Robert Frost: Nothing Gold Can Stay (1923)

Nothing Gold Can Stay (1923)

by Robert Frost | 1923

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Edgar Allan Poe: Annabel Lee (1849)

Annabel Lee

by Edgar Allan Poe | 1849

It was many and many a year ago,

   In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

   By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

   Than to love and be loved by me.

Edgar Allan Poe: A Dream Within a Dream (1849)

A Dream Within a Dream

by Edgar Allan Poe | 1849

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow —

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone? 

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

Samuel Coleridge: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1834 vers.)

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner 

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge | 1834 vers.

The Argument: how a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country.

PART I

It is an ancient Mariner,

And he stoppeth one of three.

'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,

Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

Edgar Allan Poe: The Raven (1845)

The Raven

by Edgar Allan Poe | 1845

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door—

            Only this and nothing more."

Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken (1916)

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost | 1916

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;