‘What Though the Dark Come Down’ by Annette Wynne is a powerful, four-stanza poem that explores the power, or lack thereof, darkness holds.
What though the dark come down,
What though the shadows fall,
What though the dark come on the sea,
And the ships and the hills and all?
‘Dreams’ by Anne Bronte explores the power of dreams as the speaker fantasizes about having a child to call her own.
While on my lonely couch I lie,
I seldom feel myself alone,
For fancy fills my dreaming eye
With scenes and pleasures of its own.
‘The Tyger’ is a well-known poem by William Blake. It explores the dark and destructive side of God and his creation.
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
‘The Fish’ by Marianne Moore uses imagery and form to objectively describe nature and humanity’s ability to survive and mature in the face of death, destruction, and loss.
wade
through black jade.
Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
adjusting the ash-heaps;
opening and shutting itself like
‘The Raven’ is commonly considered to be Edgar Allan Poe’s poetic masterpiece. It details a harrowing night in the speaker’s life that includes incessant knocking and a talking raven that only says one word–“Nevermore.”
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
‘After Killing a Spider’ by Masaoka Shiki is a thoughtful poem. It describes the negative and dark effects of killing a spider.
After killing
a spider, how lonely I feel
‘Try to Praise the Mutilated World’ by Adam Zagajewski focuses on the most important ways that people can find happiness in their everyday lives. They can step out into nature or return to memories.
Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine.
The nettles that methodically overgrown
‘[London, my beautiful]’ by F.S. Flint describes one speaker’s love for the city of London and how he feels the city improves others and himself.
‘A Dream’ by Edgar Allan Poe describes a speaker’s waking and dreaming state and the brief moments of light and hope he experiences.
‘A Pæan’ describes the feelings experienced by a husband as he views his dead wife and his desire to sing a “pæan” rather than a “requiem.”
How shall the burial rite be read?
The solemn song be sung ?
The requiem for the loveliest dead,
That ever died so young?
‘A Picture of Otto’ by Ted Hughes is addressed to Sylvia Plath’s father, Otto. It contains Hughes’ disagreements about how he and Otto were depicted in Plath’s work.
‘A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London’ by Dylan Thomas tells of a speaker’s inability to comprehend great losses.
‘A Stopwatch and an Ordnance Map’ by Stephen Spender explores the Spanish Civil War through the lyrical depiction of one man’s death. It is marked by a stopwatch, the olive trees, and the continued conflict around him.
‘A Winter’s Tale’ by D.H. Lawrence tells a tale of two parting lovers who meet in the woods on a dark and misty winter day.
‘A World Of Light’ explores the idea of dark and light and contravenes the traditional use of these two with
The poem, ‘About These Things’ by Elizabeth Jennings talks of the things or the fears about which the poem always
‘Acquainted with the Night’ by Robert Frost is a personal poem that deals with themes of depression. It’s told, perhaps, from the poet’s own perspective.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
‘Amends’ by Adrienne Rich is a beautiful poem in which the poet depicts the moon. She describes its presence in the sky and the peace it brings to humanity.
‘And Soul’ by Eavan Boland is a poem about death and a body’s dissolution into the elements that it is made up of. The poet emphasizes the connection between a human being made nearly entirely of water and a city that’s drenched by a particularly rainy summer season.
‘Anorexic’ by Eavan Boland conveys the mindset of a woman determined to destroy her physical body through starvation and filled with hatred for her sinful past, as according to the Biblical story of Adam and Eve.
‘Apotropaic’ by A. E. Stallings is a clever poem that personifies Evil and depicts how easy it is for “him” to take on various guises, such as that of someone old and meek.
‘Ariel’ by Sylvia Plath is a deeply metaphorical poem. It focuses on the speaker’s experiences during a terrifying horseback ride.
Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.
Ballad of Birmingham’ by Dudley Randall is a moving narrative of the last moments of a little girl murdered in a church bombing.
“Mother dear, may I go downtown
Instead of out to play,
And march the streets of Birmingham
In a Freedom March today?”
‘Before the Mirror’ by Elizabeth Drew Barstow Stoddard describes the life of a woman trapped within her home and the shadows of the world outside.
‘Blackberrying’ by Sylvia Plath explores decaying and flourishing life and human mortality. It was published in 1971 in Crossing the Water, after the poet’s death.
‘By night we linger’d on the lawn’ by Alfred Lord Tennyson is an excerpt from Tennyson’s masterpiece, ‘In Memoriam A.
‘Contusion’ by Sylvia Plath is a memorable, short poem about death and a loss of passion or meaning in one’s life. It is a dramatic monologue written 12 days before the poet’s death.
‘Crocus’ by Alfred Kreymborg is a five stanza poem that is separated into sets of four lines or quatrains. These
‘Dark August’ by Derek Walcott describes the dark life a speaker is forced to live when someone he depends on abandons him.
‘Dark house, by which once more I stand’ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson is the seventh part of the long poem
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