PolyArchive

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 […]

Nothing Gold Can Stay Robert Frost (1874–1963) Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.    

My November Guest Robert Frost (1874–1963) My sorrow, when she’s here with me, Thinks these dark days of autumn rain Are beautiful as days can be; She loves the bare, the withered tree; She walks the sodden pasture lane. Her pleasure will not let me stay. She talks and I am fain to list: She’s […]

On Pain Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) And a woman spoke, saying, Tell us of Pain. And he said: Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain. And could you keep […]

A November Night Sara Teasdale There! See the line of lights, A chain of stars down either side the street — Why can’t you lift the chain and give it to me, A necklace for my throat? I’d twist it round And you could play with it. You smile at me As though I were […]

October Edward Thomas (1878–1917) The green elm with the one great bough of gold Lets leaves into the grass slip, one by one, — The short hill grass, the mushrooms small milk-white, Harebell and scabious and tormentil, That blackberry and gorse, in dew and sun, Bow down to; and the wind travels too light To […]

An October Garden Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) In my Autumn garden I was fain To mourn among my scattered roses; Alas for that last rosebud which uncloses To Autumn’s languid sun and rain When all the world is on the wane! Which has not felt the sweet constraint of June, Nor heard the nightingale in tune. […]

Poem in October Dylan Thomas It was my thirtieth year to heaven Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood And the mussel pooled and the heron Priested shore The morning beckon With water praying and call of seagull and rook And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall Myself to […]

Poppies in October Sylvia Plath Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts. Nor the woman in the ambulance Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly — A gift, a love gift Utterly unasked for By a sky Palely and flamily Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes Dulled to a halt under […]