“Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost [w/ Audio]

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.

“Where Go the Boats?” by Robert Louis Stevenson [w/ Audio]

Dark brown is the river,
 Golden is the sand.
It flows along for ever,
 With trees on either hand.

Green leaves a-floating,
 Castles of the foam,
Boats of mine a-boating --
  Where will all come home?

On goes the river,
 And out past the mill,
Away down the valley,
 Away down the hill.

Away down the river,
 A hundred miles or more,
Other little children
 Shall bring my boats ashore.

“The Arrow and the Song” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [w/ Audio]

I shot an arrow into the air,
 It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
 Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
 It fell to earth, I knew not where:
For who has sight so keen and strong,
 That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
 I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
 I found again in the heart of a friend.

Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas [w/ Audio]

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost [w/ Audio]

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
  And sorry I could not travel both 
 And be one traveler, long I stood
  And looked down one as far as I could
 To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, just as fair,
  And having perhaps the better claim,
 Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
  Though as for that the passing there
 Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
  In leaves no step had trodden black.
 Oh, I kept the first for another day!
  Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
 I doubted if I should ever come back.

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.

Suspect Alterations [Common Meter]

To say you love, but require change
     is so deeply fishy.
 To mold the nature of your love
      as if her soul were squishy.

Creeping Evil [Lyric Poem]

I feel creeping evil
  from all around the rose.
 I'd thought it long since dead,
  but, oh, it grows and grows.

It was only dormant -
  just biding its time.
 Its suffocating burden
  weighs on all sound minds.

Oh, when will it reach here?
  One can never know.
 It will sneak up on us
  on silent tippy-toes.

Dogs of War [Lyric Poem]

The dogs of war are slipping.
  The ropes they are a ripping.

The palms they are a bleeding,
  as citizens are reading

of risks that led to slippage:
  of quips and of equipage,

and how it wasn't expected,
  and courses were corrected,

but still it all goes wrong.  

Escaping the Cave [Common Meter]

Climbing a mountain, I feel like
  I've escaped Plato's cave.
 My senses reel as though they're a
   crew of newly freed slaves.

The sky is bluer, rivers green,
  each grit granule is clear.
 And even at the very edge,
   there's ease in feeling fear.
 By "ease" I mean not frozen stiff,
   but like a friend so dear
 that one can take one's grand peril,
   a gift received with cheer.

Take me to the mountains, I say,
  where it's serene and real,
 and I can open up my sight
   to a world that's ideal.

Devourers [Lyric Poem]

We were classed: Consumer.
 And that became our task.
  The stores grew like tumors,
    and in stuff piles we basked.