Poetry & Analysis
Selected Poems
Featured PoemsSolitude
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air;
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go;
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all,—
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life’s gall.
Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
Overview Short Summary
The poem contrasts joy and sorrow, showing how pain can leave a person emotionally alone.
Meaning & Style Confessional Element
This poem fits a confessional-style reading because it speaks plainly about the loneliness that often surrounds grief and sorrow.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Loneliness: This theme helps readers understand the poem as a personal, self-revealing, reflective, or inward-looking text.
- Sorrow: This theme helps readers understand the poem as a personal, self-revealing, reflective, or inward-looking text.
- Joy: This theme helps readers understand the poem as a personal, self-revealing, reflective, or inward-looking text.
- Human nature: This theme helps readers understand the poem as a personal, self-revealing, reflective, or inward-looking text.
I Shall Not Care
When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Tho’ you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.
I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough,
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.
Overview Short Summary
The speaker imagines a time after death when old emotional wounds will no longer matter.
Meaning & Style Confessional Element
This poem shows a private emotional wound through a calm imagined future, which makes it useful for discussing voice, death, and emotional detachment.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Pain: This theme helps readers understand the poem as a personal, self-revealing, reflective, or inward-looking text.
- Detachment: This theme helps readers understand the poem as a personal, self-revealing, reflective, or inward-looking text.
- Death: This theme helps readers understand the poem as a personal, self-revealing, reflective, or inward-looking text.
- Memory: This theme helps readers understand the poem as a personal, self-revealing, reflective, or inward-looking text.
Self-Pity
I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.
Overview Short Summary
The poem rejects self-pity through a brief image of a wild bird falling from a frozen branch.
Meaning & Style Confessional Element
Its short form makes it a simple confessional poetry example for students because the poem compresses emotional advice into one sharp image.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Resilience: This theme helps readers understand the poem as a personal, self-revealing, reflective, or inward-looking text.
- Perspective: This theme helps readers understand the poem as a personal, self-revealing, reflective, or inward-looking text.
- Emotional strength: This theme helps readers understand the poem as a personal, self-revealing, reflective, or inward-looking text.
Richard Cory
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
Overview Short Summary
The poem shows how a person can appear perfect in public while hiding an unbearable inner life.
Meaning & Style Confessional Element
This poem is valuable for confessional poetry discussions because it warns that public success may hide private despair.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Public image: This theme helps readers understand the poem as a personal, self-revealing, reflective, or inward-looking text.
- Hidden despair: This theme helps readers understand the poem as a personal, self-revealing, reflective, or inward-looking text.
- Class: This theme helps readers understand the poem as a personal, self-revealing, reflective, or inward-looking text.
- Loneliness: This theme helps readers understand the poem as a personal, self-revealing, reflective, or inward-looking text.
The House on the Hill
They are all gone away,
The House is shut and still,
There is nothing more to say.
Through broken walls and gray
The winds blow bleak and shrill:
They are all gone away.
Nor is there one to-day
To speak them good or ill:
There is nothing more to say.
Why is it then we stray
Around the sunken sill?
They are all gone away,
And our poor fancy-play
For them is wasted skill:
There is nothing more to say.
There is ruin and decay
In the House on the Hill:
They are all gone away,
There is nothing more to say.
Overview Short Summary
The poem returns again and again to an empty house, turning absence into a symbol of loss.
Meaning & Style Confessional Element
The repeated lines create a quiet confession of emptiness and memory, making the poem useful for themes of loss and absence.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Absence: This theme helps readers understand the poem as a personal, self-revealing, reflective, or inward-looking text.
- Memory: This theme helps readers understand the poem as a personal, self-revealing, reflective, or inward-looking text.
- Loss: This theme helps readers understand the poem as a personal, self-revealing, reflective, or inward-looking text.
- Time: This theme helps readers understand the poem as a personal, self-revealing, reflective, or inward-looking text.
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