PoetryToneProjects

//W.B. Yeats//
 * O Do Not Love Too Long**

SWEETHEART, do not love too long: I loved long and long, And grew to be out of fashion Like an old song. All through the years of our youth Neither could have known Their own thought from the other's, We were so much at one. But O, in a minute she changed - O do not love too long, Or you will grow out of fashion Like an old song.


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//W.B. Yeats// When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
 * When You Are Old**


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//W.B. Yeats//
 * The Second Coming**

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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//Emily Dickinson//
 * I’m nobody! Who are you?**

I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? ‍‍Then there's a pair of us -don't tell‍‍! They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody! ‍‍How public, like a frog To tell your name the livelong day To an admiring bog!‍‍


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//Emily Dickinson//
 * Hope is the thing with feathers**

Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.

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//AE 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 where 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.

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//AE Housman// WHEN I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, ‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away;
 * When I Was One and Twenty**

Give pearls away and rubies But keep your fancy free.’ But I was one-and-twenty, No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty I heard him say again, ‘The heart out of the bosom Was never given in vain; ’Tis paid with sighs a plenty And sold for endless rue.’ And I am two-and-twenty, And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

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//William Wordsworth// I travelled among unknown men In lands beyond the sea; Nor, England! did I know till then What love I bore to thee.
 * I Traveled Among Unknown Men**

'Tis past, that melancholy dream! Nor will I quit thy shore A second time; for still I seem To love thee more and more.

Among thy mountains did I feel The joy of my desire; And she I cherished turned her wheel Beside an English fire.

Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed, The bowers where Lucy played; And thine too is the last green field That Lucy's eyes surveyed.

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//William Blake// Tiger! Tiger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
 * The Tiger**

In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tiger! Tiger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?


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//Robert Frost// Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.
 * Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening**

My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍harness bells a shake‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

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//Alfred Lord Tennyson// Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.
 * Break, Break, Break**

O well for the fisherman's boy, That he shouts with his sister at play! O well for the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.

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//Paul Dunbar//
 * Sympathy**

I know what the caged bird feels, alas! When the sun is bright on the upland slopes; When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass, And the river flows like a stream of glass; When the first bird sings and the first bud opes, And the faint perfume from its chalice steals— I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing Till its blood is red on the cruel bars; For he must fly back to his perch and cling When he fain would be on the bough a-swing; And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars And they pulse again with a keener sting— I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,— When he beats his bars and he would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core, But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings— I know why the caged bird sings!


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//Christina Rossetti//
 * A Birthday**

My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a water'd shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down; Hang it with vair and purple dyes; Carve it in doves and pomegranates, And peacocks with a hundred eyes; Work it in gold and silver grapes, In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys; Because the birthday of my life Is come, my love is come to me.

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//Robert Louis Stevenson//
 * My Shadow**

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see. He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; ‍‍‍And I see him‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ jump ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍before me, when I jump into my bed.‍‍‍

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow— Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow; For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball, And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.

He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play, And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way. ‍‍‍He stays so close beside me, he's a coward you can see; ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me‍‍‍</range id="436510790_1">‍‍‍‍‍‍‍!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up, I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup; But my lazy little shadow, like an errant sleepy-head, <range type="comment" id="436483370_3">‍‍‍‍‍‍‍Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.</range id="436483370_3">‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

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