Peter's Collection of Poems

in no particular order
Out Upon It! I Have Lov'd
I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud
Dust of Snow
Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
To an Athlete Dying Young
Eldorado
Love Is a Terrible Thing
Ozymandias
Finding Is the First Act
Take, O Take Those Lips Away
O, Mistress Mine, Where Are You Roaming?
To Earthward
Sonnet 116: Let me not the marriage of true minds...
Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
High Flight


Out Upon It! I Have Lov'd

Sir John Suckling

Out upon it! I have lov'd
      Three whole days together;
And am like to love three more,
      If it prove fair weather.

Time shall moult away his wings,
      Ere he shall discover
In the whole wide world again
      Such a constant lover.

But the spite on 't is, no praise
      Is due at all to me:
Love with me had made no stays,
      Had it any been but she.

Had it any been but she,
      And that very face,
There had been at least ere this
      A dozen dozen in her place.


I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud

William Wordsworth

I wondered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
in such a jocund company:
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.


Dust of Snow

Robert Frost

The way a snow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.


Stopping by Woods On a Snowy Evening

Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.


To an Athlete Dying Young

A. E. Housman

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel p
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.


Eldorado

Edgar Allen Poe

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old-
This knight so bold-
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength
Failed First him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow-
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be-
This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied,-
"If you seek for Eldorado!"


Love is a Terrible Thing

Grace Fallow Norton

I went out to the farthest meadow,
I lay down in the deepest shadow,

And I said unto the earth, "Hold me,"
And unto the night, "O enfold me,"

And I begged the little leaves to lean
Low and together for a safe screen;

Then to the stars I told my tale:
"That is my home-light, there in the vale,

"And O, I know that I shall return,
But let me lie first mid the unfeeling fern.

"For there is a flame that has blown too near,
And there is a name that has grown too dear
And there is a fear ...."

And to the still hills and cool earth and far sky I made
        moan,
"The heart in my bosom is not my own!

"O would I were free as the wind on the wing;
Love is a terrible thing!"


Ozymandias

Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.


Finding Is the First Act

Emily Dickinson

Finding is the first Act
The second, loss,
Third, Expedition for
the "Golden Fleece"

Fourth, no Discovery--
Fifth, no Crew--
Finally, no Golden Fleece--
Jason--sham--too.


Take, Oh Take Those Lips Away

William Shakespeare

Take, O take those lips away,
   That so sweetly were forsworn;
And those eyes, the break of day,
   Lights that do mislead the morn:
But my kisses bring again,
   Bring again,
Seals of love, but seal'd in vain,
        Seal'd in vain.


O, Mistress Mine, Where Are You Roaming?

William Shakespeare

O, mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O stay and hear; your true love's coming,
   That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
   Journeys end in lovers' meeting,
   Every wise man's son doth know.

What is love? 'tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
   What's to come is still unsure;
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
   Youth's a stuff will not endure.


To Earthward

Robert Frost
Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And phase once that seemed too much;
I lived on air

That crossed me from sweet things
The flow of -- was it musk
From hidden grapevine springs
Down hill at dusk?

I had the swirl and ache
From sprays of honeysuckle
That when they're gathered shake
Dew on the knuckle.

I craved strong sweets, but those
Seemed strong when I was young;
The petal of the rose
It was that stung.

Now no joy but lacks salt
That is not dashed with pain
And weariness and fault; I crave the stain

Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove.

When stiff and sore and scarred
I take away my hand
From leaning on it hard
In grass and sand,

The hurt is not enough. I long for weight and strength
To feel the earth as rough
To all my length.


Sonnet 116

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 to remove:
Oh no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks upon tempests and is never shaken.
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, though his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief days and weeks
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.


High Flight

John Gillespie Magee Jr.
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of --
Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence.
Hovering there
I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up along delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark, or even eagle flew;
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.


Sonnet 18

William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more fair and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date;
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st;
    So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.