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"Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour./ Then leaf subsides to leaf./ So Eden sank to grief."
Nothing Gold Can Stay
By Robert Frost
The Snow Man
By Wallace Stevens
"I
Among twenty snowy mountains,/ The only moving thing/ Was the eye of the blackbird"
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
By Wallace Stevens
"I have eaten/the plums/ that were in/ the icebox"
This is Just to Say
By William Carlos Williams
"And indeed there will be time/ To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”/ Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —/ (They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)/ My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,/ My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —/ (They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)"
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
By T.S. Eliot
"About suffering they were never wrong,/ The Old Masters: how well they understood/ Its human position; how it takes place/ While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along"
Musee des Beaux Arts
By W.H. Auden
"The art of losing isn’t hard to master;/ so many things seem filled with the intent/ to be lost that their loss is no disaster."
One Art
By Elizabeth Bishop
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.
Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night
By Dylan Thomas
The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
By Richard Wilbur
“Between my finger and my thumb / The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.”
Digging
By Seamus Heaney