“The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die.”

We have not long to love.
Light does not stay.
The tender things are those
we fold away.

O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?

Before man came to blow it right
    The wind once blew itself untaught,
And did its loudest day and night
    In any rough place where it caught.

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.

I had withdrawn in forest, and my song
Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway...

High, high in the branches
the seawinds plunge and roar.
A storm is moving westward,
but here on the forest floor
the ferns have captured stillness.
A green sea growth they are.

I will put Chaos into fourteen lines
And keep him there; and let him thence escape

I spent the class period sharing with them three aspects of poetry that make it special, different from other forms of literature, and necessary to the human soul.

How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide

The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep…

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

I have a passionate love of poetry, and I get to share it with my students all the time, but I also want to share it with you. Sign up for my mailing list so you can receive beautiful poems in your email inbox.