Week 6 assignment

The Red Wheelbarrow

William Carlos Williams , 1883 - 1963

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

This Is Just To Say

William Carlos Williams , 1883 - 1963

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

Danse Russe

Related Poem Content Details

By William Carlos Williams

If I when my wife is sleeping

and the baby and Kathleen

are sleeping

and the sun is a flame-white disc

in silken mists

above shining trees,—

if I in my north room

dance naked, grotesquely

before my mirror

waving my shirt round my head

and singing softly to myself:

“I am lonely, lonely.

I was born to be lonely,

I am best so!”

If I admire my arms, my face,

my shoulders, flanks, buttocks

against the yellow drawn shades,—

Who shall say I am not

the happy genius of my household?

Spring and All [By the road to the contagious hospital]

William Carlos Williams , 1883 - 1963

I

By the road to the contagious hospital

under the surge of the blue

mottled clouds driven from the

northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the

waste of broad, muddy fields

brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water

the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish

purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy

stuff of bushes and small trees

with dead, brown leaves under them

leafless vines-

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish

dazed spring approaches-

They enter the new world naked,

cold, uncertain of all

save that they enter. All about them

the cold, familiar wind-

Now the grass, tomorrow

the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf

One by one objects are defined-

It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of

entrance-Still, the profound change

has come upon them: rooted, they

grip down and begin to awaken

T.S Eliot’s “Hollow Men”

The Hollow Men

Mistah Kurtz-he dead             A penny for the Old Guy                        I     We are the hollow men     We are the stuffed men     Leaning together     Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!     Our dried voices, when     We whisper together     Are quiet and meaningless     As wind in dry grass     Or rats' feet over broken glass     In our dry cellar         Shape without form, shade without colour,     Paralysed force, gesture without motion;         Those who have crossed     With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom     Remember us-if at all-not as lost     Violent souls, but only     As the hollow men     The stuffed men.                                   II     Eyes I dare not meet in dreams     In death's dream kingdom     These do not appear:     There, the eyes are     Sunlight on a broken column     There, is a tree swinging     And voices are     In the wind's singing     More distant and more solemn     Than a fading star.         Let me be no nearer     In death's dream kingdom     Let me also wear     Such deliberate disguises     Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves     In a field     Behaving as the wind behaves     No nearer-         Not that final meeting     In the twilight kingdom                        III     This is the dead land     This is cactus land     Here the stone images     Are raised, here they receive     The supplication of a dead man's hand     Under the twinkle of a fading star.         Is it like this     In death's other kingdom     Waking alone     At the hour when we are     Trembling with tenderness     Lips that would kiss     Form prayers to broken stone.                          IV     The eyes are not here     There are no eyes here     In this valley of dying stars     In this hollow valley     This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms         In this last of meeting places     We grope together     And avoid speech     Gathered on this beach of the tumid river         Sightless, unless     The eyes reappear     As the perpetual star     Multifoliate rose     Of death's twilight kingdom     The hope only     Of empty men.                                V     Here we go round the prickly pear     Prickly pear prickly pear     Here we go round the prickly pear     At five o'clock in the morning.         Between the idea     And the reality     Between the motion     And the act     Falls the Shadow                                    For Thine is the Kingdom         Between the conception     And the creation     Between the emotion     And the response     Falls the Shadow                                    Life is very long         Between the desire     And the spasm     Between the potency     And the existence     Between the essence     And the descent     Falls the Shadow                                    For Thine is the Kingdom         For Thine is     Life is     For Thine is the         This is the way the world ends     This is the way the world ends     This is the way the world ends     Not with a bang but a whimper.