AND

 Unseen Poem: COMPULSORY question

THE GARDEN OF LOVE – William Blake

1. I went to the Garden of Love,
2. And saw what I never had seen:
3. A Chapel was built in the midst,
4. Where I used to play on the green.
   
   
5. And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
6. And Thou shalt not. writ over the door;
7. So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,
8. That so many sweet flowers bore,
   
   
9. And I saw it was filled with graves,
10. And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
11. And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
12. And binding with briars my joys & desires. 

A HARD FROST – Cecil Day Lewis

1. A frost came in the night and stole my world
2. And left this changeling for it – a precocious
3. Image of spring, too brilliant to be true:
4. White lilac on the windowpane, each grass-blade
5. Furred like a catkin, maydrift loading the hedge.
6. The elms behind the house are elms no longer
7. But blossomers in crystal, stems of the mist
8. That hangs yet in the valley below, amorphous
9. As the blind tissue whence creation formed.
   
   
10. The sun looks out, and the fields blaze with diamonds.
11. Mockery spring, to lend this bridal gear
12. For a few hours to a raw country maid,
13. Then leave her all disconsolate with old fairings
14. Of aconite and snowdrop! No, not here
15. Amid this flounce and filigree of death
16. Is the real transformation scene in progress
17. But deep below where frost
18. Worrying the stiff clods unclenches their
19. Grip on the seed and lets our future breathe.

VULTURES – Chinua Achebe

1. In the greyness
2. and drizzle of one despondent
3. dawn unstirred by harbingers
4. of sunbreak a vulture
5. perching high on broken
6. bone of a dead tree
7. nestled close to his
8. mate his smooth
9. bashed-in head, a pebble
10. on a stem rooted in
11. a dump of gross
12. feathers, inclined affectionately
13. to hers. Yesterday they picked
14. the eyes of a swollen
15. corpse in a water-logged
16. trench and ate the
17. things in its bowel. Full
18. gorged they chose their roost
19. keeping the hollowed remnant
20. in easy range of cold
21. telescopic eyes …
22. Strange
23. indeed how love in other
24. ways so particular
25. will pick a corner
26. in that charnel-house
27. tidy it and coil up there, perhaps
28. even fall asleep – her face
29. turned to the wall!
30. … Thus the Commandant at Belsen
31. Camp going home for
32. the day with fumes of
33. human roast clinging
34. rebelliously to his hairy
35. nostrils will stop
36. at the wayside sweet-shop
37. and pick up a chocolate
38. for his tender offspring
39. waiting at home for Daddy's
40. return …
41. Praise bounteous
42. providence if you will
43. that grants even an ogre
44. a tiny glow-worm
45. tenderness encapsulated
46. in icy caverns of a cruel
47. heart or else despair
48. for in the very germ
49. of that kindred love is
50. lodged the perpetuity
51. of evil.

AN AFRICAN THUNDERSTORM – David Rubadiri

1. From the west
2. Clouds come hurrying with the wind
3. Turning
4. Sharply
5. Here and there
6. Like a plague of locusts
7. Whirling
8. Tossing up things on its tail
9. Like a madman chasing nothing.
   
   
10. Pregnant clouds
11. Ride stately on its back
12. Gathering to perch on hills
13. Like dark sinister wings;
14. The Wind whistles by
15. And trees bend to let it pass.
    
    
16. In the village
17. Screams of delighted children
18. Toss and turn
19. In the din of whirling wind,
20. Women –
21. Babies clinging on their backs –
22. Dart about
23. In and out
24. Madly
25. The Wind whistles by
26. Whilst trees bend to let it pass.
27. Clothes wave like tattered flags
28. Flying off
29. To expose dangling breasts
30. As jaggered blinding flashes
31. Rumble, tremble, and crack
32. Amidst the smell of fired smoke
33. and the pelting march of the storm. 

NIGHTFALL – BW Vilakazi

1. I watch the darkness falling
2. And hills withdraw their shadows:
3. The sun, like ochre, reddens.
   
   
4. The swallows are at rest,
5. The sea-wind still and silent;
6. Above me fly the bats.
   
   
7. Now, as the streets are lit,
8. I fear the lurking thieves
9. Who seek their prey like hunters.
   
   
10. Here, there is no grass,
11. But dust from off the mine-dumps
12. Like smoke is drifting skyward.
    
    
13. Here there is no river
14. To shelter lurking frogs
15. And harbour water-fowl.
    
    
16. Here are only people
17. Jostling home from labour,
18. Herded by dusk, together.

'Yes, Dorian, you will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have
never had the courage to commit.'

'What nonsense you talk, Harry!' cried the lad, taking a light from a fire-breathing silver
dragon that the waiter had placed on the table. 'Let us go down to the theatre. When
Sibyl comes on the stage you will have a new ideal of life. She will represent                            5           
something to you that you have never known.'

'I have known everything,' said Lord Henry, with a tired look in his eyes, 'but I am
always ready for a new emotion. I am afraid, however, that, for me at any rate, there is
no such thing. Still, your wonderful girl may thrill me. I love acting. It is so much more
real than life. Let us go. Dorian, you will come with me. I am so sorry, Basil, but there is        10
only room for two in the brougham. You must follow us in a hansom.'

They got up and put on their coats, sipping their coffee standing. The painter was silent
and preoccupied. There was a gloom over him. He could not bear this marriage, and
yet it seemed to him to be better than many other things that might have happened.  
After a few minutes they all passed downstairs. He drove off by himself, as had been            15
arranged, and watched the flashing lights of the little brougham in front of him. A
strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would never again be to
him all that he had been in the past. Life had come between them … His eyes
darkened, and the crowded, flaring streets became blurred to his eyes. When the cab
drew up at the theatre, it seemed to him that he had grown years older.                                 20

[Chapter 6] 

At last the door opened, and his servant entered. He turned glazed eyes upon him.

'Mr Campbell, sir,' said the man.

A sigh of relief broke from his parched lips, and the colour came back to his cheeks.

'Ask him to come in at once, Francis.' He felt that he was himself again. His mood of
cowardice had passed away.                                                                                                      5

The man bowed, and retired. In a few moments Alan Campbell walked in, looking very
stern and rather pale, his pallor being intensified by his coal-black hair and dark
eyebrows.

'Alan! this is kind of you. I thank you for coming.'

'I had intended never to enter your house again, Gray. But you said it was a matter of             10   
life and death.' His voice was hard and cold. He spoke with slow deliberation. There
was a look of contempt in the steady searching gaze that he turned on Dorian. He kept
his hands in the pockets of his Astrakhan coat, and seemed not to have noticed the
gesture with which he had been greeted.

'Yes: it is a matter of life and death, Alan, and to more than one person. Sit down.'                   15

Campbell took a chair by the table, and Dorian sat opposite to him. The two men's
eyes met. In Dorian's there was infinite pity. He knew that what he was going to do was
dreadful.

[Chapter 14] 

I looked at him, full of fearful wonder. There being no immediate threat, my breath
slowed down, my heart stopped knocking about in my chest, and I began to regain my
senses.

I had to tame him. It was at that moment that I realised this necessity. It was not a
question of him or me, but of him and me. We were, literally and figuratively, in the                   5      
same boat. We would live – or we would die – together. He might be killed in an
accident, or he could die shortly of natural causes, but it would be foolish to count on
such an eventuality. More likely the worst would happen: the simple passage of time, in
which his animal toughness would easily outlast my human frailty. Only if I tamed him
could I possibly trick him into dying first, if we had to come to that sorry business.                     10

But there's more to it. I will come clean. I will tell you a secret: a part of me was glad
about Richard Parker. A part of me did not want Richard Parker to die at all, because if
he died I would be left alone with despair, a foe even more formidable than a tiger. If I
still had the will to live, it was thanks to Richard Parker. He kept me from thinking too
much about my family and my tragic circumstances. He pushed me to go on living.                   15
I hated him for it, yet at the same time I was grateful. I am grateful. It's the plain truth:
without Richard Parker, I wouldn't be alive today to tell you my story.

[Chapter 57]

By the time morning came, my grim decision was taken. I preferred to set off and
perish in search of my own kind than to live a lonely half-life of physical comfort and
spiritual death on this murderous island. I filled my stores with fresh water and I drank
like a camel. I ate algae throughout the day until my stomach could take no more.
I killed and skinned as many meerkats as would fit in the locker and on the floor of the          5       
lifeboat. I reaped dead fish from the ponds. With the hatchet I hacked off a large mass
of algae and worked a rope through it, which I tied to the boat.

I could not abandon Richard Parker. To leave him would mean to kill him. He would not
survive the first night. Alone in my lifeboat at sunset I would know that he was burning
alive. Or that he had thrown himself in the sea, where he would drown. I waited for his        10
return. I knew he would not be late.
When he was aboard, I pushed us off. For a few hours the currents kept us near the
island. The noises of the sea bothered me. And I was no longer used to the rocking
motions of the boat. The night went by slowly.

In the morning the island was gone, as was the mass of algae we had been towing. As       15
soon as night had fallen, the algae had dissolved the rope with its acid.

The sea was heavy, the sky grey.

[Chapter 92]

OPHELIA
My lord, as I was sewing in my closet,
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced,
No hat upon his head, his stockings fouled,
Ungart'red, and down-gyvéd to his ankle,
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,            5   
And with a look so piteous in purport
As if he had been looséd out of hell
To speak of horrors, he comes before me.
POLONIUS
Mad for thy love?
OPHELIA

My lord, I do not know,                                         10  

But truly I do fear it.
POLONIUS

What said he?

OPHELIA
He took me by the wrist, and held me hard,
Then goes he to the length of all his arm,
And with his other hand thus o'er his brow,                  15     
He falls to such perusal of my face
As he would draw it. Long stayed he so.
At last, a little shaking of mine arm,
And thrice his head thus waving up and down,
He raised a sigh so piteous and profound                     20
As it did seem to shatter all his bulk, 
And end his being. That done, he lets me go,
And with his head over his shoulder turned
He seemed to find his way without his eyes,
For out adoors he went without their helps,                  25
And to the last bended their light on me.

POLONIUS
Come, go with me. I will go seek the king.
This is the very ecstasy of love,
Whose violent property fordoes itself,
And leads the will to desperate undertakings,               30
As oft as any passion under heaven
That does afflict our natures. I am sorry …
What, have you given him any hard words of late?
OPHELIA
No, my good lord, but as you did command
I did repel his letters, and denied                                  35
His access to me.

[Act 2, Scene 1]

LAERTES
I thank you, keep the door. O thou vile king,
Give me my father.

GERTRUDE

Calmly, good Laertes.

LAERTES
That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me bastard,
Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot,                                    5        
Even here, between the chaste unsmirchéd brows
Of my true mother.
He moves towards them; the Queen throws herself in his path

CLAUDIUS

What is the cause, Laertes,

That thy rebellion looks so giant-like?                                              10
Let him go Gertrude, do not fear our person,
There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will. Tell me, Laertes,
Why thou art thus incensed–let him go, Gertrude–                          15
Speak, man.

LAERTES
Where is my father?

CLAUDIUS

Dead.

GERTRUDE

But not by him.

CLAUDIUS
Let him demand his fill.                                                                  20

LAERTES

How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with.
To hell allegiance! Vows to the blackest devil!
Conscience and grace to the profoundest pit!
I dare damnation. To this point I stand,
That both the worlds I give to negligence,                                     25
Let come what comes, only I'll be revenged
Most thoroughly for my father.
…
CLAUDIUS
Laertes, I must commune with your grief,
Or you deny me right. Go but apart,
Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will,                        30
And they shall hear and judge 'twixt you and me.

[Act 4, Scene 5]

DUKE
Be it as you shall privately determine,
Either for stay or going. The affair cries haste,
And speed must answer. You must hence tonight.

DESDEMONA
Tonight, my lord?

DUKE

This night.                                                                             5        

OTHELLO
With all my heart.

DUKE
At ten in the morning here we'll meet again.
Othello, leave some officer behind,
And he shall our commission bring to you,
With such things else of quality and respect                               10
As doth concern you.

OTHELLO
So please your grace, my ancient–
A man he is of honesty and trust.
To his conveyance I assign my wife,
With what else needful your good Grace shall think                   15
To be sent after me.

DUKE
Let it be so.
Good night to everyone. (To Brabantio) And, noble signior,
If virtue no delighted beauty lack,
Your son-in-law is far more fair than black.                                    20

1 SENATOR
Adieu, brave Moor. Use Desdemona well.

BRABANTIO
Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see.
She has deceived her father, and may thee.
Duke, Senators, Brabantio, Officers and Attendants off

OTHELLO
My life upon her faith! Honest Iago,                                               25
My Desdemona must I leave to thee.
I prithee let thy wife attend on her,
And bring them after in the best advantage.
Come, Desdemona, I have but an hour
Of love, of worldly matters and direction,                                     30
To spend with thee. We must obey the time.
Othello and Desdemona off

[Act 1, Scene 3] 

EMILIA
Is not this man jealous?

DESDEMONA
I ne'er saw this before.
Sure, there's some wonder in this handkerchief.
I am most unhappy in the loss of it.

EMILIA
'Tis not a year or two shows us a man.                                  5       
They are all but stomachs, and we all but food;
They eat us hungerly, and when they are full,
They belch us.

Enter Iago and Cassio

Look you, Cassio and my husband.                                      10

IAGO
There is no other way; 'tis she must do it.
And lo, the happiness! Go, and importune her.

DESDEMONA
How now, good Cassio! What's the news with you?

CASSIO
Madam, my former suit. I do beseech you
That by your virtuous means I may again                              15
Exist and be a member of his love,
Whom I with all the office of my heart
Entirely honour. I would not be delayed.
If my offence be of such mortal kind
That neither service past, nor present sorrows,                     20
Nor purposed merit in futurity,
Can ransom me into his love again,
But to know so must be my benefit.
So shall I clothe me in a forced content,                                 25
And shut myself up in some other course
To fortune's alms.

DESDEMONA
Alas, thrice-gentle Cassio,
My advocation is not now in tune.
My lord is not my lord, nor should I know him,
Were he in favour as in humour altered.                                 30
So help me every spirit sanctified
As I have spoken for you all my best
And stood within the blank of his displeasure
For my free speech! You must awhile be patient.
What I can do, I will; and more I will                                       35
Than for myself I dare. Let that suffice you.

[Act 3, Scene 4] 

MARY            You must see it, sir, it's God's work we do. So I'll be gone every day for
                       some time. I'm – I am an official of the court, they say, and I – (She has
                       been edging toward offstage.) 
PROCTOR     I'll official you! (He strides to the mantel, takes down the whip hanging
                        there.)                                                                                                                  5           
MARY             (terrified, but coming erect, striving for her authority): I'll not stand
                        whipping any more!
ELIZABETH   (hurriedly, as Proctor approaches): Mary, promise now you'll stay at
                        home –
MARY              (backing from him, but keeping her erect posture, striving, striving for             10
                        her way): The Devil's loose in Salem, Mr Proctor; we must discover
                        where he's hiding! 
PROCTOR      I'll whip the Devil out of you! (With whip raised he reaches out for her,
                        and she streaks away and yells.)
MARY             (pointing at Elizabeth): I saved her life today!                                                     15
                        Silence. His whip comes down.)
ELIZABETH    (softly): I am accused?
MARY             (quaking): Somewhat mentioned. But I said I never see no sign you
                       ever sent your spirit out to hurt no one, and seeing I do live so closely
                       with you, they dismissed it.                                                                                  20
ELIZABETH     Who accused me?
MARY              I am bound by law, I cannot tell it. (To Proctor): I only hope you'll not be
                        so sarcastical no more. Four judges and the King's deputy sat to dinner
                        with us but an hour ago. I – I would have you speak civilly to me, from
                        this out.                                                                                                               25

[Act 2]