Poetry for Exercise and Enjoyment

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

There is no Frigate like a Book

There is no Frigate like a Book

To take us Lands away

Nor any Coursers like a Page

Of prancing Poetry –

This Traverse may the poorest take

Without oppress of Toll –

How frugal is the Chariot

That bears the Human Soul –

Walt Whitman (!819-1892)

When I Heard the Learned Astronomer

WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer; 
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; 
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them; 
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the
lecture-room, 
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself, 
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, 
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

 ART PROJECT POEM

Robert Frost ((1874-1963)

Two Look at Two

Love and forgetting might have carried them 
A little further up the mountain side 
With night so near, but not much further up. 
They must have halted soon in any case 
With thoughts of a path back, how rough it was 
With rock and washout, and unsafe in darkness; 
When they were halted by a tumbled wall 
With barbed-wire binding. They stood facing this, 
Spending what onward impulse they still had 
In One last look the way they must not go, 
On up the failing path, where, if a stone 
Or earthslide moved at night, it moved itself; 
No footstep moved it. 'This is all,' they sighed, 
Good-night to woods.' But not so; there was more. 
A doe from round a spruce stood looking at them 
Across the wall, as near the wall as they. 
She saw them in their field, they her in hers. 
The difficulty of seeing what stood still, 
Like some up-ended boulder split in two, 
Was in her clouded eyes; they saw no fear there. 
She seemed to think that two thus they were safe. 
Then, as if they were something that, though strange, 
She could not trouble her mind with too long, 
She sighed and passed unscared along the wall. 
'This, then, is all. What more is there to ask?' 
But no, not yet. A snort to bid them wait. 
A buck from round the spruce stood looking at them 
Across the wall as near the wall as they. 
This was an antlered buck of lusty nostril, 
Not the same doe come back into her place. 
He viewed them quizzically with jerks of head, 
As if to ask, 'Why don't you make some motion? 
Or give some sign of life? Because you can't. 
I doubt if you're as living as you look." 
Thus till he had them almost feeling dared 
To stretch a proffering hand -- and a spell-breaking. 
Then he too passed unscared along the wall. 
Two had seen two, whichever side you spoke from. 
'This must be all.' It was all. Still they stood, 
A great wave from it going over them, 
As if the earth in one unlooked-for favour
Had made them certain earth returned their love.

Robert Frost (1874-1963)

The Silken Tent

She is as in a field a silken tent 
At midday when the sunny summer breeze 
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent, 
So that in guys it gently sways at ease, 
And its supporting central cedar pole, 
That is its pinnacle to heavenward 
And signifies the sureness of the soul, 
Seems to owe naught to any single cord, 
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound 
By countless silken ties of love and thought 
To everything on earth the compass round, 
And only by one's going slightly taut 
In the capriciousness of summer air 
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

The Two Graves

'Tis a bleak wild hill,--but green and bright
In the summer warmth and the mid-day light;
There's the hum of the bee and the chirp of the wren,
And the dash of the brook from the alder glen;
There's the sound of a bell from the scattered flock,
And the shade of the beech lies cool on the rock,
And fresh from the west is the free wind's breath,--
There is nothing here that speaks of death.

Far yonder, where orchards and gardens lie,
And dwellings cluster, 'tis there men die.
They are born, they die, and are buried near,
Where the populous grave-yard lightens the bier;
For strict and close are the ties that bind
In death the children of human-kind;
Yea, stricter and closer than those of life,--
'Tis a neighbourhood that knows no strife.
They are noiselessly gathered--friend and foe--
To the still and dark assemblies below:
Without a frown or a smile they meet,
Each pale and calm in his winding-sheet;
In that sullen home of peace and gloom,
Crowded, like guests in a banquet-room.

Yet there are graves in this lonely spot,
Two humble graves,--but I meet them not.
I have seen them,--eighteen years are past,
Since I found their place in the brambles last,--
The place where, fifty winters ago,
An aged man in his locks of snow,
And an aged matron, withered with years,
Were solemnly laid!--but not with tears.
For none, who sat by the light of their hearth,
Beheld their coffins covered with earth;
Their kindred were far, and their children dead,
When the funeral prayer was coldly said.

Two low green hillocks, two small gray stones,
Rose over the place that held their bones;
But the grassy hillocks are levelled again,
And the keenest eye might search in vain,
'Mong briers, and ferns, and paths of sheep,
For the spot where the aged couple sleep.

Yet well might they lay, beneath the soil
Of this lonely spot, that man of toil,
And trench the strong hard mould with the spade,
Where never before a grave was made;
For he hewed the dark old woods away,
And gave the virgin fields to the day;
And the gourd and the bean, beside his door,
Bloomed where their flowers ne'er opened before;
And the maize stood up; and the bearded rye
Bent low in the breath of an unknown sky.

'Tis said that when life is ended here,
The spirit is borne to a distant sphere;
That it visits its earthly home no more,
Nor looks on the haunts it loved before.
But why should the bodiless soul be sent
Far off, to a long, long banishment?
Talk not of the light and the living green!
It will pine for the dear familiar scene;
It will yearn, in that strange bright world, to behold
The rock and the stream it knew of old.

'Tis a cruel creed, believe it not!
Death to the good is a milder lot.
They are here,--they are here,--that harmless pair,
In the yellow sunshine and flowing air,
In the light cloud-shadows that slowly pass,
In the sounds that rise from the murmuring grass.
They sit where their humble cottage stood,
They walk by the waving edge of the wood,
And list to the long-accustomed flow
Of the brook that wets the rocks below.
Patient, and peaceful, and passionless,
As seasons on seasons swiftly press,
They watch, and wait, and linger around,
Till the day when their bodies shall leave the ground.