PolyArchive

Follower Seamus Heaney My father worked with a horse-plough, His shoulders globed like a full sail strung Between the shafts and the furrow. The horse strained at his clicking tongue. An expert. He would set the wing And fit the bright steel-pointed sock. The sod rolled over without breaking. At the headrig, with a single […]

University Karl Shapiro To hurt the Negro and avoid the Jew Is the curriculum. In mid-September The entering boys, identified by hats, Wander in a maze of mannered brick Where boxwood and magnolia brood And columns with imperious stance Like rows of ante-bellum girls Eye them, outlanders. In whited cells, on lawns equipped for peace, […]

Peel Brian Swann I read that in this famous person’s poems “she searches for signs of what lies beneath and beyond the self.” Which seemed to me pointless, as if you wouldn’t know whether to paint with egg tempera or eat it. At eighteen, I came across Tolstoy’s “What is Art?” where he said an […]

A Man Said to the Universe Stephen Crane A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!” “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.”  

The Peace of Wild Things Wendell Berry When despair for the world grows in meand I wake in the night at the least soundin fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,I go and lie down where the wood drakerests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.I come […]

Top 9 Posts of 2024 Readers came here for many different posts during the year, but these were the most popular: The Poems of Our Climate | Wallace Stevens Dorothy Parker on New York: Autumn is the Springtime of big cities Introduction to Collected Poems (1938), E.E. Cummings You Want a Social Life, with Friends […]

Morning Song Sylvia Plath Love set you going like a fat gold watch. The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry Took its place among the elements. Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue. In a drafty museum, your nakedness Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls. I’m no more your […]

Failing and Flying Jack Gilbert (1925–2012) Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew. It’s the same when love comes to an end, or the marriage fails and people say they knew it was a mistake, that everybody said it would never work. That she was old enough to know better. But anything worth doing is worth […]

Introduction to Wallace Stevens: A Poet of Imagination and Abstraction Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) occupies a revered place in American poetry, celebrated for his intricate use of language and his philosophical exploration of art, imagination, and reality. A master of modernist verse, Stevens seamlessly blended intellectual depth with musicality, crafting poems that challenge and reward readers […]

Never Give All the Heart William Butler Yeats Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that’s lovely is But a brief, dreamy, kind delight. O never give the […]

The Second Coming W.B. Yeats Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full […]

LXIV Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer 1836 –1870 Translated from the Spanish by Mason Carnes How beautiful it is to see the day Arising, crowned with fire, the waves that play,–— Each one a gleaming sprite,–— The air enkindled by the kiss of light! Late in an autumn day, when rain-drops cloy The flowers, how sweet and […]

Autumn Maeng Sa-song (1360–1438) As autumn enters this land of rivers and lakes, even the fishes have become fat. From a small boat, I fling my fishing net, and let it trail with the tide. This body’s pleasure is also a debt we owe to our great king.   Maeng Sa-song, born in 1360, was […]

To Autumn John Keats (1795–1821) Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;     To swell the gourd, and […]

Under the Harvest Moon Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) Under the harvest moon, When the soft silver Drips shimmering Over the garden nights, Death, the gray mocker, Comes and whispers to you As a beautiful friend Who remembers. Under the summer roses When the flagrant crimson Lurks in the dusk Of the wild red leaves, Love, with […]