Tag: Poetry

“The Snow Man” — Wallace Stevens

Biblioklept4 Comments
“The Snow Man” by Wallace Stevens

 

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

 

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

 

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

 

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

 

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Exercises on the Moods

Biblioklept1 Comment

(From An English Grammar, Baskervill & Sewell, 1895):

Exercises on the Moods.

(a) Tell the mood of each verb in these sentences, and what special use it is of that mood:—

1. Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart and her prayers be.

2. Mark thou this difference, child of earth! / While each performs his part, / Not all the lip can speak is worth / The silence of the heart.

3. Oh, that I might be admitted to thy presence! that mine were the supreme delight of knowing thy will!

4. ‘Twere worth ten years of peaceful life,One glance at their array!

5. Whatever inconvenience ensue, nothing is to be preferred before justice.

6.The vigorous sun would catch it up at eve / And use it for an anvil till he had filled / The shelves of heaven with burning thunderbolts.

7.Meet is it changes should control / Our being, lest we rust in ease.

8.Quoth she, / “The Devil take the goose, / And God forget the stranger!”

9. Think not that I speak for your sakes.

10. “Now tread we a measure!” said young Lochinvar.

11. Were that a just return? Were that Roman magnanimity?

12. Well; how he may do his work, whether he do it right or wrong, or do it at all, is a point which no man in the world has taken the pains to think of.

13. He is, let him live where else he like, in what pomps and prosperities he like, no literary man.

14. Could we one day complete the immense figure which these flagrant points compose! Continue reading “Exercises on the Moods” →