1. Author’s Perspective in Poetry

2. My Papa’s Waltz By Theodore Roethke 1908–1963 The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother’s countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.

3. My Papa’s Waltz By Theodore Roethke 1908–1963 The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother’s countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.

4. Child on Top of a Greenhouse The wind billowing out the seat of my britches, My feet crackling splinters of glass and dried putty, The half-grown chrysanthemums staring up like accusers, Up through the streaked glass, flashing with sunlight, A few white clouds all rushing eastward, A line of elms plunging and tossing like horses, And everyone, everyone pointing up and shouting! Theodore Roethke

5. William Blake THE SICK ROSE O rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm, That flies in the night, In the howling storm, Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy, And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. THE BLOSSOM Merry, merry sparrow! Under leaves so green A happy blossom Sees you, swift as arrow, Seek your cradle narrow, “Showing the two contrary states of the human soul”

6. HOLY THURSDAY Is this a holy thing to see In a rich and fruitful land,— Babes reduced to misery, Fed with cold and usurous hand? Is that trembling cry a song? Can it be a song of joy? And so many children poor? It is a land of poverty! And their sun does never shine, And their fields are bleak and bare, And their ways are filled with thorns, It is eternal winter there. For where’er the sun does shine, And where’er the rain does fall, Babe can never hunger there, Nor poverty the mind appal. HOLY THURSDAY ’Twas on a holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean, The children walking two and two, in red, and blue, and green: Grey-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow, Till into the high dome of Paul’s they like Thames waters flow. O what a multitude they seemed, these flowers of London town! Seated in companies they sit, with radiance all their own. The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs, Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands. Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song, Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among: Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor. Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.

9. THE LAMB Little lamb, who made thee? Does thou know who made thee, Gave thee life, and bid thee feed By the stream and o’er the mead; Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing, woolly, bright; Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice? Little lamb, who made thee? Does thou know who made thee? Little lamb, I’ll tell thee; Little lamb, I’ll tell thee: He is callèd by thy name, For He calls Himself a Lamb. He is meek, and He is mild, He became a little child. I a child, and thou a lamb, We are callèd by His name. Little lamb, God bless thee! Little lamb, God bless thee! THE TIGER Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire? And what shoulder and what art Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And, when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand and what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did He smile His work to see? Did He who made the lamb make thee? Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

10. Spring is like a perhaps hand by E. E. Cummings Spring is like a perhaps hand (which comes carefully out of Nowhere) arranging a window, into which people look (while people stare arranging and changing placing carefully there a strange thing and a known thing here) and changing everything carefully spring is like a perhaps Hand in a window (carefully to and fro moving New and Old things, while people stare carefully moving a perhaps fraction of flower here placing an inch of air there) and without breaking anything.

11. Today By Billy Collins If ever there were a spring day so perfect, so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze that it made you want to throw open all the windows in the house and unlatch the door to the canary's cage, indeed, rip the little door from its jamb, a day when the cool brick paths and the garden bursting with peonies seemed so etched in sunlight that you felt like taking a hammer to the glass paperweight on the living room end table, releasing the inhabitants from their snow-covered cottage so they could walk out, holding hands and squinting into this larger dome of blue and white, well, today is just that kind of day.

12. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) from Love's Labour's Lost Spring When daisies pied, and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver-white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight, The cuckoo then, on every tree, Mocks married men, for thus sings he: 'Cuckoo! Cuckoo, cuckoo!' O word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear. When shepherds pipe on oaten straws, And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks, When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws, And maidens bleach their summer smocks, The cuckoo then, on every tree, Mocks married men, for thus sings he: 'Cuckoo! Cuckoo, cuckoo!' O word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear.