Miscellany of American Poetry1922 - American poetry |
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Common terms and phrases
ALFRED KREYMBORG AMY LOWELL ancient apple attic beat beauty Behemot birds blue bones boughs breast buck private burned cellar cloud cold CONRAD AIKEN cries Crossed the Appalachians dark door dream dusk dust earth eyes face fire flame flesh float flower forest Four Seas Company Georgian Poetry ghosts gipsy fiddles cry golden grass hand hear heart heavens Henry Holt Holt and Company honorable orators Houghton Mifflin JEAN STARR UNTERMEYER JOHN GOULD FLETCHER Johnny Appleseed laugh leaves Leviathan lift light lilac look LOUIS UNTERMEYER Macmillan Company Miscellany mist moon Mother mountains never night once Paphos petal poet purple rain Republic SARA TEASDALE shining silence silver sing sleep snow soft song stand stars stone swans swap horses sweet tell things thought thunder to-day Toffile trees turn twilight VACHEL LINDSAY voice wall watch waves wind Yankee Doodle Dandy
Popular passages
Page 25 - Fire and Ice Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.
Page 38 - I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, ' On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth— Assorted characters of death and blight Mixed ready to begin the morning right, .. Like the ingredients of a witches' broth— A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth, And dead wings carried like a paper kite. What had that flower to do with being white, The wayside blue and innocent heal-all? What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither...
Page 30 - He broke my trance. Don't that make you suspicious That there's something the dead are keeping back? Yes, there's something the dead are keeping back. SON. You wouldn't want to tell him what we have Up attic, mother?
Page 38 - Like the ingredients of a witches' broth — A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth, And dead wings carried like a paper kite. What had that flower to do with being white, The wayside blue and innocent heal-all? What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to appall? — If design govern in a thing so small.
Page 35 - Let them stay in the attic. When they sometimes Come down the stairs at night and stand perplexed Behind the door and headboard of the bed, Brushing their chalky skull with chalky fingers, With sounds like the dry rattling of a shutter, That's what I sit up in the dark to say— To no one any more since Toffile died.
Page 198 - Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare. Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace, And lay them prone upon the earth and cease To ponder on themselves, the while they stare At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release From dusty bondage into luminous air.
Page 31 - The only fault my husband found with me — I went to sleep before I went to bed, Especially in winter when the bed Might just as well be ice and the clothes snow.
Page 185 - Seeking my heart; winds have roared and tossed me; Music in long blue waves of sound has borne me A helpless weed to shores of unthought silence; Time, above me, within me, crashed its gongs Of terrible warning, sifting the dust of death; And here I lie. Blow now your horns of glory Harshly over my flesh, you trees, you waters! You stars and suns, Canopus, Deneb, Rigel, Let me, as I lie down, here in this dust, Hear, far off, your whispered salutation! Roar now above my decaying flesh, you winds,...
Page 199 - Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word! Give back my book and take my kiss instead. Was it my enemy or my friend I heard?— "What a big book for such a little head! " Come, I will show you now my newest hat, And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink. Oh, I shall love you still and all of that. I never again shall tell you what I think. I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly; You will not catch me reading any more...
Page 195 - I KNOW I am but summer to your heart, And not the full four seasons of the year; And you must welcome from another part Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear. No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing; And I have loved you all too long and well To carry still the high sweet breast oi Spring.