Rachel Hadas: What do the classics teach us about hope?
How do we weather this welter of bad news? How do we adapt?
William Wordsworth: Lines Written in Early Spring
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?
John Clare: The Thunder Mutters
The thunder mutters louder & more loud
With quicker motion hay folks ply the rake
John Clare: The Badger
The badger grunting on his woodland track
With shaggy hide and sharp nose scrowed with black
Roots in the bushes and the woods, and makes
A great high burrow in the ferns and brakes.
Charlotte Turner Smith: On Being Cautioned Against Walking on an Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It Was Frequented by a Lunatic
In moody sadness, on the giddy brink,
I see him more with envy than fear
William Wordsworth: Tintern Abbey
Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798 . Five years have past; five summers, with the … Continue reading
Dorothy Wordsworth: The moon had the old moon in her arms
The columbine … is a graceful slender creature, a female seeking retirement, and growing freest and most graceful where it is most alone. I observed that the more shaded plants … Continue reading
John Keats: To Autumn
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To … Continue reading
Percy Bysshe Shelley: Stanzas Written in Dejection, Near Naples
The sun is warm, the sky is clear, The waves are dancing fast and bright, Blue isles and snowy mountains wear The purple noon’s transparent might, The breath of the … Continue reading
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: What If You Slept
What if you slept And what if In your sleep You dreamed And what if In your dream You went to heaven And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower … Continue reading
Vox Populi 