When the playwright Lorraine Hansberry wrote a play about the hopes and courage and defeats

of a black family in America, it was quite natural that she would find her title in of the lines from

this poem: “A Raisin in the Sun”.

Harlem

Langston Hughes

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10

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore –

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over –

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

Like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

A Narrow Fellow in the

Grass

Emily Dickinson

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A narrow fellow in the grass

Occasionally rides;

You may have met him,---did you not,

His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb

A spotted shaft is seen;

And then it closes at your feet

And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,

A floor too cool for corn.

Yet when a child, and barefoot,

I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash

Unbraiding in the sun,--

When, stooping to secure it,

It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature's people

I know, and they know me;

I feel for them a transport

Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,

Attended or alone,

Without a tighter breathing,

And zero at the bone.

How do you feel when you see the word “death” in the title of a poem or story? After you finish

this poem, write down how it made you feel: were you surprised?

The Old Pilot’s Death

Donald Hall

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He discovers himself on an old airfield.

He thinks he was there before,

but rain has washed out the lettering of a sign.

A single biplane, all struts and wires,

stands in the long grass and wildflowers.

He pulls himself into the narrow cockpit

although his muscles are stiff

and sits like an egg in a nest of canvas.

He sees that the machine gun has rusted.

The glass over the instruments

has broken, and the red arrows are gone from his gas

gauge and his altimeter.

When he looks up, his propeller is turning,

although no one was there to snap it.

He lets out the throttle. The engine catches

and the propellor spins in the wind.

He bumps over holes in the grass,

and he remembers to pull back on the stick.

He rises from the land in a high bounce

which gets higher, and suddenly he is flying again.

He feels the old fear, and rising over the fields

the old gratitude. In the distance, circling in a beam of

late sun like brids migrating,

there are the wings of a thousand biplanes.

He banks and flies to join them.

William Wordsworth wrote six poems about a young girl named Lucy. The mystery of the girl’s

identity has never been solved. The mention of the River Dove in England reveals that Lucy lived

in the countryside – but little else is known about her. Was she a real person? Was she

imaginary? Perhaps we will never know . . . .

She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways

William Wordsworth

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10

She dwelt among the untrodden ways

Beside the springs of Dove.

A maid* whom there was none to praise

And very few to love.

A violet by the mossy stone

Half hidden from the eye!

Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

She live unknown, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, an oh,

The difference to me

* maid: a young unmarried

woman

As you read this poem, consider the words that help to make this poem an extended methaphor.

Seven Ages of Man

William Shakespeare

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All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages.

At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel,

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school.

And then the lover

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress' eyebrow.

Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth.

And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,

With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part.

The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,

His youthful hose well sav'd a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound.

Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

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