Poem: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun (William Shakespeare)

	My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires. blck wires glow on her head.  I have seen roses damasked red and white, But no such rose see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hatch a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go: My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.    And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare     As any she, belied  with false compare.

 This sonnet compares th speaker's love to a number of other beauties and never in the lover's favor. Her eyes are "nothing like the sun," her lips are less red than coral; compared to white snow, her breasts are duncolored, and her hairs are like black wires on her head. In the second quatrain, the speaker says he has seen roses separated by color into red and white, but he sees no such roses in his mistress's cheeks; and he says the breath that "reeks" from his mistress is less delightful than perfume. In the third quatrain he admits that, though he loves her voice, music "hath a far more pleasing sound," and that, though he has never seen a goddess, hes mistress walks on the ground. In the couplet, however, the speaker declares that "by heav'n," he thinks his love as rare and valuable "as any she belied with false compare"--that is, any love in which false comparisons were invoked to describe the loved one's beauty.

Poem: The World is Too Much with Us (William Wordsworth)

	The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in nature that is ours; We have given our hears away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers, For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not-- Great God! I'd rather be A pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

 Summary 

We are so preoccupied with our worldly affairs-- including making money and spending it-- that we weaken our ability to perceive what really matters. We have given our souls away in order to reap a material blessing(sordid boon). In our quest for material gain, we do not notice the beauty of the sea or the fury of the winds. Nothing in nature moves us. Well, I would rather be a pagan brought up in an outdated religion. Then I would be inclined to stand in a meadow and appreciate nature around me. I could spot Proteus rising from the sea or listen to Triton blowing his conch shell.  

Late and son: Our fixation on materialism has been a problem in the past and will continue to be a problem in the future.
Sordid boon: shameful gain; tarnished blessing. This phrase is an oxymoron, a form of paradox that juxtaposes contradictory words.

Poem: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day? (William Shakespeare)

	Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temerate; Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date; Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Analysis 

In the sonnet, the poet compares his beloved to the summer season, and argues that his beloved is better. The poet also states that his beloved will live on forever through the words of the poem. By putting his love's beauty into the form of poetry, the poet is preserving it forever by the power of his written words.  

Exegesis 

"complexion" in line six, an have two meanings: 1. The outward appearance of the face as compared with the sun in the previous line, or 2. the older sense of the word in relation to the The four humours. The second meaning of "complexion" would communicate that the beloved's inner, cheerful, and temperate disposition is sometimes blotted out like the sun on a cloudy day.
"Untrimmed" in line eight, can bee taken two ways: 1. in the sense of loss of decoration and frills, and 2. in the sense of untrimmed sails on a ship. In the first interpretation, the poem reads that beautiful things naturally lose their fanciness over time. In the second, it reads that nature is a ship with sails not adjusted to wind changes in order to correct course. This line in the poem creates a shift from the mutability of the first eight lines, into the eternity of the last six. Both change and eternity are then acknowledged and challenged by the final line.
"Ow'st" in line ten can also carry two meanings equally common at the time: "ownest" and "owest". Many readers interpret it as "ownest", as do many Shakespearean glosses. However, "owest" delivers an interesting view on the text. It conveys the idea that beauty is something borrowed from nature-- that it must be paid back as time progresses.

Poem: In a Station of the Metro (Ezra Pound)

	The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
	Petals on a wet, black bough.

 Analysis 

The poem is considered on of the leading poems of the Imagist tradition. Pound's process of deletion from thirty lines to ony fourteen words typifies Imagism's focus on economy of language, precision of imagery and experimenting with non-traditional verse forms. This poem is Pound's written equivalent for the moment of revelation and intense emotion he felt at the Metro at La Concorde, Paris.   

In a poem of this sort, one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective. The word "apparition" is considered crucial as it evokes a mystical and supernatural sense of imprecision which is then reinforced by the metaphor of the second line. The plosive word 'petals' conjures ideas of delicate, feminine beauty which contrasts with the bleakness of the 'wet, black bough'.