home

Thomas Gray

William Collins

William Wordsworth (Surprised by Joy)

William Wordsworth (Mutability)

Walter Savage Landor

George Gordon, Lord Byron

Percy Bysshe Shelley

John Keats

Robert Browning

George Meredith

Thomas Hardy

William Butler Yeats

Robert Frost (Putting in the Seed)

Robert Frost (Two Tramps in Mud Time)

Ezra Pound

Robinson Jeffers

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Jorge Luis Borges

Karl Shapiro

Richard Wilbur


The PARDON

My dog lay dead five days without a grave
In the thick of summer, hid in a clump of pine
And a jungle of grass and honey-suckle vine.
I who had loved him while he kept alive

Went only close enough to where he was
To sniff the heavy honeysuckle-smell
Twined with another odor heavier still
And hear the flies' intolerable buzz.

Well, I was ten and very much afraid.
In my kind world the dead were out of range
And I could not forgive the sad or strange
In beast or man. My father took the spade

And buried him. Last night I saw the grass
Slowly divide (it was the same scene
But now it glowed a fierce and mortal green)
And saw the dog emerging. I confess

I felt afraid again, but still he came
In the carnal sun, clothed in a hymn of flies,
And death was breeding in his lively eyes.
I started in to cry and call his name,

Asking forgiveness of his tongueless head.
..I dreamt the past was never past redeeming:
But whether this was false or honest dreaming
I beg death's pardon now. And mourn the dead.