ee cummings

ee cummings 1894-1962

Extrait

"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrim's and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water

E.E. Cummings, Is5, 1926

john keats - ode to a nightingale

John Keats 1795-1821

 link

Twenty years after the poet's death, Joseph Severn painted this portrait

'Keats listening to a nightingale on Hampstead Heath'.

http://englishhistory.net/keats/contents.html

john keats - bright star

John Keats 1795-1821

Bright Star

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
    Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
    Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
    Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
    Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
    Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
    Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.