I Semester Additional English Poems

Daffodils – William Wordsworth

I WANDERED lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils:

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the Milky Way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

The thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed— and gazed— but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

Virtue – George Herbert

SWEET DAY, so cool, so calm, so bright,

     The bridal of the earth and sky:

The dew shall weep thy fall tonight,

          For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave,

     Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye:

Thy root is ever in its grave,

          And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,

     A box where sweets compacted lie;

My music shows ye have your closes,

          And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,

     Like seasoned timber, never gives,

But though the whole world turn to coal,

          Then chiefly lives.

The Tiger – William Blake

TIGER! TIGER! burning bright,

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burned the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? And what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? What dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,

And water’d heaven with their tears,

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tiger! Tiger! burning bright,

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

The Ballad of Father Gilligan – W. B. Yeats

The old priest, Peter Gilligan,

    Was weary night and day,

For half his flock were in their beds,

    Or under green sods lay.

Once, while he nodded on a chair,

    At the moth hour of eve,

Another poor man sent for him,

   And he began to grieve.

‘I have no rest, nor joy, nor peace,

    For people die and die’;

And after, cried he, ‘God forgive!

    My body spake, not I!’

He knelt, and leaning on the chair,

    He prayed and fell asleep;

And the moth hour went from the fields

    And stars began to peep.

They slowly into millions grew,

     And leaves shook in the wind;

And God covered the world with shade,

    And whispered to mankind.

Upon the time of sparrow chirp,

    When the moths came once more,

The old priest Peter Gilligan

    Stood upright on the floor.

‘Mavrone, Mavrone! The man has died

    While I slept on the chair’,

He roused his horse out of his sleep

    And rode with little care.

He rode now as he never rode,

    By rocky lane and fen;

The sick man’s wife opened the door:

    ‘Father! You come again!’

‘And is the poor man dead?’ he cried.

    ‘He died an hour ago’.

The old Priest Peter Gilligan

    In grief swayed to and fro.

‘When you were gone, he turned and died

    As merry as a bird’.

The old priest Peter Gilligan

    He knelt him at that word.

‘He who hath made the night of stars,

    For souls, who tire and bleed,

Sent one of His great angels down

    To help me in my need.

‘He who is wrapped in purple robes,

    With planets in His care,

Had pity on the least of things

    Asleep upon a chair’.

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