poetry anthology quotes Flashcards
Exposure by Wilfred Owen
‘Shutters and doors, all closed: On us the doors are closed’
‘The merciless iced east wind that knife us…’
‘Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army’
‘All their eyes are ice’
Storm on the Island by Seamus Heaney
‘Exploding comfortably’
‘We are prepared’
‘We are bombarded by the empty air’
‘Spits like a tame cat turned savage’
Bayonet Charge by Ted Hughes
‘The patriotic tear that had brimmed in his eye / Sweating like molten iron’
‘A yellow hare that rolled like a flame’
‘Cold clockwork of the stars and the nations’
‘King, honour, human dignity, etcetera / Dropped like luxuries’
Poppies by Jane Weir
‘Poppies have already been placed / on individual war graves.’
‘A single dove flew from the pear tree’
‘Released a songbird from its cage’
‘I listened, hoping to hear / your playground voice catching on the wind.’
War Photographer Carol Ann Duffy
‘Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.’
‘As though this were a church and he a priest preparing to intone a Mass’
‘His editor will pick out five or six for Sunday’s supplement.’
‘Ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel’
Remains by Simon Armitage
‘On another occasion, we get sent out’
‘Probably armed, possibly not’
‘Dug in behind enemy lines’
‘His bloody life in my bloody hands’
Kamikaze by Beatrice Garland
‘A shaven head / full of powerful incantations’
‘One-way / journey into history’
‘Strung out like bunting / on a green-blue translucent sea’
‘ He must have wondered / which had been the better way to die.’
The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Tennyson
‘Theirs not to make reply / Theirs not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die’
‘Charging an army, while / All the world wonder’d’
‘Into the jaws of Death, / Into the mouth of Hell’
‘Then they rode back, but not / Not the six hundred.’
Ozymandias by Percy Shelley
‘Look upon my works ye mighty and despair. Nothing besides remains’
‘Sneer of cold command’ ‘King of Kings’
‘Half sunk a shattered visage lies’
‘Boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away’
London by William Blake
‘The mind-forg’d manacles’
‘How the chimney-sweepers cry every blackning Church appalls’
‘How the youthful harlot’s curse’
‘Hapless soldier sigh runs in blood down the palace walls’
Extract from The Prelude
‘Troubled pleasure’
‘Heaving through the water like a swan’
‘Upreared its head’ ‘strode after me’
‘Huge and mighty forms, that do not live like living men’
My Last Duchess
`my last Duchess painted on the wall Looking as if she were alive’
‘I gave commands then all smiles stopped’
‘Even had you skill in speech - which I have not’
‘Notice Neptune, though, taming a seahorse’
Tissue
‘the back of the Koran where a hand has written in the names and histories’
‘If buildings were paper, I might feel their drift’
‘a grand design / with living tissue’
‘Let the daylight break through capitals and monoliths’
The Emigree by Carol Rumens
‘I am branded by an impression of sunlight’
‘graceful slopes glow even clearer as time rolls its tanks’
‘It may now be a lie, banned by the state’
‘I have no passport’
Checking Out Me History by John Agard
‘Dem tell me what dem want to tell me’
‘beacon’ ‘fire-woman’ ‘healing star’
‘Blind me to me own identity’
‘de cow who jump over de moon’
