It has been said that to write well you have to read well. For your reading pleasure I give you several of my favorite poems
A Passionate Shepard to His Love
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers and a kirtle
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle:
A gown made of the finest wool,
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold:
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.
The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning;
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.
Christopher Marlowe
The Nymph's Reply
If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.
Time drives the flocks from field to fold,
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold,
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complains of cares to come.
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields;
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.
Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,--
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
The coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.
But could youth last and love still breed,
Had joys no date nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.
SIR WALTER RALEGH
Robert Frost Is one of my favorite poets. He usually prefers blank verse in his writings. I inculded two of my favorites, Out, Out and For Once, Then Smething. Out, Out due to the Sheakspearian reference to Lady MacBeth's death and For Once, Then Something due to it's unusal meter.
Out, Out
1 The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
2 And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
3 Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
4 And from there those that lifted eyes could count
5 Five mountain ranges one behind the other
6 Under the sunset far into Vermont.
7 And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
8 As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
9 And nothing happened: day was all but done.
10 Call it a day, I wish they might have said
11 To please the boy by giving him the half hour
12 That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
13 His sister stood beside them in her apron
14 To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,
15 As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
16 Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap--
17 He must have given the hand. However it was,
18 Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
19 The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,
20 As he swung toward them holding up the hand
21 Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
22 The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all--
23 Since he was old enough to know, big boy
24 Doing a man's work, though a child at heart--
25 He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off--
26 The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"
27 So. But the hand was gone already.
28 The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
29 He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
30 And then--the watcher at his pulse took fright.
31 No one believed. They listened at his heart.
32 Little--less--nothing!--and that ended it.
33 No more to build on there. And they, since they
34 Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
Others taught me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths--and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.
