[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in] by e. e. cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

 

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I like this poem very much. When you love someone that much, you do really love like what the speaker says. You do carry his/her heart in yours.

Outside the Window by Thomas Hardy

‘My stick!’ he says, and turns in the lane
To the house just left, whence a vixen voice
Comes out with the firelight through the pane,
And he sees within that the girl of his choice
Stands rating her mother with eyes aglare
For something said while he was there.

‘At last I behold her soul undraped!’
Thinks the man who had loved her more than himself;
‘My God!—’tis but narrowly I have escaped.—
My precious porcelain proves it delf.’
His face has reddened like one ashamed,
And he steals off, leaving his stick unclaimed.

The speaker forgets to take his stick which has just been left in his lover’s house. When he goes back near the house, he hears an unpleasant female voice. He sees his lover shouting at her mother with angry eyes for something said when he was there before. He finally sees the true personality of his lover whom he loves so much. He is ashamed, embarrassed and disappointed. He leaves quietly in disillusionment.

He is on the outside looking into the house where he is able to see the inner soul of the girl. It is as if the window of the house provides a window to see into her true soul and true personality (disrespectful, impolite, pretentious). It implies that if you are on the outside looking in, you will see the inside truth.

His love makes him blind to the truth about his lover until he is able to view her from the outside. The beauty he perceives his lover to have proves itself false. After coming to the realization that his lover might not have been the woman he thought she was, “his face has reddened like one ashamed”. Love causes people to believe fake appearance and pretenses only to come to the realization that love is blind.

Island Man by Grace Nichols

Morning
And the Island man wakes up
To the sound of blue surf
In his head
The steady breaking and wombing

Wild seabirds
And fisherman pulling out to sea
The sun surfacing defiantly

From the east
Of his small emerald island
He always comes back groggily groggily

Comes back to sands
Of a grey metallic soar
To surge of wheels
To dull North Circular roar

Muffling muffling
His crumpled pillow waves
Island man heaves himself

Another London day

An island man feels like waking up to the sounds of the ocean. He is dreaming of being home in the Caribbean where he belongs. His dreaming, imagining and memories gradually fade into the actual reality of what is happening in London, like waking up. He would rather wake up to the sound of the ocean and the sight of the sun instead of the noisy traffic in London. It shows his homesickness and sadness.

 

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I also feel the tension between living in the city and in the nature. Due to the necessity to make a living, we all have to live in the city. However, there are so many noises and pollution in the city which makes one miss the nature.  Very often, I want to escape the city life into the countryside to keep myself from being too much overwhelmed by the city life.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

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It is winter, still and quiet.

The speaker is attracted by the deepness and darkness of the woods. The serene, mysterious, seductive Nature compels the speaker to hang out in spite of dangerous consequences.

He is contemplating staying in the woods rather than returning to the village to fulfill the obligations and promises he’s made and flirts momentarily with the idea of breaking them, before deciding against it.

The feeling of being so far away from where you need to be almost makes you feel like easier to just give up and hang out.

He might be reflecting upon something deeper and darker like death.

It’s as though the horse reminds the speaker of the “promises” he has made to those in the village and reminds him of the social life he has in the village.

He tells himself that he’s got things to do, people to see and places to go. He’s still got a long way to go before he can rest and sleep, so he had better get going.

 

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When I was in Form 7 after the AL public examination, I had a similar feeling and experience when I went to the Lion Rock Country Park alone at night. There was no one there while I sat there watching over the Victoria Harbour of Hong Kong. The glimmering night view and the hustle and bustle of the city allures me to think about the meaning of life and my future. I had a deep feeling of despair, frustration and aloneness which really felt like death. I immediately left the Park when the feelings got quite overwhelmingly worse. To be honest, I think this kind of spiritual experience could be quite dangerous if one is left to do it all alone without company.

Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo

The brickworks at which Michael’s father and mother work are going to close down. They are being made redundant. Michael’s father has been thinking about sailing around the world throughout all those years working in the factory. If he had not lost his job, he would not have dared do it. Now that he has lost his job, he thinks that it is the right time to do this once-in-a-lifetime thing. So he has bought Peggy Sue to take the family to sail around the world.

Michael is thrown overboard and lands on an island. At first, an elderly Japanese Kensuke does not want Michael on his island. He wants to be alone. He is very angry that Michael makes fire to attract people’s attention. He wants people to stay away from his island because they will shoot orangutans and gibbons. So he draws a line on the sand to keep Michael away from his territory.

When Michael is stung by jellyfish and becomes paralyzed, Kensuke saves him and brings him to his cave. There, they wash clothes together, go fishing together, fruit gathering together, cook together and do the drawing and painting together. Michael teaches Kensuke English and Kensuke teaches Michael painting. Then, they talk more and become friends.

But, when Kensuke finds out the message in the bottle that Michael sends, he is very upset because Kensuke thinks that Michael does not tell him his feelings as he did. Kensuke keeps Michael at a distance. They do not talk much as before. Later, Kensuke understands that Michael wants to go home and has his long life ahead waiting for him. Unlike himself, Michael just cannot live his whole life on this island. Then they have a friendly reconciliation.

Kensuke reveals that he is too old for the new world after staying on the island for 40 years. It would be very difficult for him to adapt to the whole new world. Japan was his world a long time ago. The island is his world now. Even if Kimi and Michiya are still alive, they are no longer the same persons. They are more like strangers than family. On the island, Kensuke has his new family – the orangutans, the gibbons, the turtles. He will look after them and protect them from hunters and killers. He cannot forget the damage caused to him by WWII.

The Flying Machine by Ray Bradbury

I like the way The Flying Machine depicts the immense potential destructive power of technology back in 1953. I think the story has a kind of dystopia tendency which casts serious doubts on the technological world in the future.

“But there are times when one must lose a little beauty to save other beauty…Some other man will see you and build a thing of bright papers and bamboo like this. But the other man will have an evil face and an evil heart, and the beauty will be gone.”

The inventor is flying in the sky with his own invention – bright papers and bamboo sticks like a dragon and thinks it is very beautiful up there. However, he has never thought that his creation/invention would be left to the hands of evil men for evil purposes. It questions the ethics of technological advancement and its potential threat, danger and even disaster that would be brought to the entire humanity and our earth mother Nature. Just imagine. When robots can now be so smart as to write poetry and play chess, would people and Nature finally be controlled, enslaved or even destroyed by robots one day in the future? What greater threat and danger would automation and robots bring to the entire humanity? We should be very cautious and responsible about technological invention; otherwise, government regulation must come into rescue to prevent any disastrous consequences brought about by technology on the entire humanity and our earth mother Nature.

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

I like how the drama Macbeth plays out with the major characters Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and the three witches. The desire for power, the ambition to become king of Scotland, the lack of a strong character and his gullibility are the tragic flaws of Macbeth which lead to his downfall. Tempted by his desire and ambition and being credulous, he listens to the prophecies of the witches and trusts them without judging their evil motives. At one point, Macbeth wrestles with his conscience about treason and murder. However, being easily manipulated and persuaded, he lets his wife Lady Macbeth question his courage and manhood and submits to his wife’s treacherous advice. To prove that he is not a coward, Macbeth has agreed to kill Duncan. As the prophecies are coming true one by one, he trusts the witches without doubt. When Macbeth successfully becomes king of Scotland, he is so obsessed with power that he is afraid the next prophecy will come true, that he will lose his throne to Banquo’s son one day. His ambition and desire for power further motivates him to listen to the prophecies of the witches and to kill Banquo’s and Macduff’s family. Macbeth’s ambition finally leads him to his destruction.