PolyArchive

The Snow Man Wallace Stevens One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of […]

Man Carrying Thing Wallace Stevens The poem must resist the intelligence Almost successfully. Illustration: A brune figure in winter evening resists Identity. The thing he carries resists The most necessitous sense. Accept them, then, As secondary (parts not quite perceived Of the obvious whole, uncertain particles Of the certain solid, the primary free from doubt, […]

Digging Seamus Heaney Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through […]

A Song W. B. Yeats I THOUGHT no more was needed Youth to prolong Than dumb-bell and foil To keep the body young. Oh, who could have foretold That the heart grows old? Though I have many words, What woman’s satisfied, I am no longer faint Because at her side? Oh, who could have foretold […]

One Art Elizabeth Bishop The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. Then practice losing […]

62 Aleksandr Blok О, весна без конца и без краю – Без конца и без краю мечта! Узнаю тебя, жизнь! Принимаю! И приветствую звоном щита! Принимаю тебя, неудача, И удача, тебе мой привет! В заколдованной области плача, В тайне смеха – позорного нет! Принимаю бессонные споры, Утро в завесах темных окна, Чтоб мои воспаленные взоры […]

The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm Wallace Stevens The house was quiet and the world was calm. The reader became the book; and summer night Was like the conscious being of the book. The house was quiet and the world was calm. The words were spoken as if there was no book, […]

Berryman W.S. Merwin I will tell you what he told me in the years just after the war as we then called the second world war don’t lose your arrogance yet he said you can do that when you’re older lose it too soon and you may merely replace it with vanity just one time […]

E.E. and Me In university, I took a summer monograph class on E.E. Cummings. It was in the basement of… Mason Hall? Or maybe that’s still Angell on that side. I can’t remember. There were 15 students the first day. The professor had a surname which looked like it should only be pronounced in two […]

Sonnet XIX: You Cannot Love Michael Drayton (1563-1631) To Humor You cannot love, my pretty heart, and why? There was a time you told me that you would; But now again you will the same deny, If it might please you, would to God you could. What, will you hate? Nay, that you will not, […]

Easter, 1916 W. B. Yeats I have met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses. I have passed with a nod of the head Or polite meaningless words, Or have lingered awhile and said Polite meaningless words, And thought before I had done Of a […]

Sonnet V Edna St. Vincent Millay IF I should learn, in some quite casual way, That you were gone, not to return again— Read from the back-page of a paper, say, Held by a neighbor in a subway train, How at the corner of this avenue And such a street (so are the papers filled) […]

The Rose Is Obsolete William Carlos Williams The rose is obsolete but each petal ends in an edge, the double facet cementing the grooved columns of air–The edge cuts without cutting meets–nothing–renews itself in metal or porcelain– whither? It ends– But if it ends the start is begun so that to engage roses becomes a […]

THE UNKNOWN CITIZEN (To JS/07/M/378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State) W.H. Auden He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be One against whom there was no official complaint, And all the reports of his conduct agree That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned term, he was a saint, For […]

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 […]