The Seashell Anthology of Great Poetry Read online

  Disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage;

  Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;

  Let it pry through the portage of the head

  Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it

  As fearfully as doth a galled rock

  O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,

  Swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean.

  Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,

  Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit

  To his full height. On, on, you noblest English,

  Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!

  Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,

  Have in these parts from morn till even fought

  And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:

  Dishonor not your mothers; now attest

  That those whom you called fathers did

  beget you.

  Be copy now to men of grosser blood,

  And teach them how to war. And you,

  good yeomen,

  Whose limbs were made in England, show us here

  The mettle of your pasture; let us swear

  That you are worth your breeding;

  which I doubt not;

  For there is none of you so mean and base,

  That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.

  I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,

  Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:

  Follow your spirit, and upon this charge

  Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'

  William Shakespeare, 1599

  King Henry V, Act III, Prologue

  Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Amis

  The Last War

  The first country to die was normal in

  the evening,

  Ate a good but plain dinner, chatted with

  some friends

  Over a glass, and went to bed soon after ten;

  And in the morning was found disfigured

  and dead.

  That was a lucky one.

  At breakfast the others heard about it, and kept

  Their eyes on their plates. Who was guilty?

  No one knew,

  But by lunch time three more would never

  eat again.

  The rest appealed for frankness, quietly

  cocked their guns,

  Declared "This can't go on."

  They were right. Only the strongest turned up

  for tea:

  The old ones with the big estates hadn't survived

  The slobbering blindfold violence of the

  afternoon.

  One killer or many? Was it a gang, or

  all-against-all?

  Somebody must have known.

  But each of them sat there watching the

  others, until

  Night came and found them anxious to

  get it over.

  Then the lights went out. A few might have lived,

  even then;

  Innocent, they thought (at first) it still

  mattered what

  You had or hadn't done.

  They were wrong. One had been lenient with

  his servants;

  Another ran an island brothel, but rarely left it;

  The third owned a museum, the fourth

  a remarkable gun;

  The name of the fifth was quite unknown,

  but in the end

  What was the difference? None.

  Homicide, pacifist, crusader, tyrant, adventurer,

  boor

  Staggered about moaning, shooting into the dark.

  Next day, to tidy up as usual, the sun came in

  When they and their ammunition were

  all finished,

  And found himself alone.

  Upset, he looked them over, to separate,

  if he could,

  The assassins from the victims, but every face

  Had taken on the flat anonymity of pain;

  And soon they'll all smell alike, he thought,

  and felt sick,

  And went to bed at noon.

  Kingsley Amis, 1956

  Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Wheelock

  Earth

  "A planet doesn't explode of itself," said drily

  The Martian astronomer, gazing off into the air—

  "That they were able to do it is proof that highly

  Intelligent beings must have been living there."

  John Hall Wheelock, 1961

  Next | TOC> Way Through Woods> Frost

  The Pasture

  I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;

  I'll only stop to rake the leaves away

  (And wait to watch the water clear, I may):

  I shan't be gone long.—You come too.

  I'm going out to fetch the little calf

  That's standing by the mother. It's so young

  It totters when she licks it with her tongue.

  I shan't be gone long.—You come too.

  Robert Frost, 1913

  Next | TOC> Way Through Woods> Frost

  After Apple Picking

  My long two-pointed ladder's sticking

  through a tree

  Toward heaven still,

  And there's a barrel that I didn't fill

  Beside it, and there may be two or three

  Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.

  But I am done with apple picking now.

  Essence of winter sleep is on the night,

  The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.

  I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight

  I got from looking through a pane of glass

  I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough

  And held against the world of hoary grass.

  It melted, and I let it fall and break.

  But I was well

  Upon my way to sleep before it fell,

  And I could tell

  What form my dreaming was about to take.

  Magnified apples appear and disappear,

  Stem end and blossom end,

  And every fleck of russet showing clear.

  My instep arch not only keeps the ache,

  It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.

  I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

  And I keep hearing from the cellar bin

  The rumbling sound

  Of load on load of apples coming in.

  For I have had too much

  Of apple picking: I am overtired

  Of the great harvest I myself desired.

  There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,

  Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.

  For all

  That struck the earth,

  No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,

  Went surely to the cider-apple heap

  As of no worth.

  One can see what will trouble

  This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.

  Were he not gone,

  The woodchuck could say whether it's like his

  Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,

  Or just some human sleep.

  Robert Frost, 1914

  Next | TOC> Way Through Woods> Roethke

  Root Cellar

  Nothing would sleep in that cellar,

  dank as a ditch,

  Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks

  in the dark,

  Shoots dangled and drooped,

  Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,

  Hung down long yellow evil necks,

  like tropical snakes.

  And what a congress of stinks!

  Roots ripe as old bait,

  Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,

  Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against

  slippery planks.

  Nothing would give up life:

  Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.

  Theodore Roethke
, 1948

  Next | TOC> Way Through Woods> Housman

  When green buds hang in

  the elm

  When green buds hang in the elm like dust

  And sprinkle the lime like rain,

  Forth I wander, forth I must,

  And drink of life again.

  Forth I must by hedgerow bowers

  To look at the leaves uncurled,

  And stand in the fields where cuckoo flowers

  Are lying about the world.

  A. E. Housman, 1936

  Next | TOC> Way Through Woods> Frost

  The Road Not Taken

  Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

  And sorry I could not travel both

  And be one traveler, long I stood

  And looked down one as far as I could

  To where it bent in the undergrowth;

  Then took the other, as just as fair,

  And having perhaps the better claim,

  Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

  Though as for that, the passing there

  Had worn them really about the same,

  And both that morning equally lay

  In leaves no step had trodden black.

  Oh, I kept the first for another day!

  Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

  I doubted if I should ever come back.

  I shall be telling this with a sigh

  Somewhere ages and ages hence:

  Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

  I took the one less traveled by,

  And that has made all the difference.

  Robert Frost, 1916

  Next | TOC> Way Through Woods> Kipling

  The Way Through the Woods

  They shut the road through the woods

  Seventy years ago.

  Weather and rain have undone it again,

  And now you would never know

  There was once a path through the woods

  Before they planted the trees.

  It is underneath the coppice and heath

  And the thin anemones.

  Only the keeper sees

  That, where the ring-dove broods,

  And the badgers roll at ease,

  There was once a road through the woods.

  Yet, if you enter the woods

  Of a summer evening late,

  When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed

  pools

  Where the otter whistles his mate,

  (They fear not men in the woods

  Because they see so few.)

  You will hear the beat of a horse's feet

  And the swish of a skirt in the dew,

  Steadily cantering through

  The misty solitudes,

  As though they perfectly knew

  The old lost road through the woods . . .

  But there is no road through the woods.

  Rudyard Kipling, 1910

  Next | TOC> Way Through Woods> Yeats

  The Song of the Wandering

  Aengus

  I went out to the hazel wood,

  Because a fire was in my head,

  And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

  And hooked a berry to a thread;

  And when white moths were on the wing,

  And moth-like stars were flickering out,

  I dropped the berry in a stream

  And caught a little silver trout.

  When I had laid it on the floor

  I went to blow the fire aflame,

  But something rustled on the floor,

  And some one called me by my name:

  It had become a glimmering girl

  With apple blossoms in her hair

  Who called me by my name and ran

  And faded through the brightening air.

  Though I am old with wandering

  Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

  I will find out where she has gone,

  And kiss her lips and take her hands;

  And walk among long dappled grass,

  And pluck till time and times are done,

  The silver apples of the moon,

  The golden apples of the sun.

  William Butler Yeats, 1897

  Next | TOC> Way Through Woods> Yeats

  The Lake Isle of Innisfree

  I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

  And a small cabin build there,

  of clay and wattles made;

  Nine bean-rows will I have there,

  a hive for the honey bee,

  And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

  And I shall have some peace there,

  for peace comes dropping slow,

  Dropping from the veils of the morning

  to where the cricket sings;

  There midnight's all a glimmer,

  and noon a purple glow,

  And evening full of the linnet's wings.

  I will arise and go now,

  for always night and day

  I hear lake water lapping

  with low sounds by the shore;

  While I stand on the roadway,

  or on the pavements gray,

  I hear it in the deep heart's core.

  William Butler Yeats, 1890

  Next | TOC> Way Through Woods> Dickinson

  I taste a liquor never brewed

  I taste a liquor never brewed,

  From tankards scooped in pearl;

  Not all the vats upon the Rhine

  Yield such an alcohol!

  Inebriate of air am I,

  And debauchee of dew,

  Reeling through endless summer days,

  From inns of molten blue.

  When landlords turn the drunken bee

  Out of the foxglove's door,

  When butterflies renounce their drams,

  I shall but drink the more!

  Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,

  And saints to windows run,

  To see the little tippler

  Leaning against the sun.

  Emily Dickinson, 1860

  Next | TOC> Way Through Woods> Wordsworth

  I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

  I wandered lonely as a cloud

  That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

  When all at once I saw a crowd,

  A host, of golden daffodils;

  Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

  Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

  Continuous as the stars that shine

  And twinkle on the Milky Way,

  They stretched in never-ending line

  Along the margin of a bay:

  Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

  Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

  The waves beside them danced, but they

  Outdid the sparkling waves in glee;

  A poet could not but be gay,

  In such a jocund company:

  I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

  What wealth the show to me had brought:

  For oft, when on my couch I lie

  In vacant or in pensive mood,

  They flash upon that inward eye

  Which is the bliss of solitude;

  And then my heart with pleasure fills,

  And dances with the daffodils.

  William Wordsworth, 1804

  Next | TOC> Way Through Woods> Blake

  The Tiger

  Tiger! Tiger! burning bright

  In the forests of the night,

  What immortal hand or eye

  Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

  In what distant deeps or skies

  Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

  On what wings dare he aspire?

  What the hand dare seize the fire?

  And what shoulder and what art,

  Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

  And when thy heart began to beat,

  What dread hand? and what dread feet?

  What the hammer? what the chain?
>
  In what furnace was thy brain?

  What the anvil? what dread grasp

  Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

  When the stars threw down their spears,

  And watered heaven with their tears,

  Did he smile his work to see?

  Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

  Tiger! Tiger! burning bright

  In the forests of the night,

  What immortal hand or eye

  Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

  William Blake, 1794

  Next | TOC> Way Through Woods> Blake

  The Lamb

  Little Lamb, who made thee?

  Dost thou know who made thee?

  Gave thee life, and bid thee feed,

  By the stream and o'er the mead;

  Gave thee clothing of delight,

  Softest clothing, woolly, bright;

  Gave thee such tender voice,

  Making all the vales rejoice?

  Little Lamb, who made thee?

  Dost thou know who made thee?

  Little Lamb, I'll tell thee,

  Little Lamb, I'll tell thee:

  He is called by thy name,

  For He calls Himself a Lamb,

  He is meek, and he is mild;

  He became a little child.

  I a child, and thou a lamb,

  We are called by his name.

  Little Lamb, God bless thee!

  Little Lamb, God bless thee!

  William Blake, 1789

  Next | TOC> Way Through Woods> Tennyson

  The Eagle

  He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

  Close to the sun in lonely lands,

  Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

  The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

  He watches from his mountain walls,

  And like a thunderbolt he falls.

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1851

  Next | TOC> Way Through Woods> Whitman

  The Dalliance of Eagles

  Skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk,

  my rest,)

  Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound,

  the dalliance of the eagles,