PolyArchive

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 […]

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 […]

Ode to the West Wind Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) I O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed The […]

The Sky is Low, the Clouds are Mean Emily Dickinson The Sky is low — the Clouds are mean. A Travelling Flake of Snow Across a Barn or through a Rut Debates if it will go — A Narrow Wind complains all Day How some one treated him Nature, like Us, is sometimes caught Without her Diadem […]

Memory Siegfried Sassoon (Limerick, 1 February 1918) When I was young my heart and head were light, And I was gay and feckless as a colt Out in the fields, with morning in the may, Wind on the grass, wings in the orchard bloom. O thrilling sweet, my joy, when life was free And all […]

If I Could Tell You W.H. Auden Time will say nothing but I told you so, Time only knows the price we have to pay; If I could tell you I would let you know. If we should weep when clowns put on their show, If we should stumble when musicians play, Time will say […]

God’s World Edna St. Vincent Millay O WORLD, I cannot hold thee close enough! Thy winds, thy wide grey skies! Thy mists, that roll and rise! Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag And all but cry with colour!  That gaunt crag To crush!  To lift the lean of that black bluff! World, […]