1. Oh,doctor I  have a brought a sample
   I hope you will find it ample
   There is no coffee left today
   Drink my sample, then we’ll pray

   If I’ve got a new infection
   Can’t you give me more protection?
   My immune system’s  gone on away
   And I have to write a Play

   No Shakespeare  am I as yet
   No bookmaker’s taking bets
   But if I write a sonnet new
   What will all the critics do?

   Meantime I get up at night
   Stumble to the bathroom bright
   I don’t know why my pee’s  so green
   Now it is aquamarine

   Green the sea at Hythe in Kent
   Down the Saxon cliffs we went
   The burning stubble , earth’s deep fires
   The inner work  that purifies

   Steep,steep road in our old car
   Smoke around us  where we were
   From the depths my soul cries out
   The cry is answered , do we  doubt?

   As we reach the lowness deep
   In our conscious mind we weep
   When we touch the lowest place
   We will    feel, angelic grace
   
   So the symbol  of  deep fires
   Filled my mind as we drove by
   Glory , for the Burning Bush
   Burned again  as stubble’s crushed

Destruction  of all our intent
Is itself a  sacrament
For it makes an empty space
Where  new creation can take place

http://www.thehypertexts.com/Best%20Symbols%20in%20Poetry%20and%20Literature.htm
Excerpts from “More Poems”
by A. E. Housman

XXIII

Crossing alone the nighted ferry
With the one coin for fee,
Whom, on the wharf of Lethe waiting,
Count you to find? Not me.

The brisk fond lackey to fetch and carry,
The true, sick-hearted slave,
Expect him not in the just city
And free land of the grave.

Charon’s ferry symbolizes the transition from life to death, or dying. The “one coin” is the obulus, which symbolizes death: the ultimate cost of mortal life. The river Lethe symbolizes forgetfulness, oblivion and concealment, as the dead are concealed from the living, and vice versa. The grave is also symbolic of death. In this poem the river Styx symbolizes death; although it is not explicitly named, we can infer it. In Greek mythology, Charon’s ferry carried the newly dead from the land of the living across the River Styx to Hades, the realm of the dead. It may interest Christians to know that Hades was not “hell,” as Hades incorporated heavenly regions such as the Elysian Fields and the Blessed Isles. Y

 
Sonnet 147
by William Shakespeare

My love is as a fever, longing still [1]
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest.
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are, [11]
At random from the truth vainly expressed,
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as Hell, as dark as night. [14]

This is one of Shakespeare’s famous “Dark Lady” sonnets. It employs simile, a type of metaphor in which comparisons are introduced by “like” or “as” (please refer to lines one, eleven and fourteen).

I like this old poem I wrote 10 years ago when I had no idea what I was doing.The last two lines surprised me.I reaised

that poetry is not logic

 It’s Autumn weather, geese fly by;

Autumn rust,red,gold,so gay.

Drystone walls, edging fields,

Apples gathered,holly berries

Flash so brightly

Look like flowers

Sun shines sideways,shadows long

Of trees appear I dwell among

Woods of gentle beeches sing

Swaying with the sideward wind.

See their roots, all intertwined.

Feel their geometry in the mind.

Look up now into the sky,

See the V formation high.

Geese fly home at end of day.

My heart is moved by patterned dance

In this peace and great silence

My mind opens like the sky

And in this moment I would die,

So I could stay with this still vision

Of geese set out on autumn mission.

Snails in rain pools slither near

My feet upon the terrace here

And look,upon their whorled backs

All the sense of life is packed.

And yet so easily Life’s destroyed,

When blind foot steps into the void.