The document contains three poems:
1) "A Noiseless Patient Spider" by Walt Whitman describes a spider exploring its surroundings by launching filaments from itself in search of a connection.
2) "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes uses the metaphor of a difficult climb up a "crystal stair" to advise his son to persevere through challenges in life.
3) Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18" compares the subject's beauty to a summer's day, saying they are more lovely and lasting.
The document contains three poems:
1) "A Noiseless Patient Spider" by Walt Whitman describes a spider exploring its surroundings by launching filaments from itself in search of a connection.
2) "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes uses the metaphor of a difficult climb up a "crystal stair" to advise his son to persevere through challenges in life.
3) Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18" compares the subject's beauty to a summer's day, saying they are more lovely and lasting.
The document contains three poems:
1) "A Noiseless Patient Spider" by Walt Whitman describes a spider exploring its surroundings by launching filaments from itself in search of a connection.
2) "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes uses the metaphor of a difficult climb up a "crystal stair" to advise his son to persevere through challenges in life.
3) Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18" compares the subject's beauty to a summer's day, saying they are more lovely and lasting.
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.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space, Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them, Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold, Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul. Mother to Son BY LA NGS TO N H UGH ES 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. But all the time I’se been a-climbin’ on, And reachin’ landin’s, And turnin’ corners, And sometimes goin’ in the dark Where there ain’t been no light. So boy, don’t you turn back. Don’t you set down on the steps ’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard. Don’t you fall now— For I’se still goin’, honey, I’se still climbin’, And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. SONNET 18 Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd; But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st; So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.