Characteristics of a Child Three Years Old (by William Wordsworth)

Wordsworth (in an 1873 reproduction of an 1839 watercolor by Margaret Gillies)

Characteristics of a Child Three Years Old
by William Wordsworth
[composed in 1811, published in 1815]

Loving she is, and tractable, though wild;
And Innocence hath privilege in her
To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes;
And feats of cunning; and the pretty round
Of trespasses, affected to provoke
Mock-chastisement and partnership in play.
And, as a faggot sparkles on the hearth,
Not less if unattended and alone
Than when both young and old sit gathered round
And take delight in its activity;
Even so this happy Creature of herself
Is all-sufficient, solitude to her
Is blithe society, who fills the air
With gladness and involuntary songs.
Light are her sallies as the tripping fawn’s
Forth-startled from the fern where she lay couched;
Unthought-of, unexpected, as the stir
Of the soft breeze ruffling the meadow-flowers,
Or from before it chasing wantonly
The many-coloured images imprest
Upon the bosom of a placid lake.



*

Suicide in the Trenches (by Siegfried Sassoon)

 

Suicide in the Trenches
by Siegfried Sassoon
[from Counter-Attack and Other Poems, 1918]

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
 
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

*

So has a Daisy vanished (by Emily Dickinson)

Emily Dickinson

[1858]

So has a Daisy vanished
From the fields today —
So tiptoed many a slipper
To Paradise away —
Oozed so, in crimson bubbles
Day’s departing tide —
Blooming — tripping — flowing
Are ye then with God?

*

Prelude: The Troops (by Siegfried Sassoon)

 

Prelude: The Troops
by Siegfried Sassoon
[from Counter-Attack and Other Poems, 1918]

Dim, gradual thinning of the shapeless gloom
Shudders to drizzling daybreak that reveals
Disconsolate men who stamp their sodden boots
And turn dulled, sunken faces to the sky
Haggard and hopeless. They, who have beaten down
The stale despair of night, must now renew
Their desolation in the truce of dawn,
Murdering the livid hours that grope for peace.

Yet these, who cling to life with stubborn hands,
Can grin through storms of death and find a gap
In the clawed, cruel tangles of his defence.
They march from safety, and the bird-sung joy
Of grass-green thickets, to the land where all
Is ruin, and nothing blossoms but the sky
That hastens over them where they endure
Sad, smoking, flat horizons, reeking woods,
And foundered trench-lines volleying doom for doom.

O my brave brown companions, when your souls
Flock silently away, and the eyeless dead
Shame the wild beast of battle on the ridge,
Death will stand grieving in that field of war
Since your unvanquished hardihood is spent.
And through some mooned Valhalla there will pass
Battalions and battalions, scarred from hell;
The unreturning army that was youth;
The legions who have suffered and are dust.

*

A.E.F. (by Carl Sandburg)

Carl Sandburg

A.E.F.
by Carl Sandburg
from Smoke and Steel  [1920]

There will be a rusty gun on the wall, sweetheart,
The rifle grooves curling with flakes of rust.
A spider will make a silver string nest in the darkest, warmest corner of it.
The trigger and the range-finder, they too will be rusty.
And no hands will polish the gun, and it will hang on the wall.
Forefingers and thumbs will point casually toward it.
It will be spoken among half-forgotten, wished-to-be-forgotten things.
They will tell the spider: Go on, you’re doing good work.

*

A Dirge (by Percy Bysshe Shelley)

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822

A Dirge

Rough wind, that moanest loud
     Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
     Knells all the night long;
Sad storm whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main,—
     Wail, for the world’s wrong!


[written 1821, published posthumously in 1824 by Mrs. Shelley]


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For more Percy Bysshe Shelley in the Crisis Chronicles Online Library, please click here.


    

In a Vale (by Robert Frost)

In a Vale
by Robert Frost
[from A Boy’s Will (1913)]

When I was young, we dwelt in a vale
     By a misty fen that rang all night,
And thus it was the maidens pale
I knew so well, whose garments trail 
     Across the reeds to a window light.

The fen had every kind of bloom, 
     And for every kind there was a face,
And a voice that has sounded in my room
Across the sill from the outer gloom. 
     Each came singly unto her place,

But all came every night with the mist; 
     And often they brought so much to say
Of things of moment to which, they wist,
One so lonely was fain to list, 
     That the stars were almost faded away

Before the last went, heavy with dew, 
     Back to the place from which she came—
Where the bird was before it flew,
Where the flower was before it grew, 
     Where bird and flower were one and the same.

And thus it is I know so well 
     Why the flower has odor, the bird has song.
You have only to ask me, and I can tell.
No, not vainly there did I dwell, 
     Nor vainly listen all the night long.

   

Morns Like These (by Emily Dickinson)

Emily Dickinson

[1858]

Morns like these — we parted —
Noons like these — she rose —
Fluttering first — then firmer
To her fair repose.

Never did she lisp it —
It was not for me —
She — was mute from transport —
I — from agony —

Till — the evening nearing
One the curtains drew —
Quick!  A sharper rustling!
And this linnet flew!  

Waiting (by Robert Frost)

Waiting
by Robert Frost
[from A Boy’s Will (1913)]


     Afield at dusk

What things for dream there are when specter-like,
Moving among tall haycocks lightly piled,
I enter alone upon the stubbled field,
From which the laborers’ voices late have died,
And in the antiphony of afterglow
And rising full moon, sit me down
Upon the full moon’s side of the first haycock
And lose myself amid so many alike.

I dream upon the opposing lights of the hour,
Preventing shadow until the moon prevail;
I dream upon the nighthawks peopling heaven,
Or plunging headlong with fierce twang afar;
And on the bat’s mute antics, who would seem
Dimly to have made out my secret place,
Only to lose it when he pirouettes,
On the last swallow’s sweep; and on the rasp
In the abyss of odor and rustle at my back,
That, silenced by my advent, finds once more,
After an interval, his instrument,
And tries once–twice–and thrice if I be there;
And on the worn book of old-golden song
I brought not here to read, it seems, but hold
And freshen in this air of withering sweetness;
But on the memory of one absent, most,
For whom these lines when they shall greet her eye.