Text of the Poem | Full Moon and Little Frieda By Ted Hughes | Eureka Study Aids

1. A cool small eveing shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket - 

2. And you listening. 

3. A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch. 

4. A pail lifted, still and brimming - mirror

5. To tempt a first star to a tremor. 

6. Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm

7. wreths of breath - 

8. A dark river of blood, many boulders, 

9. Balancing unspilled milk. 

10. 'Moon!' you cry suddenly, 'Moon! Moon!

11. The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work

12. The points at him amazed. 

Text of the Poem | That Morning By Ted Hughes | Eureka Study Aids

1. We came where the salmon were so many
2. So steady, so spaced, so far-aimed
3. On their inner map, England could add

4. Only the sooty twilight of South Yorkshire
5. Hung with the drumming drift of Lancasters
6. Till the world had seemed capsizing slowly.

7. Solemn to stand there in the pollen light
8. Waist-deep in wild salmon swaying massed
9. As from the hand of God. There the body

10. Separated, golden and imperishable,
11. From its doubting thought – a spirit-beacon
12. Lit by the power of the salmon

13. That came on, came on, and kept on coming
14. As if we flew slowly, their formations
15. Lifting us toward some dazzle of blessing

16. One wrong thought might darken. As if the fallen
17. World and salmon were over. As if these
18. Were the imperishable fish

19. That had let the world pass away –

20. There, in a mauve light of drifted lupins,
21. They hung in the cupped hands of mountains

22. Made of tingling atoms. It had happened.
23. Then for a sign that we were where we were
24. Two gold bears came down and swam like men

25. Beside us. And dived like children.
26. And stood in deep water as on a throne
27. Eating pierced salmon off their talons.

28. So we found the end of our journey.

29. So we stood, alive in the river of light,
30. Among the creatures of light, creatures of light.

Text of the Poem | The Thought Fox By Ted Hughes | Eureka Study Aids

1. I imagine this midnight moment's forest: 

2. Something else is alive

3. Beside the clock's loneliness

4. And this blank page where my fingers move. 

5. Through the window I see no star: 

6. Something more near

7. Though deeper within darkness

8. Is entering the loneliness: 

9. Cold, delicately as the dark snow, 

10. A fox's nose touches twig, leaf; 

11. Two eyes serve a movement, that now

12. And again now, and now, and now

13. Sets neat prints into the snow

14. Between trees, and warily a lam

15. Shadow lags by stump and in hollow

16. Of a body that is bold to come

17. Across clearings, an eye, 

18. A widening deepening greeness, 

19. Brilliantly, concentratedly, 

20. Coming about its own business

21. Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox

22. It enters the dark hole of the head. 

23. The window is starless still; the clock ticks, 

24. The page is printed. 

Text of the Poem | MCMXIV (1914) By Philip Larkin | Eureka Study Aids

1. Those long uneven lines
2. Standing as patiently
3. As if they were stretched outside
4. The Oval or Villa Park,
5. The crowns of hats, the sun
6. On moustached archaic faces
7. Grinning as if it were all
8. An August Bank Holiday lark;

9. And the shut shops, the bleached
10. Established names on the sunblinds,
11. The farthings and sovereigns,
12. And dark-clothed children at play
13. Called after kings and queens,
14. The tin advertisements
15. For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
16. Wide open all day;

17. And the countryside not caring:
18. The place-names all hazed over
19. With flowering grasses, and fields
20. Shadowing Domesday lines
21. Under wheat’s restless silence;
22. The differently-dressed servants
23. With tiny rooms in huge houses,
24. The dust behind limousines;

25. Never such innocence,
26. Never before or since,
27. As changed itself to past
28. Without a word – the men
29. Leaving the gardens tidy,
30. The thousands of marriages,
31. Lasting a little while longer:
32. Never such innocence again.

Text of the Poem | Ambulances By Philip Larkin | Eureka Study Aids

1. Closed like confessionals, they thread

2. Loud noons of cities, giving back
3. None of the glances they absorb.
4. Light glossy grey, arms on a plaque,
5. They come to rest at any kerb:
6. All streets in time are visited.

7. Then children strewn on steps or road,
8. Or women coming from the shops
9. Past smells of different dinners, see
10. A wild white face that overtops
11. Red stretcher-blankets momently
12. As it is carried in and stowed,

13. And sense the solving emptiness
14. That lies just under all we do,
15. And for a second get it whole,
16. So permanent and blank and true.
17. The fastened doors recede. Poor soul,
18. They whisper at their own distress;

19. For borne away in deadened air
20. May go the sudden shut of loss
21.Round something nearly at an end,
22. And what cohered in it across
23. The years, the unique random blend
24. Of families and fashions, there

25. At last begin to loosen. Far
26. From the exchange of love to lie
27. Unreachable inside a room
28. The trafic parts to let go by
29. Brings closer what is left to come,
30. And dulls to distance all we are.

Text of the Poem | Church Going By Philip Larkin | Eureka Study Aids

1. Once I am sure there's nothing going on

2. I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
3. Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
4. And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
5. For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
6. Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
7. And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
8. Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
9. My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,

10. Move forward, run my hand around the font.
11. From where I stand, the roof looks almost new-
12. Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
13. Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
14. Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
15. "Here endeth" much more loudly than I'd meant.
16. The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
17. I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
18. Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

19. Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
20. And always end much at a loss like this,
21. Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
22. When churches fall completely out of use
23. What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
24. A few cathedrals chronically on show,
25. Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases,
26. And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
27. Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

28. Or, after dark, will dubious women come
29. To make their children touch a particular stone;
30. Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
31. Advised night see walking a dead one?
32. Power of some sort or other will go on
33. In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
34. But superstition, like belief, must die,
35. And what remains when disbelief has gone?
36. Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

37. A shape less recognizable each week,
38. A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
39. Will be the last, the very last, to seek
40. This place for what it was; one of the crew
41. That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
42. Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
43. Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
44. Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
45. Or will he be my representative,

46. Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
47. Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
48. Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
49. So long and equably what since is found
50. Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
51. And death, and thoughts of these - for whom was built
52. This special shell? For, though I've no idea
53. What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
54. It pleases me to stand in silence here;

55. A serious house on serious earth it is,
56. In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
57. Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
58. And that much never can be obsolete,
59. Since someone will forever be surprising
60. A hunger in himself to be more serious,
61. And gravitating with it to this ground,
62. Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
63. If only that so many dead lie round.

Text of the Poem | Mr Bleaney By Philip Larkin | Eureka Study Aids

1. ‘This was Mr Bleaney’s room. He stayed

2. The whole time he was at the Bodies, till

3. They moved him.’ Flowered curtains, thin and frayed,

4, Fall to within five inches of the sill,

5, Whose window shows a strip of building land,

6. Tussocky, littered. ‘Mr Bleaney took

7. My bit of garden properly in hand.’

8. Bed, upright chair, sixty-watt bulb, no hook

9. Behind the door, no room for books or bags —

10. ‘I’ll take it.’ So it happens that I lie

11. Where Mr Bleaney lay, and stub my fags

12. On the same saucer-souvenir, and try

13. Stuffing my ears with cotton-wool, to drown

14. The jabbering set he egged her on to buy.

15. I know his habits — what time he came down,

16. His preference for sauce to gravy, why

17. He kept on plugging at the four aways —

18. Likewise their yearly frame: the Frinton folk

19. Who put him up for summer holidays,

20. And Christmas at his sister’s house in Stoke.

21. But if he stood and watched the frigid wind

22. Tousling the clouds, lay on the fusty bed

23. Telling himself that this was home, and grinned,

24. And shivered, without shaking off the dread

25. That how we live measures our own nature,

26. And at his age having no more to show

27. Than one hired box should make him pretty sure

28. He warranted no better, I don’t know.