(no subject)
Which reminds me, I've been intending to do this meme for awhile now since I've already done favorite movies and books of all time.
10. "The Road Not Taken"
Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a wood and I--
I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference.
9. Untitled
Emily Dickinson
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
8. "Essay on Man"
Alexander Pope
All Nature is but art, unknown to thee
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, univeral good:
And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.
7. "Concord Hymn"
Ralph Waldo Emerson
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled;
Here once the embattled farmers stood;
And fired the shot heard round the world.
6. "The Lady of Shalott"
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro' the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.
5. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The sun now rose upon the right:
Out of the sea came he,
Still hid in mist, and on the left
Went down into the sea.
And the good south wind still blew behind,
But no sweet bird did follow,
Nor any day for food or play
Came to the mariner's hallo!
4. "Dover Beach"
Matthew Arnold
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
3. "Sonnet"
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Lift not the painted veil, which those who live
Call life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly spread,--behind lurk Fear
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear.
I knew one who had lifted it--he sought,
For his lost heart was tender, things to love,
But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
The world contains, the which he could approve.
Through the unheeding many he did move,
A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove
For truth, and like the Preacher found it not.
2. "Ulysses"
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.
1. "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock"
T. S. Eliot
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And, in short, I was afraid.
----
We have lingered in the chambers of the seas,
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
***All of the above are excerpts from the, in most cases, much longer poems. The only exception being the sonnet by Shelley, which was short enough that I had enough patience to post the entire thing. The excerpts from T.S. Eliot's poem are from two separate sections of the poem.