Sylvia Plath – All The Dead Dears

Rigged poker -stiff on her back

With a granite grin

This antique museum-cased lady

Lies, companioned by the gimcrack

Relics of a mouse and a shrew

That battened for a day on her ankle-bone.

These three, unmasked now, bear

Dry witness

To the gross eating game

We'd wink at if we didn't hear

Stars grinding, crumb by crumb,

Our own grist down to its bony face.

How they grip us through think and thick,

These barnacle dead!

This lady here's no kin

Of mine, yet kin she is: she'll suck

Blood and whistle my narrow clean

To prove it. As I think now of her hand,

From the mercury-backed glass

Mother, grandmother, greatgrandmother

Reach hag hands to haul me in,

And an image looms under the fishpond surface

Where the daft father went down

With orange duck-feet winnowing this hair ---

All the long gone darlings: They

Get back, though, soon,

Soon: be it by wakes, weddings,

Childbirths or a family barbecue:

Any touch, taste, tang's

Fit for those outlaws to ride home on,

And to sanctuary: usurping the armchair

Between tick

And tack of the clock, until we go,

Each skulled-and-crossboned Gulliver

Riddled with ghosts, to lie

Deadlocked with them, taking roots as cradles rock.

Rudyard Kipling – A Ballade of Jakko Hill

One moment bid the horses wait,

Since tiffin is not laid till three,

Below the upward path and straight

You climbed a year ago with me.

Love came upon us suddenly

And loosed -- an idle hour to kill --

A headless, armless armory

That smote us both on Jakko Hill.

Ah Heaven! we would wait and wait

Through Time and to Eternity!

Ah Heaven! we could conquer Fate

With more than Godlike constancy

I cut the date upon a tree --

Here stand the clumsy figures still:

"10-7-85, A.D."

Damp with the mist of Jakko Hill.

What came of high resolve and great,

And until Death fidelity!

Whose horse is waiting at your gate?

Whose 'rickshaw-wheels ride over me?

No Saint's, I swear; and -- let me see

To-night what names your programme fill --

We drift asunder merrily,

As drifts the mist on Jakko Hill.

L'envoi.

Princess, behold our ancient state

Has clean departed; and we see

'Twas Idleness we took for Fate

That bound light bonds on you and me.

Amen! Here ends the comedy

Where it began in all good will;

Since Love and Leave together flee

As driven mist on Jakko Hill!

Sylvia Plath – Aquatic Nocturne

deep in liquid

turquoise slivers

of dilute light

quiver in thin streaks

of bright tinfoil

on mobile jet:

pale flounder

waver by

tilting silver:

in the shallows

agile minnows

flicker gilt:

grapeblue mussels

dilate lithe and

pliant valves:

dull lunar globes

of blubous jellyfish

glow milkgreen:

eels twirl

in wily spirals

on elusive tails:

adroir lobsters

amble darkly olive

on shrewd claws:

down where sound

comes blunt and wan

like the bronze tone

of a sunken gong.

William Shakespeare – A Fairy Song

Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough brier,

Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire!

I do wander everywhere,

Swifter than the moon's sphere;

And I serve the Fairy Queen,

To dew her orbs upon the green;

The cowslips tall her pensioners be;

In their gold coats spots you see;

Those be rubies, fairy favours;

In those freckles live their savours;

I must go seek some dewdrops here,

And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. 

Khalil Gibran – Children Chapter IV

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, 

"Speak to us of Children."

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, 

Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, 

And He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as he loves the arrow that flies, 

So He loves also the bow that is stable.