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THE TYGER by WILLIAM BLAKE

Tyger, Tyger 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 sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when they heart began to beat,

What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chaine?

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 water'd heaven with their tears:

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger, Tyger burning bright,

In the forest of the night:

What immortal hand or eye,

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

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SONNET by EDNA ST.VINCENT MILLAY

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.

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I SAW A JOLLY HUNTER by CHARLES CAUSLEY

I saw a jolly hunter

With a jolly gun

Walking in the country

In the jolly sun.

In the jolly meadow

Sat a jolly hare.

Saw the jolly hunter.

Took jolly care.

Hunter jolly eager -

Sight of jolly prey.

Forgot gun pointing

Wrong jolly way.

Jolly hunter jolly head

Over heels gone.

Jolly old safety catch

Not Jolly on.

Bang went the jolly gun,

Hunter jolly dead.

Jolly hare got clean away.

Jolly good, I said.

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A 14-YEAR-OLD CONVALESCENT CAT IN THE WINTER by GAVIN EWART

I want him to have another living summer,

to lie in the sun and enjoy the douceur de vivre -

because the sun, like golden rum in a rummer,

is what makes an idle cat un tout petit peu ivre -

I want him to lie stretched out, contented,

revelling in the heat, his fur all dry and warm,

an Old Age Pensioner, retired, resented

by no one, and happinesses in a beelike swarm

to settle on him - postponed for another season

that last fated hateful journey to the vet

from which there is no return ( and age the reason),

which must soon come - as i cannot forget.

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SOMETIMES by SHEENAGH PUGH

Sometimes things don't go, after all,

from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel

faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,

sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;

elect an honest man; decide they care

enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.

Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go

amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow

that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you

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TO EMILIA V - PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Music, when soft voices die,

Vibrates in the memory -

Odours, when sweet violets sicken,

Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,

Are heaped for the beloved's bed -

And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,

Love itself shall slumber on ....