Ozymandias

Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,

The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains: round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away

London
William Blake

I wander thro' each charter'd street,

Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,

In every Infants cry of fear,

In every voice: in every ban,

The mind-forg'd manacles I hear

How the Chimney-sweepers cry

Every blackning Church appalls,

And the hapless Soldiers sigh

Runs in blood down Palace walls

But most thro' midnight streets I hear

How the youthful Harlots curse

Blasts the new-born Infants tear

And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse

The Prelude: Stealing the Boat
William Wordsworth

One summer evening (led by her) I found

A little boat tied to a willow tree
Within a rocky cave, its usual home.
Straight I unloosed her chain, and stepping in
Pushed from the shore. It was an act of stealth
And troubled pleasure, nor without the voice
Of mountain-echoes did my boat move on;
Leaving behind her still, on either side,
Small circles glittering idly in the moon,
Until they melted all into one track
Of sparkling light. But now, like one who rows,
Proud of his skill, to reach a chosen point
With an unswerving line, I fixed my view
Upon the summit of a craggy ridge,
The horizon’s utmost boundary; far above
Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.
She was an elfin pinnace; lustily
I dipped my oars into the silent lake,
And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat
Went heaving through the water like a swan;
When, from behind that craggy steep till then
The horizon’s bound, a huge peak, black and huge,
As if with voluntary power instinct,
Upreared its head. I struck and struck again,
And growing still in stature the grim shape
Towered up between me and the stars, and still,
For so it seemed, with purpose of its own
And measured motion like a living thing,
Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,
And through the silent water stole my way
Back to the covert of the willow tree;
There in her mooring-place I left my bark,–
And through the meadows homeward went, in grave
And serious mood; but after I had seen
That spectacle, for many days, my brain
Worked with a dim and undetermined sense
Of unknown modes of being; o’er my thoughts
There hung a darkness, call it solitude
Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes
Remained, no pleasant images of trees,
Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;
But huge and mighty forms, that do not live
Like living men, moved slowly through the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.
My Last Duchess
Robert Browning

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Looking as if she were alive. I call Or blush, at least. She thanked men—good! but
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands thanked
Worked busily a day, and there she stands. Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
Strangers like you that pictured countenance, This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
The depth and passion of its earnest glance, In speech—which I have not—to make your will
But to myself they turned (since none puts by Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst, Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let
How such a glance came there; so, not the first Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse—
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek; perhaps Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Fra Pandolf chanced to say, “Her mantle laps Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Must never hope to reproduce the faint Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
Half-flush that dies along her throat.” Such stuff As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough The company below, then. I repeat,
For calling up that spot of joy. She had The Count your master’s known munificence
A heart—how shall I say?— too soon made glad, Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast, At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
The dropping of the daylight in the West, Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
The bough of cherries some officious fool Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
The Charge of the Light Brigade
Alfred Lord Tennyson

Half a league, half a league, Flashed all their sabres bare,

Half a league onward, Flashed as they turned in air

All in the valley of Death Sabring the gunners there,

Rode the six hundred. Charging an army, while

'Forward the Light Brigade! All the world wondered:

Charge for the guns!' he said: Plunged in the battery-smoke

Into the valley of Death Right through the line they broke;

Rode the six hundred. Cossack and Russian

Reeled from the sabre-stroke

'Forward, the Light Brigade!' Shattered and sundered.

Was there a man dismayed? Then they rode back, but not

Not though the soldier knew Not the six hundred.

Some one had blundered:

Theirs not to make reply, Cannon to right of them,

Theirs not to reason why, Cannon to left of them,

Theirs but to do and die: Cannon behind them

Into the valley of Death Volleyed and thundered;

Rode the six hundred. Stormed at with shot and shell,

While horse and hero fell,

Cannon to right of them, They that had fought so well

Cannon to left of them Came through the jaws of Death,

Cannon in front of them Back from the mouth of Hell,

Volleyed and thundered; All that was left of them,

Stormed at with shot and shell, Left of six hundred.

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death, When can their glory fade?

Into the mouth of Hell O the wild charge they made!

Rode the six hundred. All the world wondered.

Honour the charge they made!

Honour the Light Brigade,

Noble six hundred!

Exposure
Wilfred Owen
Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our
Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that faces –
knive us…
We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and
Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent… stare, snow-dazed,
Low, drooping flares confuse our memories of the Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,
salient…
Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird
Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous, fusses.
But nothing happens. Is it that we are dying?

Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire, Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires,
Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles. glozed

Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;
rumbles, For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is
Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war. theirs;

What are we doing here? Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are
closed, –

We turn back to our dying.

The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow…

We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag

stormy. Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;

Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army Nor ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.

Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey, For God’s invincible spring our love is made afraid;

But nothing happens. Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were
born,

For love of God seems dying.

Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.

Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow,
Tonight, His frost will fasten on this mud and us,
With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, and
renew, Shrivelling many hands, puckering foreheads crisp.

We watch them wandering up and down the wind’s The burying party, picks and shovels in the shaking
grasp,
nonchalance,
Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,
But nothing happens.
But nothing happens.
Storm on the Island
Seamus Heaney

We are prepared: we build our houses squat,

Sink walls in rock and roof them with good slate.

The wizened earth had never troubled us

With hay, so as you can see, there are no stacks

Or stooks that can be lost. Nor are there trees

Which might prove company when it blows full

Blast: you know what I mean - leaves and branches

Can raise a tragic chorus in a gale

So that you can listen to the thing you fear

Forgetting that it pummels your house too.

But there are no trees, no natural shelter.

You might think that the sea is company,

Exploding comfortably down on the cliffs

But no: when it begins, the flung spray hits

The very windows, spits like a tame cat

Turned savage. We just sit tight while wind dives

And strafes invisibly. Space is a salvo.

We are bombarded by the empty air.

Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear.

Bayonet Charge
Ted Hughes

Suddenly he awoke and was running – raw

In raw-seamed hot khaki, his sweat heavy,

Stumbling across a field of clods towards a green hedge

That dazzled with rifle fire, hearing

Bullets smacking the belly out of the air –

He lugged a rifle numb as a smashed arm;

The patriotic tear that had brimmed in his eye

Sweating like molten iron from the centre of his chest, –

In bewilderment then he almost stopped –

In what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations

Was he the hand pointing that second? He was running

Like a man who has jumped up in the dark and runs

Listening between his footfalls for the reason

Of his still running, and his foot hung like

Statuary in mid-stride. Then the shot-slashed furrows

Threw up a yellow hare that rolled like a flame

And crawled in a threshing circle, its mouth wide

Open silent, its eyes standing out.

He plunged past with his bayonet toward the green hedge,

King, honour, human dignity, etcetera

Dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm

To get out of that blue crackling air

His terror’s touchy dynamite.

Remains
Simon Armitage

On another occasion, we got sent out End of story, except not really.

to tackle looters raiding a bank. His blood-shadow stays on the street, and out on
patrol
And one of them legs it up the road,
I walk right over it week after week.
probably armed, possibly not.
Then I’m home on leave. But I blink

Well myself and somebody else and somebody else

and he bursts again through the doors of the bank.
are all of the same mind,
Sleep, and he’s probably armed, and possibly not.
so all three of us open fire.
Dream, and he’s torn apart by a dozen rounds.
Three of a kind all letting fly, and I swear
And the drink and the drugs won’t flush him out –

I see every round as it rips through his life –

I see broad daylight on the other side.

he’s here in my head when I close my eyes,
So we’ve hit this looter a dozen times
dug in behind enemy lines,
and he’s there on the ground, sort of inside out,
not left for dead in some distant, sun-stunned, sand-
smothered land
pain itself, the image of agony.
or six-feet-under in desert sand,
One of my mates goes by

and tosses his guts back into his body.

but near to the knuckle, here and now,
Then he’s carted off in the back of a lorry.
his bloody life in my bloody hands.
Poppies slowly melting. I was brave, as I walked
Jane Weir
with you, to the front door, threw
Three days before Armistice Sunday
it open, the world overflowing
and poppies had already been placed
like a treasure chest. A split second
on individual war graves. Before you left,
and you were away, intoxicated.
I pinned one onto your lapel, crimped petals,
After you'd gone I went into your bedroom,
spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade
released a song bird from its cage.
of yellow bias binding around your blazer.
Later a single dove flew from the pear tree,

and this is where it has led me,

Sellotape bandaged around my hand,
skirting the church yard walls, my stomach busy
I rounded up as many white cat hairs
making tucks, darts, pleats, hat-less, without
as I could, smoothed down your shirt's
a winter coat or reinforcements of scarf, gloves.
upturned collar, steeled the softening

of my face. I wanted to graze my nose

On reaching the top of the hill I traced
across the tip of your nose, play at
the inscriptions on the war memorial,
being Eskimos like we did when
leaned against it like a wishbone.
you were little. I resisted the impulse
The dove pulled freely against the sky,
to run my fingers through the gelled
an ornamental stitch. I listened, hoping to hear
blackthorns of your hair. All my words
your playground voice catching on the wind.
flattened, rolled, turned into felt,
War Photographer
Carol Ann Duffy

In his dark room he is finally alone

with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.

The only light is red and softly glows,

as though this were a church and he

a priest preparing to intone a Mass.

Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.

He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays

beneath his hands, which did not tremble then

though seem to now. Rural England. Home again

to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,

to fields which don’t explode beneath the feet

of running children in a nightmare heat.

Something is happening. A stranger’s features

faintly start to twist before his eyes,

a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries

of this man’s wife, how he sought approval

without words to do what someone must

and how the blood stained into foreign dust.

A hundred agonies in black and white

from which his editor will pick out five or six

for Sunday’s supplement. The reader’s eyeballs prick

with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.

From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where

he earns his living and they do not care.

 Maps too. The sun shines through
Tissue their borderlines, the marks
Imtiaz Dharker
that rivers make, roads,
Paper that lets the light
railtracks, mountainfolds,
shine through, this

is what could alter things.

Fine slips from grocery shops
Paper thinned by age or touching,
that say how much was sold

and what was paid by credit card

the kind you find in well-used books,
might fly our lives like paper kites.
the back of the Koran, where a hand

has written in the names and histories,

An architect could use all this,
who was born to whom,
place layer over layer, luminous

script over numbers over line,

the height and weight, who
and never wish to build again with brick
died where and how, on which sepia date,

pages smoothed and stroked and turned

or block, but let the daylight break
transparent with attention.
through capitals and monoliths,

through the shapes that pride can make,

If buildings were paper, I might
find a way to trace a grand design
feel their drift, see how easily

they fall away on a sigh, a shift

with living tissue, raise a structure
in the direction of the wind.
never meant to last,

of paper smoothed and stroked

and thinned to be transparent,

turned into your skin.

The Emigrée
Carol Rumens

There once was a country… I left it as a child

but my memory of it is sunlight-clear

for it seems I never saw it in that November

which, I am told, comes to the mildest city.

The worst news I receive of it cannot break

my original view, the bright, filled paperweight.

It may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants,

but I am branded by an impression of sunlight.

The white streets of that city, the graceful slopes

glow even clearer as time rolls its tanks

and the frontiers rise between us, close like waves.

That child’s vocabulary I carried here

like a hollow doll, opens and spills a grammar.

Soon I shall have every coloured molecule of it.

It may by now be a lie, banned by the state

but I can’t get it off my tongue. It tastes of sunlight.

I have no passport, there’s no way back at all

but my city comes to me in its own white plane.

It lies down in front of me, docile as paper;

I comb its hair and love its shining eyes.

My city takes me dancing through the city

of walls. They accuse me of absence, they circle me.

They accuse me of being dark in their free city.

My city hides behind me. They mutter death,

and my shadow falls as evidence of sunlight.

Checking Out Me History
John Agard

Dem tell me Nanny

Dem tell me see-far woman

Wha dem want to tell me of mountain dream

fire-woman struggle

Bandage up me eye with me own history hopeful stream

Blind me to me own identity to freedom river

Dem tell me bout 1066 and all dat Dem tell me bout Lord Nelson and Waterloo

dem tell me bout Dick Whittington and he cat but dem never tell me bout Shaka de great Zulu

But Toussaint L’Ouverture Dem tell me bout Columbus and 1492

no dem never tell me bout dat but what happen to de Caribs and de Arawaks too

Toussaint Dem tell me bout Florence Nightingale and she lamp

a slave and how Robin Hood used to camp

with vision Dem tell me bout ole King Cole was a merry ole soul

lick back but dem never tell me bout Mary Seacole

Napoleon

battalion From Jamaica

and first Black she travel far

Republic born to the Crimean War

Toussaint de thorn she volunteer to go

to de French and even when de British said no

Toussaint de beacon she still brave the Russian snow

of de Haitian Revolution a healing star

among the wounded

Dem tell me bout de man who discover de balloon a yellow sunrise

and de cow who jump over de moon to the dying

Dem tell me bout de dish ran away with de spoon

but dem never tell me bout Nanny de maroon Dem tell me

Dem tell me wha dem want to tell me

But now I checking out me own history

I carving out me identity

 - yes, grandfather’s boat – safe
Kamikaze to the shore, salt-sodden, awash
Beatrice Garland
with cloud-marked mackerel,
Her father embarked at sunrise
black crabs, feathery prawns,
with a flask of water, a samurai sword
the loose silver of whitebait and once
in the cockpit, a shaven head
a tuna, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous.
full of powerful incantations

and enough fuel for a one-way

And though he came back
journey into history
my mother never spoke again

in his presence, nor did she meet his eyes

but half way there, she thought,
and the neighbours too, they treated him
recounting it later to her children,
as though he no longer existed,
he must have looked far down
only we children still chattered and laughed
at the little fishing boats

strung out like bunting

till gradually we too learned
on a green-blue translucent sea
to be silent, to live as though

he had never returned, that this

and beneath them, arcing in swathes
was no longer the father we loved.
like a huge flag waved first one way
And sometimes, she said, he must have wondered
then the other in a figure of eight,
which had been the better way to die.
the dark shoals of fishes

flashing silver as their bellies

swivelled towards the sun

and remembered how he

and his brothers waiting on the shore

built cairns of pearl-grey pebbles

to see whose withstood longest

the turbulent inrush of breakers

bringing their father’s boat safe