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A Critical Introduction
“With daggers, bodkins, bullets, man can make
a bruise or break of exit for his life;
but is that a quietus, O tell me, is it quietus?”
-from D. H. Lawrence, “The Ship of Death”
Death can manifest itself through humans in endless ways, and no one has yet found a successful way to escape this inevitable passing. Most people either fear or accept Death when the time comes. Still, there are others who choose to knock on its door directly and offer themselves gladly even when their thread of Life has not been sheared. Dying by natural causes, survival, patriotism, human accidents, or even homicide are all mostly endorsed by us, but the act of suicide seems to be unacceptable by society as a means to Death. Intentional self-harm is usually experienced by those who seek temporary numbness, an “obvious” solution to get out of their current situation, and are suffering from mental instability, which does not necessarily mean mental illness. Those who must continue to brave the harsh conditions of life are important examples for people who seek alternatives to Death and to opponents of suicide. This is why suicide is often chided as weak, selfish, and an unintelligent method of solving one’s problems. In the excerpt at the beginning of the introduction,
When my brother was just sixteen years young, he attempted suicide. He had just gotten out of a relationship with a girl whom he loved very much. He experienced the crushing heartbreak of finding her cheating on him with another guy, and began a life of drinking, smoking, gang activities, and worst of all, illegally self-medicating with a drug called Xanax, which he bought from one of my brothers who was also caught in an unhealthy lifestyle. His behavior soon became evident to me and my mom, I being the oldest and most-held responsible of eleven children, and my mother the stay-at-home, primary caregiver in the household. We noticed that he seemed tired much of the time, had bloodshot eyes, and threatened my mom and the rest of the kids when they fought over something small. I remember dialing 9-1-1 when he grabbed a butcher knife and violently threatened to kill one of the kids he was angry with. One fateful day in the summer of 2005, my dad spoke of selling our house because of all the trouble that had come with it, which my unstable brother happened to be attached to. He began yelling with my dad, and promptly got fed up and reappeared with a roll of white strings (as retold by my dad who had no idea what was about to happen). I was accustomed to the fighting, and only when my mom began yelling did I come downstairs to see the problem. She was hysterical, and I followed her frightened eyes to the garage. There, to my absolute terror, I found my brother with a rope around his neck, and one foot on the ledge of the table he had used to hoist himself, ready to push off and subsequently break his own neck. I had never been in any situation like this before, and did the only thing I knew how to do. I cried fervently and panicked, all the while trying to stop my brother from this unspeakable act. He gave me a lot of excuses about how my parents don’t care about him, how his life won’t amount to anything, and that this was the only solution. I remember telling him why he feels like he has to do this, how this was definitely not the only way, that our parents honestly loved him and that he was not meant to do this, but for something more. I also promised him, things will work out there was no way he could know unless he gave himself a chance. I was desperate, snatching any kind of reason I could to save his life. After an eternity of pleading, he did come down, with bruises to his neck that were treated at the hospital. But even to this day, I believe that it was not only my words, but an inner strength that enabled him to change his mind, and that I was the only one willing to be receptive to his need for attention and realization of the torment he was feeling.
Because of this frightening experience, my life has changed and was affected in so many ways. My desire to help people and major in psychology was spurred, my relationship with my brother was less distant than it was before, and our family has become more cohesive. It has only been two years, but his mentality has positively transformed so much, especially in areas of academics, health, and relationships. Looking at him, one would never be able to guess that he had led such a dark and angry life, or that he once considered not living at all. He is my direct inspiration in compiling this conversational anthology of suicidal tendencies and human nature’s answer to their call for help. I believe that anyone with suicide intentions can overcome their difficulties, and to know that there are people out there who are willing to care and be there for them, even if it doesn’t seem so. Suicide prevention is much needed, and being knowledgeable about how to effectively understand and help someone before they commit suicide can save lives. I hope that the poems I have chosen for my short anthology will speak to you in such a way that you will become aware of these cries for pain, and to potentially be prepared to save a life.
I chose the title, “Exit: An Abridged and Poetic Compilation of Pain” as my title because each word has deep meanings in itself. Exit, which is originally Latin, means to go out or to leave. This word can be seen in two different ways, which I have recently learned, thanks to my teacher. My dilemma in choosing a title for my piece sprang from my negativistic interpretation of this word. I had no idea how my anthology would end, and I previously thought that Exit would foreshadow Death. My teacher unknowingly (?) presented a wonderfully optimistic contra-analysis of this term, and a solution to my problem. He said that titling my anthology Exit could mean coming out from an end and starting a new beginning. So my title can remain ambiguous and still have a very meaningful title, and the reader’s personality would determine their understanding. However, I added the last partly on wanting to keep the “anthology title” theme. Abridged means that I did not have enough poems and enough time to put together a substantial collection, and it also means that suicidal people wish to cut their life short, when there are so much more to be experienced. Poetic is a way of literally stating my collection of poems, and it describes Pain as symbolic of our inner feelings that must be expressed. Compilation not only illustrates the labor into collecting these poems, but it also represents my wish to converge reasons that one might feel suicidal, whether it be of a loss of meaning in life and identity, disconnected relationships, inner conflicts, and hopelessness. Together, these words serve to explicitly and thoughtfully address the basis of my piece.
The poems themselves have been selected on several premises. Firstly, they had to have been either a person(s) expressing woes or a person offering their sympathies. I will henceforth refer to the factions as Optimists or the Distressed. It was relatively simple to select poems such as these because there were not much candidates to start with, though it was tedious to thumb through the Norton Anthology for them. From there, I further filtered my results by how well they would fit into my idea of conversation within the anthology. In other words, every two poems can be seen as directly speaking to each other, or the entire anthology can be interpreted as a complete story, starting with a group of Distressed and continuing with individual anecdotes. For instance, the poem I chose to lead my anthology is A. E. Housman’s “From Far, From Eve and Morning.” What grabbed my attention the most was these lines:
“Now – for a breath I tarry
Nor yet disperse apart–
Take my hand quick and tell me,
What have you in your heart.
Speak now, and I will answer;
How shall I help you, say;”
This is exactly how I envisioned one who wished to help someone in need. They express urgency and a dire willingness to acknowledge one’s thoughts. The rhyme scheme in the poem shows the firmness of the message, and also the fact that the Optimists have lives also but are able to set some time apart for the Distressed. Further along in this collection, you can find a second duplication of this poem, following “The Ship of Death.” This is not an error. In fact, I think it may be crucial in setting the stage for the evolution of the suicidal self. Should the person choose to live, they can turn around and become an Optimist, help others who were once in the same situation as they were, and be fully qualified for this position. Therefore, these lines form the foundation for my anthology and the conversations to follow.
In answer to this first instance of the Optimists’ lending their ears, Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” provides a response from the Distressed, stating their true feelings underneath their happy pretense with these lines, “We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries / To thee from tortured souls arise.” I believe that most persons from the Distressed usually do not reveal to the public what they are experiencing within. To do so would be a sign of weakness and vulnerability, but the Distressed in this poem is reaching out to others. There is hope yet. Charles Wesley follows this cry with reassurances of his own in “Come on, My Partners in Distress.” The speaker tells his comrades to forget their troubles and patiently tread through life, and they will be rewarded by God.
Percy Bysshe Shelley persists and begins the individual accounts of pain and suffering with his famous, “Stanzas Written in Dejection.” His anxiety comes from his feelings of hopelessness and having nothing and no one to support him, while the world continues without him. This closely resembles many Distressed causes. In response, John Keats suggests ways to battle melancholy and its intertwining fate with Joy and Pleasure in his poem, “Ode to Melancholy.” His answer to pain and suffering is human’s interaction with nature. He doesn’t sugar coat life to the Distressed; rather, he explains that sadness dwells with happiness, and comes easily to those who seek for it. This is very important when speaking with someone who is Distressed. They don’t wish to hear about how life is grand and that they can’t just whittle it away or cut it short. They really need empathy, and for someone to understand that life is not always rosy and can be miserable.
But of course, similar to my brother, Distressed persons will offer reasons to be allowed to wallow in this state. Chidiock Tichborne is the next representative of sufferers, and the speaker in this poem feels as if they do not have a sufficiently good reason for living. They feel that they toil and work without being able to reap the rewards of life. He/She feels as if they only solely exist, but nothing else. His reference to not seeing the sun calls for a response from Thomas Campion in “Follow Thy Fair Sun.” Laura Jackson’s “The Wind Suffers” is similar to Tichborne’s “My Prime of Youth Is but a Frost of Cares.” She has yet to know what her reason is for this pain that she is feeling, and who she is. She also thinks that it will be solved by “her further dying.” Sylvia Chidi, my guest poet who has given me permission to reprint her poem, provides a modern day version of suicidal prevention. She says it clearly in these stanzas,
“So you feel so empty inside
You are full of egoistical pride
To admit the thought of a suicide tide
Love has never even been on your side
Believe me when I say ‘You are not alone’”
Above all else, her point magnifies mine in that Distressors are not in this situation by themselves, and that there are others they can connect with and help each other. However, this advice was not solid enough for John Clare. He is the epitome of the lonely and the depressed. He writes, “I am: yet what I am none cares or knows / My friends forsake me like a memory lost,”
“Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest, that I love the best,
Are strange – nay, rather stranger than the rest.”
His feelings of absolute emptiness are portrayed in his poem. The disappointment that even your loved ones no longer seem familiar to a Distressed person is blinding, and causes one to be pulled further into the hole that they have fallen in. Finally, it is at this time that we see the arrival of “The Ship of Death.” Clare describes his life as a shipwreck, and now,
“The flood subsides, and the body, like a worn sea-shell
emerges strange and lovely.
And the little ship wings home, faltering and lapsing
on the pink flood,
and the frail soul steps out, into her house again
filling the heart with peace.”
Here, here is where we can find peace. Death is not the way, but when we strive to find Life again, no matter the obstacles we may face, peace will come upon us. If we see the ship as more than just a materialized metaphor of Death, we can find that the ship represents our bodies, the wear and tear of life upon it, and the rejuvenation of oneself into a new life. Death is not something that we can avoid, but we can definitely halt its control once we can find our inner peace and the strength to face Life, and no matter who is there to assist us, the ultimate decision lies completely in our hands.
The final poems bringing up the rear of the anthology are actually two different solutions and pathways for the Distressed to decide which they choose to embark. One, the Distressed has now become an Optimist and is offering their help to others. In the other unfortunate path, the Distressed has been unable to locate their inner resolve and their ego can no longer resist the temptation from Death. With my anthology, I present two realistic endings and hope that there has been enough proof of caring Optimists in the world to convince the Distressed to find it in themselves to fight Death and see the love that is around them.
From Far, from Eve and Morning
From far, from eve and morning
And yon twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither: here am I.
Now – for a breath I tarry
Nor yet disperse apart–
Take my hand quick and tell me,
What have you in your heart.
Speak now, and I will answer;
How shall I help you, say;
Ere to the wind’s twelve quarters
I take my endless way.
A. E. Housman
We Wear the Mask
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes–
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Come on, My Partners in Distress
1
Come on, my partners in distress,
My comrades through the wilderness,
Who still your bodies feel;
Awhile forget your griefs and fears,
And look beyond this vale of tears
To that celestial hill.
2
Beyond the bounds of time and space
Look forward to that heavenly place,
The saints’ secure abode;
On faith’s strong eagle pinions rise,
And force your passage to the skies,
And scale the mount of God.
3
Who suffer with our Master here,
We shall before his face appear,
And by his side sit down;
To patient faith the prize is sure,
And all that to the end endure
The cross, shall wear the crown.
4
Thrice blessed bliss-inspiring hope!
It lifts the fainting spirits up,
It brings to life the dead;
Our conflicts here shall soon be past,
And you and I ascent at last
Triumphant with our head.
5
That great mysterious Deity
We soon with open face shall see;
The beatific sight
Shall fill heaven’s sounding courts with praise,
And wide diffuse the golden blaze
Of everlasting light.
6
The Father shining on his throne,
The glorious, co-eternal Son,
The Spirit, one and seven,
Conspire our rapture to complete,
And lo! we fall before his feet,
And silence heightens heaven.
7
In hope of that ecstatic pause,
Jesu, we now sustain the cross,
And at thy footstool fall,
Till thou our hidden life reveal,
Till thou our ravished spirits fill,
And God is all in all.
Charles Wesley
Stanzas Written in Dejection
1
The sun is warm, the sky is clear,
The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple noon’s transparent might,
The breath of the moist earth is light,
Around its unexpanded buds;
Like many a voice of one delight,
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,
The City’s voice itself is soft like Solitude’s.
2
I see the Deep’s untrampled floor
With green and purple seaweeds strown;
I see the waves upon the shore,
Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown:
I sit upon the sands alone–
The lightning of the noontide ocean
Is flashing around me, and a tone
Arises from its measured motion;
How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.
3
Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace within nor calm around,
Nor that content surpassing wealth
The sage in meditation found,
And walked with inward glory crowned–
Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
Others I see whom these surround–
Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.
4
Yet now despair itself is mild,
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o’er my dying brain its last monotony.
5
Some might lament that I were cold,
As I, when this sweet day is gone,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
Insults with this untimely moan;
They might lament – for I am one
Whom men love not – and yet regret,
Unlike this day, which, when the sun
Shall on its stainless glory set,
Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ode on Melancholy
I
No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolfsbane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kissed
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.
2
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Imprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.
3
She dwells with Beauty – Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to Poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Aye, in the very
Veiled Melancholy has her sov’reign shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
John Keats
My Prime of Youth Is but a Frost of Cares
My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my good is but vain hope of gain;
The day is past, and yet I saw no sun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
My tale was heard and yet it was not told,
My fruit is fallen and yet my leaves are green,
My youth is spent and yet I am not old,
I saw the world and yet I was not seen;
My thread is cut and yet it is not spun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
I sought my death and found it in my womb,
I looked for life and saw it was a shade,
I trod the earth and knew it was my tomb,
And now I die, and now I was but made;
My glass is full, and now my glass is run,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
Chidiock Tichborne
Follow Thy Fair Sun
Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow;
Though thou be black as night,
And she made all of light,
Yet follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow.
Follow her whose light thy light depriveth;
Though here thou liv’st disgraced,
And she in heaven is placed,
Yet follow her whose light the world reviveth!
Follow those pure beams whose beauty burneth,
That so have scorchèd thee,
As thou still black must be,
Till her kind beams thy black to brightness turneth.
Follow her while yet her glory shineth;
There comes a luckless night,
That will dim all her light;
And this the black unhappy shade divineth.
Follow still since so thy fates ordained;
The sun must have his shade,
Till both at once do fade;
The sun still proved, the shadow still disdained.
Thomas Campion
The Wind Suffers
The wind suffers of blowing,
The sea suffers of water,
And fire suffers of burning,
And I of a living name.
As stone suffers of stoniness,
As light of its shiningness,
As birds of their wingedness,
So I of my whoness.
And what the cure of all this?
What the not and not suffering?
What the better and later of this?
What the more me of me?
How for the pain-world to be
More world and no pain?
How for the old rain to fall
More wet and more dry?
How for the willful blood to run
More salt-red and sweet-white?
And how for me in my actualness
To more shriek and more smile?
By no other miracles,
By the same knowing poison,
By an improved anguish,
By my further dying.
Laura Jackson
Why Commit Suicide?
Why commit suicide?
Don’t tie yourself with a rope
With life, there is always hope
With life, there is always scope
Why commit suicide?
For you there is no roller coaster life ride
Your heart is filled with an empty hole so wide
Don’t put yourself on fire and fry
With life, you can still make an effort and try
Please leave us not with a permanent goodbye
Why commit suicide?
Believe me when I say ‘You are not alone’
Many out there are shivering cold to the bone
Express your feelings to someone on the phone
Full of debt
Never properly slept
Always sadly wept
Wish you had something wonderful
You could have treasured and kept
Unsucessfuly with exams
After hectic midnight crams
Who gives a damn!
You are not alone!
You are not alone!
So you feel so empty inside
You are full of egoistical pride
To admit the thought of a suicide tide
Love has never even been on your side
Believe me when I say ‘You are not alone’
With life, there is no stone
That you cannot eventually overthrow
To reclaim your rightful throne
So why commit suicide?
Sylvia Chidi
I Am
I am: yet what I am none cares or knows
My friends forsake me like a memory lost,
I am the self-consumer of my woes–
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied, stifled throes–
And yet I am, and live – like vapors tossed
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest, that I love the best,
Are strange – nay, rather stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes, where man hath never trod,
A place where woman never smiled or wept–
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling, and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below – above the vaulted sky.
John Clare
The Ship of Death
1
Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion.
The apples falling like great drops of dew
to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.
And it is time to go, to bid farewell
to one’s own self, and find an exit
from the fallen self.
2
Have you built your ship of death, O have you?
O build your ship of death, for you will need it.
The grim frost is at hand, when the apples will fall
thick, almost thunderous, on the hardened earth.
And death is on the air like a smell of ashes!
Ah! can’t you smell it?
And in the bruised body, the frightened soul
finds itself shrinking, wincing from the cold
that blows upon it through the orifices.
3
And can a man his own quietus make
with a bare bodkin?
With daggers, bodkins, bullets, man can make
a bruise or break of exit for his life;
but is that a quietus, O tell me, is it quietus?
Surely not so! for how could murder, even self-murder
ever a quietus make?
4
O let us talk of quiet that we know,
that we can know, the deep and lovely quiet
of a strong heart at peace!
How can we make this, our own quietus, make?
5
Build then the ship of death, for you must take
the longest journey, to oblivion.
And die the death, the long and painful death
that lies between the old self and the new.
Already our bodies are fallen, bruised, badly bruised,
already our souls are oozing through the exit
of the cruel bruise.
Already the dark and endless ocean of the end
is washing in through the breaches of our wounds,
already the flood is upon us.
Oh build your ship of death, your little ark
and furnish it with food, with little cakes, and wine
for the dark flight down oblivion.
6
Piecemeal the body dies, and the timid soul
has her footing washed away, as the dark flood rises.
We are dying, we are dying, we are all of us dying
and nothing will stay the death-flood rising within us
and soon it will rise on the world, on the outside world.
We are dying, we are dying, piecemeal our bodies are dying
and our strength leaves us,
and our soul cowers naked in the dark rain over the flood,
cowering in the last branches of the tree of our life.
7
We are dying, we are dying, so all we can do
is now to be willing to die, and to build the ship
of death to carry the soul on the longest journey.
A little ship, with oars and food
and little dishes, and all accoutrements
fitting and ready for the departing soul.
Now launch the small ship, now as the body dies
and life departs, launch out, the fragile soul
in the fragile ship of courage, the ark of faith
with its store of food and little cooking pans
and change of clothes,
upon the flood’s black waste
upon the waters of the end
upon the sea of death, where still we sail
darkly, for we cannot steer, and have no port.
There is no port, there is nowhere to go
only the deepening blackness darkening still
blacker upon the soundless, ungurgling flood
darkness at one with darkness, up and down
and sideways utterly dark, so there is no direction any more.
and the little ship is there; yet she is gone.
She is not seen, for there is nothing to see her by.
She is gone! gone! and yet
somewhere she is there.
Nowhere!
8
And everything is gone, the body is gone
completely under, gone, entirely gone.
The upper darkness is heavy as the lower,
between them the little ship
is gone
she is gone.
It is the end, it is oblivion.
9
And yet out of eternity, a thread
separates itself on the blackness,
a horizontal thread
that fumes a little with pallor upon the dark.
Is it illusion? or does the pallor fume
A little higher?
Ah wait, wait for there’s the dawn,
the cruel dawn of coming back to life
out of oblivion.
Wait, wait, the little ship
drifting, beneath the deathly ashy grey
of a flood-dawn.
Wait, wait! even so, a flush of yellow
and strangely, O chilled wan soul, a flush of rose.
A flush of rose, and the whole thing starts again.
10
The flood subsides, and the body, like a worn sea-shell
emerges strange and lovely.
And the little ship wings home, faltering and lapsing
on the pink flood,
and the frail soul steps out, into her house again
filling the heart with peace.
Swings the heart renewed with peace
even of oblivion.
Oh build your ship of death, oh build it!
for you will need it.
For the voyage of oblivion awaits you.
D. H. Lawrence
Optimist Ending
From Far, from Eve and Morning
From far, from eve and morning
And yon twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither: here am I.
Now – for a breath I tarry
Nor yet disperse apart–
Take my hand quick and tell me,
What have you in your heart.
Speak now, and I will answer;
How shall I help you, say;
Ere to the wind’s twelve quarters
I take my endless way.
A. E. Housman
Distressed Ending
Remember
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Christina Rossetti
Works Cited
Campion, Thomas. "Follow Thy Fair Sun." The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Margaret
Chidi, Sylvia. "Why Commit Suicide?" Poetryhunter.com. 3 December 2007.
Clare, John. "I Am." The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Margaret
Dunbar, Paul. "We Wear the Mask." The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Margaret
Housman, A.E. "From Far, from Eve and Morning." The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Margaret
Jackson, Laura. "The Wind Suffers." The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Margaret
Keats, John. "Ode on Melancholy." The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Margaret
Larkin, Philip. "This Be the Verse." The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Margaret
Lawrence, D. H. "The Ship of Death." The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Margaret
Plath, Sylvia. "Daddy." The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Margaret
Rossetti, Christina. "Remember." The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Margaret
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "Stanzas Written in Dejection." The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Margaret
Tichborne, Chidiock. "My Prime of Youth Is but a Frost of Cares." The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Margaret
Wesley, Charles. "Come on, My Partners in Distress." The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Margaret
