On the Departure Platform – Thomas Hardy

We kissed at the barrier; and passing through

She left me, and moment by moment got
Smaller and smaller, until to my view
She was but a spot;

A wee white spot of muslin fluff

That down the diminishing platform bore
Through hustling crowds of gentle and rough
To the carriage door.

Under the lamplight's fitful glowers,

Behind dark groups from far and near,
Whose interests were apart from ours,
She would disappear,

Then show again, till I ceased to see

That flexible form, that nebulous white;
And she who was more than my life to me
Had vanished quite . . .

We have penned new plans since that fair fond day,

And in season she will appear again -
Perhaps in the same soft white array -
But never as then!

- "And why, young man, must eternally fly

A joy you'll repeat, if you love her well?"
—O friend, nought happens twice thus; why,
I cannot tell!
Walking Alone – Elma Mitchell

Our houses stand apart, and so

The time had come I had to go
Out from the fire, into the snow
-He would have come, but I said No.

I walk beyond the lights I know,

The busy poet's harmless glow,
The lovers curtained from the snow
-He would have come, but I said No.

No voices on the winds that blow,

No light house in the swiveling snow,
No flare, no flame, the way I go
-But heel and toe, and heel and toe.
A poem about the determined rejection of a man's love. Elma repeats the line 'He would
have come, but I said No' to show how determined the woman is in rejecting him. We can
say that the woman in the poem was once fallen deeply in love with the man, however she
chooses to go 'out from the fire, into the snow' without a concrete reason. Based on the title
itself, it is possible that the woman thinks it is better to walk alone even though there is 'no
flare, no flame, the way [she] go'.
The imagery used in this poem is really strong. By giving us the winter season as Elma keeps
repeating the word 'snow', we can sense that the feeling inside the woman is only coldness.
She knows that the man will be there for her as she keeps saying 'He would have come' but
yet she insisted in saying 'I said No.' It is maybe because of the coldness inside her is all over
her that she finds herself impossible to be with him anymore. Ironically, from the first verse,
she says 'the time had come, I had to go' which tells us that she doesn't exactly want to go.
It's just that she HAS to go. Wow!
Elegy – In Memory of W.B. Yeats (W.H. Auden)
I

He disappeared in the dead of winter:

The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

Far from his illness

The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,

An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities

And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow

When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the
Bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly
accustomed,
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his
freedom,
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.

What instruments we have agree

The day of his death was a dark cold day.
II

You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:

The parish of rich women, physical decay,

Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.

Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives

In the valley of its making where executives

Would never want to tamper, flows on south

From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,

Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,

A way of happening, a mouth.

III

Earth, receive an honoured guest:

William Yeats is laid to rest.

Let the Irish vessel lie

Emptied of its poetry.

In the nightmare of the dark

All the dogs of Europe bark,

And the living nations wait,

Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace

Stares from every human face,

And the seas of pity lie

Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right

To the bottom of the night,

With your unconstraining voice

Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse

Make a vineyard of the curse,

Sing of human unsuccess

In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart

Let the healing fountain start,

In the prison of his days

Teach the free man how to praise.

 To Autumn (John Keats)

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Sonnet - My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun (Shakespeare)
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

This sonnet compares the speaker’s lover to a number of other beauties—and never in
the lover’s favor. Her eyes are “nothing like the sun,” her lips are less red than coral;
compared to white snow, her breasts are dun-colored, and her hairs are like black wires
on her head. In the second quatrain, the speaker says he has seen roses separated by
color (“damasked”) into red and white, but he sees no such roses in his mistress’s
cheeks; and he says the breath that “reeks” from his mistress is less delightful than
perfume. In the third quatrain, he admits that, though he loves her voice, music “hath a
far more pleasing sound,” and that, though he has never seen a goddess, his
mistress—unlike goddesses—walks on the ground. In the couplet, however, the
speaker declares that, “by heav’n,” he thinks his love as rare and valuable “As any she
belied with false compare”—that is, any love in which false comparisons were invoked
to describe the loved one’s beauty.
My Last Duchess (Robert Browning)

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said
“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say “Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat”: such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
—E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

This poem is loosely based on historical events involving Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara, who lived in
the 16th century. The Duke is the speaker of the poem, and tells us he is entertaining an emissary
who has come to negotiate the Duke’s marriage (he has recently been widowed) to the daughter of
another powerful family. As he shows the visitor through his palace, he stops before a portrait of the
late Duchess, apparently a young and lovely girl. The Duke begins reminiscing about the portrait
sessions, then about the Duchess herself. His musings give way to a diatribe on her disgraceful
behavior: he claims she flirted with everyone and did not appreciate his “gift of a nine-hundred-
years- old name.” As his monologue continues, the reader realizes with ever-more chilling certainty
that the Duke in fact caused the Duchess’s early demise: when her behavior escalated, “[he] gave
commands; / Then all smiles stopped together.” Having made this disclosure, the Duke returns to
the business at hand: arranging for another marriage, with another young girl. As the Duke and the
emissary walk leave the painting behind, the Duke points out other notable artworks in his collection.
 Strange Meeting
BY WILFRED OWEN

It seemed that out of battle I escaped

Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,

Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,—
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;

Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
“Strange friend,” I said, “here is no cause to mourn.”
“None,” said that other, “save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

“I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now. . . .”

Strange Meeting is a poem about reconciliation. Two soldiers meet up in an imagined Hell, the first
having killed the second in battle. Their moving dialogue is one of the most poignant in modern war
poetry.

Summary of Strange Meeting

Strange Meeting is a dramatic war poem with a difference. Almost all of the poem is set
in an imagined landscape within the speaker's mind. And what dialogue there is comes
mostly from the mouth of the second soldier, killed in action by the first. Owen broke
with tradition, using pararhyme, enjambment and subtle syntax to cause unease within
the form of the heroic couplet. In doing so, he helped bring the cruel war to the forefront,
the poetry in the pity.
Limericks – There was a Small Boy of Quebec(Rudyard Kipling)
THERE was a small boy of Quebec,
Who was buried in snow to his neck;
When they said. “Are you friz?”
He replied, “Yes, I is—
But we don’t call this cold in Quebec.”

Haiku – Collection of Six Haiku (Matsuo Basho)

Waking in the night;
the lamp is low,
the oil freezing.

It has rained enough

to turn the stubble on the field
black.

Winter rain
falls on the cow-shed;
a cock crows.

The leeks
newly washed white,-
how cold it is!

The sea darkens;

the voices of the wild ducks
are faintly white.

Ill on a journey;
my dreams wander
over a withered moor.
LIMERICK
The limerick, whose name comes from the town in Ireland, is a five-line joke of a poem — witty,
usually involving place names and puns, and most often bawdy, sometimes unprintable. A limerick
is constructed of anapests, the metrical foot consisting of two unaccented or short syllables followed
by one stressed or long syllable: da-da-dum. The first two lines are three anapests, the second two
are two anapests, and the last line is three, the whole poem rhymed aabba.

SONNET
A sonnet, in English poetry, is a poem of fourteen lines, usually in iambic pentameter that has one
of two regular rhyme schemes - although there are a couple of exceptions, and years of
experimentation that have loosened this definition.

Rhyme : Varied, but the two most popular are ababcdcd-efefgg (Shakespearean)
andabbaabba-cdcdcd (Miltonic)

Structure : Varied, but most popular is 14 lines, 10 syllables per line, in either two quatrains
and two tercets; or three quatrains and a closing couplet

Measure/Beat : Iambic pentameter

Common themes: Romantic, joys and perils of love

HAIKU

A haiku poem consists of three lines, with the first and last line having 5 moras, and the middle line
having 7. A mora is a sound unit, much like a syllable, but is not identical to it. Since the moras do
not translate well into English, it has been adapted and syllables are used as moras.