I Dwell in Possibility
by Emily Dickinson
I dwell in Possibility –A fairer House than Prose –More numerous of Windows –Superior – for Doors –
Of Chambers as the Cedars –Impregnable of eye –And for an everlasting RoofThe Gambrels of the Sky –
Of Visitors – the fairest –For Occupation – This –The spreading wide my narrow HandsTo gather Paradise –
We Never Know How High We Areby Emily Dickinson
We never know how high we areTill we are asked to riseAnd then if we are true to planOur statures touch the skies.
The Heroism we reciteWould be a normal thingDid not ourselves the Cubits warpFor fear to be a King.
The Night Will Never Stayby Eleanor Farjeon
The night will never stay,
The night will still go by,
Though with a million stars
You pin it to the sky;
Though you bind it with the blowing wind
And buckle it with the moon,
The night will slip away
Like sorrow or a tune.
The Tygerby William Blake
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Leavesby Sarah Teasdale
One by one, like leaves from a tree
All my faiths have forsaken me;
But the stars above my head
Burn in white and delicate red,
And beneath my feet the earth
Brings the sturdy grass to birth.
I who was content to be
But a silken-singing tree,
But a rustle of delight
In the wistful heart of night–
I have lost the leaves that knew
Touch of rain and weight of dew.
Blinded by a leafy crown
I looked neither up nor down–But the little leaves that die
Have left me room to see the sky;
Now for the first time I know
Stars above and earth below.
Spring Nightby Sara Teasdale
The park is filled with night and fog,
The veils are drawn about the world,
The drowsy lights along the paths
Are dim and pearled.
Gold and gleaming the empty streets,
gold and gleaming the misty lake,
The mirrored lights like sunken swords,
Glimmer and shake.
Oh, is it not enough to be
Here with this beauty over me?
My throat should ache with praise, and I
Should kneel in joy beneath the sky.
O, Beauty are you not enough?
Why am I crying after love,
With youth, a singing voice and eyes
To take earth's wonder with surprise?
Why have I put off my pride,
Why am I unsatisfied,–
I for whom the pensive night
Binds her cloudy hair with light,–
I, for whom all beauty burns
Like incense in a million urns?
O, Beauty, are you not enough?
Why am I crying after love?
Pied Beautyby Gerard Manley Hopkins
Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
Morning
by Sara Teasdale
I went out on an April morning
All alone, for my heart was high,
I was a child of the shining meadow,
I was a sister of the sky.
There in the windy flood of morning
Longing lifted its weight from me,
Lost as a sob in the midst of cheering,
Swept as a sea-bird out to sea.
I Taste a Liquor Never Brewedby Emily Dickinson
I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!
Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.
When the landlord turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove's door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!
Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun!
The Double Fortressby Alfred Noyes
Time, wouldst thou hurt us? Never shall we grow old.Break as thou wilt these bodies of blind clay,Thou canst not touch us here, in our stronghold,Where two, made one, laugh all thy powers away.
Though ramparts crumble and rusty gates grow thin,And our brave fortress dwine to a hollow shell,Thou shalt hear heavenly laughter, far within,Where, young as Love, two hidden lovers dwell.
We shall go clambering up our twisted stairsTo watch the moon through rifts in our grey towers.Thou shalt hear whispers, kisses, and sweet prayersCreeping through all our creviced walls like flowers.
Wouldst wreck us, Time? When thy dull leaguer bringsThe last wall down, look heavenward. We have wings.
To the Moon
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I.
And, like a dying lady lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky east
A white and shapeless mass.
II.
Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?
Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
by William Butler Yeats
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
