The Second Book of Modern Verse: A Selection from the Work of Contemporaneous American PoetsJessie Belle Rittenhouse |
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Common terms and phrases
Amy Lowell ANCIENT BEAUTIFUL THINGS Anna Hempstead Branch bird blow blue breast breath bright Cale Young Rice CHINESE NIGHTINGALE clouds Copyright dark dawn death deep door dragons dream earth Edwin Arlington Robinson eyes face feet fire flame Flammonde flowers forever golden green hand Harbury hear heard heart heaven Heel and toe hills Jerico John John Hall Wheelock kiss knew laugh Leonora Speyer lift light lips loam lonely look lover Macmillan Company Margaret Widdemer moon morning never night Old King Cole once pass path Poems rain rendezvous with Death Reprinted roof-tops rose round sang Sara Teasdale shadows shining silence silver sing sleep smile snow sorrow soul SPOON RIVER SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY Spring stars sweet tell thee thou town tree Vachel Lindsay voice walked walls wind window wings wonder woods
Popular passages
Page 109 - Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored, and imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, "Good morning...
Page 186 - My instep arch not only keeps the ache, It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round. I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend. And I keep hearing from the cellar bin The rumbling sound Of load on load of apples coming in. For I have had too much Of apple-picking: I am overtired Of the great harvest I myself desired. There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
Page 3 - THE ROAD NOT TAKEN Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth...
Page 136 - Ye stolid, homely, visible things, Above you all brood glorious wings Of your deep entities, set high, Like slow moons in a hidden sky. But you, their likenesses, are spent Upon another element. Truly ye are but seemings — The shadowy cast-off gleamings Of bright solidities. Ye seem Soft as water, vague as dream ; Image, cast in a shifting stream.
Page 140 - A LADY You are beautiful and faded, Like an old opera tune Played upon a harpsichord; Or like the sun-flooded silks Of an eighteenth-century boudoir. In your eyes Smoulder the fallen roses of outlived minutes, And the perfume of your soul Is vague and suffusing, With the pungence of sealed spice jars.
Page 30 - I beat forever The fens and the sedges. The pledge is still the same — for all disastrous pledges, All hopes resigned ! My soul still flies above me for the quarry it shall find.
Page 153 - OUT of me unworthy and unknown The vibrations of deathless music : "With malice toward none, with charity for all.
Page 50 - Music I heard with you was more than music, And bread I broke with you was more than bread; Now that I am without you, all is desolate; All that was once so beautiful is dead. Your hands once touched this table and this silver, And I have seen your fingers hold this glass. These things do not remember you, beloved, And yet your touch upon them will not pass. For it was in my heart you moved among them, And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes; And in my heart they will remember always,—...
Page 40 - Honoring the throne? — The loveliest fete and carnival Our world had ever known? The sages sat about us With their heads bowed in their beards, With proper meditation on the sight. Confucius was not born; We lived in those great days Confucius later said were lived aright. . . . And this gray bird, on that day of spring, With a bright-bronze breast, and a bronze-brown wing, Captured the world with his carolling.
Page 138 - With labor do I sound Thy praise, My work is done for Thee. Whoever makes a thing more bright, He is an angel of all light. Therefore let me spread abroad The beautiful cleanness of my God.