PolyArchive

Life’s Tragedy Paul Laurence Dunbar It may be misery not to sing at all And to go silent through the brimming day. It may be sorrow never to be loved, But deeper griefs than these beset the way. To have come near to sing the perfect song And only by a half-tone lost the key, […]

Thunder Road Bruce Springsteen The screen door slams Mary’s dress waves Like a vision she dances across the porch As the radio plays Roy Orbison singing for the lonely Hey that’s me and I want you only Don’t turn me home again I just can’t face myself alone again Don’t run back inside darling you […]

Prospective Immigrants Please Note Adrienne Rich Either you will go through this door or you will not go through. If you go through there is always the risk of remembering your name. Things look at you doubly and you must look back and let them happen. If you do not go through it is possible […]

Acquainted with the Night Robert Frost I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain–and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. I […]

e. e. cummings yours is the music for no instrument yours the preposterous colour unbeheld –mine the unbought contemptuous intent till this our flesh merely shall be excelled by speaking flower (if I have made songs it does not greatly matter to the sun, nor will rain care cautiously who prolongs unserious twilight) shadows have […]

The Ball Poem John Berryman What is the boy now, who has lost his ball, What, what is he to do? I saw it go Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then Merrily over–there it is in the water! No use to say ‘O there are other balls’: An ultimate shaking grief fixes the boy […]

The Great Lover Rupert Brooke I have been so great a lover: filled my days So proudly with the splendour of Love’s praise, The pain, the calm, and the astonishment, Desire illimitable, and still content, And all dear names men use, to cheat despair, For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear Our hearts at […]

Nocturne Dorothy Parker Always I knew that it could not last (Gathering clouds, and the snowflakes flying), Now it is part of the golden past (Darkening skies, and the night-wind sighing); It is but cowardice to pretend. Cover with ashes our love’s cold crater- Always I’ve known that it had to end Sooner or later. […]

Dolor Theodore Roethke I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils, Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper-weight, All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage, Desolation in immaculate public places, Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard, The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher, Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, and comma, Endless duplication of lives […]

A Blessing James Wright Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth onto the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies Darken with kindness. They have come gladly out of the willows To welcome my friend and me. We step over the barbed wire into the pasture Where they have […]

Девушка пела в церковном хоре А.А. Блок Девушка пела в церковном хоре О всех усталых в чужом краю, О всех кораблях, ушедших в море, О всех забывших радость свою. Так пел её голос, летящий в купол, И луч сиял на белом плече, И каждый из мрака смотрел и слушал, Как белое платье пело в луче. […]

Лотова жена Анна Ахматова Жена же Лотова оглянула позади его и стала соляным столпом. Книга Бытия И праведник шел за посланником бога, Огромный и светлый, по черной горе. Но громко жене говорила тревога: Не поздно, ты можешь еще посмотреть На красные башни родного Содома, На площадь, где пела, на двор, где пряла, На окна пустые […]

The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower Dylan Thomas The force that through the green fuse drives the flower Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees Is my destroyer. And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose My youth is bent by the same wintry fever. The force […]

Langston Hughes Theme For English B The instructor said,       Go home and write       a page tonight.       And let that page come out of you –       Then, it will be true. I wonder if it’s that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then […]

the lesson of the moth Don Marquis i was talking to a moth the other evening he was trying to break into an electric light bulb and fry himself on the wires why do you fellows pull this stunt i asked him because it is the conventional thing for moths or why if that had […]