Niobe in Distress by Phillis Wheatley
Apollo’s wrath to man the dreadful spring Of ills innum’rous, tuneful goddess, sing! Thou who did’st first th’ ideal pencil give, And taught’st the painter in his works to live, Inspire with glowing energy of thought, What Wilson painted, and what Ovid wrote. Muse! lend thy aid, nor let me sue in vain, Tho’ last […]
Isaiah LXIII by Phillis Wheatley
Say, heav’nly muse, what king or mighty God, That moves sublime from Idumea’s road? In Bosrah’s dies, with martial glories join’d, His purple vesture waves upon the wind. Why thus enrob’d delights he to appear In the dread image of the Pow’r of war? Compres’d in wrath the swelling wine-press groan’d, It bled, and pour’d […]
Goliath Of Gath by Phillis Wheatley
SAMUEL, Chap. xvii. YE martial pow’rs, and all ye tuneful nine, Inspire my song, and aid my high design. The dreadful scenes and toils of war I write, The ardent warriors, and the fields of fight: You best remember, and you best can sing The acts of heroes to the vocal string: Resume the lays […]
An Hymn To The Morning by Phillis Wheatley
ATTEND my lays, ye ever honour’d nine, Assist my labours, and my strains refine; In smoothest numbers pour the notes along, For bright Aurora now demands my song. Aurora hail, and all the thousand dies, Which deck thy progress through the vaulted skies: The morn awakes, and wide extends her rays, On ev’ry leaf the […]
An Hymn To The Evening by Phillis Wheatley
Soon as the sun forsook the eastern main The pealing thunder shook the heav’nly plain; Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr’s wing, Exhales the incense of the blooming spring. Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes, And through the air their mingled music floats. Through all the heav’ns what beauteous dies are spread! But […]
An Hymn To Humanity by Phillis Wheatley
O! for this dark terrestrial ball Forsakes his azure-paved hall A prince of heav’nly birth! Divine Humanity behold, What wonders rise, what charms unfold At his descent to earth! II. The bosoms of the great and good With wonder and delight he view’d, And fix’d his empire there: Him, close compressing to his breast, The […]
An Answer To The Rebus, By The Author Of These Poems by Phillis Wheatley
The poet asks, and Phillis can’t refuse To show th’ obedience of the Infant muse. She knows the Quail of most inviting taste Fed Israel’s army in the dreary waste; And what’s on Britain’s royal standard borne, But the tall, graceful, rampant Unicorn? The Emerald with a vivid verdure glows Among the gems which regal […]
A Rebus, By I. B. by Phillis Wheatley
I. A BIRD delicious to the taste, On which an army once did feast, Sent by an hand unseen; A creature of the horned race, Which Britain’s royal standards grace; A gem of vivid green; II. A town of gaiety and sport, Where beaux and beauteous nymphs resort, And gallantry doth reign; A Dardan hero […]
A Funeral Poem on the Death of C.E. by Phillis Wheatley
Through airy roads he wings his instant flight To purer regions of celestial light; Enlarg’d he sees unnumber’d systems roll, Beneath him sees the universal whole, Planets on planets run their destin’d round, And circling wonders fill the vast profound. Th’ ethereal now, and now th’ empyreal skies With growing splendors strike his wond’ring eyes: […]
A Farewel To America to Mrs. S. W. by Phillis Wheatley
I. ADIEU, New-England’s smiling meads, Adieu, the flow’ry plain: I leave thine op’ning charms, O spring, And tempt the roaring main. II. In vain for me the flow’rets rise, And boast their gaudy pride, While here beneath the northern skies I mourn for health deny’d. III. Celestial maid of rosy hue, O let me feel […]
Zoo-Keeper’s Wife by Sylvia Plath
I can stay awake all night, if need be — Cold as an eel, without eyelids. Like a dead lake the dark envelops me, Blueblack, a spectacular plum fruit. No air bubbles start from my heart. I am lungless And ugly, my belly a silk stocking Where the heads and tails of my sisters decompose. […]
You’re by Sylvia Plath
Clownlike, happiest on your hands, Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled, Gilled like a fish. A common-sense Thumbs-down on the dodo’s mode. Wrapped up in yourself like a spool, Trawling your dark, as owls do. Mute as a turnip from the Fourth Of July to All Fools’ Day, O high-riser, my little loaf. Vague as […]
Yadwigha, On A Red Couch, Among Lillies by Sylvia Plath
Yadwigha, the literalists once wondered how you Came to be lying on this baroque couch Upholstered in red velvet, under the eye Of uncaged tigers and a tropical moon, Set in intricate wilderness of green Heart-shaped leaves, like catalpa leaves, and lillies Of monstrous size, like no well-bred lilies It seems teh consistent critics wanted […]
Yaddo : The Grand Manor by Sylvia Plath
Woodsmoke and a distant loudspeaker Filter into this clear Air, and blur. The red tomato’s in, the green bean; The cook lugs a pumpkin From the vine For pies. The fir tree’s thick with grackles. Gold carp loom in the pools. A wasp crawls Over windfalls to sip cider-juice. Guests in the studios Muse, compose. […]
Wreath For A Bridal by Sylvia Plath
What though green leaves only witness Such pact as is made once only; what matter That owl voice sole ‘yes’, while cows utter Low moos of approve; let sun surpliced in brightness Stand stock still to laud these mated ones Whose stark act all coming double luck joins. Couched daylong in cloisters of stinging nettle […]
Words Heard, By Accident, Over The Phone by Sylvia Plath
O mud, mud, how fluid! — Thick as foreign coffee, and with a sluggy pulse. Speak, speak! Who is it? It is the bowel-pulse, lover of digestibles. It is he who has achieved these syllables. What are these words, these words? They are plopping like mud. O god, how shall I ever clean the phone […]
A Winter’s Tale by Sylvia Plath
On Boston Common a red star Gleams, wired to a tall Ulmus Americana. Magi near The domed State House. Old Joseph holds an alpenstock. Two waxen oxen flank the Child. A black sheep leads the shepherds’ flock. Mary looks mild. Angels-more feminine and douce Than models from Bonwit’s or Jay’s, Haloes lustrous as Sirius- Gilt […]
Winter Landscape, With Rooks by Sylvia Plath
Water in the millrace, through a sluice of stone, plunges headlong into that black pond where, absurd and out-of-season, a single swan floats chaste as snow, taunting the clouded mind which hungers to haul the white reflection down. The austere sun descends above the fen, an orange cyclops-eye, scorning to look longer on this landscape […]
Watercolor Of Grantchester Meadows by Sylvia Plath
There, spring lambs jam the sheepfold. In air Stilled, silvered as water in a glass Nothing is big or far. The small shrew chitters from its wilderness Of grassheads and is heard. Each thumb-sized bird Fits nimble-winged in thickets, and of good color. Cloudrack and owl-hollowed willows slanting over The bland Granta double their white […]
Waking In Winter by Sylvia Plath
I can taste the tin of the sky — the real tin thing. Winter dawn is the color of metal, The trees stiffen into place like burnt nerves. All night I have dreamed of destruction, annihilations — An assembly-line of cut throats, and you and I Inching off in the gray Chevrolet, drinking the green […]
Virgin In A Tree by Sylvia Plath
How this tart fable instructs And mocks! Here’s the parody of that moral mousetrap Set in the proverbs stitched on samplers Approving chased girls who get them to a tree And put on bark’s nun-black Habit which deflects All amorous arrows. For to sheathe the virgin shape In a scabbard of wood baffles pursuers, Whether […]
Two Views Of Withens by Sylvia Plath
Above whorled, spindling gorse, Sheepfoot-flattened grasses, Stone wall and ridgepole rise Prow-like through blurs Of fog in that hinterland few Hikers get to: Home of uncatchable Sage hen and spry rabbit, Where second wind, hip boot Help over hill And hill, and through peaty water. I found bare moor, A colorless weather, And the House […]
Two Views Of A Cadaver Room by Sylvia Plath
1 The day she visited the dissecting room They had four men laid out, black as burnt turkey, Already half unstrung. A vinegary fume Of the death vats clung to them; The white-smocked boys started working. The head of his cadaver had caved in, And she could scarcely make out anything In that rubble of […]
Two Sisters Of Persephone by Sylvia Plath
Two girls there are : within the house One sits; the other, without. Daylong a duet of shade and light Plays between these. In her dark wainscoted room The first works problems on A mathematical machine. Dry ticks mark time As she calculates each sum. At this barren enterprise Rat-shrewd go her squint eyes, Root-pale […]
Two Lovers And A Beachcomber By The Real Sea by Sylvia Plath
Cold and final, the imagination Shuts down its fabled summer house; Blue views are boarded up; our sweet vacation Dwindles in the hour-glass. Thoughts that found a maze of mermaid hair Tangling in the tide’s green fall Now fold their wings like bats and disappear Into the attic of the skull. We are not what […]
Two Campers In Cloud Country by Sylvia Plath
(Rock Lake, Canada) In this country there is neither measure nor balance To redress the dominance of rocks and woods, The passage, say, of these man-shaming clouds. No gesture of yours or mine could catch their attention, No word make them carry water or fire the kindling Like local trolls in the spell of a […]
Trio Of Love Songs by Sylvia Plath
(1) Major faults in granite mark a mortal lack, yet individual planet directs all zodiac. Diagram of mountains graphs a fever chart, yet astronomic fountains exit from the heart. Tempo of strict ocean metronomes the blood, yet ordered lunar motion proceeds from private flood. Drama of each season plots doom from above, yet all angelic […]
To Eva Descending The Stair by Sylvia Plath
Clocks cry: stillness is a lie, my dear; The wheels revolve, the universe keeps running. (Proud you halt upon the spiral stair.) The asteroids turn traitor in the air, And planets plot with old elliptic cunning; Clocks cry: stillness is a lie, my dear. Red the unraveled rose sings in your hair: Blood springs eternal […]
To A Jilted Lover by Sylvia Plath
Cold on my narrow cot I lie and in sorrow look through my window-square of black: figured in the midnight sky, a mosaic of stars diagrams the falling years, while from the moon, my lover’s eye chills me to death with radiance of his frozen faith. Once I wounded him with so small a thorn […]
Tinker Jack And The Tidy Wives by Sylvia Plath
‘Come lady, bring that pot Gone black of polish And whatever pan this mending master Should trim back to shape. I’ll correct each mar On silver dish, And shine that kettle of copper At your fireside Bright as blood. ‘Come lady, bring that face Fallen from luster. Time’s soot in bleared eye Can be made […]
The Trial Of A Man by Sylvia Plath
The ordinary milkman brought that dawn Of destiny, delivered to the door In square hermetic bottles, while the sun Ruled decree of doomsday on the floor. The morning paper clocked the headline hour You drank your coffee lke original sin, And at the jet-plane anger of God’s roar Got up to let the suave blue […]
The Tour by Sylvia Plath
O maiden aunt, you have come to call. Do step into the hall! With your bold Gecko, the little flick! All cogs, weird sparkle and every cog solid gold. And I in slippers and housedress with no lipstick! And you want to be shown about! Yes, yes, this is my address. Not a patch on […]
The Times Are Tidy by Sylvia Plath
Unlucky the hero born In this province of the stuck record Where the most watchful cooks go jobless And the mayor’s rôtisserie turns Round of its own accord. There’s no career in the venture Of riding against the lizard, Himself withered these latter-days To leaf-size from lack of action: History’s beaten the hazard. The last […]
The Thin People by Sylvia Plath
They are always with us, the thin people Meager of dimension as the gray people On a movie-screen. They Are unreal, we say: It was only in a movie, it was only In a war making evil headlines when we Were small that they famished and Grew so lean and would not round Out their […]
The Swarm by Sylvia Plath
Somebody is shooting at something in our town – A dull pom, pom in the Sunday street. Jealousy can open the blood, It can make black roses. Who are the shooting at? It is you the knives are out for At Waterloo, Waterloo, Napoleon, The hump of Elba on your short back, And the snow, […]
The Surgeon At 2 A.M. by Sylvia Plath
The white light is artificial, and hygienic as heaven. The microbes cannot survive it. They are departing in their transparent garments, turned aside From the scalpels and the rubber hands. The scalded sheet is a snowfield, frozen and peaceful. The body under it is in my hands. As usual there is no face. A lump […]
The Stones by Sylvia Plath
This is the city where men are mended. I lie on a great anvil. The flat blue sky-circle Flew off like the hat of a doll When I fell out of the light. I entered The stomach of indifference, the wordless cupboard. The mother of pestles diminished me. I became a still pebble. The stones […]
The Snowman on the Moor by Sylvia Plath
Stalemated their armies stood, with tottering banners: She flung from a room Still ringing with bruit of insults and dishonors And in fury left him Glowering at the coal-fire: ‘Come find me’-her last taunt. He did not come But sat on, guarding his grim battlement. By the doorstep Her winter-beheaded daisies, marrowless, gaunt, Warned her […]
The Sleepers by Sylvia Plath
No map traces the street Where those two sleepers are. We have lost track of it. They lie as if under water In a blue, unchanging light, The French window ajar Curtained with yellow lace. Through the narrow crack Odors of wet earth rise. The snail leaves a silver track; Dark thickets hedge the house. […]
The Shrike by Sylvia Plath
When night comes black Such royal dreams beckon this man As lift him apart From his earth-wife’s side To wing, sleep-feathered, The singular air, While she, envious bride, Cannot follow after, but lies With her blank brown eyes starved wide, Twisting curses in the tangled sheet With taloned fingers, Shaking in her skull’s cage The […]