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Allegiances
© William Stafford
It is time for all the heroes to go home
if they have any, time for all of us common ones
to locate ourselves by the real things
we live by.
The Voices
© John Greenleaf Whittier
"WHY urge the long, unequal fight,
Since Truth has fallen in the street,
Or lift anew the trampled light,
Quenched by the heedless million's feet?
Stanzas In Meditation: Stanza I
© Gertrude Stein
I caught a bird which made a ball
And they thought better of it.
The Yukon
© Joaquin Miller
THE moon resumed all heaven now,
She shepherded the stars below
Along her wide, white steeps of snow,
Nor stooped nor rested, where or how.
From The Woolworth Tower
© Sara Teasdale
Vivid with love, eager for greater beauty
Out of the night we come
Into the corridor, brilliant and warm.
A metal door slides open,
December 14
© David Lehman
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere,
The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
That never touch with inarticulate pang
Book Sixth [Cambridge and the Alps]
© William Wordsworth
A passing word erewhile did lightly touch
On wanderings of my own, that now embraced
With livelier hope a region wider far.
Elegy I
© Henry James Pye
O Happiness! thou wish of every mind,
Whose form, more subtle than the fleeting air,
Sestina
© David Lehman
At the restaurant, people were talking about Philip Levine's
latest: the Pulitzer. A toast was proposed by Anne Sexton.
No one saw the stranger, who said his name was Marvin Bell,
pour something into Donna's drink. "In the Walt Whitman
Shopping Center, there you feel free," said Ted Berrigan,
pulling on a Chesterfield. Everyone laughed, except T. S. Eliot.
A Little History
© David Lehman
Some people find out they are Jews.
They can't believe it.
Thy had always hated Jews.
As children they had roamed in gangs on winter nights in the old
Hermann And Dorothea - IV. Euterpe
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Mother," he said in confusion:--"You greatly surprise me!" and quickly
Wiped he away his tears, the noble and sensitive youngster.
"What! You are weeping, my son?" the startled mother continued
"That is indeed unlike you! I never before saw you crying!
Say, what has sadden'd your heart? What drives you to sit here all lonely
Under the shade of the pear-tree? What is it that makes you unhappy?"
You Gote-heard Gods
© Sir Philip Sidney
You Gote-heard Gods, that loue the grassie mountaines,
You Nimphes that haunt the springs in pleasant vallies,
You Satyrs ioyde with free and quiet forests,
Vouchsafe your silent eares to playning musique,
Which to my woes giues still an early morning;
And drawes the dolor on till wery euening.
The Cloud
© Sara Teasdale
I am a cloud in the heaven's height,
The stars are lit for my delight,
Tireless and changeful, swift and free,
I cast my shadow on hill and sea-
But why do the pines on the mountain's crest
Call to me always, "Rest, rest"?
Voices at the Window
© Sir Philip Sidney
Who is it that, this dark night,
Underneath my window plaineth?
It is one who from thy sight
Being, ah, exiled, disdaineth
Every other vulgar light.
The Cavalier's March To London
© Thomas Babbington Macaulay
To horse! to horse! brave Cavaliers!
To horse for Church and Crown!
Sonnet XXVIII: You That With Allegory's Curious Frame
© Sir Philip Sidney
You that with allegory's curious frame,
Of others' children changelings use to make,
With me those pains for God's sake do not take:
I list not dig so deep for brazen fame.
Song
© Emily Jane Brontë
The linnet in the rocky dells,
The moor-lark in the air,
The bee among the heather bells
That hide my lady fair:
Song from Arcadia
© Sir Philip Sidney
My true love hath my heart, and I have his,
By Just Exchange, one for the other given.
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,
There never was a better bargain driven.
At Euroma
© Henry Kendall
They built his mound of the rough, red ground,
By the dip of a desert dell,
Astrophel And Stella-Eleventh Song
© Sir Philip Sidney
"Who is it that this dark night
Underneath my window plaineth?"
'It is one who from thy sight
Being, ah! exiled, disdaineth
Every other vulgar light.'
