Maya Angelou Still I Rise

 Maya Angelou

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies

You may tread me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise

?Does my sassiness upset you

Why are you beset with gloom

'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room

Just like moons and like suns

With the certainty of tides

Just like hopes springing high

Still I'll rise

?Did you want to see me broken

Bowed head and lowered eyes

Shoulders falling down like teardrops.

.Weakened by my soulful cries

?Does my haughtiness offend you

Don't you take it awful hard

'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

.Diggin' in my own back yard

You may shoot me with your words

You may cut me with your eyes

You may kill me with your hatefulness

.But still, like air, I'll rise

?Does my sexiness upset you

?Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs

Out of the huts of history's shame

I rise

Up from a past that's rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave

I am the dream and the hope of the slave

I rise

I rise

I rise

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

1.A Dream

Was it a dream? We sail'd, I thought we sail'd,

Martin and I, down the green Alpine stream,

Border'd, each bank, with pines; the morning sun,

On the wet umbrage of their glossy tops,

On the red pinings of their forest-floor,

Drew a warm scent abroad; behind the pines

The mountain-skirts, with all their sylvan change

Of bright-leaf'd chestnuts and moss'd walnut-trees

And the frail scarlet-berried ash, began.

Swiss chalets glitter'd on the dewy slopes,

And from some swarded shelf, high up, there came

Notes of wild pastoral music--over all

Ranged, diamond-bright, the eternal wall of snow.

Upon the mossy rocks at the stream's edge,

Back'd by the pines, a plank-built cottage stood,

Bright in the sun; the climbing gourd-plant's leaves

Muffled its walls, and on the stone-strewn roof

Lay the warm golden gourds; golden, within,

Under the eaves, peer'd rows of Indian corn.

We shot beneath the cottage with the stream.

On the brown, rude-carved balcony, two forms

Came forth--Olivia's, Marguerite! and thine.

Clad were they both in white, flowers in their breast;

Straw hats bedeck'd their heads, with ribbons blue,

Which danced, and on their shoulders, fluttering, play'd.

They saw us, they conferred; their bosoms heaved,

And more than mortal impulse fill'd their eyes.

Their lips moved; their white arms, waved eagerly,

Flash'd once, like falling streams; we rose, we gazed.

One moment, on the rapid's top, our boat

Hung poised--and then the darting river of Life

(Such now, methought, it was), the river of Life,

Loud thundering, bore us by; swift, swift it foam'd,

Black under cliffs it raced, round headlands shone.

Soon the plank'd cottage by the sun-warm'd pines

Faded--the moss--the rocks; us burning plains,

Bristled with cities, us the sea received.

2. A Wish

I ask not that my bed of death

From bands of greedy heirs be free;

For these besiege the latest breath

Of fortune's favoured sons, not me.

I ask not each kind soul to keep

Tearless, when of my death he hears;

Let those who will, if any, weep!

There are worse plagues on earth than tears.

I ask but that my death may find

The freedom to my life denied;

Ask but the folly of mankind,

Then, at last, to quit my side.

Spare me the whispering, crowded room,

The friends who come, and gape, and go;

The ceremonious air of gloom -

All which makes death a hideous show!

Nor bring, to see me cease to live,

Some doctor full of phrase and fame,

To shake his sapient head and give

The ill he cannot cure a name.

Nor fetch, to take the accustomed toll

Of the poor sinner bound for death,

His brother doctor of the soul,

To canvass with official breath

The future and its viewless things -

That undiscovered mystery

Which one who feels death's winnowing wings

Must need read clearer, sure, than he!

Bring none of these; but let me be,

While all around in silence lies,

Moved to the window near, and see

Once more before my dying eyes

Bathed in the sacred dew of morn

The wide aerial landscape spread -

The world which was ere I was born,

The world which lasts when I am dead.

Which never was the friend of one,

Nor promised love it could not give,

But lit for all its generous sun,

And lived itself, and made us live.

There let me gaze, till I become

In soul with what I gaze on wed!

To feel the universe my home;

To have before my mind -instead

Of the sick-room, the mortal strife,

The turmoil for a little breath -

The pure eternal course of life,

Not human combatings with death.

Thus feeling, gazing, let me grow

Composed, refreshed, ennobled, clear;

Then willing let my spirit go

To work or wait elsewhere or here!

by: T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

1. MORNING AT THE WINDOW

HEY are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,

And along the trampled edges of the street

I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids

Sprouting despondently at area gates.

The brown waves of fog toss up to me

Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,

And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts

An aimless smile that hovers in the air

And vanishes along the level of the roofs.

2. RHAPSODY ON A WINDY NIGHT

WELVE o'clock.

Along the reaches of the street

Held in a lunar synthesis,

Whispering lunar incantations

Dissolve the floors of memory

And all its clear relations,

Its divisions and precisions,

Every street lamp that I pass

Beats like a fatalistic drum,

And through the spaces of the dark

Midnight shakes the memory

As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

Half-past one,

The street lamp sputtered,

The street lamp muttered,

The street lamp said, "Regard that woman

Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door

Which opens on her like a grin.

You see the border of her dress

Is torn and stained with sand,

And you see the corner of her eye

Twists like a crooked pin."

The memory throws up high and dry

A crowd of twisted things;

A twisted branch upon the beach

Eaten smooth, and polished

As if the world gave up

The secret of its skeleton,

Stiff and white.

A broken spring in a factory yard,

Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left

Hard and curled and ready to snap.

Half-past two,

The street lamp said,

"Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,

Slips out its tongue

And devours a morsel of rancid butter."

So the hand of a child, automatic,

Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.

I could see nothing behind that child's eye.

I have seen eyes in the street

Trying to peer through lighted shutters,

And a crab one afternoon in a pool,

An old crab with barnacles on his back,

Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.

Half-past three,

The lamp sputtered,

The lamp muttered in the dark.

The lamp hummed:

"Regard the moon,

La lune ne garde aucune rancune,

She winks a feeble eye,

She smiles into corners.

She smoothes the hair of the grass.

The moon has lost her memory.

A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,

Her hand twists a paper rose,

That smells of dust and old Cologne,

She is alone

With all the old nocturnal smells

That cross and cross across her brain."

The reminiscence comes

Of sunless dry geraniums

And dust in crevices,

Smells of chestnuts in the streets,

And female smells in shuttered rooms,

And cigarettes in corridors

And cocktail smells in bars."

The lamp said,

"Four o'clock,

Here is the number on the door.

Memory!

You have the key,

The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair,

Mount.

The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,

Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life."

The last twist of the knife.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

1. Afterwards

When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,

And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,

Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,

"He was a man who used to notice such things"?

If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's soundless blink,

The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight

Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,

"To him this must have been a familiar sight."

If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,

When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,

One may say, "He strove that such innocent creatures should

come to no harm,

But he could do little for them; and now he is gone."

If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at

the door,

Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees,

Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,

"He was one who had an eye for such mysteries"?

And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom,

And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,

Till they rise again, as they were a new bell's boom,

"He hears it not now, but used to notice such things?"

2.The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate

When Frost was spectre-gray,

And Winter's dregs made desolate

The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be

The Century's corpse outleant,

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

Was shrunken hard and dry,

And every spirit upon earth

Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among

The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings

Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terrestrial things

Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through

His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

And I was unaware.

3.I Found Her Out There

I found her out there

On a slope few see,

That falls westwardly

To the salt-edged air,

Where the ocean breaks

On the purple strand,

And the hurricane shakes

The solid land.

I brought her here,

And have laid her to rest

In a noiseless nest

No sea beats near.

She will never be stirred

In her loamy cell

By the waves long heard

And loved so well.

So she does not sleep

By those haunted heights

The Atlantic smites

And the blind gales sweep,

Whence she often would gaze

At Dundagel's famed head,

While the dipping blaze

Dyed her face fire-red;

And would sigh at the tale

Of sunk Lyonesse,

As a wind-tugged tress

Flapped her cheek like a flail

Or listen at whiles

With a thought-bound brow

To the murmuring miles

She is far from now.

Yet her shade, maybe,

Will creep underground

Till it catch the sound

Of that western sea

As it swells and sobs

Where she once domiciled,

And joy in its throbs

With the heart of a child.