The three poems describe different types of labor and their effects. The first poem by Seamus Heaney describes watching his father dig potatoes on their farm, highlighting his strength and skill with a spade. The second poem by Robert Herrick encourages readers to find love while they are young before time passes. The third poem by Walt Whitman reflects on a solitary live oak tree in Louisiana and how it reminds him of friendship and love.
The three poems describe different types of labor and their effects. The first poem by Seamus Heaney describes watching his father dig potatoes on their farm, highlighting his strength and skill with a spade. The second poem by Robert Herrick encourages readers to find love while they are young before time passes. The third poem by Walt Whitman reflects on a solitary live oak tree in Louisiana and how it reminds him of friendship and love.
The three poems describe different types of labor and their effects. The first poem by Seamus Heaney describes watching his father dig potatoes on their farm, highlighting his strength and skill with a spade. The second poem by Robert Herrick encourages readers to find love while they are young before time passes. The third poem by Walt Whitman reflects on a solitary live oak tree in Louisiana and how it reminds him of friendship and love.
Seamus Heaney and slap Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge Between my finger and my thumb Through living roots awaken in my head. The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. But I’ve no spade to follow men like them. Under my window, a clean rasping sound Between my finger and my thumb When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: The squat pen rests. My father, digging. I look down I’ll dig with it. Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away TO THE VIRGINS, TO MAKE MOST OF TIME Stooping in rhythm through potato drills Robert Herrick Where he was digging. Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft Old Time is still a-flying; Against the inside knee was levered firmly. And this same flower that smiles today He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright Tomorrow will be dying. edge deep To scatter new potatoes that we picked, The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, Loving their cool hardness in our hands. The higher he’s a-getting, The sooner will his race be run, By God, the old man could handle a spade. And nearer he’s to setting. Just like his old man. That age is best which is the first, My grandfather cut more turf in a day When youth and blood are warmer; Than any other man on Toner’s bog. But being spent, the worse, and worst Once I carried him milk in a bottle Times still succeed the former. Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up Then be not coy, but use your time, To drink it, then fell to right away And while ye may, go marry; Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods For having lost but once your prime, Over his shoulder, going down and down You may forever tarry. For the good turf. Digging. THE HILL WE CLIMB Amanda Gorman
When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry, a sea we must wade We've braved the belly of the beast We've learned that quiet isn't always peace And the norms and notions of what just is Isn’t always just-ice And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it Somehow we do it Somehow we've weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken but simply unfinished We the successors of a country and a time Where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one And yes we are far from polished far from pristine but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect We are striving to forge a union with purpose To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us but what stands before us We close the divide because we know, to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another We seek harm to none and harmony for all Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true: That even as we grieved, we grew That even as we hurt, we hoped That even as we tired, we tried That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious Not because we will never again know defeat but because we will never again sow division Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree And no one shall make them afraid If we’re to live up to our own time Then victory won’t lie in the blade But in all the bridges we’ve made That is the promised glade The hill we climb If only we dare It's because being American is more than a pride we inherit, it’s the past we step into and how we repair it We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy And this effort very nearly succeeded But while democracy can be periodically delayed it can never be permanently defeated In this truth in this faith we trust For while we have our eyes on the future history has its eyes on us This is the era of just redemption We feared at its inception We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour but within it we found the power to author a new chapter To offer hope and laughter to ourselves So while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe? Now we assert How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us? We will not march back to what was but move to what shall be A country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation Our blunders become their burdens But one thing is certain: If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left with Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west, we will rise from the windswept northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states, we will rise from the sunbaked south We will rebuild, reconcile and recover and every known nook of our nation and every corner called our country, our people diverse and beautiful will emerge, battered and beautiful When day comes we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid The new dawn blooms as we free it For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it If only we’re brave enough to be it
I SAW IN LOUISIANA A LIVE-OAK GROWING
Walt Whitman
I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches, Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green, And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself, But I wonder’d how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for I knew I could not, And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss, And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room, It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends, (For I believe lately I think of little else than of them,) Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love; For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana solitary in a wide flat space, Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near, I know very well I could not.
(The Library of Hebrew Bible - Old Testament Studies 467) Robert L. Foster, David M. Howard, Jr. - My Words Are Lovely - Studies in The Rhetoric of The Psalms-Bloomsbury T&T Clark (2008)