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Robert Frost, "Death of the Hired Man"
North of Boston. 2nd ed. NY: Holt, 1915. 14-23.
George Meredith, "Juggling Jerry"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Skeleton in Armor"
Walt Whitman, "O Captain! My Captain!"
Wilfred Owen, "Dulce et Decorum Est"
A. E. Houseman, "To An Athlete Dying Young"
"'Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.'
'I should have called it
Something you somehow haven't to deserve.'"
George Meredith
"I've studied men from my topsy-turvy
Close, and, I reckon, rather true.
Some are fine fellows: some, right scurvy:
Most, a dash between the two.
But it's a woman, old girl, that shakes me
When the great Juggler I must face."
"Hateful to me were men,
The sunlight hateful!
In the vast forest here,
Clad in my warlike gear,
Fell I upon my spear...."
"Who ... as if asking alms,
Why dost thou haunt me?"
2. Who is the great Juggler?
3. Discuss the moon image in Frost and Meredith.
4. Discuss the various way sthe poems convey the human experience of death.
Graduate Readings
Last Revised: October 19, 2004