1 When the world turns completely upside down You say we’ll emigrate to the Eastern Shore Aboard a [...]

Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren’t lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live.

To an Athlete Dying Young By A. E. Housman The time you won your town the race We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high. Today, [...]

September 1, 1939 W. H. Auden I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate [...]

The Boston Evening Transcript By T. S. Eliot The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn. When evening quickens faintly in the street, Wakening the appetites of life [...]

Epilogue By Robert Browning At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, When you set your fancies free, Will they pass to where—by death, fools think, imprisoned— Low he lies who once so loved you, [...]

The Trees Philip Larkin The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief. Is it that they are born again [...]

Affirmation By Donald Hall To grow old is to lose everything. Aging, everybody knows it. Even when we are young, we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads when a grandfather dies. Then we row for [...]

The Stump By Donald Hall 1. Today they cut down the oak. Strong men climbed with ropes in the brittle tree. The exhaust of a gasoline saw was blue in the branches. The oak had been [...]

The Pasture By Robert Frost I'm going out to clean the pasture spring; I'll only stop to rake the leaves away (And wait to watch the water clear, I may): I sha'n't be gone long.—You come [...]