Song (When I Am Dead, My Dearest)
Written when Rossetti was a teenager, this gentle “Song” asks a lover to skip the roses and sad songs — and grants him the freedom to remember her or forget. A serene, quietly radical meditation on death.
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Grass
In Carl Sandburg’s “Grass” (1918) the grass itself speaks, burying the dead of Austerlitz, Gettysburg, and Verdun until travelers forget the battles ever happened — a quiet, chilling anti-war poem.
Fog
Carl Sandburg’s six-line “Fog” (1916) likens a harbor mist to a cat that sits on silent haunches and then moves on — his most famous short poem and a touchstone of American imagism.
Chicago
Carl Sandburg’s 1914 free-verse portrait of his adopted city hears every accusation against Chicago, grants them, and answers with fierce pride in its labor and rough, unbeatable vitality.
Endymion
Keats’s longest poem opens “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.” A reading of his 1818 romance: the shepherd Endymion’s quest for the moon goddess, its lush couplets, and its harsh critical reception.
When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be
Facing the dread of an early death, Keats fears dying before his pen empties his teeming brain, before he traces the sky’s visions, before he loves. A reading of his 1818 sonnet on mortality, ambition, and love.
Rupert Brooke
English poet Rupert Brooke (1887–1915) won fame for his idealistic 1914 war sonnets, above all “The Soldier,” and for his early death en route to Gallipoli. A look at his life, poems, style, and reputation.
The Soldier
Facing death in the First World War, a soldier imagines the foreign field where he might lie becoming “for ever England.” A reading of Brooke’s 1914 sonnet: its patriotism, form, and idealised vision of home.
Death Be Not Proud (Holy Sonnet 10)
John Donne addresses death as a powerless braggart and argues that, for the faithful, it is only a short sleep before eternal waking. A reading of Holy Sonnet 10’s argument, form, and famous closing paradox.
Wild Nights – Wild Nights!
Twelve short lines of open desire. Dickinson casts longing as a storm to revel in and a harbor to reach, ending on a single wish: to moor, tonight, in thee.
Tell All the Truth but Tell It Slant
Tell the whole truth, but tell it slant. Dickinson’s compact defense of indirection argues that truth too bright to bear must be eased in gradually or it blinds.
I’m Nobody! Who Are You?
Two quatrains that make a boast out of self-erasure. Dickinson defends anonymity, recruits the reader into a secret club, and reduces fame to a frog in a bog.