Category: Poem Analysis

The Rainy Day

The Rainy Day By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The day is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, But at every gust the dead leaves fall, And…

The Lost Mistress

The Lost Mistress By Robert Browning All’s over, then: does truth sound bitter As one at first believes? Hark, ’tis the sparrows’ good-night twitter About your cottage eaves! And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly, I noticed that, today;…

The Listeners

The Listeners By Walter de La Mare ‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grasses Of the forest’s ferny floor: And a bird flew up out of…

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? By 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…

Reluctance

Reluctance By Robert Frost  Out through the fields and the woods And over the walls I have wended; I have climbed the hills of view And looked at the world, and descended; I have come by the highway home, And…

Symphony in Yellow

Symphony in Yellow By Oscar Wilde An omnibus across the bridge Crawls like a yellow butterfly And, here and there, a passer-by Shows like a little restless midge. Big barges full of yellow hay Are moored against the shadowy wharf,…

Justice

Justice By Rita Joe Justice Seems to have many faces, It does not want to play if my skin is not the right hue, or correct the wrong we long for, Action hanging off-balance Justice is like an open field…

Drought

Drought By Denys Lefebvre The time has been dry, and no rain, The whole earth has care, want and pain. The air is hot and cruel dictator Where should I go and seek peaceful shelter? The fertile seed-beds of Shrawan…

Love After Love

Love After Love By Derek Walcott The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You…

Everyone Sang

Everyone Sang By Siegfried Sassoon Everyone suddenly burst out singing; And I was filled with such delight As prisoned birds must find in freedom, Winging wildly across the white Orchards and dark-green fields; on – on – and out of…

Love without Love

Love without Love By Luis Lloréns Torres I love you, because in my thousand and one nights of dreams, I never once dreamed of you. I looked down paths that traveled from afar, but it was never you I expected.…

Last of His Tribe

Last of His Tribe By Oodgeroo Noonuccal Change is the law. The new must oust the old. I look at you and am back in the long ago, Old pinaroo lonely and lost here Last of your clan. Left only…

Musee des Beaux Arts

Musee des Beaux Arts By W. H. Auden About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking…

Love Like Salt

Love Like Salt  by Lisel Mueller 1996 It lies in our hands in crystals too intricate to decipher It goes into the skillet without being given a second thought It spills on the floor so fine we step all over…

England, My England

England, My England By William Ernest Henley WHAT have I done for you, England, my England? What is there I would not do, England, my own? With your glorious eyes austere, As the Lord were walking near, Whispering terrible things…

Let Me Die a Youngman’s Death

Let Me Die a Youngman’s Death By Roger McGough Let me die a youngman’s death not a clean and inbetween the sheets holy water death not a famous-last-words peaceful out of breath death. When I’m 73 and in constant good…

A Married State

A Married State By Katherine Philips A married state affords but little ease The best of husbands are so hard to please. This in wives’ careful faces you may spell Though they dissemble their misfortunes well. A virgin state is…

 A Quoi Bon Dire

 A Quoi Bon Dire By Charlotte Mew Seventeen years ago you said Something that sounded like Good-bye; And everybody thinks that you are dead, But I. So I, as I grow stiff and cold To this and that say Good-bye…

Lost Beauty

Lost Beauty By Jwani Mwaikusa There are only white women around: Awful fakes of white females Reflecting an awful mass of ugliness: And I want a lady To mount the rostrum with And announce to the world: ―Black is beautiful!…

Mother of the Groom

Mother of the Groom by Seamus Heaney What she remembers Is his glistening back In the bath, his small boots In the ring of boots at her feet. Hands in her voided lap, She hears a daughter welcomed. It’s as…