Sonnet 61 - Michael Drayton

A break-up poem from 1620.  *g*

Sonnet 61

Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part.
Nay, I have done: you get no more of me,
And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands forever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,
When faith is kneeling by his bed of death
And innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.

A Prayer in Spring - Robert Frost

A Prayer in Spring

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.

Mediocrity in Love Rejected - Thomas Carew

Mediocrity in Love Rejected

Give me more love, or more disdain;
   The torrid or the frozen zone
Bring equal ease unto my pain;
   The temperate affords me none:
Either extreme, of love or hate,
Is sweeter than a calm estate.

Give me a storm; if it bew love,
   Like Danae in that golden shower,
I swim in pleasure; if it prove
   Disdain, that torrent will devour
My vulture hopes; and he's possessed
Of heaven that's but from hell released.
   Then crown my joys, or cure my pain;
   Give me more love, or more disdain.

To an Athlete Dying Young - A. E. Housman

To an Athlete Dying Young

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields were glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

Annunciation - John Donne

A splendid poem to celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation! 

Annunciation

Salvation to all that will is nigh;
That All, which always is all everywhere,
Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,
Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,
Lo, faithful virgin, yields Himself to lie
In prison, in thy womb; and though He there
Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet He will wear,
Taken from thence, flesh, which death's force may try.
Ere by the spheres time was created, thou
Wast in His mind, who is thy Son and Brother;
Whom thou conceiv’st, conceived; yea thou art now
Thy Maker's maker, and thy Father's mother;
Thou hast light in dark, and shut’st in little room,
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb.

Sonnet 47 - Sir Philip Sidney

Another charming, dramatic love sonnet by Sidney.  His cleverness and excellence make even his 'courtly' subject matter -- which he certainly knew was conventional and a bit corny -- entertaining and even effective.  A vocab note: sprite = spirit.  And when he talks about "black beams", he's talking about Stella's glance -- she has black eyes.

Sonnet 47

What, have I thus betrayed my liberty?
Can those black beams such burning marks engrave
In my free side? or am I born a slave,
Whose neck becomes such yoke of tyranny?
Or want I sense to feel my misery?
Or sprite, disdain of such disdain to have?
Who for long faith, though daily help I crave,
May get no alms but scorn of beggary.
Virtue, awake! Beauty but beauty is;
I may, I must, I can, I will, I do
Leave following that which it is gain to miss.
Let her go.  Soft, but here she comes.  Go to,
Unkind, I love you not! O me, that eye
Doth make my heart give to my tongue the lie!

God's Grandeur - Gerard Manley Hopkins

I love this.  I have been underexposed to Hopkins, and I definitely remember reading him in high school (including this one) and finding him entirely incomprehensible.  What a delight to revisit this one and realize how incredibly awesome it is!!

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
        It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
        It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
        And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
        And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
        There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
        Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
        World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Daffodils - William Wordsworth

I was going to post this one yesterday for the first day of spring, but, um....I forgot.  Oops.

Daffodils

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 leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but 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.

Night is my Sister - Edna St. Vincent Millay

This one is really dark, but the imagery is amazing.

"Night is my sister, and how deep in love"

Night is my sister, and how deep in love,
How drowned in love and weedily washed ashore,
There to be fretted by the drag and shove
At the tide's edge, I lie -- these things and more:
Whose arm alone between me and the sand,
Whose voice alone, whose pitiful breath brought near,
Could thaw these nostrils and unlock this hand,
She could advise you, should you care to hear.
Small chance, however, in a storm so black,
A man will leave his friendly fire and snug
For a drowned woman's sake, and bring her back
To drip and scatter shells upon the rug.
No one but Night, with tears on her dark face,
Watches beside me in this windy place.

To One in Paradise - Edgar Allan Poe

To One in Paradise

  Thou wast that all to me, love,
    For which my soul did pine--
  A green isle in the sea, love,
    A fountain and a shrine,
  All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
  And all the flowers were mine.

  Ah, dream too bright to last!
    Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
  But to be overcast!
    A voice from out the Future cries,
  "On! on!"--but o'er the Past
    (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
  Mute, motionless, aghast!

  For, alas! alas! with me
    The light of Life is o'er!
  “No more--no more--no more--”
  (Such language holds the solemn sea
    To the sands upon the shore)
  Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
    Or the stricken eagle soar!

  And all my days are trances,
    And all my nightly dreams
  Are where thy dark eye glances,
    And where thy footstep gleams--
  In what ethereal dances,
    By what eternal streams!

  Alas! for that accursed time
    They bore thee o'er the billow,
  From love to titled age and crime,
    And an unholy pillow!
  From me, and from our misty clime,
    Where weeps the silver willow!