The most important pieces of English literature

neutral tones:

We stood by a pond that winter day and the sun was white as though hidden from God. A few leaves were starving soil. they have fallen from and ash and where grey.

your eye on me were as ayes that rove over tedious riddles of years ago and some words played between us. Your smile was the deadest thing alive enough to have the strength to die

And a grind of bitterness swept thereby like and ominous bird. Since then, keen lesson that loves deceives and wring was wrong.

has shaped to me your face ad god's curse sun and the trees and the pond edge with grayish leaves.

letters from Yorkshire:

In February, digging his garden, planting potatoes, he saw the first lapwing return and came indoors to write to me, his knuckles singing

As they reddened in the warmth. It's not romance simply how things are.

You out there, in the cold, seeing the seasons turning me with heartfelt headlines feeding words onto a blank screen. Is your life more real because you dig and sow?

You wouldn't say so, breaking ice on a waterfront, clearing a path through snow. Still, it's you who sends me words of that other world

Pouring air and light into an envelope. So that at night, watching the same news in different houses our souls tap out messages across the icy miles

The farmer's bride:

Three summers since I chose a maid too young maybe but more to do at harvest time than bide.

She turned afraid of me an all things human like the shut of a winter's day.

Her smile went out and wasn't human more like a little frighten fay. she turned away

Her been among the sheep they said should properly have been abed; But sure, enough she wasn't there lying awake with her wide brown stare. So over seven-acre field and up-along across the down

We chased her, flying like a hare before our lantern. To church-town all in a shiver and a scare we caught her, fetched her home at last and turned the key upon her fast.

She does the work about the house as well as most, but like a mouse.

Happy enough to chat and play with birds and rabbits and such as they So long as menfolk keep away not near her eyes when one of us come within reach.

The woman says that the best in stall looks round like children at her call I've hardly heard her speak at all.

Walking Away:

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day A sunny day with leaves just turning, the touch-lines new ruled-since I watched you play your first match then like a satellite wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away

Behind a scatter of boys. I can see You walking away from me toward the school with the pathos of half-fledged thing set free into a wilderness that gained one who finds no path where the path should be

That hesitant figure, eddying away like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem Has something I never quite grasp to convey about nature's give-and-take the small, scorching ordeals which fire one's irresolute clay

I have worse parting, but none that so Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly saying what god alone could perfectly show how self-hood begins with the walking away and love is proved in the letting go

Eden rock:

They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden rock. My father, twenty-five, in the same suite of Genuine Irish tweed, his terrier Jack still two years old and trembling at his feet.

My mother, twenty-five, in a sprigged dress drawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat, has spread the stiff white cloth over the grass her hair color of wheat, takes on the light.

She pours tea from a thermos, the milk straight from on old H.P. sauce bottle, a screw of paper for a cork; slowly set out the same three plates, the tin cups painted blue.

The sky whitens as if lit by three sons. My mother shades her eyes and looks my way Over the drifted stream. My father spins a stone along the water. Leisurely they beckon to me from the other bank. I hear them call, see where the stream path is crossing is not as hard as you might think.