from THE HOLY SONNETS, by John Donne

Batter My Heart, Three-Person'd God

1     Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
2     As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
3     That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
4     Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
5     I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,
6     Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;
7     Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
8     But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
9     Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
10   But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
11   Divorce me,'untie or break that knot again,
12   Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
13   Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
14   Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

from THE HOLY SONNETS, by John Donne

Death, be not proud

1     Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
2     Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
3     For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
4     Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
5     From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
6     Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
7     And soonest our best men with thee do go,
8     Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
9     Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
10   And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
11   And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
12   And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
13   One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
14   And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

from THE HOLY SONNETS, by John Donne

Since she whom I lov'd

1     Since she whom I lov'd hath paid her last debt
2     To nature, and to hers, and my good is dead,
3     And her soul early into heaven ravished,
4     Wholly in heavenly things my mind is set.
5     Here the admiring her my mind did whet
6     To seek thee, God; so streams do show the head;
7     But though I have found thee, and thou my thirst hast fed,
8     A holy thirsty dropsy melts me yet.
9     But why should I beg more love, whenas thou
10   Dost woo my soul, for hers off'ring all thine,
11   And dost not only fear lest I allow
12   My love to saints and angels, things divine,
13   But in thy tender jealousy dost doubt
14   Lest the world, flesh, yea devil put thee out.

Ernest Dowson, A LAST WORD

1 Let us go hence: the night is now at hand;
2 The day is overworn, the birds all flown;
3 And we have reaped the crops the gods have sown;
4 Despair and death; deep darkness o'er the land,
5 Broods like an owl; we cannot understand
6 Laughter or tears, for we have only known
7 Surpassing vanity: vain things alone
8 Have driven our perverse and aimless band.

9 Let us go hence, somewhither strange and cold,
10 To Hollow Lands where just men and unjust
11 Find end of labour, where's rest for the old,
12 Freedom to all from love and fear and lust.
13 Twine our torn hands! O pray the earth enfold
14 Our life-sick hearts and turn them into dust.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, GOD'S GRANDEUR

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

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

John Keats, TO SLEEP

1 O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
2 Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
3 Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,
4 Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
5 O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close
6 In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,
7 Or wait the "Amen," ere thy poppy throws
8 Around my bed its lulling charities.
9 Then save me, or the passed day will shine
10 Upon my pillow, breeding many woes,--
11 Save me from curious Conscience, that still lords
12 Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
13 Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
14 And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.

John Keats, WHEN I HAVE FEARS THAT I MAY CEASE TO BE

1 When I have fears that I may cease to be
2 Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
3 Before high-piled books, in charactery,
4 Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
5 When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
6 Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
7 And think that I may never live to trace
8 Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
9 And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
10 That I shall never look upon thee more,
11 Never have relish in the faery power
12 Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
13 Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
14 Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

John Keats, THE HUMAN SEASONS

1 Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
2 There are four seasons in the mind of man:
3 He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
4 Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
5 He has his Summer, when luxuriously
6 Spring's honied cud of youthful thought he loves
7 To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
8 Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
9 His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
10 He furleth close; contented so to look
11 On mists in idleness--to let fair things
12 Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
13 He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
14 Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

John Keats, BRIGHT STAR

1 Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
2 Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
3 And watching, with eternal lids apart,
4 Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
5 The moving waters at their priestlike task
6 Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
7 Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
8 Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
9 No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
10 Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
11 To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
12 Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
13 Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
14 And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

Emma Lazarus, THE NEW COLOSSUS

1 Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
2 With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
3 Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
4 A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
5 Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
6 Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
7 Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
8 The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
9 "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
10 With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
11 Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
12 The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
13 Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
14 I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Claude McKay, AMERICA

1 Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
2 And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
3 Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
4 I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
5 Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
6 Giving me strength erect against her hate.
7 Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
8 Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
9 I stand within her walls with not a shred
10 Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
11 Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
12 And see her might and granite wonders there,
13 Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
14 Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, FOUR SONNETS: III

3.1 Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!
3.2 Faithless am I save to love's self alone.
3.3 Were you not lovely I would leave you now:
3.4 After the feet of beauty fly my own.
3.5 Were you not still my hunger's rarest food,
3.6 And water ever to my wildest thirst,
3.7 I would desert you -- think not but I would! --
3.8 And seek another as I sought you first.
3.9 But you are mobile as the veering air,
3.10 And all your charms more changeful than the tide,
3.11 Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:
3.12 I have but to continue at your side.
3.13 So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,
3.14 I am most faithless when I most am true.

John Milton, WHEN I CONSIDER HOW MY LIGHT IS SPENT

When I consider how my light is spent
2 Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
3 And that one talent which is death to hide
4 Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent
5 To serve therewith my Maker, and present
6 My true account, lest he returning chide,
7 "Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
8 I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
9 That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need
10 Either man's work or his own gifts: who best
11 Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
12 Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
13 And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
14 They also serve who only stand and wait."

E. A. Robinson, REUBEN BRIGHT

1 Because he was a butcher and thereby
2 Did earn an honest living (and did right),
3 I would not have you think that Reuben Bright
4 Was any more a brute than you or I;
5 For when they told him that his wife must die,
6 He stared at them, and shook with grief and fright,
7 And cried like a great baby half that night,
8 And made the women cry to see him cry.

9 And after she was dead, and he had paid
10 The singers and the sexton and the rest,
11 He packed a lot of things that she had made
12 Most mournfully away in an old chest
13 Of hers, and put some chopped-up cedar boughs
14 In with them, and tore down the slaughter-house.

Christina Rossetti, MONNA INNOMINATA : A SONNET OF SONNETS

1.1 Come back to me, who wait and watch for you:--
1.2 Or come not yet, for it is over then,
1.3 And long it is before you come again,
1.4 So far between my pleasures are and few.
1.5 While, when you come not, what I do I do
1.6 Thinking "Now when he comes," my sweetest when:"
1.7 For one man is my world of all the men
1.8 This wide world holds; O love, my world is you.
1.9 Howbeit, to meet you grows almost a pang
1.10 Because the pang of parting comes so soon;
1.11 My hope hangs waning, waxing, like a moon
1.12 Between the heavenly days on which we meet:
1.13 Ah me, but where are now the songs I sang
1.14 When life was sweet because you call'd them sweet?

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
THE HOUSE OF LIFE: 97. A SUPERSCRIPTION

1 Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;
2 I am also call'd No-more, Too-late, Farewell;
3 Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell
4 Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between;
5 Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen
6 Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell
7 Is now a shaken shadow intolerable,
8 Of ultimate things unutter'd the frail screen.

9 Mark me, how still I am! But should there dart
10 One moment through thy soul the soft surprise
11 Of that wing'd Peace which lulls the breath of sighs,--
12 Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart
13 Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart
14 Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes.

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 15

1 When I consider everything that grows
2 Holds in perfection but a little moment,
3 That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
4 Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;
5 When I perceive that men as plants increase,
6 Cheered and check'd even by the selfsame sky,
7 Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
8 And wear their brave state out of memory;
9 Then the conceit of this inconstant stay
10 Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
11 Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay
12 To change your day of youth to sullied night;
13 And all in war with Time for love of you,
14 As he takes from you, I engraft you new.


William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18

1 Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
2 Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
3 Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
4 And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
5 Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
6 And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
7 And every fair from fair sometime declines,
8 By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
9 But thy eternal summer shall not fade
10 Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
11 Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
12 When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
13 So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
14 So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29

1 When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
2 I all alone beweep my outcast state
3 And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
4 And look upon myself and curse my fate,
5 Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
6 Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
7 Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
8 With what I most enjoy contented least;
9 Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
10 Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
11 Like to the lark at break of day arising
12 From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
13 For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
14 That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

William Shakespeare, Sonnet LXIV

1 When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd
2 The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
3 When sometime lofty towers I see down-ras'd
4 And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
5 When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
6 Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
7 And the firm soil win of the wat'ry main,
8 Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
9 When I have seen such interchange of state,
10 Or state itself confounded to decay;
11 Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
12 That Time will come and take my love away.
13 This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
14 But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

William Shakespeare, SONNET 73

1 That time of year thou mayst in me behold
2 When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
3 Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
4 Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
5 In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
6 As after sunset fadeth in the west,
7 Which by and by black night doth take away,
8 Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
9 In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
10 That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
11 As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
12 Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
13 This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
14 To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

William Shakespeare, Sonnet CVII

1 Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
2 Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
3 Can yet the lease of my true love control,
4 Suppos'd as forfeit to a confin'd doom.
5 The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur'd
6 And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
7 Incertainties now crown themselves assur'd
8 And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
9 Now with the drops of this most balmy time
10 My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
11 Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme,
12 While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes;
13 And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
14 When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.

William Shakespeare, SONNET CXVI

1 Let me not to the marriage of true minds
2 Admit impediments. Love is not love
3 Which alters when it alteration finds,
4 Or bends with the remover to remove.
5 O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
6 That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
7 It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
8 Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
9 Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
10 Within his bending sickle's compass come;
11 Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
12 But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
13 If this be error and upon me prov'd,
14 I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

William Shakespeare, SONNET CXXIX

1 Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame
2 Is lust in action; and till action, lust
3 Is perjur'd, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame,
4 Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
5 Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight;
6 Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had,
7 Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait,
8 On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
9 Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;
10 Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
11 A bliss in proof, and prov'd, a very woe;
12 Before, a joy propos'd; behind, a dream.
13 All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
14 To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

from Sir Philip Sidney's ASTROPHEL & STELLA
(aka ASTROPHIL & STELLA), Sonnet 1

ASTROPHEL AND STELLA: I
1     Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
2     That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,--
3     Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
4     Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,--
5     I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe;
6     Studying inventions fine her wits to entertain,
7     Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow
8     Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburn'd brain.
9     But words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay;
10   Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows;
11   And others' feet still seem'd but strangers in my way.
12   Thus great with child to speak and helpless in my throes,
13   Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
14   "Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write."

from Sir Philip Sydney's sonnet sequence ASTROPHEL & STELLA
(aka Astrophil & Stella)

Sonnet 20

1     Fly, fly, my friends, I have my death wound, fly!
2     See there that boy, that murd'ring boy, I say,
3     Who, like a thief, hid in dark bush doth lie
4     Till bloody bullet get him wrongful prey.
5     So tyrant he no fitter place could spy,
6     Nor so fair level in so secret stay,
7     As that sweet black which veils the heav'nly eye;
8     There himself with his shot he close doth lay.
9     Poor passenger, pass now thereby I did,
10   And stay'd, pleas'd with the prospect of the place,
11   While that black hue from me the bad guest hid;
12   But straight I saw motions of lightning grace
13   And then descried the glist'ring of his dart:
14   But ere I could fly thence it pierc'd my heart.

from Sir Philip Sydney's sonnet sequence ASTROPHEL & STELLA (aka
Astrophil & Stella)

Sonnet 39

1     Come Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
2     The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
3     The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
4     Th' indifferent judge between the high and low.
5     With shield of proof shield me from out the prease
6     Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw:
7     O make in me those civil wars to cease;
8     I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
9     Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
10   A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,
11   A rosy garland and a weary head:
12   And if these things, as being thine by right,
13   Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,
14   Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see.

from Sidney's ASTROPHIL & STELLA
Sonnet 44

My words I know do well set forth my minde;
My mind bemones his sense of inward smart;
Such smart may pitie claim of any hart;
Her heart, sweet heart, is of no tygres kind:
And yet she heares and yet no pitie I find,
But more I cry, less grace she doth impart.
Alas, what cause is there so overthwart
That Nobleness it selfe makes thus unkind?
I much do guesse, yet finde no truth save this,
That when the breath of my complaints doth touch
Those dainty doors unto the Court of Blisse,
The heav'nly nature of that place is such,
That, once come there, the sobs of mine annoyes
Are metamorphosed straight to tunes of joyes.

William Wordsworth,
COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE,
SEPTEMBER 3, 1802

1 Earth has not anything to show more fair:
2 Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
3 A sight so touching in its majesty:
4 This City now doth, like a garment, wear
5 The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
6 Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
7 Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
8 All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
9 Never did sun more beautifully steep
10 In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
11 Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
12 The river glideth at his own sweet will:
13 Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
14 And all that mighty heart is lying still!

William Wordsworth, MUTABILITY

1 From low to high doth dissolution climb,
2 And sink from high to low, along a scale
3 Of awful notes, whose concord shall not fail;
4 A musical but melancholy chime,
5 Which they can hear who meddle not with crime,
6 Nor avarice, nor over-anxious care.
7 Truth fails not; but her outward forms that bear
8 The longest date do melt like frosty rime,
9 That in the morning whitened hill and plain
10 And is no more; drop like the tower sublime
11 Of yesterday, which royally did wear
12 His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain
13 Some casual shout that broke the silent air,
14 Or the unimaginable touch of Time.

William Wordsworth, THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US

1 The world is too much with us; late and soon,
2 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
3 Little we see in Nature that is ours;
4 We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
5 This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
6 The winds that will be howling at all hours,
7 And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
8 For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
9 It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
10 A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
11 So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
12 Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
13 Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
14 Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.