Mending Wall
By Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

About this Poem

We might interpret this piece of family wisdom as meaning: having clear boundaries between ourselves and others leads to healthy relationships between neighbors because they won’t fall out over petty territorial disputes or ‘invading each other’s space’. For instance, we may like our neighbors, but we don’t want to wake up and draw the curtains to find them dancing naked on our front lawn. (Although, that’s according to who your neighbor is. I’ve had a few that I wouldn’t mind dancing naked in my yard.) There are limits. Respecting each other’s boundaries helps to keep things civil and amicable. However, does this mean that Frost himself approves of such a notion?

“Mending Wall” is frequently misinterpreted, as Frost himself observed in 1962, shortly before his death. “People are frequently misunderstanding it or misinterpreting it.” But he went on to remark, “The secret of what it means I keep,” which doesn’t really clear up the matter. However, we can analyze “Mending Wall” as a poem contrasting two approaches to life and human relationships: the approach embodied by he speaker of his poem and the approach represented by his neighbor. It is the neighbor, rather than the poem’s speaker, who insists: “Good fences make good neighbors.” The phrase has become like another of Frost’s sentiments: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, / I took the one less travelled by.” This statement, from “The Road Not Taken,” is often misinterpreted because readers assume Frost is proudly asserting his individualism, whereas in fact, the lines are filled with regret over “what might have been.”

“Good fences make good neighbors” is actually more straightforward: people misinterpret the meaning of this line because they misattribute the statement to Frost himself, rather than to the neighbor with whom the speaker disagrees. As the first line of the poem has it, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall”: this, spoken by the poem’s speaker, clearly indicates that Frost does not agree with the view that “good fences make [for] good neighbors.”

It is also worth noting that this line, “Good fences make good neighbors” did not originate with Frost: it is first found in the Western Christian Advocate (13 June 1834), as noted in The Yale Book of Quotations.

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
By E. E. Cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
                                                                  i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

About the Poem

“i carry your heart with me (i carry it in” by E.E. Cummings was first published in June 1952 in Poetry magazine. It is an unconventional sonnet, and as an unconventional poet, Cummings plays with the established styles of poetry for the benefit of meaning and aesthetics. It is important to note the aesthetics of his poetry play a role in the message being delivered, something which is clearly seen in this poem.

The poem details a powerful, romantic love from start to finish. Even the structure demonstrates this by breaking old-fashioned rules but still managing to be clear. The sweet intention is not lost; if anything, it is strengthened by the unconventionality. It mirrors the words of strength and unity, lack of fear. Everything in the speaker’s life, including the soul, rests in this love and in the very being of the person meant to receive the message. The unique structure of the poem also serves to demonstrate the oneness of the love the speaker feels. In addition, it also shows how the beauty of the love knows no bounds. In other words, it is not restricted by any old rules or traditions. Just as the speaker is not restricted in life due to the courage his or her love provides.

The overarching themes of this piece are love, admiration, and fortitude. The admiration of the speaker is not just assumed because he or she is in love, it is also evident in the writing itself. The line “for beautiful you are my world,my true)” shows the high esteem in which the lover is held. All three themes interweave and work with each other to make the poem even more beautiful, rather than each theme standing alone. This adds coherency to the fourth theme seen in the poem, unity. Though it may not be as explicit in the lines when read, unity is definitely a very present topic throughout the piece.

About the Poet

Edward Estlin (E.E.) Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 14, 1894. He began writing poems as early as 1904 and studied Latin and Greek at the Cambridge Latin High School.

He received his BA in 1915 and his MA in 1916, both from Harvard University. His studies there introduced him to the poetry of avant-garde writers, such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound.

In 1917, Cummings published an early selection of poems in the anthology Eight Harvard Poets. The same year, Cummings left the United States for France as a volunteer ambulance driver in World War I. Five months after his assignment, however, he and a friend were interned in a prison camp by the French authorities on suspicion of espionage (an experience recounted in his novel, The Enormous Room) for his outspoken anti-war convictions.

After the war, he settled into a life divided between his lifetime summer home, Joy Farm in New Hampshire, and Greenwich Village, with frequent visits to Paris. He also traveled throughout Europe, meeting poets and artists, including Pablo Picasso, whose work he particularly admired.

In 1920, The Dial published seven poems by Cummings, including “Buffalo Bill’s.” Serving as Cummings’ debut to a wider American audience, these “experiments” foreshadowed the synthetic cubist strategy Cummings would explore in the next few years. 

In his work, Cummings experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. Later in his career, he was often criticized for settling into his signature style and not pressing his work toward further evolution. Nevertheless, he attained great popularity, especially among young readers, for the simplicity of his language, his playful mode and his attention to subjects such as war and sex.

The poet and critic Randall Jarrell once noted that Cummings is “one of the most individual poets who ever lived—and, though it sometimes seems so, it is not just his vices and exaggerations, the defects of his qualities, that make a writer popular. But, primarily, Mr. Cummings’s poems are loved because they are full of sentimentally, of sex, of more or less improper jokes, of elementary lyric insistence.”

During his lifetime, Cummings received a number of honors, including an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1958, and a Ford Foundation grant.

At the time of his death, September 3, 1962, he was the second most widely read poet in the United States, after Robert Frost. He is buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts.

The Raven
By Edgar Allan Poe

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
 While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
   Only this and nothing more.”

 Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
 Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
 From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
   Nameless here for evermore.

 And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
 So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
 “’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
   This it is and nothing more.”

 Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
 But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
 And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—
   Darkness there and nothing more.

 Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
 But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
 And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—
   Merely this and nothing more.

 Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
 “Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
  Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
   ’Tis the wind and nothing more!”

 Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
 Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
 But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
   Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
   Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

 Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
 For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
 Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
   With such name as “Nevermore.”

 But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
 Nothing farther then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—
 Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.”
   Then the bird said “Nevermore.”

 Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store
 Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
 Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
   Of ‘Never—nevermore’.”

 But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
 Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
 Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
   Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

 This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
 This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
 On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,
   She shall press, ah, nevermore!

 Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
 “Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
 Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
   Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

 “Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
 Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
 On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”
   Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

 “Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
 Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
 It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
   Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

 “Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
 Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
 Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
   Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

 And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
 And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
 And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
   Shall be lifted—nevermore!

Sometimes, there are pieces of literature that are ingrained in your mind with a voice that is not your own. One of those is Linus reciting Chapter 2 from the Gospel of Luke in A Charlie Brown Christmas. Likewise, I can never read “The Raven” without hearing it in Vincent Price’s voice. Christopher Lee also did a famous reading of the poem, but It’s Vincent Price that I would suspect every American of my generation, and possibly the one before, is more familiar with the Vincent Price version. One of my teachers had a record of the Price version, and I have always found it wonderfully creepy, as Vincent Price’s voice always was. His horror movies were dreadful, but Price’s voice is what really made him famous. Take a listen:

“The Raven” was first attributed to Poe in print in the New York Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845. Its publication made Poe popular in his lifetime, although it did not bring him much financial success. The poem was soon reprinted, parodied, and illustrated. Critical opinion is divided as to the poem’s literary status, but it nevertheless remains one of the most famous poems ever written.

The poem tells of a distraught lover who is paid a mysterious visit by a talking raven. The lover, often identified as a student, is lamenting the loss of his love, Lenore. Sitting on a bust of Pallas (an epithet of the Greek Goddess Athena which recalls her attributes as the goddess of warfare), the raven seems to further antagonize the protagonist with its constant repetition of the word “Nevermore”. The poem makes use of folk, mythological, religious, and classical references. Poe claimed to have written the poem logically and methodically, with the intention to create a poem that would appeal to both critical and popular tastes, as he explained in his 1846 follow-up essay, “The Philosophy of Composition.”

In the essay, Poe traces the logical progression of his creation of “The Raven” as an attempt to compose “a poem that should suit at once the popular and the critical taste.” He claims that he considered every aspect of the poem. For example, he purposely set the poem on a, pardon the cliché, dark and stormy night, causing the raven to seek shelter. He purposefully chose a pallid bust to contrast with the dark plume of the bird. The bust was of Pallas in order to evoke the notion of scholar, to match with the presumed student narrator poring over his “volume[s] of forgotten lore.” No aspect of the poem was an accident, he claims, but is based on total control by the author.

Even the term “Nevermore,” he says, is based on logic following the “unity of effect.” The essay states Poe’s conviction that a work of fiction should be written only after the author has decided how it is to end and which emotional response, or “effect,” he wishes to create. Once this effect has been determined, the writer should decide all other matters pertaining to the composition of the work, including tone, theme, setting, characters, conflict, and plot. In this case, Poe logically decides on “the death… of a beautiful woman” because it is “unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.” Some commentators have taken this to imply that pure poetry can only be attained by the eradication of female beauty. Biographers and critics have often suggested that Poe’s obsession with this theme stems from the repeated loss of women throughout his life, including his mother Eliza Poe, his foster mother Frances Allan and, later, his wife Virginia.

The raven itself, Poe says, is meant to become symbolic by the end of the poem. By the end, Poe wanted his reader to see the Raven as symbolic, but it is not to appear so until the very last stanza when the reader is to see the Raven as symbolic of Mournful and Never-ending. This may imply an autobiographical significance to the poem, alluding to the many people in Poe’s life who had died.

Poe is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism and Gothic fiction in the United States and is best known for his poetry, such as “The Raven” and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. While not all of his writings were Gothic, all of his writing is anchored in Romanticism. The fictionalized portrayals of Poe often show him as a “mad genius” or “tormented artist” while blending depictions of the characters in his stories suggesting that Poe and his characters share identities. I always associate Poe with the macabre aspects of Halloween, which is why I am featuring Poe and his most famous poem today of all days.

Happy Halloween!

Annabel Lee
By Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago,
  In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
  By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
  Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
  In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
  My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
  And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
  In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
  Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
  In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
  Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
  Of those who were older than we—
  Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
  Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
  Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
  Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
  Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
  Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
  In her sepulchre there by the sea—
  In her tomb by the sounding sea.

“Annabel Lee” is the last complete poem composed by American author Edgar Allan Poe. Like many of Poe’s poems, it explores the theme of the death of a beautiful woman. In my opinion, “Annabel Lee” is Poe’s most hauntingly beautiful poem. The narrator, who fell in love with Annabel Lee when they were young, has a love for her so strong that even angels are envious. He retains his love for her after her death. There has been debate over who, if anyone, was the inspiration for “Annabel Lee.” Though many women have been suggested, Poe’s wife Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe is one of the more credible candidates. For whoever was the inspiration, it is obvious that Poe truly loved her. Annabel Lee” was written in 1849 but not published until shortly after Poe’s death that same year.

Alone
By Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring—
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow—I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone—
And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—
Then—in my childhood—in the dawn
Of a most stormy life—was drawn
From ev’ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still—
From the torrent, or the fountain—
From the red cliff of the mountain—
From the sun that ‘round me roll’d
In its autumn tint of gold—
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass’d me flying by—
From the thunder, and the storm—
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view—

About the Poem

Edgar Allan Poe’s early life was full of tragedy and by the time this poem is thought to have been written, despite his relatively young age, he had experienced a large amount of loss. Poe wrote “Alone” in 1829, shortly after the death of his foster mother, Frances Allan. The poem was not titled or published in Poe’s lifetime but was discovered after his death and published posthumously in 1875. Known for his darker-themed works, it perhaps makes sense in this context that where others see a blue sky, he often struggled to see past the “demon in his view.”

“Alone” is believed to be autobiographical. The narrator perceives his life and emotions differently to others which has led to him feeling isolated. In the poem, he is questioning why he sees things so differently. The major theme of “Alone” is of feeling isolated, seen as different, and being misunderstood. The beauty and irony of these feelings is one that many people can relate to, and the very act of expressing these feelings through poetry connects Poe with others who feel the same. Poe feels his intense imaginative life is a curse, forever setting him apart from other people. But it’s also a blessing, the source of his visionary power.

About the Poet

Along with Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe is one of my favorite poets. As with Frost, what might seem to be a simple and straightforward poem has a lot more complexity. Poe always felt he was different, and he struggled to fit in. Poe mostly handled these feelings with destructive behavior, while Dickinson handles her feelings by being a recluse. All three poets expressed their feelings eloquently in their poems. While Frost is not usually known for darker themes like Poe is, he did write a few poems that make you contemplate your own mortality and the choices we make in life. Dickinson has many of the dark themes of Poe, though she is not primarily known for them. Her most famous poem, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” is definitely one of her more morbid prose.

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston. Poe’s father and mother, both professional actors, died before the poet was three years old, and John and Frances Allan raised him as a foster child in Richmond, Virginia. John Allan, a prosperous tobacco exporter, sent Poe to the best boarding schools and, later, to the University of Virginia, where Poe excelled academically. After less than one year of school, however, he was forced to leave the university when Allan refused to pay Poe’s gambling debts.

Poe returned briefly to Richmond, but his relationship with Allan deteriorated. In 1827, Poe moved to Boston and enlisted in the United States Army. His first collection of poems, Tamerlane, and Other Poems (George Redway) was published that year. In 1829, he published a second collection entitled Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (Hatch & Dunning). Neither volume received significant critical or public attention. Following his Army service, Poe was admitted to the United States Military Academy, but he was again forced to leave for lack of financial support, and because he may have been kicked out for showing up at formation naked among other mischievous events. He then moved into the home of his aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter, Virginia, in Baltimore.

Poe began to sell short stories to magazines at around this time, and, in 1835, he became the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, where he moved with his aunt and cousin Virginia. In 1836, he married Virginia, who was thirteen years old at the time. Over the next ten years, Poe edited a number of literary journals including the Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine and Graham’s Magazine in Philadelphia and the Broadway Journal in New York City. It was during these years that he established himself as a poet, a short story writer, and an editor. He published some of his best-known stories and poems, including “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and “The Raven.” 

After Virginia’s death from tuberculosis in 1847, Poe’s lifelong struggle with depression and alcoholism worsened. He returned briefly to Richmond in 1849 and then set out for an editing job in Philadelphia. For unknown reasons, he stopped in Baltimore. On October 3, 1849, he was found in a state of semi-consciousness. Poe died four days later of “acute congestion of the brain.” Evidence by medical practitioners who reopened the case has shown that Poe may have been suffering from rabies.

Poe’s work as an editor, poet, and critic had a profound impact on American and international literature. His stories mark him as one of the originators of both horror and detective fiction. Many anthologies credit him as the “architect” of the modern short story. He was also one of the first critics to focus primarily on the effect of style and structure in a literary work; as such, he has been seen as a forerunner to the “art for art’s sake” movement. Today, Poe is remembered as one of the first American writers to become a major figure in world literature.

October
By Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

In this poem, the American-born poet Robert Frost (1874-1963) considers the state of nature on an October morning, asking that nature beguile him and his fellow humans into believing things are not hastily moving to a state of waste and ruin by slowing down the process of decay and demise that October brings, with the falling leaves and harsh winds. Frost uses October, the autumn season, and its natural beauty to portray his idea. He then suddenly changes to the winter season following it, to show the genuine fondness of the magnificence and that each moment should be experienced to the fullest.

Compensation
By James Edwin Campbell

O, rich young lord, thou ridest by
With looks of high disdain;
It chafes me not thy title high,
Thy blood of oldest strain.
The lady riding at thy side
Is but in name thy promised bride.
    Ride on, young lord, ride on!

Her father wills and she obeys,
The custom of her class;
’Tis Land not Love the trothing sways—
For Land he sells his lass.
Her fair white hand, young lord, is thine,
Her soul, proud fool, her soul is mine,
    Ride on, young lord, ride on!

No title high my father bore;
The tenant of thy farm,
He left me what I value more:
Clean heart, clear brain, strong arm
And love for bird and beast and bee
And song of lark and hymn of sea,
    Ride on, young lord, ride on!

The boundless sky to me belongs,
The paltry acres thine;
The painted beauty sings thy songs,
The lavrock lilts me mine;
The hot-housed orchid blooms for thee,
The gorse and heather bloom for me,
    Ride on, young lord, ride on!

About the Poem

Campbell was among the first African-American poets to write in the African-American vernacular dialect. “Compensation” is one of his poems in which he did not use the African-American vernacular dialect. His first book, Driftings and Gleanings, a volume of poetry and essays in standard American English, was published in 1887.

In “Compensation,” Campbell uses the image of a young lord riding around observing his serfs. It is an analogy for the sharecropping system developed in the South after the American Civil War. After the Civil War, former slaves sought jobs, and planters sought laborers. The absence of cash or an independent credit system led to the creation of sharecropping, a system where the landlord/planter allows a tenant to use the land in exchange for a share of the crop. This encouraged tenants to work to produce the biggest harvest that they could and ensured they would remain tied to the land and unlikely to leave for other opportunities. 

Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism and similar systems. It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery, just as sharecropping was. It developed during the Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages in Europe and lasted in some countries until the mid-19th century. Unlike slaves but similar to sharecroppers, serfs could not be bought, sold, or traded individually though they could, depending on the area, be sold together with land.

“Compensation” is a contrast between the “young lord” who believes he is above it all and intimidates all those who live on his land. In the poem, land is the most important thing to the young lord, it is how he keeps his aristocratic lifestyle. In the South, the planters had lost all of their free labor and were at risk of losing their status at the top of Southern society. The young lord is said to “ridest by/ With looks of high disdain.” He shows his power over people with his haughtiness.

Campbell though points out how even though bonded by sharecropping, the black tenant farmers were still better off than when they were slaves, though in actuality that is debatable. They weren’t owned, but their debts were, and sharecropping became a form of debt bondage. Cambell’s speaker in the poem says that while he was not left land by his father like the young lord, he did have a “clean heart, clear brain, strong arm.”

I think the picture above is a nice complement to the poem. It reminds me of the folktale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” The story is about a vain emperor who gets exposed before his subjects. His vanity causes the emperor to be a naked fool to his subjects. In the poem, the young lord is also vain and believes he is above all others, but his “subjects” have something he does not have, a “clean heart, clear brain, strong arm.”

About the Poet

James Edwin Campbell was born on September 28, 1867, in Pomeroy, Ohio. He graduated from Pomeroy Academy in 1884. While still in school, he began to write poetry and stories in dialect. 

A poet, essayist, and educator, Campbell published two books in his lifetime: Driftings and Gleanings (State Tribune, 1887), a compilation of poems and essays; and Echoes from the Cabin and Elsewhere (Donohue & Henneberry, 1895), a full collection of poetry.

Campbell taught for two years at Buck Ridge, near Gallipoli, Ohio, and became involved in Republican politics in his state. He then ventured into journalism, writing for the West Virginia-based newspaper, Pioneer. He left the paper to return to education. Campbell led Langston School in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and, from 1892–94, became the first president of West Virginia Colored Institute (now, West Virginia State College). In the mid-1890s, Campbell moved to Chicago and wrote for the Chicago Times-Herald, while publishing poems in other periodicals. 

Campbell died on January 26, 1896, of typhoid pneumonia while visiting his parents for Christmas. He published his last poem, “Homesick,” on December 7, 1895, in the Chicago Conservator. It was reprinted in an Ohio newspaper.

Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792 – 1822

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

In antiquity, Ozymandias (Ὀσυμανδύας) was a Greek name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II. Shelley began writing his poem in 1817, soon after the announcement of the British Museum’s acquisition of a large fragment of a statue of Ramesses II from the thirteenth century BC, leading some scholars to believe that Shelley was inspired by this. The 7.25-ton fragment of the statue’s head and torso had been removed in 1816 from the mortuary temple of Ramesses at Thebes by Italian adventurer Giovanni Battista Belzoni. It was expected to arrive in London in 1818, but did not arrive until 1821. Shelley wrote the poem in friendly competition with his friend and fellow poet Horace Smith (1779–1849), who also wrote a sonnet on the same topic with the same title. Smith’s poem was published in The Examiner a few weeks after Shelley’s sonnet. Both poems explore the fate of history and the ravages of time: even the greatest men and the empires they forge are impermanent, their legacies fated to decay into oblivion.

Ozymandias
Horace Smith, 1779-1849

In Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desart knows:-
‘I am great OZYMANDIAS,’ saith the stone,
‘The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
‘The wonders of my hand.’- The City’s gone,-
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder,-and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro’ the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

A central theme of “Ozymandias” is the inevitable decline of leaders of empires and their pretensions to greatness. The name “Ozymandias” represents a rendering in Greek of a part of Ramesses’ throne name, User-maat-re Setep-en-re. The sonnet paraphrases the inscription on the base of the statue, given by Diodorus Siculus in his Bibliotheca historica as “King of Kings am I, Ozymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works.”

The Journey
By Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life that you could save.

About the Poem

“The Journey” by Mary Oliver is a poem that focuses on the need to leave behind what is bad and wrong and harmful and start out on a new path. It has become a popular poem for those seeking guidance and strength in their lives. Oliver is best known for her poems on nature. So, “The Journey” is different from most of her poems in that it is more involved with the life of a person who is struggling to find meaning in a relationship and with themselves. The references to the natural world are few and distant – this poem is about the necessity for change, leaving one dark situation and finding another that is more positive. This person who, one day, finally knew what they had to do, is someone who is coming in from the cold, into the light from the dark, re-joining the world of the whole, finding their own voice, no longer a broken individual.

The journey tells of a person who has waited a long time for this day to arrive when they are about to start on a journey out of the dark past and into a brighter future. Despite those voices from any number of people trying to drag them back, giving their “bad advice” as loudly as they could, the poet had made up their mind out of necessity. Note the use of the house which is a symbol of the self, how it was made to tremble, that is, how close this person came to completely collapsing. It’s not a home but an empty person. And the voices are powerful because they represent negative energy, old patterns that this person had to break out of.

In a repeat of the opening line, the speaker clearly declares determinedly that “you know what you had to do.” There is no looking back, no stopping, no chance of holding onto that past life. However, the wind is still at you, trying to destroy and undermine you. The person set off in the day but now it is night and chaos still might rule. This is the chaotic energy of the past still attempting to stop the new progress and end this journey voices are not enough to cause a halt. The poem tells us that we cannot cling to the past, we cannot afford to dwell on what has gone.

In the final dozen lines of the poem, the transition is nearly complete, ready for the next phase. Stars are visible once again, but the cloud cover is not strong enough to diminish their light. Stars, what the old navigators used, now you can use. The voice that had been drowned out by those negative false calls for help is renewed. And it is strong, and it is yours alone.

The emphasis is on coming back into the world following what has been a challenging, chaotic, and terrifying experience. To be able to listen again to that inner voice of wisdom and truth, a sort of companion throughout the ordeal. At the last moment, in the nick of time, before it was too late, the speaker (the person, ‘you’) began the journey and overcame the obstacles both real and imagined.

About the Poet

Mary Jane Oliver (September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019) was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her work is inspired by nature rather than the human world, stemming from her lifelong passion for solitary walks in the wild. It is characterized by a sincere wonderment at the impact of natural imagery conveyed in unadorned language. In 2007, she was declared to be the country’s best-selling poet.