Sonnets
Shakespeare's Sonnets: http://members.aol.com/ericblomqu/shakespe.htm
The World is too much with us
The world is too much with us; late and
soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our
powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid
boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of
tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I'd
rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
—William Wordsworth
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay
and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive
for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for
peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning
to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon
a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night
and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds
by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the
pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
—W.B. Yeats
Cows
Sometimes when you couldn't sleep it off
you'd go outside and sing to the cows.
And they'd sing back, moon, moon.
I could hear you all night from my room,
a bull in stall, blowing across
the top of the bottle. I can hear you now,
here, in this room, as I have, poem
after poem. As just a moment ago, almost
dawn, you came breaking back into the house.
My father's house, my room. You couldn't
sleep it off. You went out into the dark,
got lost, almost. I hear the cows.
And the moon's still up, the doomed moon.
And all this time I've stayed awake with you.
—Stanley Plumly
Sonnet: The Poet at Seven
And
on the porch, across the upturned chair,
The boy would spread a dingy counterpane
Against the length and majesty of the rain,
And on all fours crawl under it like a
bear
To lick his wounds in secret, in his lair;
And afterwards, in the windy yard again,
One hand cocked back, release his paper
plane
Frail as a May fly to the faithless air.
And summer evenings he would whirl around
Faster and faster till the drunken ground
rose up to meet him; sometimes he would
squat
Among the bent weeds of the vacant lot,
Waiting for the dusk and someone dear to
come
And whip him down the street, but gently,
home.
—Donald Justice
Saint Judas
When I went out to kill myself, I caught
A pack of hoodlums beating up a man.
Running to spare his suffering, I forgot
My name, my number, how my day began.
How soldiers milled around the garden stone
And sang amusing songs; how all that day
Their javelins measured crowds; how I alone
Bargained the proper coins, and slipped
away.
Banished from heaven, I found this victim
beaten,
Stripped, kneed, and left to cry. Dropping
my rope
Aside, I ran, ignored the uniforms:
Then I remembered bread my flesh has eaten,
The kiss that ate my flesh. Flayed
without hope,
I held the man for nothing in my arms.
—James Wright
Sonnet for Joe
When I tell you I would rather you describe a clock than time
to me,
that the essence of your ocean sentiments is not the ocean,
I'm wondering if you would live if your feet got tangled in seaweed.
Write me the superstructure of water.
And now you drop your face. I see my mistake. You
did not write
to contend. So it was the ocean in four dry lines
like seaweed from Japanese groceries that thickens and plumps
when ladled in water. Look, you don't even like it
when I give you some copies of ocean poems. You detest
the sea
and its marketable herring, its common tuna, and starfish
always losing their legs. Think of the man
who fell from his fishing boat in the fog off Alaska. He
heard the motor
slowly trupping away, its cargo of vain fish under its
wing. Think of
his widow who detests the sea, who lives beside it, who writes
now to her friend.
—Sandra McPhearson
Three Hard Sonnets
1
If you can buy all those groceries
why do you wear those clothes?
the woman said.
The phone rang:
If you answer our
question you can take a trip.
What do you think of me? said
the gambler telling me
his life.
Are you lost asked the policeman.
Why don't you smile.
No.
She said, Sometime I'd love to talk with you.
He walked out the door without saying good-bye.
2 .
I parked in the driveway.
Getting out I glimpsed the body
of a tall Indian brave
framed on the floor of the station wagon.
Another time one of those big family dinners:
we invited Uncle George
and he hooked over the table
from his seat at is head.
She sewed me a red dress but said
finish this hem,
I'm going away.
An old corpse of myself obstructed
the stairwell. I covered its face
with papers and books.
3 .
Proof! proof! It sounds like something
going up in smoke, abracadabra
smoke, producing
the answer to nothing.
At ease! at ease! You must look
at ease. There are places for nervousness:
stand trembling over the wastebasket
till anxiety falls in.
Beautiful! beautiful! I have no
big toe, no knee.
Compliments buried them
as well as insult.
Action!
Ok enough, enough, wrap it up.
—Sandra McPhearson
Aunt Jennifer's Tigers
Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a
screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.
Aunt Jennifer's fingers fluttering through
her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.
When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands
will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered
by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.
—Adrienne Rich