The Emperor of Ice-Cream (published in 1922; Harmonium, 1923): Wallace Stevens (1879 1955)

Call the roller of big cigars,The muscular one, and bid him whipIn kitchen cups concupiscent curds.Let the wenches dawdle in such dressAs they are used to wear, and let the boysBring flowers in last month's newspapers.Let be be finale of seem.The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal.Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheetOn which she embroidered fantails onceAnd spread it so as to cover her face.If her horny feet protrude, they comeTo show how cold she is, and dumb.Let the lamp affix its beam.The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Sonnet 19 (c. 1652): John Milton (1608-1674)

ON HIS BLINDNESS.

WHEN I consider how my light is spent,Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,And that one talent which is death to hideLodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and presentMy true account, lest He returning chide,'Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?'I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, 'God doth not needEither man's work or his own gifts. Who bestBear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,And post o'er land and ocean without rest;They also serve who only stand and wait.'

The Sunne Rising (c. 1609;1633, Collection): John Donne (1572-1631)

BUSYold fool, unruly Sun, Why dost thou thus,Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run ? Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide Late school-boys and sour prentices, Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride, Call country ants to harvest offices ;Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams so reverend, and strong Why shouldst thou think ?I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,But that I would not lose her sight so long. If her eyes have not blinded thine, Look, and to-morrow late tell me, Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,And thou shalt hear, "All here in one bed lay."

She's all states, and all princes I ; Nothing else is ;Princes do but play us ; compared to this,All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy. Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,In that the world's contracted thus ; Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties beTo warm the world, that's done in warming us.Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere ;This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.

Mushrooms (1960): Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)Overnight, veryWhitely, discreetly,Very quietly

Our toes, our nosesTake hold on the loam,Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,Stops us, betrays us;The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist onHeaving the needles,The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.Our hammers, our rams,Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,Widen the crannies,Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,On crumbs of shadow,Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.So many of us!So many of us!

We are shelves, we areTables, we are meek,We are edible,

Nudgers and shoversIn spite of ourselves.Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morningInherit the earth.Our foot's in the door. To My Mother (1938): Genevieve Taggard (1894-1948)

The long delight and early I heard in my small years clearly; The morning song, bed-making, bustle for new undertaking, With dish-washing and hay-raking, This vanished or seemed diminished, Was lost, in trouble finished. I did nervous work, unsteady, captive work and heady. Nothing well-done and ready. And heard in other places Than home, and from foreign faces The dauntless gay and breezy communal song of the busy, I---idle and uneasy. I said, my work is silly, Lonely and willy-nilly. See this hand with nicotined habits, this useless hand that edits A chronicle of debits. Join, if I can, the makers, And the tillers of difficult acres; And get somehow this dearly lost, this re-discovered rarely Habit of rising early.

The Red Wheelbarrow (1923): William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

so much dependsupon

a red wheelbarrow

glazed with rainwater

beside the whitechickens.

Theres a certain Slant of Light (1890 [1861]): Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

There's a certain slant of light,On winter afternoons,That oppresses, like the weightOf cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;We can find no scar,But internal differenceWhere the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,'Tis the seal, despair,-An imperial afflictionSent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,Shadows hold their breath;When it goes, 't is like the distanceOn the look of death.

The Dance (1944): William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

In Brueghel's great picture, The Kermess,the dancers go round, they go round andaround, the squeal and the blare and thetweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddlestipping their bellies (round as the thick-sided glasses whose wash they impound)their hips and their bellies off balanceto turn them. Kicking and rollingabout the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, thoseshanks must be sound to bear up under suchrollicking measures, prance as they dancein Brueghel's great picture, The Kermess.

Sailing to Byzantium (1928): W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees Those dying generationsat their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamellingTo keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.