Mushrooms, by Sylvia Plath

Mushrooms

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.

A Dream Within a Dream, by Edgar Allan Poe

 

Take this kiss upon the brow! 

And, in parting from you now, 

Thus much let me avow: 

You are not wrong who deem 

That my days have been a dream; 

Yet if hope has flown away 

In a night, or in a day, 

In a vision, or in none, 

Is it therefore the less gone? 

All that we see or seem 

Is but a dream within a dream. 

 

I stand amid the roar 

Of a surf-tormented shore, 

And I hold within my hand 

Grains of the golden sand-- 

How few! yet how they creep 

Through my fingers to the deep, 

While I weep--while I weep! 

O God! can I not grasp 

Them with a tighter clasp? 

O God! can I not save 

One from the pitiless wave? 

Is all that we see or seem 

But a dream within a dream? 

 

The Daffodils, by William Wordsworth

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
   Out-did 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.

We never know how high we are (1176), by Emily Dickinson

We never know how high we are 

  Till we are called to rise; 

And then, if we are true to plan, 

  Our statures touch the skies--

The Heroism we recite 

  Would be a daily thing, 

Did not ourselves the Cubits warp 

  For fear to be a King--

I saw a man pursuing the horizon, by Stephen Crane

I saw a man pursuing the horizon; Round and round they sped. I was disturbed at this; I accosted the man. "It is futile," I said, "You can never-" "You lie," he cried, And ran on.

Before the Birth of One of Her Children, by Anne Bradstreet

All things within this fading world hath end, 

Adversity doth still our joys attend; 

No ties so strong, no friends so dear and sweet, 

But with death's parting blow are sure to meet. 

The sentence past is most irrevocable, 

A common thing, yet oh, inevitable. 

How soon, my Dear, death may my steps attend, 

How soon't may be thy lot to lose thy friend, 

We both are ignorant, yet love bids me 

These farewell lines to recommend to thee, 

That when the knot's untied that made us one, 

I may seem thine, who in effect am none. 

And if I see not half my days that's due, 

What nature would, God grant to yours and you; 

The many faults that well you know I have 

Let be interred in my oblivious grave; 

If any worth or virtue were in me, 

Let that live freshly in thy memory 

And when thou feel'st no grief, as I no harmes, 

Yet love thy dead, who long lay in thine arms, 

And when thy loss shall be repaid with gains 

Look to my little babes, my dear remains. 

And if thou love thyself, or loved'st me, 

These O protect from stepdame's injury. 

And if chance to thine eyes shall bring this verse, 

With some sad sighs honor my absent hearse; 

And kiss this paper for thy dear love's sake, 

Who with salt tears this last farewell did take.

Annabel Lee, EDGAR ALLAN POE

It was many and many a year ago,

   In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

   By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

   Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

   In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

   I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

   Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

   In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

   My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

   And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

   In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

   Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

   In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

   Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

   Of those who were older than we—

   Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

   Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

   Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

   In her sepulchre there by the sea—

   In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.”

Ben Sherwood, The Death And Life Of Charlie St. Cloud

“That's death and life, you see. We all shine on. You just have to release your hearts, alert your senses, and pay attention. A leaf, a star, a song, a laugh. Notice all the little things, because somebody is reaching out to you. Qualcuno ti ama. Somebody loves you.”

Song, by James Joyce

My love is in a light attire

     Among the apple trees,

Where the gay winds do most desire
     To run in companies.

There, where the gay winds stay to woo
     The young leaves as they pass,
My love goes slowly, bending to
     Her shadow on the grass.

And where the sky's a pale blue cup
     Over the laughing land,
My love goes lightly, holding up
     Her dress with dainty hand. 

Teach me I am forgotten by the dead, by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Teach me I am forgotten by the dead

And that the dead is by herself forgot
And I no longer would keep terms with me.
I would not murder, steal, or fornicate,
Nor with ambition break the peace of towns
But I would bury my ambition
The hope & action of my sovereign soul
In miserable ruin. Nor a hope
Should ever make a holiday for me
I would not be the fool of accident
I would not have a project seek an end
That needed aught
Beyond the handful of my present means
The sun of Duty drop from his firmament
To be a rushlight for each petty end
I would not harm my fellow men
On this low argument, 'twould harm myself.

Papyrus, by Ezra Pound

Spring . . . . . . .

Too long . . . . . .
Gongula . . . . . .

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, by Wallace Stevens

I

 

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.