Fate so enviously debars,

Is the conjunction of the mind,

And opposition of the stars.

This poem just caught my eye. As we grow up, love is never defined for us and we are always seeking to learn ways to define love.

A Thing of Beauty by John Keats

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its lovliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkn'd ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

I just really loved the imagery of this poem. What a joy!

A Prayer in Spring by Robert Frost

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.

I like this poem for the mere imagery. With it being so cold now, it is nice to think of these objects associated with spring.