1.
Ding, Dong Bell SAE
RP
http://trmg.designwest.com/TRMG5.html#122d
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/motherg3.html
Mother Goose
http://www.librarysupport.net/mothergoosesociety/who.html
Ding,
dong bell, Pussy's in the well!
Who put her in? Little Tommy Lin.
Who
pulled her out? Little Tommy Stout.
What a naughty boy was that
To try
to drown poor pussy-cat
Who never did him any harm,
But killed the mice
in his father's barn!
2.
Ladybug SAE
RP
translated by Isaac Taylor Headland
Ladybug,
ladybug, fly away, do,
Fly to the mountain, and feed upon dew,
Feed upon
dew and sleep on a rug,
And then run away like a good little bug.
蟲蟲蟲蟲飛，飛到南山喝露水
露水喝飽了，回頭就跑了。
3.
On the Beach at Fontana SAE
RP
http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/pomes.html
James Joyce Irish (1882-1941)
http://www.local.ie/content/751.shtml
Wind
whines and whines the shingle,
The crazy pierstakes groan;
A senile sea
numbers each single
Slimesilvered stone.
From
whining wind and colder
Grey sea I wrap him warm
And touch his trembling
fineboned shoulder
And boyish arm.
Around
us fear, descending
Darkness of fear above
And in my heart how deep unending
Ache of love!
4.
Learning SAE
RP
http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?prmID=1658
Judith Viorst American (1931- )
http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=62
I'm
learning to say thank you.
And I'm learning to say please.
And I'm learning
to use Kleenex,
Not my sweater, when I sneeze.
And I'm learning not to
dribble.
And I'm learning not to slurp.
And I'm learning (though it sometimes
really hurts me)
Not to burp.
And I'm learning to chew softer
When
I eat corn on the cob.
And I'm learning that it's much
Much easier to
be a slob.
5.
Sheep in Fog SAE
RP
http://www.plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=1429
http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/sheep.html
Sylvia Plath American (1932-1963)
http://www.stanford.edu/~krisl/bio.html
The
hills step off into whiteness.
People or stars
Regard me sadly, I disappoint
them.
The train
leaves a line of breath.
O slow
Horse the color of rust,
Hooves,
dolorous bells –
All morning the
Morning has been blackening,
A
flower left out.
My bones hold a stillness, the far
Fields melt my heart.
They
threaten
To let me through to a heaven
Starless and fatherless, a dark
water.
6.
To a Friend SAE
RP
http://www.potw.org/archive/potw217.html
Amy Lowell American (1874-1925)
http://www.harvardmagazine.com/issues/ma97/vita.html
I
ask but one thing of you, only one,
That always you will be my
dream of you;
That never shall I wake to find untrue
All
this I have believed and rested on,
Forever vanished, like a vision gone
Out into the night. Alas, how few
There are
who strike in us a chord we knew
Existed, but so seldom heard its tone
We tremble at the half-forgotten sound.
The world is full of
rude awakenings
And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground,
Yet still our human longing vainly clings
To a belief in
beauty through all wrongs.
O stay your hand, and leave my heart
its songs!
7.
Lullaby SAE
RP
http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?prmID=1208
Eve Merriam American (1916-1992)
http://www.newtrix.com/poems/poetbio_m-p.htm#Merriam
Purple,
Purple,
Twilight
Sky light.
Purple
as a king's cape
Purple as a grape.
Purple
for the evening
When daylight is leaving.
Soft
and purry,
Gentle and furry,
Velvet evening-time.
Purple,
Purple.
Sky light
Goodbye light.
Dusky
Musky
Into night.
8.
Sonnet LXXVI SAE
RP
http://www.bartleby.com/70/50076.html
William Shakespeare English (1564-1616)
http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/
http://www.stratford.co.uk/hislife/home.html
Join the Shakespeare Sonnet-a-Day list at
http://www.online-literature.com/
Why is
my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds
strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention
in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their
birth and where they did proceed?
O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words
new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun
is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.
9.
The Cutting Edge SAE
RP
Frances FitzGerald American
http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?userid=5BZEVPP7XA&mscssid=&author_last=Fitzgerald&author_first=Frances&match=exact&options=and
Americans ignore history, for to them everything
has
always seemed new under the sun. The national myth
is that of creativity
and progress, of a steady climbing
upward into power and prosperity, both
for the individual
and for the country as a whole. Americans see history
as a straight line and themselves standing at the cutting
edge of it as representatives
for all mankind.
10.
Gazing at the Sacred Peak SAE
RP
Du Fu (Tu Fu) Chinese (712-770)
http://search.biography.com/print_record.pl?id=8410
http://www.thedrunkenboat.com/transpge3.htm
Link to Chinese
original
For
all this, what is the mountain god like?
An unending green of lands north
and south:
From ethereal beauty Creation distills
There, yin and yang
split dusk and dawn.
Swelling
clouds sweep by. Returning birds
Ruin my eyes vanishing. One day soon,
At the summit, the other mountains will be
Small enough to hold, all in a
single glance.
11.
Pine Tree Tops SAE
RP
http://www.wenaus.com/poetry/gs-pinetops.html
Gary Snyder American (1930- )
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/snyder/snyder.htm
in
the blue night
frost haze, the sky glows
with the moon
pine tree tops
bend snow-blue, fade
into sky, frost, starlight.
the creak of boots.
rabbit tracks, deer tracks,
what do we know.
12.
Since There's No Help, Come Let Us Kiss and Part SAE
RP
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/drayton8.html
Michael Drayton English (1563-1631)
http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/draybio.htm
http://www.netpoets.com/classic/024000.htm
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 mightst him yet recover.
13.
Three Days SAE
RP
James R. Gilmore American (1822-1903)
http://www.potw.org/archive/potw225.html
So
much to do: so little done!
Ah! yesternight I saw the sun
Sink beamless
down the vaulted gray, –
The ghastly ghost of YESTERDAY.
So
little done: so much to do!
Each morning breaks on conflicts new;
But
eager, brave, I'll join the fray,
And fight the battle of TO-DAY.
So
much to do: so little done!
But when it's o'er, – the victory won, –
Oh! then, my soul, this strife and sorrow
Will end in that great, glad TO-MORROW.
14. Plea
for a Captive SAE
RP
William Stanley Merwin American (1927 - )
http://www.barclayagency.com/merwin.html
Woman
with the caught fox
By the scruff, you can drop your hopes:
It will not
tame though you prove kind,
Though you entice it with fat ducks
Patiently
to your fingertips
And in dulcet love enclose it
Do not suppose it will
turn friend,
Dog your heels, sleep at your feet,
Be happy in the house,
No,
It
will only trot to and fro,
To and fro, with vacant eye,
Neither will its
pelt improve
Nor its disposition, twisting
The raw song of its debasement
Through the long nights, and in your love,
In your delicate meats tasting
Nothing but its own decay
(As at first hand I have learned)
Oh
Kill it at once or let it go.
15.
Quote from: Franz Kafka Jewish/Bohemian (1883-1924) SAE
RP
http://www.levity.com/corduroy/kafka.htm
http://www.pitt.edu/~kafka/links.html
You
do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at
your table and listen.
Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not
even wait, be quiet still and solitary.
The world will freely offer
itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice,
it will roll in
ecstasy at your feet.
Quote
from: Henry Van Dyke American (1852-1933)
http://www.slider.com/enc/54000/van_Dyke_Henry.htm
Use
what talents you possess; the woods would be
very silent if no birds sang
except those that sang best.
16.
In Honor of David Anderson Brooks, My Father SAE
RP
July 30, 1883-November 21, 1959
Gwendolyn Brooks American
(1917-2000)
http://voices.cla.umn.edu/authors/GwendolynBrooks.html
A dryness is upon the house
My father loved and tended.
Beyond
his firm and sculptured door
His light and lease have ended.
He
walks the valleys, now-replies
To sun and wind forever.
No more the
cramping chamber's chill,
No more the hindering fever.
Now
out upon the wide clean air
My father's soul revives,
All innocent of
self-interest
And the fear that strikes and strives.
He
who was Goodness, Gentleness,
And Dignity is free,
Translates to public
Love
Old private charity.
17.
Was There a Time SAE
RP
http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/t/thomas/time.html
Dylan Thomas English (1914-1953)
http://www.popsubculture.com/pop/bio_project/dylan_thomas.html
Was
there a time when dancers with their fiddles
In children's circuses could
stay their troubles?
There was a time they could cry over books,
But time
has set its maggot on their track.
Under the arc of the sky they are unsafe.
What's never known is safest in this life.
Under the skysigns they who have
no arms
Have cleanest hands, and, as the heartless ghost
Alone's unhurt,
so the blind man sees best.
18.
When Your Face Dawned... SAE
RP
http://home.freeuk.com/gjepps/Poems/when_your_face_dawned.htm
Yevgeny Yevtushenko Russian (1933- )
http://www.boppin.com/poets/yevtushenko.htm
When
your face dawned
over my crumpled life,
at first I understood
only
the poverty of all I have.
Then
its particular light
was shed on woods, rivers, and seas
and initiated
into the world of colors
the uninitiated me.
I
am so frightened, I am so frightened
of the end of the unexpected sunrise,
of the end of revelations, tears, excitement,
but I don't fight with this
fear.
I understand
– this fear
is what love is. I cherish it,
though I know not how
to cherish,
a careless guard of his own love.
This
fear has encircled me.
These moments – I know –are brief,
and
for me these colors will vanish
when your face sets.
19.
Still Here SAE
RP
http://www.novia.net/~aaronk/ls/hughes.html
Langston Hughes American (1902-1967)
http://www.redhotjazz.com/hughes.html
I
been scared and battered.
My hopes the wind done scattered.
Snow
has friz me,
Sun has baked me,
Looks
like between 'em they done
Tried to make me
Stop
laughin', stop lovin', stop livin' –
But I don't care!
I'm still here!
20.
It's This Way SAE
RP
http://lennon.pub.csufresno.edu/~kds31/hik5.html
Nazim Hikmet Turkish (1902-1963)
http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~sibel/poetry/nazim_hikmet.html
I
stand in the advancing light,
my hands hungry, the world beautiful.
My
eyes can't get enough of the trees –
they're so hopeful, so green.
A
sunny road runs through the mulberries,
I'm at the window of the prison infirmary.
I
can't smell the medicines –
carnations must be blooming nearby.
It's
this way:
being captured is beside the point,
the point is not to surrender.
21.
The Minimal SAE
RP
http://www.wmchs.org/users/nehemiah/classes/cool_stuff/cool.html
Theodore Roethke American (1908-1963)
http://thebrothers.com/eraaz/trbio2.html
I
study the lives on a leaf: the little
Sleepers, numb nudgers in cold dimensions,
Beetles in caves, newts, stone-deaf fishes,
Lice tethered to long limp subterranean
weeds,
Squirmers in bogs,
And bacterial creepers
Wriggling through
wounds
Like elvers in ponds,
Their wan mouths kissing the warm sutures,
Cleaning and caressing,
Creeping and healing.
22.
Stay SAE
http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR5-3/delawter.html
Ingeborg Bachmann Austrian (1926-1973)
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~gisela/bachmann.htm
translated from the German by Peter Filkins
Now
the journey is ending,
the wind is losing heart.
Into your hands it's
falling,
a rickety house of cards.
The
cards are backed with pictures
displaying all the world.
You've stacked
up all the images
and shuffled them with words.
And
how profound the playing
that once again begins!
Stay, the card you're
drawing
is the only world you'll win.
Readers:
Karen Steffen Chung (US English)
Colin R. Whiteley (RP)