1. Poetry of the 1900s
American Poets

2. Paul Laurence Dunbar
1872-1906:
He was the first African-
American poet to make a
living from writing. He
wrote his first poem at
age six and gave his first
public recital at age nine.

3. Ione
Ah, yes, ‘t is sweet still to remember,
Though ‘t were less painful to forget;
For while my heart glows like an ember,
Mine eyes with sorrow’s drops are wet,
And, oh, my heart is aching yet.
It is a law of mortal pain
That old wounds, long accounted well,
Beneath the memory’s potent spell,
Will wake to life and bleed again.
So ‘t is with me; it might be better
If I should turn no look behind, --
If I could curb my heart and fetter,
From reminiscent gaze my mind,
Or let my soul go blind – go blind!
But would I do it if I could?
Nay! Ease at such a price were spurned;
For, since my love was once returned,
All that I suffer seemth good.
I know, I know it is the fashion,
When love has left some heart distressed,
To weight the air with wordful passion;
But I am glad that in my breast
I ever held so dear a guest.
Love does not come at every nod,
Or every voice that calleth “hasten;”. . .

4. Unexpressed
Deep in my heart that aches with the repression,
And strives with plentitude of bitter pain,
There lives a thought that clamors for expression,
And spends its undelivered force in vain.
What boasts it that some other may have thought it?
The right of thoughts’ expression is divine;
The price of pain I pay for it has bought it,
I care not who lays claim to it – ‘t is mine!
And yet not mine until it be delivered;
The manner of its birth shall prove the test.
Alas, alas, my rock of pride is shivered –
I beat my brow – the thought still unexpressed.

5. Longing
If you could sit with me beside the sea to-day,
And whisper with me sweetest dreamings o’er and o’er;
I think I should not find the clouds so dim and gray,
And not so loud the waves complaining at the shore.
If you could sit with me upon the shore to-day,
And hold my hand in yours as in the days of old,
I think I should not mind the chill baptismal spray,
Nor find my hand and heart and all the world so cold.
If you could walk with me upon the sand to-day,
And tell me that my longing love had won your own,
I think all my sad thoughts would then be put away,
And I could give back laughter the Ocean’s moan!

6. Ere Sleep Comes Down to Soothe the Weary Eyes
Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes,
Which all the day with ceaseless care have sought
The magic gold which from the seeker flies;
Ere dreams put on the gown and cap of thought,
And make the waking world a world of lies, --
Of lies most palpable, uncouth, forlorn,
That say life’s full of aches and tears and sighs, --
Oh, how with more than dreams the soul is torn,
Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes,
What phantoms fill the dimly lighted room;
What ghostly shades in awe-creating guide
Are bodies forth within the teeming gloom.
What echoes faint of sad and soul-sick cries,
And pangs of vague inexplicable pain
That pay the spirit’s ceaseless enterprise,. . .

7. Robert Frost
1874-1963
Using traditional verse
forms, he wrote about
searching and often about
dark mediations on
universal themes. His work
is infused with layers of
ambiguity and irony.

8. Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

9. Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake,
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

10. November
We saw leaves go to glory,
then almost migratory
go part way down the lane,
and then to end the story
get beaten down and pasted
in one wild day of rain.
We heard “’Tis over” roaring.
A year of leaves was wasted.
Oh, we make a boast of storing,
of saving and of keeping,
but only by ignoring
the waste of moments sleeping,
the waste of pleasure weeping,
by denying and ignoring
the waste of nations warring.

11. My November Guest
My sorrow, when she’s here with me,
thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.
Her pleasure will not let me stay,
She talks and I am fain to list;
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.
The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.
Now yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

12. Langston Hughes
1902-1967
He lived with his
grandmother in
Lawrence, Kansas, until he
was thirteen. He was
named class poet of his
eighth-grade class. He
used the rhythms of
African-American
music, particularly blues
and jazz in his poems.

13. Silence
I catch the pattern
Of your silence
Before you speak.
I do not need
To hear a word.
In your silence
Every tone I seek
Is heard.

14. Refugee
Loneliness terrific beats on my heart,
Bending the bitter broken boughs of pain.
Stunned by the onslaught that tears the sky apart
I stand with unprotected head against the rain.
Loneliness terrific turns to panic and to fear.
I hear my footsteps on the stairs of yesteryear,
Where are you? Oh, where are you?
Once so dear.

15. Girl
She lived in sinful happiness
And died in pain.
She danced in sunshine
And laughed in rain.
She went one summer morning
When flowers spread the plain,
But she told everybody
She was coming back again.
Folks made a coffin
And hid her deep in earth.
Seems like she said:
My body
Brings new birth.
For sure there grew flowers
And tall young trees
And sturdy weeds and grasses
To sway in the breeze.
And sure she lived
In growing things
With no pain
To laugh in sunshine
And dance in rain.

16. Love Song for Antonia
If I should sing
All of my songs for you
And you would not listen to them,
If I should build
All of my dream houses for you
And you would never live in them,
If I should give
All of my hopes to you
And you would laugh and say: I do not care,
Still I would give you my love
Which is more than my songs,
More than any houses of dreams,
Or dreams of houses—
I would still give you my love
Though you never looked at me.

17. Troubled Woman
She stands
In the quiet darkness,
This troubled woman
Bowed by
Weariness and pain
Like an
Autumn flower
In the frozen rain,
Like a
Wind-blown autumn flower
That never lifts its head
Again.

18. Edna Millay
1892-1950
She was the first woman to
receive the Pulitzer Prize
for poetry. She ranks
today as a major figure in
twentieth century
American literature.

19. Ebb
I know what my heart is like
Since your love died;
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
Left there by the tide,
A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.

20. Two Sonnets in Memory
II
Where can the heart be hidden in the ground
And be at peace, and be at peace forever,
Under the world, untroubled by the sound
Of mortal tears, that cease from pouring never?
Well for the heart, by stern compassion harried,
If death be deeper than the churchmen say, --
Gone from this world indeed what’s graveward carried,
And laid to rest indeed what’s laid away.
Anguish enough while yet the indignant breather
Have blood to spurt upon the oppressor’s hand;
Who would eternal be, and hand in ether
A stuffless ghost above his struggling land,
Retching in vain to render up the groan
That is not there, being aching dust’s alone?

21. Pity Me Not Because the Light of Day
Pity me not because the light of day
At close of day no longer walks the sky;
Pity me not for the beauties passed away
From field and thicket as the year goes by;
Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,
Nor that a man’s desire is hushed so soon,
And you no longer look with love on me.
This have I known always: Love is no more
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,
Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,
Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales;
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.

22. The Dream
Love, if I weep it will not matter,
And if you laugh I shall not care;
Foolish am I to think about it,
But it is good to feel you there.
Love, in my sleep I dreamed of waking, --
White and awful the moonlight reached
Over the floor, and somewhere, somewhere
There was a shutter loose, -- it screeched!
Swung in the wind, -- and not wind blowing! –
I was afraid, and turned to you,
Put out my hand to you for comfort, --
And you were gone! Cold, cold as dew,
Under my hand the moonlight lay!
Love, if you laugh I shall not care,
But if I weep it will not matter, --
Ah, it is good to feel you there!

23. Sylvia Plath
1932-1963
She published her first
poem at eight years old.
She was described as
sensitive, intelligent, and a
perfectionist. She
committed suicide at the
age of thirty.

24. Pheasant
You said you would kill it this morning.
Do not kill it. It startles me still,
The jut of that odd, dark head, pacing
Through the uncut grass on the elm’s hill.
It is something to own a pheasant,
Or just to be visited at all.
I am not mystical: it isn’t
As if I thought it had a spirit.
It is simply in its element.
That gives it a kingliness, a right.
The print of its big foot last winter,
The tail-track, on the snow in our court—
The wonder of it, in that pallor,
Through crosshatch of sparrow and starling.
Is it its rareness, then? It is rare.
But a dozen would be worth having,
A hundred, on that hill – green and red,
Crossing and recrossing: a fine thing!

25. Stillborn
These poems do not live: it’s a sad diagnosis.
They grew their toes and fingers well enough,
Their little foreheads bulged with concentration.
If they missed out on walking about like people
It wasn’t for any lack of mother-love.
O I cannot understand what happened to them!
They are proper in shape and number and every part.
They sit so nicely in the pickling fluid!
They smile and smile and smile and smile at me.
And still the lungs won’t fill and the heart won’t start.
They are not pigs, they are not even fish,
Though they have a piggy and a fishy air –
It would be better if they were alive, and that’s what they were.
But they are dead, and their mother near dead with distraction,
And they stupidly stare and do not speak of her.

26. Sheep in Fog
The hills step off into whiteness.
People or stars
Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.
The train leaves a line of breath.
O slow
Horse the color of rust,
Hooves, dolorous bells –
All morning the
Morning has been blackening,
A flower left out.
My bones hold a stillness, the far
Fields melt my heart.
They threaten
To let me through to a heaven
Starless and fatherless, a dark water.

27. Carl Sandburg
1878-1967
His works portray his
concern for the difficulties
of the American worker.
His goal was to write
simple poems with which
people could identify.

28. To a Dead Man
Over the dead line we have called to you
To come across with a word to us,
Some beaten whisper of what happens
Where you are over the dead line
Deaf to our calls and voiceless.
The flickering shadows have not answered
Nor your lips sent a signal
Whether to love talks and roses grow
And the sun breaks at morning
Splattering the sea with crimson.

29. Under the Harvest Moon
Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.
Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

30. Monotone
The monotone of the rain is beautiful,
And the sudden rise and slow relapse
Of the long multitudinous rain.
The sun on the hills is beautiful
Or a captured sunset sea-flung,
Bannered with fire and gold.
A face I know is beautiful –
With fire and gold of sky and sea,
And the peace of long warm rain.

31. The Road and the End
I shall foot it
down the roadway in the dusk,
Where shapes of hunger wander
And the fugitives of pain go by.
I shall foot it
In the silence of the morning,
See the night slur into dawn,
Hear the slow great winds arise
Where tall trees flank the way
And shoulder toward the sky.
The broken boulders by the road
Shall not commemorate my ruin.
Regret shall be the gravel under foot.
I shall watch for
Slim birds swift of wing
That go where wind and ranks of thunder
Drive the wild processionals of rain.
The dust of the traveled road
Shall touch my hands and face.

32. Wallace Stevens
1897-1955
He is best known for his
poem “The
Snowman”, of which a
commentator once said, it
is “the best short poem in
the English language”.

33. The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

34. She’s Just a Memory
But that’s not what
I want her to be
She meant the world to me
But now she’s just a memory.
Day after Day
Night after Night
I think of her
Remembering the times
We spent together and
Hoping someday I’ll see her again.

35. A Quiet Normal Life
His place, as he sat and as he thought, was not
In anything that he constructed, so frail,
So barely lit, so shadowed over and naught,
As, for example, a world in which, like snow,
He became an inhabitant, obedient
To gallant notions on the part of the cold.
It was here. This was the setting and the time
Of year. Here in his house and in his room,
In his chair, the most tranquil thought grew peaked
And the oldest and the warmest heart was cut
By gallant notions on the part of night –
Both late and alone, above the crickets’ chords,
Babbling, each one, the uniqueness of its sound.
There was no fury in transcendent forms.
But his actual candle blazed with artifice.

36. Gray Room
Although you sit in a room that is gray,
Except for the silver
Of the straw-paper,
And pick
At your pale white gown;
Or lift on the green beads
Of your necklace,
To let it fall;
Or gaze at your green fan
Printed with the red branches of a red willow;
Or, with one finger,
Move the leaf in the bowl –
The leaf that has fallen from the branches of the forsythia
Beside you...
What is all this?
I know how furiously your heart is beating.

37. Themes in 1900’s Poetry:
• Relationships
• Individual Identity
• Social Consciousness
• The Working Class
• Life and Death