my favorite poems
Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
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 what 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?
William Burke
From Childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were-I have not seen
As others saw-I could not bring
My passions from a common spring-
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow-I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone-
And all I lov’d- I lov’d alone-
Then-in my childhood-in the dawn
Of a most stormy life-was drawn
From ev’ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still-
Fro mthe torrent, or the fountain-
From the red cliff of the mountain-
From the sun that round me roll’d
In its autumn tint of gold-
From the lightning of the sky
As it pass’d me flying by-
From the thunder, and the storm-
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view-
Edgar Allan Poe
Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.
Gaze no more in the bitter glass
The demons, with their subtle guile.
Lift up before us when they pass,
Or only gaze a little while;
For there a fatal image grows
That the stormy night receives,
roots half hidden under snows,
Broken boughs and blackened leaves.
For ill things turn to barrenness
In the dim glass the demons hold,
The glass of outer weariness,
Made when God slept in times of old.
There, through the broken branches, go
The ravens of unresting thought;
Flying, drying, to and fro,
Cruel claw and hungry throat,
Or else they stand and sniff the wind,
And shake their ragged wings; alas!
Thy tender eyes grow all unkind:
Gaze no more in the bitter glass.
W. B. Yates
She made a little shadow-hidden grave,
The day Faith died;
Therein she laid it, heard the clod’s sick fall,
And smiled aside-
“If less I ask,” tear-blind, she mocked, “I may
Be less denied.”
She set a rose to blossom in her hair,
The day Faith died-
“Now glad,” she said, “and free at last, I go,
And life is wide.”
But through long nights she stared into the dark,
And knew she had lied.
Fannie Heaslip Lea
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
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 what 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?
William Burke
From Childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were-I have not seen
As others saw-I could not bring
My passions from a common spring-
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow-I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone-
And all I lov’d- I lov’d alone-
Then-in my childhood-in the dawn
Of a most stormy life-was drawn
From ev’ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still-
Fro mthe torrent, or the fountain-
From the red cliff of the mountain-
From the sun that round me roll’d
In its autumn tint of gold-
From the lightning of the sky
As it pass’d me flying by-
From the thunder, and the storm-
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view-
Edgar Allan Poe
Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.
Gaze no more in the bitter glass
The demons, with their subtle guile.
Lift up before us when they pass,
Or only gaze a little while;
For there a fatal image grows
That the stormy night receives,
roots half hidden under snows,
Broken boughs and blackened leaves.
For ill things turn to barrenness
In the dim glass the demons hold,
The glass of outer weariness,
Made when God slept in times of old.
There, through the broken branches, go
The ravens of unresting thought;
Flying, drying, to and fro,
Cruel claw and hungry throat,
Or else they stand and sniff the wind,
And shake their ragged wings; alas!
Thy tender eyes grow all unkind:
Gaze no more in the bitter glass.
W. B. Yates
She made a little shadow-hidden grave,
The day Faith died;
Therein she laid it, heard the clod’s sick fall,
And smiled aside-
“If less I ask,” tear-blind, she mocked, “I may
Be less denied.”
She set a rose to blossom in her hair,
The day Faith died-
“Now glad,” she said, “and free at last, I go,
And life is wide.”
But through long nights she stared into the dark,
And knew she had lied.
Fannie Heaslip Lea