Category: Poem Analysis

This Land is Your Land

This Land is Your Land by Woody Guthrie This land is your land and this land is my land From California to the New York island From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for…

Sonnet 22

Sonnet 22: My Glass Shall Not Persuade Me I Am Old by William Shakespeare My glass shall not persuade me I am old, So long as youth and thou are of one date; But when in thee time’s furrows I…

Shut Out

Shut Out by Christiana Rossetti The door was shut. I looked between Its iron bars; and saw it lie, My garden, mine, beneath the sky, Pied with all flowers bedewed and green: From bough to bough the song-birds crossed, From…

Petals

Petals by Amy Lowell Life is a stream On which we strew Petal by petal the flower of our heart; The end lost in dream, They float past our view, We only watch their glad, early start. Freighted with hope,…

Friendly Advice to a Lot of Young Men

Friendly Advice to a Lot of Young Men by Charles Bukowski Go to Tibet Ride a camel. Read the bible. Dye your shoes blue. Grow a beard. Circle the world in a paper canoe. Subscribe to The Saturday Evening Post.…

Sonnet 27

Sonnet 27: Weary With Toil, I Haste Me To My Bed by William Shakespeare Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, The dear repose for limbs with travel tired; But then begins a journey in my head, To…

Sonnet 23

Sonnet 23: As An Unperfect Actor On The Stage By William Shakespeare As an unperfect actor on the stage, Who with his fear is put beside his part, Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage, Whose strength’s abundance…

Sonnet 20

Sonnet 20: A Woman’s Face with Nature’s Own Hand Painted by William Shakespeare A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion; A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted With shifting change as is…

Sonnet 98

Sonnet 98: From You Have I Been Absent in The Spring by William Shakespeare From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in everything, That…

Sonnet 116

Sonnet 116: Let Me Not to The Marriage of True Minds by William Shakespeare Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover…

Sonnet 147

Sonnet 147:  My Love Is as A Fever, Longing Still by William Shakespeare My love is as a fever, longing still For that which longer nurseth the disease, Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill, Th’ uncertain sickly appetite…

Sonnet 19

Sonnet 19:  Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws by William Shakespeare Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws, And make the earth devour her own sweet brood; Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws, And burn the…

The Sea of Glass

The Sea of Glass by Ezra Pound I looked and saw a sea roofed over with rainbows, In the midst of each two lovers met and departed; Then the sky was full of faces with gold glories behind them. Meanings…

The Sacred

The Sacred by Stephen Dunn After the teacher asked if anyone had a sacred place and the students fidgeted and shrunk in their chairs, the most serious of them all said it was his car, being in it alone, his…

My Son My Executioner

My Son My Executioner by Donald Hall My son, my executioner, I take you in my arms, Quiet and small and just astir And whom my body warms. Sweet death, small son, our instrument Of immortality, Your cries and hunger…

I’ll You How the Sun Rose

I’ll You How the Sun Rose by Emily Dickinson I’ll tell you how the Sun rose – A Ribbon at a time – The Steeples swam in Amethyst – The news, like Squirrels, ran – The Hills untied their Bonnets…

Elm

Elm by Sylvia Plath For Ruth Fainlight I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root: It is what you fear. I do not fear it: I have been there. Is it the sea you…

 All the World’s a Stage

 All the World’s a Stage by William Shakespeare All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven…