William Wordsworth
Poet(17701850)
Born in England in April 7, 1770, poet William Wordsworth worked
with Samuel Taylor Coleridge onLyrical Ballads(1798). The
collection, which contained Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey,"
introduced Romanticism to English poetry. Wordsworth also showed
his affinity for nature with the famous poem "I Wandered Lonely as
a Cloud." He became England's poet laureate in 1843, a role he held
until his death in April 23, 1850 at the age of 80.
DESIDERIA
by: William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
SURPRISED by joy -- impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport -- O! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recall'd thee to my mind--
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss? -- That thought's return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore
WALLACE STEVENS
Wallace Stevens(October 2, 1879 August 2, 1955) was an
AmericanModernistpoet. He was born inReading, Pennsylvania,
educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and he spent most
of his life working as an executive for an insurance company
inHartford, Connecticut. He won thePulitzer Prize for Poetryfor
hisCollected Poemsin 1955.
Some of his best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar,"
"Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock," "The Emperor of Ice-Cream," "The
Idea of Order at Key West," "Sunday Morning," "The Snow Man," and
"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."
The Snow Man
Wallace Stevens
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.
T.S. ELIOT
Writer(18881965)
Thomas StearnsT.S. Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in
September 28, 1888. He published his first poetic masterpiece, "The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," in 1915. In 1921, he wrote the
poem "The Waste Land" while recovering from exhaustion. The dense,
allusion-heavy poem went on to redefine the genre and become one of
the most talked about poems in literary history. For his lifetime
of poetic innovation, Eliot won the Order of Merit and the Nobel
Prize in Literature in 1948. Part of the ex-pat community of the
1920s, he spent most of his life in Europe, dying in London,
England, in 1965.
MORNING AT THE WINDOW
by: T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.
The brown waves of fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts
An aimless smile that hovers in the air
And vanishes along the level of the roofs.
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William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was a celebrated playwright, poet and actor.
He was born in the city of Stratford-upon-Avon in England, in the
year 1564. In 1582, when Shakespeare was just 18 years old, he got
married to Anne Hathaway, who was eight years older than him. After
that, there are no definite records of the next few years of his
life. Historians often refer to these years of Shakespeares life as
the lost years.
William began his career as a playwright in London in 1592. Soon
he himself started acting and also became part-owner of a
playwright company known as the Lord Chamberlains Men. King James I
renamed it as The Kings Men. Many of Shakespeares plays were
performed at the Globe Theatre.
Many of his plays were written in the latter half of his career.
Shakespeare then underwent a series of ups and downs owing to the
outbreak of the bubonic plague due to which the theatres had to be
shut down. The Globe Theatre caught fire too. However, it was
rebuilt again.
William retired and settled in Stratford, where he died in
1616.
William Shakespeare Plays
Shakespeare wrote 37 plays in his lifetime. Some of his most
famous works are Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet,
Othello, Merchant of Venice and Julius Caesar.
To this day,Hamletis probably his most quoted and reproduced
tragedy. It is also Shakespeares longest play.
Shakespeare is credited with introducing almost 3,000 words to
the English language.
Under the Greenwood Tree
Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
Who doth ambition shun,
And loves to live i' the sun,
Seeking the food he eats,
And pleas'd with what he gets,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
