Poets by Imagery Key

Edgar Allan Poe

A: “The Raven” (raven)

In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;

B: “The Bells” (bells)

Keeping time, time, time

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the throbbing of the bells–

Of the bells, bells, bells–

To the sobbing of the bells;

C: “Annabel Lee” (seaside cemetery in St. Ives, Cornwall, reminiscent of poem’s setting)

In her sepulcre there by the sea,

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

D: “A Dream Within a Dream” (screenshot from Inception, relating to the topic)

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

Robert Frost

A: “The Road Not Taken” (diverging paths)

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;

B: “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (snowy woods)

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

C: “Mending Wall” (stone wall being repaired)

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

D: “After Apple-Picking” (ladder in apple tree)

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree

Toward heaven still,

And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill

Beside it, and there may be two or three

Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.

But I am done with apple-picking now.

William Wordsworth

A: “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” (Tintern Abbey)

These beauteous forms,

Through a long absence, have not been to me

As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:

But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,

In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,

B: “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (daffodils)

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

C: “The World Is Too Much with Us” (Triton blowing horn)

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

D: “The Solitary Reaper” (woman with scythe)

Behold her, single in the field,

Yon solitary Highland Lass!

Reaping and singing by herself;

Stop here, or gently pass!

John Keats

A: “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (Grecian urn)

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

B: “To Autumn” (autumn scene)

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

C: “Ode to a Nightingale” (nightingale singing)

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard

In ancient days by emperor and clown:

D: “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (Balboa [“Cortez”] seeing Pacific Ocean)

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men

Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

William Carlos Williams

A: “The Red Wheelbarrow” (red wheelbarrow)

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

B: “This Is Just to Say” (plums)

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

C: “The Great Figure” (figure 5 in gold on firetruck)

Among the rain

and lights

I saw the figure 5

in gold

on a red

firetruck

D: “Spring and All” (muddy, puddly field sorta reminiscent of setting)

Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen
patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

William Blake

A: “The Tyger” (tiger)

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

B: “The Chimney Sweeper” (young chimney sweeper)

When my mother died I was very young,

And my father sold me while yet my tongue

Could scarcely cry ” ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!”

So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.

C: “London” (historical London scene of a poor area)

I wander thro’ each charter’d street,

Near where the charter’d Thames does flow.

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

D: “The Lamb” (lamb)

Little Lamb who made thee

Dost thou know who made thee

Gave thee life & bid thee feed.

By the stream & o’er the mead;

Gave thee clothing of delight,

Softest clothing wooly bright;

Robert Burns

A: “To a Mouse” (fieldmouse)

Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,

An’ weary Winter comin fast,

An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,

Thou thought to dwell,

Till crash! the cruel coulter past

Out thro’ thy cell.

B: “A Red, Red Rose” (red rose)

O my Luve is like a red, red rose

That’s newly sprung in June;

O my Luve is like the melody

That’s sweetly played in tune.

C: “Address to a Haggis” (haggis)

Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,

Great chieftain o the puddin’-race!

Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,

Painch, tripe, or thairm:

Weel are ye worthy o’ a grace

As lang’s my arm.

D: “Tam O’Shanter” (Tam O’Shanter escaping across a bridge on Maggie, his horse, pursued by witches)

Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg,

And win the key-stane of the brig:

There at them thou thy tail may toss,

A running stream they dare na cross.

But ere the key-stane she could make,

The fient a tail she had to shake!

Percy Bysshe Shelley

A: “Ozymandias” (trunkless legs of stone in Egypt)

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . .

B: “Ode to the West Wind” (Zephyrus, the West Wind)

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

C: “To a Skylark” (skylark)

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!

Bird thou never wert,

That from Heaven, or near it,

Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

D: “Adonais” (death of Adonis)

I weep for Adonais—he is dead!

Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears

Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!

Langston Hughes

A: “Harlem” (raisin)

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

B: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (Mississippi River)

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy

bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

C: “Mother to Son” (rough staircase)

Well, son, I’ll tell you:

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

It’s had tacks in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor—

Bare.

D: “Night Funeral in Harlem” (two hearses)

Night funeral

In Harlem:
Where did they get
Them two fine cars?

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A: “Paul Revere’s Ride” (Paul Revere)

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

B: “The Village Blacksmith” (blacksmith)

The smith, a mighty man is he,

With large and sinewy hands;

And the muscles of his brawny arms

Are strong as iron bands.

C: “The Cross of Snow” (Mount of the Holy Cross, Colorado)

There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

D: The Song of Hiawatha (Hiawatha in canoe)

I a light canoe will build me,

Build a swift Cheemaun for sailing,

That shall float upon the river,

Like a yellow leaf in Autumn,

Like a yellow water-lily!

William Butler Yeats

A: “The Second Coming” (falcon)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

B: “The Wild Swans at Coole” (swans)

But now they drift on the still water,

Mysterious, beautiful;

Among what rushes will they build,

By what lake’s edge or pool

Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day

To find they have flown away?

C: “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” (beehive)

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

D: “Easter, 1916” (Dublin, following the Easter Rising)

MacDonagh and MacBride

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Emily Dickinson

A: “There’s a certain Slant of light” (slanted light through window)

There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –

B: “Because I could not stop for Death” (funerary carriage)

Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.

C: “A Bird came down the Walk” (bird on sidewalk)

A Bird came down the Walk—
He did not know I saw—
He bit an Angleworm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw,

D: “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died” (buzzing fly)

I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air –
Between the Heaves of Storm –

Gerard Manley Hopkins

A: “Spring” (thrush eggs)

Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

B: “Pied Beauty” (skies of couple-color and stippled trout)

Glory be to God for dappled things –

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

C: “God’s Grandeur” (foil and oozing olive oil)

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

D: “The Caged Skylark” (caged skylark – actually, a skylark decoy)

As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage,

Man’s mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells —

That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;

This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life’s age.

John Donne

A: “The Flea” (flea)

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,

How little that which thou deniest me is;

It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;

B: “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” (compass)

If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two;

Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show

To move, but doth, if the other do.

C: “Song: Go and catch a falling star” (shooting star and mandrake root)

Go and catch a falling star,

Get with child a mandrake root,

D: “Holy Sonnet 10 (Death Be Not Proud)” (death, perhaps a bit down-in-the-dumps)

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

W.H. Auden

A: “Musée des Beaux Arts” (Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, featured in poem)

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

B: “The Unknown Citizen” (grave of an unknown)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,

C: “Funeral Blues” (broken/stopped clock)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

D: “The Fall of Rome” (herd of reindeer)

Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

A: “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (painting of the Charge of the Light Brigade)

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said:

B: “Ulysses” (Sean Bean as Odysseus in Troy)

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

C: “The Lady of Shalott” (The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse)

She floated down to Camelot:

And as the boat-head wound along

The willowy hills and fields among,

They heard her singing her last song,

The Lady of Shalott.

D: “Break, Break, Break” (breaking waves)

Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.

Wallace Stevens

A: “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” (blackbird in snow with Roman numeral 13)

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing

And it was going to snow.

The blackbird sat

In the cedar-limbs.

B: “The Emperor of Ice Cream” (ice cream)

Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

C: “Disillusionment of 10 O’Clock” (a spooky white nightgown)

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.

D: “Anecdote of the Jar” (outdoor jar)

I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill.

It made the slovenly wilderness

Surround that hill.

Walt Whitman

A: “Song of Myself” (Walt Whitman, himself)

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

B: “A Noiseless Patient Spider” (weaving spider)

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.