Mother to Son On the Grasshopper and by Langston Hughes the Cricket Well, son, I’ll tell you: Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. It’s had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor – Bare. But all the time It’s been a –climbin’ on, And rechin’ landin’s, And turnin’ corners, And sometimes goin’ in the dark Where there ain’t been no light. So boy, don’t you turn back. Don’t you set down on the steps ‘Cause you find it’s kinder hard. Don’t you fall now – For I’se still goin’, honey, I’se still climbin’, And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. On the Grasshopper and the Cricket by John Keats The poetry of the earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in the cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead1; That is the Grasshopper’s – he takes the lead In summer luxury, - he has never done With his delights; for when tired out with fun He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of the earth is ceasing never: On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought2 a silent from the stove there shrills The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills. 1Mead is a shortened form of meadow, so here, it is pronounced as rhyming with “bed.” 2wrought: made, produced. This poem is: rhymed free verse If you chose rhymed, label the rhyme scheme This poem is: rhymed free verse If you chose rhymed, label the rhyme scheme

Good-Night Afternoon on a Hill by Robert Louis Stevenson When the bright lamp is carried in, The sunless hours again begin; O’er all without, in field and lane, The haunted night returns again. Now we behold the embers flee About the firelit hearth; and see Our faces painted as we pass, Like pictures, on the window glass. Must we to bed indeed? Well then, Let us arise and go like men, And face with an undaunted tread The long black passage up to bed. Farewell, O brother, sister, sire! O pleasant party round the fire! The songs you sing, the tales you tell, Till far to-morrow, fare you well! Afternoon on a Hill by Edna St. Vincent Millay I will be the gladdest thing Under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers And not pick one. I will look at cliffs and clouds With quiet eyes, Watch the wind bow down the grass, And the grass rise. And when lights begin to show Up from the town, I will mark which must be mine, And then start down! This poem is: rhymed free verse If you chose rhymed, label the rhyme scheme This poem is: rhymed free verse If you chose rhymed, label the rhyme scheme