1. Mary Wroth
“Sonnet 1”
When night’s blacke Mantle could
most darknesse prove,
And sleepe, death’s image, did my
senses hire
From knowledge of myselfe, than thoughts did
move
Swifter then those most swiftnesse neede
require.
In sleepe, a chariot drawne by winged
desire
I saw, where sate bright Venus, Queene of
Love,
And at her feete, her son, still adding fire
To burning hearts, which she did hold above.
But
one heart flaming more than all the rest,
The Goddesse held,
and put it to my breast.
“Dear Sonne now shut,” said she,
“thus must we winne.”
He her obeyed, and martyred my poore
heart.
I, waking, hoped as dreames it would
depart:
Yet since, O me, a lover have I beene.
“Sonnet 40”
False hope, which feeds but to
destroy, and spill
What it first breeds, unnatural to the
birth
Of thine own womb; conceiving but to kill,
And plenty gives to make the greater dearth,
So
tyrants do who falsely ruling earth
Outwardly grace them,
and with profits fill;
Advance those who appointed are to
death
To make their greater fall to please their
will.
Thus shadow they their wicked vile intent,
Coloring evil with a show of good,
While in fair
shows their malice so is spent;
Hope kills the heart, and
tyrants shed the blood.
For hope deluding brings us to the
pride
Of our desires the farther down to slide.
2. John Donne
“The Flea”
MARK but this flea, and mark in
this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee,
And
in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
5 Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A
sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead
Yet this enjoys
before it woo,
And pamper’d swells with one blood made of
two;
And this, alas! is more than we would
do.
10 O stay, three lives in one flea
spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we’re met,
15 And cloister’d in these living walls of
jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.
Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
20 Purpled thy nail in blood of
innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck’d from thee?
Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou
Find’st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
25 ’Tis true; then learn how false fears
be;
Just so much honour, when thou yield’st to me,
Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.
“Holy Sonnet XIV”
Batter my heart,
three-person’d God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe,
shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand,
o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn,
and make me new.
5 I, like an
usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O,
to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should
defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or
untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved
fain,
10 But am betroth’d unto your
enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot
again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
3. John Milton
“Sonnet: O Nightingale!”
O Nightingale, that
on yon bloomy Spray
Warbl’st at eve, when all the Woods are
still,
Thou with fresh hope the Lover’s heart dost
fill,
While the jolly hours lead on propitious
May,
Thy liquid notes that close the eye of Day,
First heard before the shallow Cuckoo’s bill
Portend success in love; O if Jove’s will
Have linkt that
amorous power to thy soft lay,
Now timely sing, ere the rude
Bird of Hate
Foretell my hopeless doom, in some Grove
nigh:
As thou from year to year hast sung too late
For my relief; yet hadst no reason why,
Whether
the Muse, or Love call thee his mate,
Both them I serve, and
of their train am I.
“Sonnet: When I consider …”
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
hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more
bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide,
Doth God
exact day-labour, light denied?
I fondly ask. But patience,
to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not
need
Either man’s work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o’er
land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand
and wait.
4. John Keats
“To Autumn”
1.Season of
mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the
maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and
bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves
run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To
swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet
kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers
for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never
cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy
cells.
2.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
3.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
“O Solitude!”
O Solitude! if I must with thee
dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep—
Nature’s observatory—whence the dell,
Its flowery slopes,
its river’s crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy
vigils keep
’Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s
swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove
bell.
But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with
thee,
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refin’d,
Is my
soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest
bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits
flee.
5. Sir Philip Sidney
“Astrophil and Stella: Sonnet I”
Loving in
truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That she, dear
she, might take some pleasure of my pain,
Pleasure might
cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might
pity win, and pity grace obtain,
I sought fit words to paint
the blackest face of woe;
Studying inventions fine her wits
to entertain,
Oft turning others’ leaves to see if thence
would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburn’d
brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting invention’s
stay;
Invention, Nature’s child, fled step-dame Study’s
blows,
And others’ feet still seem’d but strangers in my
way.
Thus great with child to speak and helpless in my
throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for
spite,
“Fool,” said my Muse to me, “look in thy heart, and
write.”
6. Terrance Hayes
“American Sonnet for Wanda C.”
Who I know
knows why all those lush-boned worn-out girls are
Whooping
at where the moon should be, an eyelid clamped
On its
lightness. Nobody sees her without the hoops firing in her
Ears because nobody sees. Tattooed across her chest she claims
Is bring me to where my blood runs
and I want that to be here
Where I am her son, pent in
blackness and turning the night’s calm
Loose and letting the
same blood fire through me. In her bomb hair:
Shells full of
thunder; in her mouth: the fingers of some calamity,
Somebody foolish enough to love her foolishly. Those who could hear
No music weren’t listening—and when I say it, it’s like
claiming
She’s an elegy. It rhymes, because of her, with
effigy. Because of her,
If there is no smoke, there is no
party. I think of you, Miss Calamity,
Every Sunday. I think
of you on Monday. I think of you hurling hurt
Where the moon
should be and stomping into our darkness calmly.
7. Andrew Marvell
“The Garden”
How vainly men themselves
amaze
To win the palm, the oak, or bays;
And their uncessant labors see
Crowned from some single
herb or tree,
Whose short and narrow-vergèd shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid;
While all the
flowers and trees do close
To weave the garlands of
repose.
Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence, thy sister dear!
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men:
Your sacred plants, if here below,
Only among the plants will grow;
Society is all but rude,
To this delicious solitude.
No white nor red was ever seen
So amorous as this lovely green;
Fond lovers, cruel as their flame,
Cut in these trees their mistress’ name.
Little, alas, they know or heed,
How far these beauties hers exceed!
Fair trees! wheresoe’er your barks I wound
No name shall but your own be found.
When we have run our passion’s heat,
Love hither makes his best retreat:
The gods who mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race.
Apollo hunted Daphne so,
Only that she might laurel grow,
And Pan did after Syrinx speed,
Not as a nymph, but for a reed.
What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons as I pass,
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness:
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade.
Here at the fountain’s sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree’s mossy root,
Casting the body’s vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide:
There like a bird it sits and sings,
Then whets and combs its silver wings;
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
Such was that happy garden-state,
While man there walked without a mate:
After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet!
But ’twas beyond a mortal’s share
To wander solitary there:
Two paradises ’twere in one
To live in Paradise alone.
How well the skillful gard’ner drew
Of flowers and herbs this dial new;
Where from above the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run;
And, as it works, th’ industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers!
8. Adrienne Rich
“Diving Into the Wreck”
First having read the
book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd
flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I
am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded
schooner
but here alone.
There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.
I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.
First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.
And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.
I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed
the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.
This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he
whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass
We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.
9. Georgia Douglas Johnson
“The Measure”
Fierce is the conflict—the
battle of eyes,
Sure and unerring, the wordless
replies,
Challenges flash from their ambushing
caves—
Men, by their glances, are masters or
slaves.
“Common Dust”
And who shall separate the
dust
What later we shall be:
Whose keen
discerning eye will scan
And solve the mystery?
The high, the low, the rich, the poor,
The black, the white, the red,
And all the chromatique between,
Of whom shall it be said:
Here lies the dust of Africa;
Here are the sons of Rome;
Here lies the one unlabelled,
The world at large his home!
Can one then separate the dust?
Will mankind lie apart,
When life has settled back again
The same as from the start?
10. John Prine
“Lake Marie”
We were standing
Standing by peaceful waters
Standing by peaceful
waters
Whoa, wah, oh wha, oh
Whoa, wah,
oh wha, oh
Many years ago along the Illinois-Wisconsin border
There was this Indian tribe
They found two babies in the woods
White babies
One of them was named Elizabeth
She was the fairer of the two
While the smaller and more fragile one was named Marie
Having never seen white girls before
And living on the two lakes known as the Twin Lakes
They named the larger and more beautiful lake, Lake Elizabeth
And thus the smaller lake that was hidden from the highway
Became known forever as Lake Marie
Many years later I found myself talking to this girl
Who was standing there with her back turned to Lake Marie
The wind was blowing especially through her hair
There was four Italian sausages cooking on the outdoor grill
And man, they was sssssssizzlin’
Many years later we found ourselves in Canada
Trying to save our marriage and perhaps catch a few fish
Whatever seemed easier, that night she fell asleep in my arms
Humming the tune to, “Louie Louie”
Aah baby, we gotta go now
The dogs were barking as the cars were parking
The loan sharks were sharking, the narcs were narcing
Practically everyone was there
In the parking lot by the forest preserve
The police had found two bodies in the woods
Nay, naked bodies
Their faces had been horribly disfigured by some sharp object
Saw it on the news, on the TV news, in a black and white video
You know what blood looks like in a black and white video?
Shadows, shadows, that’s exactly what it looks like
All the love we shared between her and me was slammed
Slammed up against the banks of Old Lake Marie, Marie
We were standing
Standing by peaceful waters
Standing by peaceful waters
Whoa, wah, oh wha, oh
Whoa, wah, oh wha, oh