Behind it all.

In a field I looked into going past,¹

In the sound of a few leaves,²

Your shadow at morning striding behind you,³

The only other sound’s the sweep⁴

of water⁵

From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake⁶

with dead, brown leaves under them.⁷

 

Essence of winter sleep is on the night.⁸

The woods are lovely, dark and deep; ⁴

mysterious, beautiful;⁹

of Body and air and forms and images,¹⁰

shade more than man, more image than a shade.¹

straight up and down of tall slim trees,²

whose wild ascending shadows will not be back.³

 

Before me floats an image, man or shade¹¹

I thought, who is that man? I didn’t know you¹⁴

He thought he kept the universe alone; ⁶

He would cry out on life, that what it wants⁶

like one who takes everything said as personal to himself¹²

Something more of the depths �" and then I lost it¹⁵

For I have had too much.⁸

I sense my own limit¹⁶

 

Once out of nature I shall never take.¹⁷

with Glitter of Sun Rays,²⁶

deeper down in the well than where the water¹⁵

will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn,¹⁸

upon the brimming water among the stones.⁹

 

Forever and forever, forever,¹⁹

The leaves fall early this autumn.¹⁹

Since I first made my count⁹

Too deep to clear them away!¹⁶

That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves.¹⁸

See, they return, one, and by one!²⁰

 

Lowering my head, I looked at the wall,¹⁹

“and I could tell.⁸

By this and this only, we have existed ³

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish; ⁷

bathed in filth from Monday to Saturday²¹

Their time past.²²

The loneliness includes me unawares.¹

 

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces,¹

Infinite water cannot crack me;¹⁶

And lonely as that is, that loneliness¹

Came we then to the bounds of deepest water,²³

Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind,²⁴

Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom.¹⁵

Now they drift on the still water.⁹

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.²⁵

For I shall have some peace there, for peace bings dropping slow,²⁵

Here are your waters and your watering place.¹⁸

 

 

 

 

1: Robert Frost, Desert Place

2: Wallace Stevens, The Snowman

3: T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland

4: Robert Frost, Stopping by woods…

5: Elizabeth Bishop, Songs for the Rainy Season

6: Robert Frost, The Most of It

7: William Williams, Spring and All

8: Robert Frost, After Apple Picking

9: William Yeats, The Wild Swans at Coole

10: Wallace Stevens, The Auroras of Autumn

11: William Yeats, Byzantium

12: Robert Frost, The Woodpile

13: Elizabeth Bishop, Rain Towards Morning

14: Robert Frost, Home Burial

15: Robert Frost, For Once, then Something.

16: HD, These Walls Do Not Fall

17: William Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium

18: Robert Frost, Directive

19: Ezra Pound, The River Merchants Wife: A Letter

20: Ezra Pound, The Return

21: William Williams, To Elsie

22: William Williams, Burning Christmas Greens

23: Ezra Pound, Canto 1

24: William Yeats, Among School Children

25: William Yeats, The Lake of Innisfree

26: Ezra Pound, Canto 2

Author's Note

I wrote this for a class and it turned out rather well, so I thought I would post it here and let you all enjoy. This poem type is called a "cento". You basically take other lines from other poetry, and then make your own poem with only that. Enjoy. :)

Reviews

[Me]

It's called "found poetry"

[Samantha Lynn]

This is a cento. This poem is made entirely of whole lines from other poems. Found poetry is a little different. With found poetry you are using parts of phrases, words, etc. and making new meanings with that as well as adding in your own lines to create that new meaning. I am using whole lines here, obviously, and only those lines. Therefore that makes this a cento.