Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay. 

Swan and Shadow by John Hollander (Cherie)

Swan and Shadow by John Hollander

                            Dusk

                         Above the

                    water hang the

                              loud

                             flies

                             Here

                            O so

                           gray

                          then

                         What             A pale signal will appear

                        When         Soon before its shadow fades

                       Where       Here in this pool of opened eye

                       In us     No Upon us As at the very edges

                        of where we take shape in the dark air

                         this object bares its image awakening

                           ripples of recognition that will

                              brush darkness up into light

even after this bird this hour both drift by atop the perfect sad instant now

                              already passing out of sight

                           toward yet-untroubled reflection

                         this image bears its object darkening

                        into memorial shades Scattered bits of

                       light     No of water Or something across

                       water       Breaking up No Being regathered

                        soon         Yet by then a swan will have

                         gone             Yes out of mind into what

                          vast

                           pale

                            hush

                             of a

                             place

                              past

                    sudden dark as

                         if a swan

                            sang

Level: Uppser Sec

Themes: Nature, Ephemerality

Stylistic Features: Concrete/ Shape Poetry

Rather by Mary Austin

By Mary Austin

Rathers

I know very well what I'd rather be
If I didn't always have to be me!
I'd rather be an owl,
A downy feathered owl,
A wink-ity, blink-ity, yellow-eyed owl
In a hole in a hollow tree.
I'd take my dinner in chipmunk town,
And wouldn't I gobble the field mice down,
If I were a wink-ity, blink-ity owl,
And didn't always have to be me!

I know very well what I'd like to do
If I didn't have to do what I do!
I'd go and be a woodpecker,
A rap-ity, tap-ity, red-headed woodpecker
In the top of a tall old tree.
And I'd never take a look
At a lesson or a book,
And I'd scold like a pirate on the sea,
If I only had to do what I like to do,
And didn't always have to be me!

Or else I'd be an antelope,
A pronghorned antelope,
With lots of other antelope
Skimming like a cloud on a wire-grass plian.
A bounding, bouncing antelope,
You'd never get me back to my desk again!

Or I might be a puma,
A singe-colored puma,
A slinking, sly-foot puma
As fierce as fierce could be!
And I'd wait by the waterholes where antelope drink
In the cool of the morning
And I do
not
think
That ever any antelope could get away from me.

But if I were a hunter,
A red Indian hunter -
I'd like to be a hunter, -
I'd have a bow made of juniper wood
From a lightning-blasted tree,
And I'd creep and I'd creep on that puma asleep
A flint tipped arrow,
An eagle feathered arrow,
For a puma kills calves and a puma kills sheep,
And he'd never eat any more antelope
If he once met up with me!