A Poison Tree by William Blake

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water’d it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole,
When the night had veil’d the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

The Wicked Hawthorn Tree by William Butler Yeats

O, but I saw a solemn sight;
Said the rambling, shambling traveling-man;
Castle Dargan’s ruin all lit,
Lovely ladies dancing in it.

What though they danced! Those days are gone,
Said the wicked, crooked hawthorn tree;
Lovely lady or gallant man
Are blown cold dust or a bit of bone.

O, what is life but a mouthful of air?
Said the rambling, shambling traveling-man;
Yet all the lovely things that were
Live, for I saw them dancing there.

Nobody knows what may befall
Said the wicked, crooked, hawthorn tree.
I have stood so long by the gap in the wall
Maybe I shall not die at all.

The Ruined Homestead by Roland Robinson

White birds, frightened from silver grass,
whose blood-rose breasts and wings are thrown
like petals settling down the pass,
flower the ruined homestead’s stone.

Rise from the fallen walls and scream,
crested, from the stark dead gum;
shatter the crystal of the morning’s dream
where I, across your landscape, come.

Roofless, the broken stonework frames
red arid hills, a valley where
the ghost-gums writhe like whitened flames
and desert-oaks droop their dark hair.

And when, in the crucible of the hills
the molten day has died, there stands
under the blaze of stars that fills
its night, a house not made with hands.

Red Wings by Winifred Virginia Jackson

I hear the shadows moving among old trees;
I see cold, white mists face new ecstasies;
And I, a thing of tears
And fears.

I hear the dead feet travel in a row;
I see the torn leaves falling where they go;
And I, a sleeping stone
Age blown.

I hear the red winds of the west arise;
I see strange, wide and watchful, waiting eyes;
And I, a thing of dust
In trust.

A Ghost Story by Randall Jarrell

 

The fox lifts his head from the feathers

And stares to the goose in the sky;

A song drifts from the bars of the tower

To the sow asleep in her sty.

 

The crushed or folded flower

Is grey in the grey of the moon;

The moonlight dreams of moonlight.

The vacant whorls of the tune
Ripple like wheat to the shepherd

from the light in the empty tower.

He nods, and the blurred moon sets.

The voice laughs over and over,
The ticking shriek of the crickets

Fades; and a long, light sigh

Trails over the lonely valley,

The leaves stir absently.

Voices by Frances Bellerby

 

I heard those voices today again:

Voices of women and children, down in that hollow

Of blazing light into which swoops the tree-darkened lane

Before it mounts up into the shadow again.

 
I turned the bend–just as always before

There was no one at all down there in the sunlit hollow;

Only ferns in the wall, foxglove by the hanging door

Of the blind old desolate cottage. And just as before

 
I noticed the leaping glitter of light

Where the steam runs under the lane; in that mine-dark archway

–Water and stones unseen as though in the gloom of night–

Like glittering fish slithers and leaps the light.

 
I waited long at the bend of the lane,

But heard only the murmuring water under the archway.

Yet I tell you, I’ve been to that place again and again,

And always, in summer weather, those voices are plain,

Down near that broken house, just where the tree-darkened lane

Swoops into the hollow of light before mounting to shadow again.

The House of Silence by Thomas Hardy

That is a quiet place –
That house in the trees with the shady lawn.“
”–If, child, you knew what there goes on
You would not call it a quiet place.
Why, a phantom abides there, the last of its race,
And a brain spins there till dawn.“

“But I see nobody there, –
Nobody moves about the green,
Or wanders the heavy trees between.”
“–Ah, that’s because you do not bear
The visioning powers of souls who dare
To pierce the material screen.

“Morning, noon, and night,
Mid those funereal shades that seem
The uncanny scenery of a dream,
Figures dance to a mind with sight,
And music and laughter like floods of light
Make all the precincts gleam.

“It is a poet’s bower,
Through which there pass, in fleet arrays,
Long teams of all the years and days,
Of joys and sorrows, of earth and heaven,
That meet mankind in its ages seven,
An aion in an hour.”

The Kind Ghosts by Wilfred Owen

She sleeps on soft, last breaths; but no ghost looms
Out of the stillness of her palace wall,
Her wall of boys on boys and dooms on dooms.

She dreams of golden gardens and sweet glooms,
Not marvelling why her roses never fall
Nor what red mouths were torn to make their blooms.

The shades keep down which well might roam her hall.
Quiet their blood lies in her crimson rooms
And she is not afraid of their footfall.

They move not from her tapestries, their pall,
Nor pace her terraces, their hecatombs,
Lest aught she be disturbed, or grieved at all.

Ghost House by Robert Frost

I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.

It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me—
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,—
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.

In the Fog By Giovanni Pascoli (Translated by Geoffrey Brock)

I stared into the valley: it was gone—
wholly submerged! A vast flat sea remained,
gray, with no waves, no beaches; all was one.

And here and there I noticed, when I strained,
the alien clamoring of small, wild voices:
birds that had lost their way in that vain land.

And high above, the skeletons of beeches,
as if suspended, and the reveries
of ruins and of the hermit’s hidden reaches.

And a dog yelped and yelped, as if in fear,
I knew not where nor why. Perhaps he heard
strange footsteps, neither far away nor near—

echoing footsteps, neither slow nor quick,
alternating, eternal. Down I stared,
but I saw nothing, no one, looking back.

The reveries of ruins asked: “Will no
one come?” The skeletons of trees inquired:
“And who are you, forever on the go?”

I may have seen a shadow then, an errant
shadow, bearing a bundle on its head.
I saw—and no more saw, in the same instant.

All I could hear were the uneasy screeches
of the lost birds, the yelping of the stray,
and, on that sea that lacked both waves and beaches,

the footsteps, neither near nor far away.