The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

Reputation

Iago

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
‘Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.

Othello

Act III, Scene III

Shakespeare

How Like An Angel

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me—
nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

Hamlet Act 2, scene 2

LAY ON, MACDUFF!

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time.  And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.

OUT OUT Brief Candle!  ‘Tis a tale told by an idiot, FULL of Sound and Fury, signifying – nothing.

Lay On, Macduff!  And damn be he that first cries, “Hold Enough!”

William Shakespeare

Macbeth

Ozymandias

Ozymandias

I met a traveler 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 shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked 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.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822)

John Updike

John Updike

John Updike born March 18, 1932, Reading, Pennsylvania, U.S. died January 27, 2009, Danvers, Mass.

American writer if novels, short stories, and poetry, known for his careful craftsmanship and realistic but subtle depiction of “American, Protestant, small-town, middle-class” life.

He grew up in Shillington, Pennsylvania, and many of his early stories draw on his youthful experiences there. He graduated from Harvard in 1954. In 1955 he began an association with The New Yorker to which he contributed editorials, poetry, stories, and criticism throughout his prolific career. His poetry—intellectual, witty pieces on the absurdities of modern life—was gathered in his first book, The Carpentered Hen and Other Tame Creatures (1958), which was followed by his first novel, The Poorhouse Fair (1958).

About this time, Updike devoted himself to writing fiction full-time, and several works followed..  Rabbit, Run (1960), which is considered to be one of his best novels, concerns a former star athlete who is unable to recapture success when bound by marriage and small-town life and flees responsibility. Three subsequent novels, Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981), and Rabbit at Rest (1990)—the latter two winning Pulitzer Prizes—follow the same character during later periods of his life. Rabbit Remembered (2001) returns to characters from those books in the wake of Rabbit’s death. The Centaur (1963) and Of the Farm (1965) are notable among Updike’s novels set in Pennsylvania.

Much of Updike’s later fiction is set in New England where he lived from the 1960s. Updike continued to explore the issues that confront middle-class America, such as fidelity, religion, and responsibility. The novels Couples (1968) and Marry Me (1976) expose the evolving sexual politics of the time in East Coast suburbia. Updike set Memories of the Ford Administration: A Novel (1992) in the 1970s, infusing the tale of a professor’s research on President James Buchanan with observations on sexuality. In the Beauty of the Lilies (1996) draws parallels between religion and popular obsession with cinema, while Gertrude and Claudius (2000) offers conjectures on the early relationship between Hamlet’s mother and her brother-in-law. In response to the cultural shifts that occurred in the United States after the September 11 attacks, Updike released Terrorist in 2006.

Updike often expounded upon characters from earlier novels, eliding decades of their lives only to place them in the middle of new adventures. The Witches of Eastwick (1984; filmed 1987), about a coven of witches, was followed by The Widows of Eastwick (2008), which trails the women into old age. Bech: A Book (1970), Bech Is Back (1982), and Bech at Bay (1998) humorously trace the tribulations of a Jewish writer.

Updike’s several collections of short stories include The Same Door (1959), Pigeon Feathers (1962), Museums and Women (1972), Problems (1979), and Trust Me (1987). He also wrote nonfiction and criticism, much of it appearing in The New Yorker. It has been collected in Assorted Prose (1965), Picked-Up Pieces (1975), Hugging the Shore (1983), and Odd Jobs (1991). Still Looking: Essays on American Art (2005) examines both art and its cultural presentation, and Due Considerations (2007) collects later commentary spanning art, sexuality, and literature. Updike also continued to write poetry, usually light verse.

Awful Grace

Awful Grace

Wisdom comes through suffering.
Trouble, with its memories of pain,
Drips in our hearts as we try to sleep,
So men against their will
Learn to practice moderation.
Favors come to us from gods.

(or put another way . . . )

He who learns must suffer
And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget
Falls drop by drop upon the heart,
And in our own despair, against our will,
Comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God

Aeschylus
Agamemnon

hold their manhoods cheap

Enter the KING

WESTMORELAND. O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!

KING. What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian.’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.’
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

It Hit the Moon

THE DEATH OF THE HIRED MAN

Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table
Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step,
She ran on tip-toe down the darkened passage
To meet him in the doorway with the news
And put him on his guard. ‘Silas is back.’
She pushed him outward with her through the door
And shut it after her. “Be kind,’ she said.
She took the market things from Warren’s arms
And set them on the porch, then drew him down
To sit beside her on the wooden steps.
‘When was I ever anything but kind to him?
But I’ll not have the fellow back,’ he said.
‘I told him so last haying, didn’t I?
“If he left then,” I said, “that ended it.”
What good is he? Who else will harbour him
At his age for the little he can do?
What help he is there’s no depending on.
Off he goes always when I need him most.
‘He thinks he ought to earn a little pay,
Enough at least to buy tobacco with,
won’t have to beg and be beholden.”
“All right,” I say “I can’t afford to pay
Any fixed wages, though I wish I could.”
“Someone else can.”
“Then someone else will have to.
I shouldn’t mind his bettering himself
If that was what it was. You can be certain,
When he begins like that, there’s someone at him
Trying to coax him off with pocket-money, –
In haying time, when any help is scarce.
In winter he comes back to us. I’m done.’
‘Shh I not so loud: he’ll hear you,’ Mary said.
‘I want him to: he’ll have to soon or late.’
‘He’s worn out. He’s asleep beside the stove.
When I came up from Rowe’s I found him here,
Huddled against the barn-door fast asleep,
A miserable sight, and frightening, too-
You needn’t smile — I didn’t recognize him-
I wasn’t looking for him- and he’s changed.
Wait till you see.’
‘Where did you say he’d been?
‘He didn’t say. I dragged him to the house,
And gave him tea and tried to make him smoke.
I tried to make him talk about his travels.
Nothing would do: he just kept nodding off.’
‘What did he say? Did he say anything?’
‘But little.’
‘Anything? Mary, confess
He said he’d come to ditch the meadow for me.’
‘Warren!’
‘But did he? I just want to know.’
‘Of course he did. What would you have him say?
Surely you wouldn’t grudge the poor old man
Some humble way to save his self-respect.
He added, if you really care to know,
He meant to dear the upper pasture, too.
That sounds like something you have heard before?
Warren, I wish you could have heard the way
He jumbled everything. I stopped to look
Two or three times — he made me feel so queer–
To see if he was talking in his sleep.
He ran on Harold Wilson — you remember -
The boy you had in haying four years since.
He’s finished school, and teaching in his college.
Silas declares you’ll have to get him back.
He says they two will make a team for work:
Between them they will lay this farm as smooth!
The way he mixed that in with other things.
He thinks young Wilson a likely lad, though daft
On education — you know how they fought
All through July under the blazing sun,
Silas up on the cart to build the load,
Harold along beside to pitch it on.’
‘Yes, I took care to keep well out of earshot.’
‘Well, those days trouble Silas like a dream.
You wouldn’t think they would. How some things linger!
Harold’s young college boy’s assurance piqued him.
After so many years he still keeps finding
Good arguments he sees he might have used.
I sympathize. I know just how it feels
To think of the right thing to say too late.
Harold’s associated in his mind with Latin.
He asked me what I thought of Harold’s saying
He studied Latin like the violin
Because he liked it — that an argument!
He said he couldn’t make the boy believe
He could find water with a hazel prong–
Which showed how much good school had ever done
him. He wanted to go over that. ‘But most of all
He thinks if he could have another chance
To teach him how to build a load of hay –’
‘I know, that’s Silas’ one accomplishment.
He bundles every forkful in its place,
And tags and numbers it for future reference,
So he can find and easily dislodge it
In the unloading. Silas does that well.
He takes it out in bunches like big birds’ nests.
You never see him standing on the hay
He’s trying to lift, straining to lift himself.’
‘He thinks if he could teach him that, he’d be
Some good perhaps to someone in the world.
He hates to see a boy the fool of books.
Poor Silas, so concerned for other folk,
And nothing to look backward to with pride,
And nothing to look forward to with hope,
So now and never any different.’
Part of a moon was filling down the west,
Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.
Its light poured softly in her lap. She saw
And spread her apron to it. She put out her hand
Among the harp-like morning-glory strings,
Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves,
As if she played unheard the tenderness
That wrought on him beside her in the night.
‘Warren,’ she said, ‘he has come home to die:
You needn’t be afraid he’ll leave you this time.’
‘Home,’ he mocked gently.
‘Yes, what else but home?
It all depends on what you mean by home.
Of course he’s nothing to us, any more
then was the hound that came a stranger to us
Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.’
‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.’
‘I should have called it
Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.’
Warren leaned out and took a step or two,
Picked up a little stick, and brought it back
And broke it in his hand and tossed it by.
‘Silas has better claim on’ us, you think,
Than on his brother? Thirteen little miles
As the road winds would bring him to his door.
Silas has walked that far no doubt to-day.
Why didn’t he go there? His brother’s rich,
A somebody- director in the bank.’
‘He never told us that.’
‘We know it though.’
‘I think his brother ought to help, of course.
I’ll see to that if there is need. He ought of right
To take him in, and might be willing to-=
He may be better than appearances.
But have some pity on Silas. Do you think
If he’d had any pride in claiming kin
Or anything he looked for from his brother,
He’d keep so still about him all this time?’
‘I wonder what’s between them.’
‘I can tell you.
Silas is what he is — we wouldn’t mind him–
But just the kind that kinsfolk can’t abide.
He never did a thing so very bad.
He don’t know why he isn’t quite as good
As anyone. He won’t be made ashamed
To please his brother, worthless though he is.’
‘I can’t think Si ever hurt anyone.’
‘No, but he hurt my heart the way he lay
And rolled his old head on that sharp-edged chair-back.
He wouldn’t let me put him on the lounge.
You must go in and see what you can do.
I made the bed up for him there to-night.
You’ll be surprised at him — how much he’s broken.
His working days are done; I’m sure of it.’
‘I’d not be in a hurry to say that.’
‘I haven’t been. Go, look, see for yourself.
But, Warren, please remember how it is:
He’ come to help you ditch the meadow.
He has a plan, You mustn’t laugh at him.
He may not speak of it, and then he may.
I’ll sit and see if that small sailing cloud
Will hit or miss the moon.’
It hit the moon.
Then there were three there, making a dim row,
The moon, the little silver cloud, and she.
Warren returned– too soon, it seemed to her,
Slipped to her side, caught up her hand and waited.
‘Warren?’ she questioned.
‘Dead,’ was all he answered.

 

Robert Frost

 

Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty

Ode on a Grecian Urn

 

THOU still unravish’d bride of quietness,                     

  Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,             

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express                    

  A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:            

What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape        

  Of deities or mortals, or of both,                              

    In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?                          

  What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?   

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?             

    What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

                                                                                

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard            

  Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;         

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,                

  Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:                           

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

  Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;             

    Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,               

Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;      

    She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,   

  For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!                   

                                                                                

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed               

  Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;              

And, happy melodist, unwearièd,                               

  For ever piping songs for ever new;                         

More happy love! more happy, happy love!              

  For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,                      

    For ever panting, and for ever young;                    

All breathing human passion far above,                      

  That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,          

    A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.           

                                                                                

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?                      

  To what green altar, O mysterious priest,                 

Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,                 

  And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?            

What little town by river or sea-shore,                       

  Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,                    

    Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?                   

And, little town, thy streets for evermore                    

  Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell                         

    Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.                   

                                                                                

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede                      

  Of marble men and maidens overwrought,               

With forest branches and the trodden weed;              

  Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought          

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!                                 

  When old age shall this generation waste,                 

    Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe                

  Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,      

‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all                    

    Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know

 

John Keats