Sir Francis Osbert Sacheverell Sitwell, 5th Baronet, (December 6, 1892 – May 4, 1969) was an English writer. His elder sister was Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell and his younger brother was Sir Sacheverell Sitwell; like them he devoted his life to art and literature.
Source: Wikipedia
Charles Hanson Towne was born at Louisville, Kentucky, February 2, 1877. and educated at New York City College. Mr. Towne was an active journalist, having been successively editor of "The Smart Set", "The Delineator", "The Designer", and "McClure's Magazine". Despite his journalistic work he found time to write several volumes of poetry of which the best known are: "The Quiet Singer, and Other Poems", 1908; "Manhattan", 1909; "Youth, and Other Poems", 1910; "Beyond the Stars, and Other Poems", 1912; and "To-day and To-morrow", 1916.
Source: poetryX
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Read the two poems and then do the activity about them. Finally, do some writing yourself and see texts written by other readers.
The following two poems have different messages - but you should decide for yourself what those messages are.
The city's heat is like a leaden pall—
Its lowered lamps glow in the midnight air
Like mammoth orange-moths that flit and flare
Through the dark tapestry of night. The tall
Black houses crush the creeping beggars down,
Who walk beneath and think of breezes cool,
Of silver bodies bathing in a pool;
Or trees that whisper in some far, small town
Whose quiet nursed them, when they thought that
Was merely metal, not a grave of mould
In which men bury all that's fine and fair.
When they could chase the jewelled butterfly
Through the green bracken-scented lanes or sigh
For all the future held so rich and rare;
When, though they knew it not, their baby cries
Were lovely as the jewelled butterflies.
by Osbert Sitwell
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When, sick of all the sorrow and distress
That flourished in the City like foul weeds,
I sought blue rivers and green, opulent meads,
And leagues of unregarded loneliness
Whereon no foot of man had seemed to press,
I did not know how great had been my needs,
How wise the woodland’s gospels and her creeds,
How good her faith to one long comfortless.
But in the silence came a Voice to me;
In every wind it murmured, and I knew
It would not cease though far my heart might roam.
It called me in the sunrise and the dew,
At noon and twilight, sadly, hungrily,
The jealous City, whispering always—“Home!”
by Charles Hanson Towne
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Write a poem about the city and/or the country. Send it to us.
Death is everywhere,
The lambs are waiting to die in the countryside
They make me remember that I could be shattered tonight,
Time is running out and nothing can stop it,
Quickly come to the city and kiss me now.
Eric Ramirez Rodriguez
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