PolyArchive

A Birthday Christina Rossetti My heart is like a singing bird                   Whose nest is in a water’d shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree                   Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell                   That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these                   Because my love is […]

Of Mere Being Wallace Stevens The palm at the end of the mind, Beyond the last thought, rises In the bronze distance. A gold-feathered bird Sings in the palm, without human meaning, Without human feeling, a foreign song. You know then that it is not the reason That makes us happy or unhappy. The bird […]

Instructions Eavan Boland To write about age you need to take something and break it. (This is an art which has always loved young women. And silent ones.) A branch, perhaps, girlish with blossom. Snapped off. Close to the sap. Then cut through a promised summer. Continue. Cut down to the root. The spring afternoon […]

when serpents bargain e.e. cummings when serpents bargain for the right to squirm and the sun strikes to gain a living wage– when thorns regard their roses with alarm and rainbows are insured against old age when every thrush may sing no new moon in if all screech-owls have not okayed his voice –and any […]

THE LEAF AND THE TREE Edna St. Vincent Millay When will you learn, myself, to be a dying leaf on a living tree? Budding, swelling, growing strong, Wearing green, but not for long, Drawing sustenance from air, That other leaves, and you not there, May bud, and at the autumn’s call Wearing russet, ready to […]