Senior High School Within Manatangale E.S.

Poem From “The Iron Heel” by Jack London “Joy upon joy and gain upon gain Are the destined rights of my birth, And I shout the praise of my endless days To the echoing edge of the earth. Though I suffer all deaths that a man can die To the uttermost end of time, I have deep-drained this, my cup of bliss, In every age and clime— “The froth of Pride, the tang of Power, The sweet of Womanhood! I drain the lees upon my knees, For oh, the draught is good; I drink to Life, I drink to Death, And smack my lips with song, For when I die, another ‘I’ shall pass the cup along. “The man you drove from Eden’s grove Was I, my Lord, was I, And I shall be there when the earth and the air Are rent from sea to sky; For it is my world, my gorgeous world, The world of my dearest woes, From the first faint cry of the newborn To the rack of the woman’s throes. “Packed with the pulse of an unborn race, Torn with a world’s desire, The surging flood of my wild young blood Would quench the judgme

“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” by John Donne As virtuous men pass mildly away,    And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say    The breath goes now, and some say, No: So let us melt, and make no noise,    No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; ‘Twere profanation of our joys    To tell the laity our love. Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears,    Men reckon what it did, and meant; But trepidation of the spheres,    Though greater far, is innocent. Dull sublunary lovers’ love    (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove    Those things which elemented it. But we by a love so much refined,    That our selves know not what it is, Inter-assured of the mind,    Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss. Our two souls therefore, which are one,    Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion,    Like gold to airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so    As stiff twin compasses are tw

“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse  A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,  Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.  Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo  Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,  Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo. Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question … Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in

“The Soldier” by Rupert Brooke If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam; A body of England’s, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

“The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I’ve known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

“The Builders” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow All are architects of Fate, Working in these walls of Time; Some with massive deeds and great, Some with ornaments of rhyme. Nothing useless is, or low; Each thing in its place is best; And what seems but idle show Strengthens and supports the rest. For the structure that we raise, Time is with materials filled; Our to-days and yesterdays Are the blocks with which we build. Truly shape and fashion these; Leave no yawning gaps between; Think not, because no man sees, Such things will remain unseen. In the elder days of Art, Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part; For the Gods see everywhere. Let us do our work as well, Both the unseen and the seen; Make the house, where Gods may dwell, Beautiful, entire, and clean. Else our lives are incomplete, Standing in these walls of Time, Broken stairways, where the feet Stumble as they seek to climb. Build to-day, then, strong and sure, With a firm and am

“Horatius” by Thomas Babington I LARS Porsena of Clusium By the Nine Gods he swore That the great house of Tarquin Should suffer wrong no more. By the Nine Gods he swore it, And named a trysting day, And bade his messengers ride forth, East and west and south and north, To summon his array. II East and west and south and north The messengers ride fast, And tower and town and cottage Have heard the trumpet’s blast. Shame on the false Etruscan Who lingers in his home, When Porsena of Clusium Is on the march for Rome. III The horsemen and the footmen Are pouring in amain From many a stately market-place; From many a fruitful plain; From many a lonely hamlet, Which, hid by beech and pine, Like an eagle’s nest, hangs on the crest Of purple Apennine; IV From lordly Volaterræ, Where scowls the far-famed hold Piled by the hands of giants For godlike kings of old; From seagirt Populonia, Whose sentinels descry Sardinia’s snowy mountain-tops Fringing the southern sky; V