Passages Flashcards
I have sene theil gentill tame and meke
That nowe are wyld and do not remembre
that sometyme they put theimself in daunger
To take bred at my hand; and nowe they raunge
Besely seking with a continuell chaunge.
They fle from me that sometyme did me seke, Sir Thomas Wyatt
Come live with mee, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That Vallies, groves, hills and fieldes,
Woods, or steepie mountaine yeeldes.
The Passionate Sheepheard to his Love, Christopher Marlowe
The flowers doe fade, and wanton fieldes,
To wayward winter reckoning yeeldes,
A honny tongue, a hart of gall,
Is fancies spring, but sorrowes fall.
The Nimph’s Reply to the Sheepheard, Sir Walter Ralegh
Who will in fairest booke of Nature know,
How Vertue may bedt lodg’d in beautie be,
Astrophil and Stella #71, Sir Philip Sidney
Shall I compare thee to a Summers day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough windes do shake the darling buds of Maie.
And Sommers lease hath all too short a date:
Sonnet 18, Shakespeare
My Mistres eyes are nothing like the Sunne,
Curral(coral) is far more red, then her lips red,
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun:
Sonnet 130, Shakespeare
Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where wee almost, yea more than maryed are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is
The Flea, John Donne
my vegetable love should grow
vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze.
To His Coy Mistress, Andrew Marvell
The muses are turned gossips; they have lost
the buskined step, and clear high-sounding phrase,
language of gods. come then, domestic Muse
in slipshod measure loosely prattling on
Washing Day, Barbauld
How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every black’ning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.
London, William Blake
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 - William Wordsworth
My heart aches, and drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and the Lethe-wards had sunk:
Ode to a Nightingale, John Keats
He tore out a reed, the great god Pan, From the deep cool bed of the river: The limpid water turbidly ran, And the broken lilies a-dying lay, And the dragon-fly had fled away, Ere he brought it out of the river.
A Musical Instrument, Browning
A heart - how shall I say? - too soon made glad,
too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
she looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
My Last Duchess, Robert Browning
I am a poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.
from Song of Myself, Walt Whitman
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
in the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer, Whitman
There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons–
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes–
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us–
we can find no scar,
but internal difference,
where the meanings, are–
258: There’s a certain slant of light, Emily Dickinson
because I could not stop for Death–
he kindly stopped for me–
the carriage held but just Ourselves–
And Immortality–
712: Because I could not stop for Death, Dickinson
Glory be to God for dappled things–
for skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
for rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings
Pied Beauty, Hopkins
Slowly, furtively, till my eyes
grew big with the awe of a dim surmise,
And the hair of my neck began to creep
At hearing the wilderness talk in sleep.
Shapes in the fir-gloom drifted near.
In the deep of my heart I heard my fear.
And I turned and fled, like a soul pursued,
From the white, inviolate solitude.
The Skater, Charles Roberts
A thin wet sky, that yellows at the rim,
And meets with sun-lost lip the marsh’s brim.
The pools low lying, dank with moss and mould,
Glint through their mildews like large cups of gold.
Among the wild rice in the still lagoon,
In monotone the lizard shrills his tune.
Marshlands, Johnson
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
Mending Wall, Robert Frost
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
In a Station of the Metro, Ezra Pound
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
The Red Wheelbarrow, Williams
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
This is Just to Say, Williams
A wild duck calls to her mate, and the ragged and passionate tones stagger and fall, and recover, and stagger and fall, on these stones-- are lost in the lapping of water on smooth, flat stones.
The Lonely Land, Smith
In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
but for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
as it had to on the white kegs disappearing into the green
Musee des Beaux Arts, Auden
sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings’ wax
unsignificantly
off the coast
there was
a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, Williams
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) “Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no
Inner Resources.” I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
14 from The Dream Songs, Berryman
and ax the casket open ha to see
just how he’s taking it, which he sought so hard
we’ll tear it apart
the mouldering grave clothes ha & then Henry
will heft the ax once more, his final card,
and fell it on the start
384 from The Dream Songs, Berryman
Out of kitchen table or chair As if a celestial burning took Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then --- Thus hallowing an interval Otherwise inconsequent
Black Rook in Rainy Weather, Plath
I have not held my breath so that I might hear the breathing of God, or tamed my heartbeat with an exercise, or starved for visions. Although I have watched him often I have not become the heron, leaving my body on the shore, and I have not become the luminous trout, leaving my body in the air.
I have Not Lingered in European Monasteries, Cohen
year curves to ending now and thous dost say me, wife I choose another love, and oh the delicate, delicate serpent of your mouth stings deep, and bitter iron cuts and shapes my death, I was so fool.
Thou Didst Say Me, Waddington
the uneaten meals and unslept sleep; there was retirement, and worst of all a green umbrella he can never take back.
Ten Years and More, Waddington
dear walt is it ever possible to escape metaphor or change a democracy whose foundation digs into the bones of her original people i would like to know walt if there is a place for dead poets where we can lie among leaves of grass then laugh at how little has changed
dear walt, Connie Fife
how can we help but keep hearing his voice,
the flip side of the sound track, still playing:
“Come on, boys, we got them
where we want them, drunk, running.
They’ll give us what we want, what we need.”
Even his disease was the idea of taking everything.
Those cells, burning, doubling, splitting out of their skins.
Dear John Wayne, Eldrich
so mek dem send one big word after me i ent serving no jail sentence i slashing suffix in self-defence i bashing future wit present tense and if necessary i making de Queen's English accessory/ to my offence
Listen Mr Oxford Don, John Agard
So it was Prospero's turn to put the kettle on and pour a pot for two. they talked of weather, inflation, immigration, poll tax, but never got around to the matter of Sycorax for that roots-woman was taboo and familiarity breeds familiars like black cats and spiders embodied out of thin air ...
How Aunti Nansi Reshuffled Prospero’s Books, Agard
in the meantime rose can play games with trolls and
witches. her prince will tolerate it as long as
she doesn’t cross him. as long as her game
doesn’t interfere with his
Sex and Politics in Fairyland, Wanda Coleman
if clothes make the girl, they make the boys cry out for a heart ringed in Valentine lace. I have hundreds, will drop one in your mail. But first you must take me out to dinner, as is done; for what’s paradise without protocol?
Flashpoint, Karen Solie
