Reading Responses to a Poem

Because I Could Not Stop for Death

Emily Dickinson (1890/1983)

Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality.

5

We slowly drove, he knew no haste, And I had put away My labor, and my leisure too, For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove

10

At recess, in the ring; We passed the fields of gazing grain, We passed the setting sun.

Or rather, he passed us; The dews grew quivering and chill,

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For only gossamer my gown, My tippet only tulle.

We paused before a house that seemed A swelling of the ground; The roof was scarcely visible,

20

The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each Feels shorter than the day

I first surmised the horses' heads Were toward eternity.

A Summer Morning

Richard Wilbur (1960/1988)

Her young employers, having got in late From seeing friends in town And scraped the right front fender on the gate, Will not, the cook expects, be coming down.

5

She makes a quiet breakfast for herself. The coffee-pot is bright, The jelly where it should be on the shelf. She breaks an egg into the morning light,

Then, with the bread-knife lifted, stands and hears

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The sweet efficient sounds Of thrush and catbird, and the snip of shears Where, in the terraced backward of the grounds,

A gardener works before the heat of day. He straightens for a view

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Of the big house ascending stony-gray O Out of his beds mosaic with the dew.

His young employers having got in late, He and the cook alone Receive the morning on their old estate,

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Possessing what the owners can but own.

et Evening Come

Jane Kenyon (1990)

Let the light of late afternoon shine through chinks in the barn, moving up the bales as the sun moves down Let the cricket take up chafing

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as a woman takes up her needles and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned in long grass. Let the stars appear and the moon disclose her silver horn.

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Let the fox go back to its sandy den. Let the wind die down. Let the shed go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop in the oats, to air in the lung

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let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come.

Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night

Dylan Thomas (1952)

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

5

Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

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Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

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Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.