POETRY FOR ORAL INTERPRETATION

#1 #2
Invictus The Road Not Taken

William Ernest Henley - 1849-1903 By Robert Frost

Out of the night that covers me,    Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
  Black as the Pit from pole to pole,    And sorry I could not travel both
I thank whatever gods may be    And be one traveler, long I stood
  For my unconquerable soul.    And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
In the fell clutch of circumstance 
  I have not winced nor cried aloud.    Then took the other, as just as fair,
Under the bludgeonings of chance    And having perhaps the better claim,
  My head is bloody, but unbowed.    Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Beyond this place of wrath and tears    Had worn them really about the same,
  Looms but the Horror of the shade, 
And yet the menace of the years    And both that morning equally lay
  Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.    In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
It matters not how strait the gate,    Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
  How charged with punishments the scroll,    I doubted if I should ever come back.
I am the master of my fate:
  I am the captain of my soul. I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
#3 #4
O Captain! My Captain!
A Dream Within a Dream
Walt Whitman - 1819-1892
Edgar Allan Poe - 1809-1849
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we Take this kiss upon the brow!
sought is won, And, in parting from you now,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all Thus much let me avow:
exulting, You are not wrong who deem
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim That my days have been a dream;
and daring; Yet if hope has flown away
       But O heart! heart! heart! In a night, or in a day,
         O the bleeding drops of red, In a vision, or in none,
           Where on the deck my Captain lies, Is it therefore the less gone?
             Fallen cold and dead. All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up- for you the flag is flung- for you the bugle I stand amid the roar
trills, Of a surf-tormented shore,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths- for you the And I hold within my hand
shores a-crowding, Grains of the golden sand--
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces How few! yet how they creep
turning; Through my fingers to the deep,
       Here Captain! dear father! While I weep--while I weep!
         This arm beneath your head! O God! can I not grasp
           It is some dream that on the deck, Them with a tighter clasp?
             You’ve fallen cold and dead. O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and Is all that we see or seem
still, But a dream within a dream?
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor
will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage
closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object
won;
       Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
         But I with mournful tread,
           Walk the deck my Captain lies,
             Fallen cold and dead.
 #5
#6

The Second Coming I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

By William Butler Yeats By William Wordsworth

Turning and turning in the widening gyre    I wandered lonely as a cloud

The falcon cannot hear the falconer; That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; When all at once I saw a crowd,
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, A host, of golden daffodils;
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere    Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
The ceremony of innocence is drowned; Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity. Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
Surely some revelation is at hand; They stretched in never-ending line
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.    Along the margin of a bay:
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out    Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,    The waves beside them danced; but they
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,    Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it    A poet could not but be gay,
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.    In such a jocund company:
The darkness drops again; but now I know    I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
That twenty centuries of stony sleep What wealth the show to me had brought:
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,    For oft, when on my couch I lie
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.