Still to be neat, still to be dressed,As you were going to a feast;Still be powdered, still perfumed;Lady, it is to be presumed,Though art’s hid causes are not found,All is not sweet, all is not sound.Give me a look, give me a faceThat makes simplicity a grace;Robes loosely flowing, hair as free;Such sweet neglect more …
Still to Be Neat by Ben Jonson’s (Analysis & Summary) Read More »
‘When I consider how my light is spent,Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,And that one talent which is death to hideLodged with me useless, though my soul more bentTo serve therewith my Maker, and presentMy true account, lest he returning chide,“Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?”I fondly ask. But Patience, to …
On His Blindness By John Milton (Summary & Analysis) Read More »
John Milton, who towers over all his contemporaries, was born in London in a family with strict puritan leanings. His father was a man of culture and a classical scholar. He had him carefully schooled and tutored. Thomas Young was his first instructor. In 1623 he was sent to St. Paul’s school. After that, he …
I met a traveler from an antique landWho said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert …. Near them, on the sand,Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,Tell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,The hand that …
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley (Critical Analysis) Read More »
First stanza That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees – Those dying generations – at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unaging intellect. Second stanza An aged man …
That winter, the dead could not be buried.The ground was frozen, the gravediggers weak from hunger,The coffin wood was used for fuel. So they were covered with somethingAnd taken on a child’s sled to the cemeteryIn the sub-zero air. They lay on the soil,Some of them wrapped in dark clothBound with rope like the tree’s …
Leningrad Cemetery, Winter of 1941 by Sharon Olds Read More »
I’ve known rivers:I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than theFlow of human blood in human veins.My soul has grown deep like the rivers.I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above …
The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes – Analysis Read More »
Thus she had lain, sugarcane sweetdeserts her hair, golden her feetmountains her breasts, two Niles her tears.Thus she has lain, Black through the years.Over the white seas, rime white and coldbrigands ungentle, icicle boldtook her young daughterssold her strong sonschurched her with Jesusbled her with guns.Thus she has lainNow she is rising, remember her painremember …
Derek Walcott was born in St.Lucia in the West Indies in 1930. His father was English and his mother was African. He has written poems, plays and is a painter. The time will comeWhen, with elation,You will greet yourself arrivingAt your own door, in your own mirror,And each will smile at the other’s welcome, And …
(for a Caribbean island man in London who still wakes up to the sound of the sea)Morning and island man wakes upto the sound of blue surfin his headthe steady breaking and wombingwild seabirdsand fishermen pushing out to seathe sun surfacing defiantlyfrom the east; of his small emerald islandhe always comes back groggily groggilyComes back …
