Star of Ethiopia, a poem by Lucian B. Watkins

Out in the Night thou art the sun
Toward which thy soul-charmed children run,
The faith-high height whereon they see
The glory of their Day To Be—
The peace at last when all is done
The night is dark but, one by one,
Thy signals, ever and anon,
Smile beacon answers to their plea,
Out in the Night
Ah, Life! thy storms these cannot shun;
Give them a hope to rest upon,
A dream to dream eternally,
The strength of men who would be free
And win the battle race begun,
Out in the Night!

The star of Ethiopia was used to refer to the African American journey and struggle for freedom.

The Star of Ethiopia is an American historical pageant written by leading New Negro intellectual, W. E. B. Du Bois in 1911. Outlining the history of African-Americans throughout time, pageants were held in high regard by Du Bois who felt that Pageants could be utilized best as a form of educational theatre, or as an instructional tool to not only teach African Americans the meaning of their history, but also enlighten whites as to "reveal the negro...as human."[1] Despite his minimal experience in playwriting, Pageant Movement intellectual W.E.B DuBois composed and constructed for the stage The Star of Ethiopia to be presented as an American historical pageant.
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By Bai Li entitled A Tranquil Night

Before my bed a pool of light—
Can it be hoarfrost on the ground?
Looking up, I find the moon bright;
Bowing, in homesickness I’m drowned.

Nocturne Varial, a poem by Lewis Alexander



I came as a shadow,
To dazzle your night!I came as a shadow,
I stand now a light;
The depth of my darkness
Transfigures your night.

My soul is a nocturne
Each note is a star;
The light will not blind you
So look where you are.

The radiance is soothing.
There's warmth in the light.
I came as a shadow,
To dazzle your night!

Analysis by https://harlemrenaissancepoets7.wikispaces.com/Lewis+Alexander

Although this poem was written in first person, the "I" represents the African Americans, or the Harlem Renaissance. African Americans were looked down upon and rejected by the society.

"I came as a shadow" (1) illustrates the African Americans seen as outcasts and "shadows." Alexander emphasized the "light" in the darkness.

"I stand now a light" (2). The "light" symbolizes Harlem Renaissance. As a group, the blacks had strength to stand up and step into the light.

"To dazzle your night" (12) grabs the audience's attention because of the tone used. The word "dazzle" in the last line means showing off and giving a whole new experience. As the African Americans were usually these "Shadows", forgotten by nearly everybody, they were still able to be themselves. When they did as such, they dazzled the people around them.

Suppression is a horrible thing, but during that time, African-Americas everywhere were being suppressed. They did not have the same rights as the Whites, and could not do very much about it. This is what the Nocturne Varial is showing us. This is why the Harlem Renaissance was sch a great thing for the African-Americans. It was the first time where they could be themselves ad express their inner selves, the selves that were suppressed by the white society.

"Each note is a star" (6). This line is saying how everyone is special. everyone is different and can make a difference to this world. Every note is a star, and every note should have the right to show the world who or what it really is.

Wonder and Joy, a poem by Robinson Jeffers


The things that one grows tired of—O, be sure
They are only foolish artificial things!
Can a bird ever tire of having wings?
And I, so long as life and sense endure,
(Or brief be they!) shall nevermore inure
My heart to the recurrence of the springs,
Of gray dawns, the gracious evenings,
The infinite wheeling stars. A wonder pure
Must ever well within me to behold
Venus decline; or great Orion, whose belt
Is studded with three nails of burning gold,
Ascend the winter heaven. Who never felt
This wondering joy may yet be good or great:
But envy him not: he is not fortunate.

↑↑This poem is an example of a lyric, as it describes and explains the emotions of the author, rather than a narrative that is simply a telling of a story. This story would simply state facts and not the inner diaglogs of the characters.
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Beloved, a poem by Govinda Krishna Chettur


"You are the Rose of me,
In you have I lost myself utterly,
Your fragrance, as a breath from Paradise,
About me ever lies;
I crush you to my heart with subtlest ecstasy
And on your lips I live, and in your passionate eyes
You are the Dream of me,
My visions many-footed flit and flee
Beneath the jewelled arches of Life's grace
But through lone nights and days,
One form I follow, and mine eyes but see
The dear delightful wonder of your love-lit face
You are the Greatness of me,
My thoughts are Beauty shaped exquisitely
To the rare pattern of your loveliness
Exceeding all excess:
And the strange magic of this mystery,
Steals weight from burdened hours, and woe from weariness"

Night Thoughts, a poem by Johann Wolfgang Goethe

Stars, you are unfortunate, I pity you,
Beautiful as you are, shining in your glory,
Who guides seafaring men through stress and peril
And have no recompense from gods or mortals,
Love you do not, nor do you know what love is.
Hours that are aeons urgently conducting
Your figures in a dance through the vast heaven,
What journey have you ended in this moment,
Since lingering in the arms of my beloved
I lost all memory of you and midnight.

Analysis
"Night Thoughts" is a poem by Goethe that speaks about how he pities the stars because no matter how beautiful they are and how much they help us, they cannot feel love and when we are with our love, nothing else matters and we forget the stars even exist.
"Night Thoughts" is a love poem that consists of only one stanza with ten lines. It is unrhymed.

Read more about Night Thoughts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Analysis & Poem by www.poemofquotes.com

by Sara Teasdale

They came to tell your faults to me,
They named them over one by one;
I laughed aloud when they were done,
I knew them all so well before, --
Oh, they were blind, too blind to see
Your faults had made me love you more

Born in 1884, Sara Trevor Teasdale's work was characterized by its simplicity and clarity and her use of classical forms

To the Muses, by William Blake

Whether on Ida's shady brow
Or in the chambers of the East,
The chambers of the Sun, that now
From ancient melody have ceased;
Whether in heaven ye wander fair,
Or the green corners of the earth,
Or the blue regions of the air
Where the melodious winds have birth;
Whether on crystal rocks ye rove,
Beneath the bosom of the sea,
Wandering in many a coral grove;
Fair Nine, forsaking Poetry;
How have you left the ancient love
That bards of old enjoy'd in you!
The languid strings do scarcely move,
The sound is forced, the notes are few

Analysis
"To the Muses" is not quite as complicated and layered as most other Blake poems. There are still weighty things to consider: the speaker is at a loss of inspiration and wonders aloud where it has all gone (heaven, the sky, the tops of mountains, the bottom of the sea)? The only thing he knows for certain is that his muses do not rest where the knowledge and reason of Rule Britannica say they do. Placing the muses in the British Isles helps create poetic fraud, where “the sound is forc’d, the notes are few!”

Thus, while a simple poem, "To the Muses" also seems a deeply personal one. Is Blake laying bare his own worries, his own reservations about his art? The poem does have a near-confessional flavor, groping toward a catharsis that seems just out of reach.
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poem by William Wordsworth entitled A Night Thought

Lo! where the Moon along the sky
Sails with her happy destiny;
Oft is she hid from mortal eye
Or dimly seen,
But when the clouds asunder fly
How bright her mien!
Far different we--a froward race,
Thousands though rich in Fortune's grace
With cherished sullenness of pace
Their way pursue,
Ingrates who wear a smileless face
The whole year through
If kindred humours e'er would make
My spirit droop for drooping's sake,
From Fancy following in thy wake,
Bright ship of heaven!
A counter impulse let me take
And be forgiven

In the Preface to the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads, we read

Now the music of harmonious metrical language, the sense of difficulty overcome, and the blind association of pleasure which has been previously received from works of rhyme or metre of the same or similar construction, all these imperceptibly make up a complex feeling of delight, which is of the most important use in tempering the painful feeling which will always be found intermingled with powerful descriptions of the deeper passions. This effect is always produced in pathetic and impassioned poetry; while in lighter compositions the ease and gracefulness with which the Poet manages his numbers are themselves confessedly a principal source of the gratification of the Reader.

This theoretical flourish serves to elucidate from a slightly different angle something of what is happening in the Night Piece. The central paradox of apparent movement and actual stillness (though the stars are, of course, all nevertheless really in motion), of the near and the far, of the possibility of registering with a glance a whole galaxy in an instant, and the consequent vertiginous shock of insignificance which this produces, does indeed give us something akin to a 'painful feeling', or at least a disturbing feeling, such as is 'found intermingled with powerful descriptions of the deeper passions', here man's insignificance in the face of the immensity of the universe. But it is the function of rhyme and metre to temper this painful feeling, with 'delight' which transforms into 'peaceful calm'. We have looked on the face of the deep, but Wordsworth has cleverly boxed the experience into a regular metrical form with its manifold pleasant suggestions, and we exit the experience wiser and calmer. In effect, the versification acts like a sugar coating to a bitter pill.

The whole process is, of course, dependent upon the possession of a certain poetic sensibility by the reader, a question also addressed by Wordsworth in the Preface...

http://www.adnax.com/poems/ww04.htm

Robert Frost's A Late Walk

When I go up through the mowing field,
The headless aftermath,
Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,
Half closes the garden path
And when I come to the garden ground,
The whir of sober birds
Up from the tangle of withered weeds
Is sadder than any words
A tree beside the wall stands bare,
But a leaf that lingered brown,
Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,
Comes softly rattling down
I end not far from my going forth
By picking the faded blue
Of the last remaining aster flower
To carry again to you

The first verse establishes a rhyming structure — ABCB — and helps to create a sense of setting for the reader. The narrator of the poem is walking through a garden field. Although it is not expressly stated, the imagery of the poem suggests that the time of year is in autumn; “mowing” can refer to using a lawnmower, but it also refers to the fallen tips of grass blades that we now associate with using a lawnmower. “The headless aftermath” helps to confirm this; we can imagine a field that has been freshly harvested, the last grains taken from the field before winter comes to wither it all away. The path is half-blocked, the narrator notes, in an increasingly imagery-based style that completes the autumn image. ...

Here's a poem by Claude McKay: America

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.