Mini Essay

A Noiseless Patient Spider

A noiseless patient spider,

I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand, Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,

Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

Barnet, Sylvan; Burto, William; Cain, William E.; Nixon, Cheryl. Literature for Composition (Page 855). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

Love in Place

I really don’t remember falling in love all that much

I remember wanting to bake corn bread and boil a ham and

I certainly remember making lemon pie and when I used to smoke I stopped in the middle of my day to contemplate

I know I must have fallen in love once because I quit biting my cuticles and my hair is gray and that must indicate something and

I all of a sudden had a deeper appreciation for Billie Holiday° and Billy Strayhorn° so if it wasn’t love

I don’t know what it was I see the old photographs and I am smiling and I’m sure quite happy

but what I mostly see is me through your eyes and I am still young and slim and very much committed to the love we still have.

Barnet, Sylvan; Burto, William; Cain, William E.; Nixon, Cheryl. Literature for Composition (Page 978). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

General Review of the Sex Situation

Woman wants monogamy;

Man delights in novelty.

Love is woman’s moon and sun;

Man has other forms of fun.

Woman lives but in her lord;

Count to ten, and man is bored.

With this the gist and sum of it,

What earthly good can come of it?

Barnet, Sylvan; Burto, William; Cain, William E.; Nixon, Cheryl. Literature for Composition (Page 979). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

Design

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 in the night?

What but design of darkness to appall?—

If design govern in a thing so small.

Barnet, Sylvan; Burto, William; Cain, William E.; Nixon, Cheryl. Literature for Composition (Page 824). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

We Real Cool

The Pool Players.

Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We Left school.

We Lurk late.

We Strike straight.

We Sing sin.

We Thin gin.

We Jazz June.

We Die soon.

Barnet, Sylvan; Burto, William; Cain, William E.; Nixon, Cheryl. Literature for Composition (Page 813). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

I'm Nobody! Who are you?

I’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 June—

To an admiring Bog!

Barnet, Sylvan; Burto, William; Cain, William E.; Nixon, Cheryl. Literature for Composition (Page 766). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.