The Solitary Reaper, by William Wordsworth

Behold her, single in the field,  Yon solitary Highland Lass!  Reaping and singing by herself;  Stop here, or gently pass!  Alone she cuts and binds the grain, And sings a melancholy strain;  O listen! for the Vale profound  Is overflowing with the sound.   No Nightingale did ever chaunt  More welcome notes to weary bands Of travellers in some shady haunt,  Among Arabian sands:  A voice so thrilling ne’er was heard  In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,  Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides.    Will no one tell me what she sings?—  Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow  For old, unhappy, far-off things,  And battles long ago: Or is it some more humble lay,  Familiar matter of to-day?  Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,  That has been, and may be again?   Whate’er the theme, the Maiden sang As if her song could have no ending;  I saw her singing at her work,  And o’er the sickle bending;—  I listen’d, motionless and still;  And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore,  Long after it was heard no more.

Tea at the Palaz of Hoon by Wallace Stevens

Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself.

What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?

Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,
And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
I was myself the compass of that sea:

I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought (Sonnet 30) by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 30

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 

I summon up remembrance of things past, 

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, 

And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste: 

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, 

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, 

And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe, 

And moan the expense of many a vanished sight: 

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, 

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er 

The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan, 

Which I new pay as if not paid before. 

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, 

All losses are restored and sorrows end.

The Wound-Dresser by Walt Whitman

1

An old man bending I come among new faces,
Years looking backward resuming in answer to children,
Come tell us old man, as from young men and maidens 

   that love me,
(Arous'd and angry, I'd thought to beat the alarum, and 

   urge relentless war,
But soon my fingers fail'd me, my face droop'd and I 

   resign'd myself,
To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently 

   watch the dead;)
Years hence of these scenes, of these furious 

   passions, these chances,
Of unsurpass'd heroes, (was one side so brave? the 

   other was equally brave;)
Now be witness again, paint the mightiest armies 

   of earth,
Of those armies so rapid so wondrous what saw you 

   to tell us?
What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious 

   panics,
Of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous 

   what deepest remains?

2

O maidens and young men I love and that love me,
What you ask of my days those the strangest and 

   sudden your talking recalls,
Soldier alert I arrive after a long march cover'd with 

   sweat and dust,
In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly 

   shout in the rush of successful charge,
Enter the captur'd works--yet lo, like a swift running 

   river they fade,
Pass and are gone they fade--I dwell not on soldiers' 

   perils or soldiers' joys,
(Both I remember well--many of the hardships, few 

   the joys, yet I was content.)

But in silence, in dreams' projections,
While the world of gain and appearance and mirth 

   goes on,
So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the 

   imprints off the sand,
With hinged knees returning I enter the doors, (while 

   for you up there,
Whoever you are, follow without noise and be of 

   strong heart.)

Bearing the bandages, water and sponge,
Straight and swift to my wounded I go,
Where they lie on the ground after the battle 

   brought in,
Where their priceless blood reddens the grass, 

   the ground,
Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the 

   roof'd hospital,
To the long rows of cots up and down each side 

   I return,
To each and all one after another I draw near, not 

   one do I miss,
An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a 

   refuse pail,
Soon to be fill'd with clotted rags and blood, emptied, 

   and fill'd again.

I onward go, I stop,
With hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds,
I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp yet 

   unavoidable,
One turns to me his appealing eyes--poor boy! I 

   never knew you,
Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for 

   you, if that would save you.

Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I [Round about the cauldron go] by William Shakespeare

Act IV, Scene I [Round about the cauldron go] The three witches, casting a spell Round about the cauldron go; In the poison'd entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone Days and nights hast thirty one Swelter'd venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.         Double, double toil and trouble;         Fire burn and cauldron bubble. Fillet of a fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake; Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg, and howlet's wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.          Double, double toil and trouble;          Fire burn and cauldron bubble. Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witches' mummy, maw and gulf Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark, Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark, Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat, and slips of yew Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse, Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips, Finger of birth-strangled babe Ditch-deliver'd by a drab, Make the gruel thick and slab: Add thereto a tiger's chaudron, For the ingredients of our cauldron.           Double, double toil and trouble;           Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

A Nation's Strength by Ralph Waldo Emerson

What makes a nation's pillars high
And it's foundations strong?
What makes it mighty to defy
The foes that round it throng?

It is not gold. Its kingdoms grand
Go down in battle shock;
Its shafts are laid on sinking sand,
Not on abiding rock.

Is it the sword? Ask the red dust
Of empires passed away;
The blood has turned their stones to rust,
Their glory to decay.

And is it pride? Ah, that bright crown
Has seemed to nations sweet;
But God has struck its luster down
In ashes at his feet.

Not gold but only men can make
A people great and strong;
Men who for truth and honor's sake
Stand fast and suffer long.

Brave men who work while others sleep,
Who dare while others fly...
They build a nation's pillars deep
And lift them to the sky.

Out of the Rolling Ocean, the Crowd by Walt Whitman

1

Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd, came a drop gently to me,
Whispering, I love you, before long I die,
I have travel'd a long way, merely to look on you, to touch you,
For I could not die till I once look'd on you,
For I fear'd I might afterward lose you.

2

(Now we have met, we have look'd, we are safe;
Return in peace to the ocean, my love;
I too am part of that ocean, my love—we are not so much separated;
Behold the great rondure—the cohesion of all, how perfect!
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,
As for an hour carrying us diverse—yet cannot carry us diverse forever;
Be not impatient—a little space—know you, I salute the air, the ocean and the land,
Every day, at sundown, for your dear sake, my love.)

Guillaume Apollinaire by Gertrude Stein

Give known or pin ware.
Fancy teeth, gas strips.
Elbow elect, sour stout pore, pore caesar, pour state at.
Leave eye lessons I. Leave I. Lessons. I. Leave I lessons, I.

My Heart Leaps Up, by William Wordsworth

My heart leaps up when I behold 
   A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began; 
So is it now I am a man; 
So be it when I shall grow old, 
   Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

Preludes [excerpt] by T. S. Eliot

IV His soul stretched tight across the skies That fade behind a city block, Or trampled by insistent feet At four and five and six o'clock; And short square fingers stuffing pipes, And evening newspapers, and eyes Assured of certain certainties, The conscience of a blackened street Impatient to assume the world. I am moved by fancies that are curled Around these images, and cling: The notion of some infinitely gentle Infinitely suffering thing. Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh; The worlds revolve like ancient women Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

Coda by Ezra Pound

O my songs, Why do you look so eagerly and so curiously into     people's faces, Will you find your lost dead among them?

House or Window Flies, by John Clare

These little window dwellers, in cottages and halls, were always entertaining to me; after dancing in the window all day from sunrise to sunset they would sip of the tea, drink of the beer, and eat of the sugar, and be welcome all summer long. They look like things of mind or fairies, and seem pleased or dull as the weather permits. In many clean cottages and genteel houses, they are allowed every liberty to creep, fly, or do as they like; and seldom or ever do wrong. In fact they are the small or dwarfish portion of our own family, and so many fairy familiars that we know and treat as one of ourselves.

My Childhood Home I See Again by Abraham Lincoln

 

My childhood home I see again,

And sadden with the view; 

And still, as memory crowds my brain,

There's pleasure in it too. 

O Memory! thou midway world

'Twixt earth and paradise, 

Where things decayed and loved ones lost

In dreamy shadows rise, 

And, freed from all that's earthly vile, 

Seem hallowed, pure, and bright, 

Like scenes in some enchanted isle 

All bathed in liquid light. 

As dusky mountains please the eye 

When twilight chases day; 

As bugle-notes that, passing by, 

In distance die away; 

As leaving some grand waterfall, 

We, lingering, list its roar-- 

So memory will hallow all 

We've known, but know no more. 

Near twenty years have passed away 

Since here I bid farewell 

To woods and fields, and scenes of play, 

And playmates loved so well. 

Where many were, but few remain 

Of old familiar things; 

But seeing them, to mind again 

The lost and absent brings. 

The friends I left that parting day, 

How changed, as time has sped! 

Young childhood grown, strong manhood gray, 

And half of all are dead. 

I hear the loved survivors tell 

How nought from death could save, 

Till every sound appears a knell, 

And every spot a grave. 

I range the fields with pensive tread, 

And pace the hollow rooms, 

And feel (companion of the dead) 

I'm living in the tombs.

Wanting is -- What? by Robert Browning

Wanting is -- what?                 Summer redundant,                 Blueness abundant,                  -- Where is the blot? Beamy the world, yet a blank all the same, -- Framework which waits for a picture to frame: What of the leafage, what of the flower? Roses embowering with naught they embower! Come then, complete incompletion, O comer, Pant thro' the blueness, perfect the summer!                 Breathe but one breath                 Rose-beauty above,                 And all that was death                 Grows life, grows love,                      Grows love!

Weave in, My Hardy Life, by Walt Whitman

Weave in, weave in, my hardy life, Weave yet a soldier strong and full for great campaigns to come, Weave in red blood, weave sinews in like ropes,       the senses, sight weave in, Weave lasting sure, weave day and night the weft, the warp,       incessant weave, tire not, (We know not what the use O life, nor know the aim, the end,       nor really aught we know, But know the work, the need goes on and shall go on, the death-       envelop’d march of peace as well as war goes on,) For great campaigns of peace the same the wiry threads to weave, We know not why or what, yet weave, forever weave.

The Outlet (162), by Emily Dickinson

My river runs to thee: Blue sea, wilt welcome me? My river waits reply. Oh sea, look graciously! I’ll fetch thee brooks From spotted nooks,— Say, sea, Take me!

Love, by William Carlos Williams

Love is twain, it is not single, Gold and silver mixed to one, Passion ‘tis and pain which mingle Glist’ring then for aye undone. Pain it is not; wondering pity Dies or e’er the pang is fled; Passion ‘tis not, foul and gritty, Born one instant, instant dead. Love is twain, it is not single, Gold and silver mixed to one, Passion ‘tis and pain which mingle Glist’ring then for aye undone.