Set poems.

There is a bird bath on our grass,
I wait to watch it as I pass,
And see the little sparrow things
Stand on the edge with flapping wings.
They give each eye a merry wink
And stoop to take a little drink,
And then, before I’m fairly gone,
They bath with all their clothing on!

I built a hut in a little wood;
Nobody came there – nobody could;
Only a bird and a rabbit perhaps –
Only the wind with three small taps.

You’ll never find my hut in the wood;
If I can’t find it, nobody could.
For the wind one day, crazy with play,
Carried my little hut away.

He didn’t come with three small taps,
He banged on the door with thunderous raps.
Then he carried my lonely house away,
And I’ve searched for it now for a year and a day.

There are big waves and little waves.
Green waves and blue.
Waves you can jump over,
Waves you dive through,
Waves that rise up
Like a great water wall,
Waves that swell softly
And don’t break at all,
Waves that can whisper,
Waves that can roar,
And tiny waves that run at you
Running on the shore.

At first the river’s very small,
And can’t float anything at all;
But later, as it journeys on,
It’s large enough to float a swan.

It grows till it can safely float
A slim canoe and then a boat;

And later still, as like as not,
It manages to float a yacht.

And presently, when really large,
It takes a steamer, then a barge.
And last it passes busy quays
And floats great ships to foreign seas.

I’m going to do my homework,
As soon as I’ve had my tea.
I’m going to get on with my homework –
After I’ve watched TV.

I’ll just have a run round the garden,
And then I’ll work really hard,
As soon as I’ve telephoned Jane,
And sent off that birthday card.

I’m going to get on with my homework
As soon as the rabbits are fed.
I’m going to get on with my homework
Before it is time for bed.

What! Bedtime already? It can’t be –
To get all those good marks I planned,
I simply must do my homework!
Oh Mummy! You don’t understand!

This dog will eat anything.

Apple cores and bacon fat,
Milk you poured out for the cat.
He likes the string that ties the roast
And relishes hot, buttered toast,
Hide your chocolates! He’s a thief,
He’ll even eat your handkerchief.
And if you don’t like sudden shocks,
Carefully conceal your socks.
Leave some soup without a lid,
And you’ll wish you never did.
When you think he must be full,
You find him gobbling bits of wool,
Orange peel or paper bags,
Dusters and old cleaning rags.

This dog will eat anything,
Except for mushrooms and cucumber.

Now what is wrong with those, I wonder?

I’d like to write a poem about daffodils.
I’d like to say
How beautiful they look on a March day,
Their green stems rising
Into those large, incredibly surprising
Trumpets of pure gold;
And how, after frost and cold,
They bring
Such colour and such warmth to everything,
They shake us into Spring.

I’d like to write it, but I know
That Wordsworth wrote it long ago.

In Hans’ old mill his three black cats
Watch his bins for the thieving rats.
Whisker and claw, they crouch in the night,
Their five eyes smouldering green and bright:
Squeaks from the flour sacks, squeaks from where
The cold wind stirs on the empty stair,
Squeaking and scampering, everywhere.
Then down they pounce, now in, now out,
At whisking tail, and sniffing snout;
While lean old Hans he snores away
Till peep of light at break of day;
Then up he climbs to his creaking mill,
Out come his cats all grey with meal –
Jekkel, and Jessup, and one-eyed Jill.

Long years of strength and willing toil have flown;
Time weighs like harness on my back and breast;
Now through the dimming fields I walk alone...
Oh; be at peace, great Horse; lie down and rest.

Unease besets me, sadness clouds my eyes.
I only know the farm below the hill;
How shall I be at home in Paradise?

The things you loved will be about you still.

Will there be grasses and sweet apples there?
And friends who paced beside me in the dew?

Their ears are pricking now in meadows fair,
And someone’s waiting with an apple, too.

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look-out?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this Autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.

If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.