PoetrPoetryy

“For poetry is the blossom

and the fragrance of all

human knowledge,

human thoughts,

human passions, emotions,

language.” --Coleridge.

XXVIII’m nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?Then there’s a pair of us—don’t

tell!They’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!How public, like a frog

To tell your name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!

Emily Dickinson

1830-1886

EpigramThis is my letter to the world,

That never wrote to me,—The simple news that Nature

told,With tender majesty.

Her message is committedTo hands I cannot see;For love of her, sweet

countrymen,Judge tenderly of me!

IVFame is a fickle foodUpon a shifting plate,

Whose table once a Guest, but notThe second time, is set.

Whose crumbs the crows inspect,And with ironic caw

Flap past it to the Farmer’s corn;Men eat of it and die.

Lewis CarrollLewis Carroll

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:All mimsy were the borogoves,  And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:  Long time the manxome foe he sought --So rested he by the Tumtum tree,  And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,  The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,  And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through  The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!He left it dead, and with its head  He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?  Come to my arms, my beamish boy!O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'  He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;All mimsy were the borogoves,  And the mome raths outgrabe.

Jabberwocky

William Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s Birthplace, Stratford,

England, UK

1564-1616

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's lease hath all too short a date:Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimmed,And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade,Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,Nor shall death brag thou wander'st 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.

Shakespeare’s Sonnet XVIII

Gwendolyn Brooks

1917-2000

Sing sin. We Thin gin. We 

Jazz June. We Die soon.

We real cool. We Left school. We 

Lurk late. We Strike straight. We 

When power narrows the

areas of man's

concern, poetry reminds him of

the richness and diversity of his

existence. When power corrupts,

poetry cleanses." - John F. Kennedy