Classic and Contemporary Poetry
ON FIRST OPENING THE LYRIC YEAR, by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: It is a certain satisfaction to overlook a cemetery Last Line: But for myself somehow this does not satisfy. Subject(s): Individuality; Cemeteries | ||||||||
It is a certain satisfaction to overlook a cemetery, All the little two-yard-long mounds that vary So negligibly after all. I mean it brings on a mood Of clear proportions. I remember once how I stood Thinking, one summer's day, how good it must be to spend Some thousand years there from beginning to the end, There on the cool hillside. But with that feeling grew the dread That I too would have to be like all the other dead. That unpleasant sense which one has when one smothers, Unhappy to leave so much behind merely to resemble others. It's good no doubt to lie socially well ordered when one has so long to lie, But for myself somehow this does not satisfy. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...POEM FOR MY TWENTIETH BIRTHDAY by KENNETH KOCH THERE IS ALWAYS A LITTLE WIND by TED KOOSER JEWISH GRAVEYARDS, ITALY by PHILIP LEVINE SAILING HOME FROM RAPALLO by ROBERT LOWELL SEVEN LAMENTS FOR THE WAR-DEAD: 6 by YEHUDA AMICHAI AT THE CEMETERY, WALNUT GROVE PLANTATION, SOUTH CAROLINA, 1989 by LUCILLE CLIFTON A CELEBRATION by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS |
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