The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two rodas diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.

"The Road Not Taken"

Robert Frost

The Cottager's Hymn - IX

Whatever is hid
Shall burst on my sight
When hence I have fled
To glorious light.
Should chastisements lower,
Then let me resign;
Should kindnesses shower,
Let gratitude shine.

excerpt from "The Cottager's Hymn"

Branwell Brontë

Sonnet LXXV

ONE day I wrote her name upon the strand,
but came the waves and washed it away:
again I wrote it with a second hand,
but came the tide, and made my pains his prey.

Vain man, said she, that dost in vain assay,
a mortal thing so to immortalize,
for I my self shall like to this decay,
and eek my name be wiped out likewise.

Not so, (quoth I) let baser things devise,
to die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
my verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
and in the heavens write your glorious name.

Where when as death shall all the world subdue,
our love shall live, and later life renew.

"Sonnet LXXV"

Edmund Spenser

The Rose of the World

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,
Mournful that no new wonder may betide,
Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,
And Usna's children died.


We and the labouring world are passing by:
Amid men's souls, that waver and give place
Like the pale waters in their wintry race,
Under the passing stars, foam of the sky,
Lives on this lonely face.


Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:
Before you were, or any hearts to beat,
Weary and kind one lingered by His seat;
He made the world to be a grassy road
Before her wandering feet.

"The Rose of the World"

William Butler Yeats

(as found in "The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics")

On Time

Ever eating, never cloying,

All-devouring, all-destroying

Never finding full repast,

Till I eat the world at last.

"On Time"

Jonathan Swift

The Hourglass

 

Do but consider this small dust
Here running in the glass,
By atoms moved;
Could you believe that this
The body was
Of one that loved?
And in his mistress' flame, playing like a fly,
Turned to cinders by her eye?
Yes; and in death, as life, unblessed,
To have't expressed,
Even ashes of lovers find no rest.

“The Hourglass” 
Ben Jonson

The Gladness of Nature

 

Is this a time to be cloudy and sad,
When our mother Nature laughs around;
When even the deep blue heavens look glad,
And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground?

There are notes of joy from the hang-bird and wren,
And the gossip of swallows through all the sky;
The ground-squirrel gaily chirps by his den,
And the wilding bee hums merrily by.

The clouds are at play in the azure space,
And their shadows at play on the bright green vale,
And here they stretch to the frolic chase,
And there they roll on the easy gale.

There's a dance of leaves in that aspen bower,
There's a titter of winds in that beechen tree,
There's a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower,
And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea.

And look at the broad-faced sun, how he smiles
On the dewy earth that smiles in his ray,
On the leaping waters and gay young isles;
Ay, look, and he'll smile thy gloom away.

 

“The Gladness of Nature”  
William Cullen Bryant