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Lyric poetry, characterized by its musicality and emotional depth, allows poets to express personal feelings, thoughts, and perceptions in a highly imaginative and emotive manner.
These poems are typically short and possess a single speaker who expresses internal thoughts or feelings rather than narrating a story. Classic forms of lyric poetry include sonnets, odes, and elegies, each with specific structures and themes. With its focus on personal emotion, lyric poetry can create a powerful resonance with readers, offering a deep exploration of human experiences such as love, loss, joy, and grief.
The ‘Hymn to Aphrodite’ by Sappho is an ancient lyric in which Sappho begs for Aphrodite’s help in managing her turbulent love life.
Beautiful-throned, immortal Aphrodite,
Daughter of Zeus, beguiler, I implore thee
Weigh me not down with weariness and anguish,
O thou most holy!
Wordsworth’s ‘The Tables Turned’ asks readers to quit books and rediscover the natural world’s beauty and wisdom.
Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?
‘Loveliest of Trees’ by A. E. Housman is a joyful nature poem in which the speaker describes how powerful the image of cherry blossom trees is in his life. He takes a great deal of pleasure from looking at them.
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ takes the reader through a speaker’s fantastical daydream to leave their world behind for the peace that nature brings.
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
Kilmer’s ‘Trees’ marvels at nature’s beauty, declaring trees as divine art surpassing human creation, in simple yet profound couplets.
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
Gunn’s ‘The Man with Night Sweats’ contrasts past vitality with present fragility, capturing the intimate pain of AIDS.
I wake up cold, I who
Prospered through dreams of heat
Wake to their residue,
Sweat, and a clinging sheet.
‘My Mother Would Be a Falconress’ by Robert Duncan explores a son and mother’s relationship through the lens of a falcon breaking free from his handler.
My mother would be a falconress,
And I, her gay falcon treading her wrist,
would fly to bring back
from the blue of the sky to her, bleeding, a prize,
‘The Spring’ by Thomas Carew is a poem about unrequited love in spring. The poet mourns the fact that no matter the season, his beloved does not love him.
Now that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost
Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost
Candies the grass, or casts an icy cream
Upon the silver lake or crystal stream;
‘What Now?’ by Gary Soto is a contemporary poem that speaks to the universal experience of aging and learning.
Where did the shooting stars go?
They flit across my childhood sky
vAnd by my teens I no longer looked upward—
My face instead peered through the windshield
‘After’ by Marston captures the eternal ache of loss, where brief joys transition to lasting sorrow, reflecting on grief’s permanence.
A LITTLE time for laughter,
— A little time to sing,
— A little time to kiss and cling,
And no more kissing after.
William Wordsworth’s literary classic, ‘Daffodils,’ also known as ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,’ is one of the most popular poems in the English language. It is a quintessential poem of the Romantic movement.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
‘Sonnet 131,’ also known as ‘Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art,’ is a poem about how the Dark Lady’s beauty moves the speaker. He knows she’s untraditionally beautiful but he doesn’t care!
Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art,
As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel;
For well thou know'st to my dear doting heart
Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel.
‘Childhood’ explores the transitory moment when a child becomes aware of the passing of time, and the process of growing old.
I used to think that grown-up people chose
To have stiff backs and wrinkles round their nose,
And veins like small fat snakes on either hand,
On purpose to be grand.
‘Hope is the Thing with Feathers’ by Emily Dickinson is a poem about hope. It is depicted through the famous metaphor of a bird.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
‘Long Distance II’ by Tony Harrison is an elegiac poem that describes a father’s way of grieving the death of his wife and his child’s reaction to his futile actions.
Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles her side of the bed
and still went to renew her transport pass.
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