Sonnet 18

William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Love Armed
BY APHRA BEHN
Song from Abdelazar
Love in Fantastic Triumph sat,
Whilst Bleeding Hearts around him flowed,
For whom Fresh pains he did Create,
And strange Tyrannic power he showed;
From thy Bright Eyes he took his fire,
Which round about, in sport he hurled;
But ’twas from mine he took desire
Enough to undo the Amorous World.

From me he took his sighs and tears,

From thee his Pride and Cruelty;
From me his Languishments and Fears,
And every Killing Dart from thee;
Thus thou and I, the God have armed,
And set him up a Deity;
But my poor Heart alone is harmed,
Whilst thine the Victor is, and free.
 A Different History by Sujata Bhatt

Great Pan is not dead;

he simply emigrated
to India.
Here, the gods roam freely,
disguised as snakes or monkeys;
every tree is sacred
and it is a sin
to be rude to a book.
It is a sin to shove a book aside
with your foot,
a sin to slam books down
hard on a table,
a sin to toss one carelessly
across a room.
You must learn how to turn the pages gently
without disturbing Sarasvati,
without offending the tree
from whose wood the paper was made.

2
Which language
has not been the oppressor’s tongue?
Which language
truly meant to murder someone?
And how does it happen
that after the torture,
after the soul has been cropped
with a long scythe swooping out
of the conqueror’s face –
the unborn grandchildren
grow to love that strange language.
The Chimney Sweeper: When my mother
died I was very young
BY WILLIAM BLAKE

When my mother died I was very young,

And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry " 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!"
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.

There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head

That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved, so I said,
"Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."

And so he was quiet, & that very night,

As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight!
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black;

And by came an Angel who had a bright key,

And he opened the coffins & set them all free;
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run,
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.

Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,

They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.
And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father & never want joy.

And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark

And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm;
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
 Where I Come From
By Elizabeth Brewster

People are made of places. They carry with them

hints of jungles or mountains, a tropic grace
or the cool eyes of sea-gazers. Atmosphere of cities
how different drops from them, like the smell of smog
or the almost-not-smell of tulips in the spring,
nature tidily plotted with a guidebook;
or the smell of work, glue factories maybe,
chromium-plated offices; smell of subways
crowded at rush hours.

Where I come from, people

carry woods in their minds, acres of pine woods;
blueberry patches in the burned-out bush;
wooden farmhouses, old, in need of paint,
with yards where hens and chickens circle about,
clucking aimlessly; battered schoolhouses
behind which violets grow. Spring and winter
are the mind’s chief seasons: ice and the breaking of ice.

A door in the mind blows open, and there blows

a frosty wind from fields of snow.
 Report to Wordsworth
by Boey Kim Cheng

You should be here, Nature has need of you.

She has been laid waste. Smothered by the smog,

the flowers are mute, and the birds are few

in a sky slowing like a dying clock.

All hopes of Proteus rising from the sea

have sunk; he is entombed in the waste

we dump. Triton’s notes struggle to be free,

his famous horns are choked, his eyes are dazed,

and Neptune lies helpless as beached as a whale,

while insatiate man moves in for the kill.

Poetry and piety have begun to fail,

As Nature’s mighty heart is lying still.

O see the widening in the sky,

God is labouring to utter his last cry.

 Lament
By Gillian Clarke

For the green turtle with her pulsing burden,

in search of the breeding ground.
For her eggs laid in their nest of sickness.

For the cormorant in his funeral silk,

the veil of iridescence on the sand,
the shadow on the sea.

For the ocean’s lap with its mortal stain.

For Ahmed at the closed border.
For the soldier with his uniform of fire.

For the gunsmith and the armourer,

the boy fusilier who joined for the company,
the farmer’s sons, in it for the music.

For the hook-beaked turtles,

the dugong and the dolphin,
the whale struck dumb by the missile’s thunder.

For the tern, the gull and the restless wader,

the long migrations and the slow dying,
the veiled sun and the stink of anger.

For the burnt earth and the sun put out,

the scalded ocean and the blazing well.
For vengeance, and the ashes of language.

The Cockroach
by Kevin Halligan
I watched a giant cockroach start to pace,

Skirting a ball of dust that road the floor.

At first he seemed quite satisfied to trace

A path between the wainscot and the door,

But soon he turned to jog in crooked rings,

Circling the rusty table leg and back,

And flipping right over to scratch his wings-

As if the victim of a mild attack

Of restlessness that worsened over time.

After a while, he climbed an open shelf

And stopped. He looked uncertain where to go.

Was this due payment for some vicious crime

A former life had led to? I don’t know

Except I thought I recognised myself.

Follower
BY SEAMUS HEANEY
My father worked with a horse-plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horses strained at his clicking tongue.

An expert. He would set the wing

And fit the bright steel-pointed sock.
The sod rolled over without breaking.
At the headrig, with a single pluck

Of reins, the sweating team turned round

And back into the land. His eye
Narrowed and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly.

I stumbled in his hobnailed wake,

Fell sometimes on the polished sod;
Sometimes he rode me on his back
Dipping and rising to his plod.

I wanted to grow up and plough,

To close one eye, stiffen my arm.
All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow round the farm.

I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,

Yapping always. But today
It is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away

Storyteller

By Liz Lochhead
she sat down

at the scoured table

in the swept kitchen

beside the dresser with its cracked delft.

And every last crumb of daylight was salted away.

No one could say the stories were useless

for as the tongue clacked

five or forty fingers stitched

corn was grated from the husk

patchwork was pieced

or the darning was done.

Never the one to slander her shiftless.

Daily sloven or spotless no matter whether

Dishwater or tasty was her soup.

To tell the stories was her work.

It was like spinning,

gathering air to the single strongest

thread. Night in

she’d have us waiting, held

breath, for the ending we knew by heart.

And at first light

as the women stirred themselves to build the fire

as the peasant’s feet felt for clogs

as thin grey light washed over flat fields

the stories dissolved in the whorl of the ear

but they

hung themselves upside down

in the sleeping heads of the children

till they flew again

in the storytellers night.

Before the Sun

By Charles Mungoshi
Intense blue morning

promising early heat

and later in the afternoon,

heavy rain.

The bright chips

fly from the sharp axe

for some distance through the air,

arc,

and eternities later,

settle down in showers

on the dewy grass.

It is a big log:

but when you are fourteen

big logs

are what you want.

The wood gives off

a sweet nose-cleansing odour

which (unlike sawdust)

doesn\'t make one sneeze.

It sends up a thin spiral

of smoke which later straightens

and flutes out

to the distant sky: a signal

of some sort,

or a sacrificial prayer.

The wood hisses,

The sparks fly.

And when the sun

finally shows up

in the East like some

latecomer to a feast

I have got two cobs of maize

ready for it.

I tell the sun to come share

with me the roasted maize

and the sun just winks

like a grown-up.

So I go ahead, taking big

alternate bites:

one for the sun,

one for me.

This one for the sun,

this one for me:

till the cobs

are just two little skeletons

in the sun.

A Married State

By Katherine Philips
A married state affords but little ease:

The best of husbands are so hard to please

This in wifes Carefull faces you may spell,

Tho they desemble their misfortunes well

A virgin state is crown'd with much content,

It's allways happy as it's inocent

No Blustering husbands to create your fears,

No pangs of child birth to extort your tears,

No children's crys for to offend your ears,

Few worldly crosses to distract your prayers

Thus are you freed from all the cares that do

Attend on matrymony and a husband too.

Therefore, madam, be advised by me:

Turn, turn apostate to love's Levity.

Supress wild nature if she dare rebell,

There's no such thing as leading Apes in hell.

An Essay on Man

by Alexander Pope
To Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke

Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things

To low ambition, and the pride of kings.

Let us (since life can little more supply

Than just to look about us and to die)

Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man;

A mighty maze! but not without a plan;

A wild, where weeds and flow'rs promiscuous shoot;

Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit.

Together let us beat this ample field,

Try what the open, what the covert yield;

The latent tracts, the giddy heights explore

Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;

Eye Nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies,

And catch the manners living as they rise;

Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;

But vindicate the ways of God to man.

I.

Say first, of God above, or man below,

What can we reason, but from what we know?

Of man what see we, but his station here,

From which to reason, or to which refer?

Through worlds unnumber'd though the God be known,

'Tis ours to trace him only in our own.

He, who through vast immensity can pierce,

See worlds on worlds compose one universe,

Observe how system into system runs,

What other planets circle other suns,

What varied being peoples ev'ry star,

May tell why Heav'n has made us as we are.

But of this frame the bearings, and the ties,

The strong connections, nice dependencies,

Gradations just, has thy pervading soul

Look'd through? or can a part contain the whole?

Is the great chain, that draws all to agree,

And drawn supports, upheld by God, or thee?

II.

Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst thou find,

Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind?

First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,

Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no less!

Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made

Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade?

Or ask of yonder argent fields above,

Why Jove's satellites are less than Jove?

Of systems possible, if 'tis confest

That Wisdom infinite must form the best,

Where all must full or not coherent be,

And all that rises, rise in due degree;

Then, in the scale of reas'ning life, 'tis plain

There must be somewhere, such a rank as man:

And all the question (wrangle e'er so long)

Is only this, if God has plac'd him wrong?

Respecting man, whatever wrong we call,

May, must be right, as relative to all.

In human works, though labour'd on with pain,

A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;

In God's, one single can its end produce;

Yet serves to second too some other use.

So man, who here seems principal alone,

Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown,

Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal;

'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

When the proud steed shall know why man restrains

His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains:

When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod,

Is now a victim, and now Egypt's God:

Then shall man's pride and dulness comprehend

His actions', passions', being's, use and end;

Why doing, suff'ring, check'd, impell'd; and why

This hour a slave, the next a deity.

Then say not man's imperfect, Heav'n in fault;

Say rather, man's as perfect as he ought:

His knowledge measur'd to his state and place,

His time a moment, and a point his space.

If to be perfect in a certain sphere,

What matter, soon or late, or here or there?

The blest today is as completely so,

As who began a thousand years ago.

III.

Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of fate,

All but the page prescrib'd, their present state:

From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:

Or who could suffer being here below?

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed today,

Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?

Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flow'ry food,

And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.

Oh blindness to the future! kindly giv'n,

That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heav'n:

Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,

A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,

Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;

Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore!

What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,

But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast:

Man never is, but always to be blest:

The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,

Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind

Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;

His soul, proud science never taught to stray

Far as the solar walk, or milky way;

Yet simple nature to his hope has giv'n,

Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heav'n;

Some safer world in depth of woods embrac'd,

Some happier island in the wat'ry waste,

Where slaves once more their native land behold,

No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.

To be, contents his natural desire,

He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;

But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,

His faithful dog shall bear him company.

IV.

Go, wiser thou! and, in thy scale of sense

Weigh thy opinion against Providence;

Call imperfection what thou fanciest such,

Say, here he gives too little, there too much:

Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,

Yet cry, if man's unhappy, God's unjust;

If man alone engross not Heav'n's high care,

Alone made perfect here, immortal there:

Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,

Rejudge his justice, be the God of God.

In pride, in reas'ning pride, our error lies;

All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.

Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes,

Men would be angels, angels would be gods.

Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,

Aspiring to be angels, men rebel:

And who but wishes to invert the laws

Of order, sins against th' Eternal Cause.

V.

Ask for what end the heav'nly bodies shine,

Earth for whose use? Pride answers, " 'Tis for mine:

For me kind Nature wakes her genial pow'r,

Suckles each herb, and spreads out ev'ry flow'r;

Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew,

The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew;

For me, the mine a thousand treasures brings;

For me, health gushes from a thousand springs;

Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise;

My foot-stool earth, my canopy the skies."

But errs not Nature from this gracious end,

From burning suns when livid deaths descend,

When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep

Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep?

"No, ('tis replied) the first Almighty Cause

Acts not by partial, but by gen'ral laws;

Th' exceptions few; some change since all began:

And what created perfect?"—Why then man?

If the great end be human happiness,

Then Nature deviates; and can man do less?

As much that end a constant course requires

Of show'rs and sunshine, as of man's desires;

As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,

As men for ever temp'rate, calm, and wise.

If plagues or earthquakes break not Heav'n's design,

Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline?

Who knows but he, whose hand the lightning forms,

Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms,

Pours fierce ambition in a Cæsar's mind,

Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind?

From pride, from pride, our very reas'ning springs;

Account for moral, as for nat'ral things:

Why charge we Heav'n in those, in these acquit?

In both, to reason right is to submit.

Better for us, perhaps, it might appear,

Were there all harmony, all virtue here;

That never air or ocean felt the wind;

That never passion discompos'd the mind.

But ALL subsists by elemental strife;

And passions are the elements of life.

The gen'ral order, since the whole began,

Is kept in nature, and is kept in man.

VI.

What would this man? Now upward will he soar,

And little less than angel, would be more;

Now looking downwards, just as griev'd appears

To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears.

Made for his use all creatures if he call,

Say what their use, had he the pow'rs of all?

Nature to these, without profusion, kind,

The proper organs, proper pow'rs assign'd;

Each seeming want compensated of course,

Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force;

All in exact proportion to the state;

Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.

Each beast, each insect, happy in its own:

Is Heav'n unkind to man, and man alone?

Shall he alone, whom rational we call,

Be pleas'd with nothing, if not bless'd with all?

The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find)

Is not to act or think beyond mankind;

No pow'rs of body or of soul to share,

But what his nature and his state can bear.

Why has not man a microscopic eye?

For this plain reason, man is not a fly.

Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n,

T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n?

Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er,

To smart and agonize at ev'ry pore?

Or quick effluvia darting through the brain,

Die of a rose in aromatic pain?

If nature thunder'd in his op'ning ears,

And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres,

How would he wish that Heav'n had left him still

The whisp'ring zephyr, and the purling rill?

Who finds not Providence all good and wise,

Alike in what it gives, and what denies?

VII.

Far as creation's ample range extends,

The scale of sensual, mental pow'rs ascends:

Mark how it mounts, to man's imperial race,

From the green myriads in the peopled grass:

What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme,

The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam:

Of smell, the headlong lioness between,

And hound sagacious on the tainted green:

Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,

To that which warbles through the vernal wood:

The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine!

Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:

In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true

From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew:

How instinct varies in the grov'lling swine,

Compar'd, half-reas'ning elephant, with thine:

'Twixt that, and reason, what a nice barrier;

For ever sep'rate, yet for ever near!

Remembrance and reflection how allied;

What thin partitions sense from thought divide:

And middle natures, how they long to join,

Yet never pass th' insuperable line!

Without this just gradation, could they be

Subjected, these to those, or all to thee?

The pow'rs of all subdu'd by thee alone,

Is not thy reason all these pow'rs in one?

VIII.

See, through this air, this ocean, and this earth,

All matter quick, and bursting into birth.

Above, how high, progressive life may go!

Around, how wide! how deep extend below!

Vast chain of being, which from God began,

Natures ethereal, human, angel, man,

Beast, bird, fish, insect! what no eye can see,

No glass can reach! from infinite to thee,

From thee to nothing!—On superior pow'rs

Were we to press, inferior might on ours:

Or in the full creation leave a void,

Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroy'd:

From nature's chain whatever link you strike,

Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.

And, if each system in gradation roll

Alike essential to th' amazing whole,

The least confusion but in one, not all

That system only, but the whole must fall.

Let earth unbalanc'd from her orbit fly,

Planets and suns run lawless through the sky;

Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurl'd,

Being on being wreck'd, and world on world;

Heav'n's whole foundations to their centre nod,

And nature tremble to the throne of God.

All this dread order break—for whom? for thee?

Vile worm!—Oh madness, pride, impiety!

IX.

What if the foot ordain'd the dust to tread,

Or hand to toil, aspir'd to be the head?

What if the head, the eye, or ear repin'd

To serve mere engines to the ruling mind?

Just as absurd for any part to claim

To be another, in this gen'ral frame:

Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains,

The great directing Mind of All ordains.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,

Whose body Nature is, and God the soul;

That, chang'd through all, and yet in all the same,

Great in the earth, as in th' ethereal frame,

Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,

Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,

Lives through all life, extends through all extent,

Spreads undivided, operates unspent,

Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,

As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;

As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,

As the rapt seraph that adores and burns;

To him no high, no low, no great, no small;

He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.

X.

Cease then, nor order imperfection name:

Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.

Know thy own point: This kind, this due degree

Of blindness, weakness, Heav'n bestows on thee.

Submit.—In this, or any other sphere,

Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear:

Safe in the hand of one disposing pow'r,

Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.

All nature is but art, unknown to thee;

All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;

All discord, harmony, not understood;

All partial evil, universal good:

And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,

One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.

Carpet-Weavers, Morocco

By Carol Rumens
The children are at the loom of another world.

Their braids are oiled and black, their dresses bright.

Their assorted heights would make a melodious chime.

They watch their flickering knots like television.

As the garden of Islam grows, the bench will be raised.

Then they will lace the dark-rose veins of the tree-tops.

The carpet will travel in the merchant’s truck.

It will be spread by the servants of the mosque.

Deep and soft, it will give when heaped with prayer.

The children are hard at work in the school of days.

From their fingers the colours of all-that-will-be fly

and freeze into the frame of all-that-was.

Hunting Snake by
 Judith Wright

Sun-warmed in this late season’s grace

under the autumn’s gentlest sky

we walked, and froze half-through a pace.

The great black snake went reeling by.

Head down, tongue flickering on the trail

he quested through the parting grass,

sun glazed his curves of diamond scale

and we lost breath to see him pass.

What track he followed, what small food

fled living from his fierce intent,

we scarcely thought; still as we stood

our eyes went with him as he went.

Cold, dark and splendid he was gone

into the grass that hid his prey.

We took a deeper breath of day,

looked at each other, and went on.