Night

by Sidney Lanier

A pale enchanted moon is sinking low

Behind the dunes that fringe the shadowy lea,
And there is haunted starlight on the flow
Of immemorial sea.

I am alone and need no more pretend

Laughter or smile to hide a hungry heart;
I walk with solitude as with a friend
Enfolded and apart.

We tread an eerie road across the moor

Where shadows weave upon their ghostly looms,
And winds sing an old lyric that might lure
Sad queens from ancient tombs.

I am a sister to the loveliness

Of cool far hill and long-remembered shore,
Finding in it a sweet forgetfulness
Of all that hurt before.

The world of day, its bitterness and cark,

No longer have the power to make me weep;
I welcome this communion of the dark
As toilers welcome sleep.
 The Strongest Girl I Ever Knew

 She never got to dance

Or go to her own prom.
She never got the chance
To forget where she came from.

She never got to kiss,

A man she idolized.
She never felt love's bliss,
'Cause she was paralyzed.

She never got to talk

About love with a smile.
She never got to walk
Down a church's aisle.

She never got to say

Those precious words, "I Do."
But she was far and away
The strongest girl I ever knew.

She couldn't brush her hair

Or put make up on her face.
She couldn't hold you dear
Or give you a warm embrace.

She couldn't clasp her hands

As if in the form of prayer.
She couldn't understand
Why she was in a wheelchair.

She never showed her fears

Or let you hear her cries.
She never showed the tears
That fell down from her eyes.

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Fall Leaves - Poem by David Welch

Flame yellow with a tint of gold,

flutters with bite of autumn cold,
on aspens and their birch cousins
are first seen when the fall begins.
F
Then scarlet fire will appear,
a blaze that won't inspire fear,
and deep crimsons of apple-hue,
add such richness to a view.

Next sugar maples, orange bright,

like morning color of sunlight,
the harvest-bringer's vibrant shade
soon dominates the forest glade.

And then the tourists come again,

I guess I can't really blame them,
the beauty of this display marks
a last hurrah before the dark.

I myself like autumn as well,

but to be honest, this I'll tell:
I much prefer when the fall leaves,
because I can get out my skis…
 Ode on the Spring
B Y T H O M AS G R AY

Lo! where the rosy-bosom'd Hours,

Fair Venus' train appear,

Disclose the long-expecting flowers,

And wake the purple year!

The Attic warbler pours her throat,

Responsive to the cuckoo's note,

The untaught harmony of spring:

While whisp'ring pleasure as they fly,

Cool zephyrs thro' the clear blue sky

Their gather'd fragrance fling.

Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch

A broader, browner shade;

Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech

O'er-canopies the glade,

Beside some water's rushy brink

With me the Muse shall sit, and think

(At ease reclin'd in rustic state)

How vain the ardour of the crowd,

How low, how little are the proud,

How indigent the great!

Still is the toiling hand of Care:

The panting herds repose:

Yet hark, how thro' the peopled air

The busy murmur glows!

The insect youth are on the wing,

Eager to taste the honied spring,

And float amid the liquid noon:

Some lightly o'er the current skim,

Some show their gaily-gilded trim

Quick-glancing to the sun.

To Contemplation's sober eye

Such is the race of man:

And they that creep, and they that fly,

Shall end where they began.

Alike the busy and the gay

But flutter thro' life's little day,

In fortune's varying colours drest:

Brush'd by the hand of rough Mischance,

Or chill'd by age, their airy dance

They leave, in dust to rest.

Methinks I hear in accents low

The sportive kind reply:

Poor moralist! and what art thou?

A solitary fly!

Thy joys no glitt'ring female meets,

No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,

No painted plumage to display:

On hasty wings thy youth is flown;

Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone—

We frolic, while 'tis May.

 O Captain! My Captain!
BY WALT WHITMAN

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,

For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head!

It is some dream that on the deck,

You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;

Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

But I with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

 From Sonnets
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die.
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.
 THIRTY BOB A WEEK

BY JOHN DAVIDSON

I couldn't touch a stop and turn a screw,

And set the blooming world a-work for me,
Like such as cut their teeth -- I hope, like you --
On the handle of a skeleton gold key;
I cut mine on a leek, which I eat it every week:
I'm a clerk at thirty bob as you can see.

But I don't allow it's luck and all a toss;

There's no such thing as being starred and crossed;
It's just the power of some to be a boss,
And the bally power of others to be bossed:
I face the music, sir; you bet I ain't a cur;
Strike me lucky if I don't believe I'm lost!

For like a mole I journey in the dark,

A-travelling along the underground
From my Pillar'd Halls and broad Suburbean Park,
To come the daily dull official round;
And home again at night with my pipe all alight,
A-scheming how to count ten bob a pound.

And it's often very cold and very wet,

And my missus stitches towels for a hunks;
And the Pillar'd Halls is half of it to let--
Three rooms about the size of travelling trunks.
And we cough, my wife and I, to dislocate a sigh,
When the noisy little kids are in their bunks.

But you never hear her do a growl or whine,

For she's made of flint and roses, very odd;
And I've got to cut my meaning rather fine,
Or I'd blubber, for I'm made of greens and sod:
So p'r'haps we are in Hell for all that I can tell,
And lost and damn'd and served up hot to God.

I ain't blaspheming, Mr. Silver-tongue;

I'm saying things a bit beyond your art:
Of all the rummy starts you ever sprung,
Thirty bob a week's the rummiest start!
With your science and your books and your the'ries about spooks,
Did you ever hear of looking in your heart?

I didn't mean your pocket, Mr., no:

I mean that having children and a wife,
With thirty bob on which to come and go,
Isn't dancing to the tabor and the fife:
When it doesn't make you drink, by Heaven! it makes you think,
And notice curious items about life.

I step into my heart and there I meet

A god-almighty devil singing small,
Who would like to shout and whistle in the street,
And squelch the passers flat against the wall;
If the whole world was a cake he had the power to take,
He would take it, ask for more, and eat them all.

And I meet a sort of simpleton beside,

The kind that life is always giving beans;
With thirty bob a week to keep a bride
He fell in love and married in his teens:
At thirty bob he stuck; but he knows it isn't luck:
He knows the seas are deeper than tureens.

And the god-almighty devil and the fool

That meet me in the High Street on the strike,
When I walk about my heart a-gathering wool,
Are my good and evil angels if you like.
And both of them together in every kind of weather
Ride me like a double-seated bike.

That's rough a bit and needs its meaning curled.

But I have a high old hot un in my mind --
A most engrugious notion of the world,
That leaves your lightning 'rithmetic behind:
I give it at a glance when I say 'There ain't no chance,
Nor nothing of the lucky-lottery kind.'
And it's this way that I make it out to be:
No fathers, mothers, countres, climates -- none;
Not Adam was responsible for me,
Nor society, nor systems, nary one:
A little sleeping seed, I woke -- I did, indeed --
A million years before the blooming sun.

I woke because I thought the time had come;

Beyond my will there was no other cause;
And everywhere I found myself at home,
Because I chose to be the thing I was;
And in whatever shape of mollusc or of ape
I always went according to the laws.

I was the love that chose my mother out;

I joined two lives and from the union burst;
My weakness and my strength without a doubt
Are mine alone for ever from the first:
It's just the very same with a difference in the name
As 'Thy will be done.' You say it if you durst!

They say it daily up and down the land

As easy as you take a drink, it's true;
But the difficultest go to understand,
And the difficultest job a man can do,
Is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week,
And feel that that's the proper thing for you.

It's a naked child against a hungry wolf;

It's playing bowls upon a splitting wreck;
It's walking on a string across a gulf
With millstones fore-and-aft about your neck;
But the thing is daily done by many and many a one;
And we fall, face forward, fighting, on the deck.
EXAMPLE OF HAIKU
Matsuo Basho
An old silent pond...
A frog jumps into the pond,
splash! Silence again.
Autumn moonlight-
a worm digs silently
into the chestnut.
In the twilight rain
these brilliant-hued hibiscus -
A lovely sunset.
Yosa Buson
A summer river being crossed
how pleasing
with sandals in my hands!
Light of the moon
Moves west, flowers' shadows
Creep eastward.
In the moonlight,
The color and scent of the wisteria
Seems far away.
Kobayashi Issa
O snail
Climb Mount Fuji,
But slowly, slowly!
Trusting the Buddha, good and bad,
I bid farewell
To the departing year.
Everything I touch
with tenderness, alas,
pricks like a bramble.

Examples of Limerick:
Hickory dickory dock,
The mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck one
The mouse ran down.
Hickory, dickory dock.

There once was a man from Nantucket,

who kept all his cash in a bucket.
But his daughter, named Nan,
ran away with a man,
And as for the bucket, Nantucket. (Edward Lear)

And let me the canakin clink, clink;

And let me the canakin clink
A soldier's a man;
A life's but a span;
Why, then, let a soldier drink.
 IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT

REQUIREMENTS IN CREATIVE WRIITING AND NON FICTION

SUBMITED BY:AUDREY P. LAMPITAO

SUBMITED TO : RUDO

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