Richard Wilbur: Exuent
Piecemeal the summer dies;
At the field’s edge a daisy lives alone;
A last shawl of burning lies
On a gray field-stone.
All cries are thin and terse;
The field has droned the summer’s final mass;
A cricket like a dwindled hearse
Crawls from the dry grass.
Exuent, in Latin, means they leave. Wilbur examines those last few days of summer as the weather gets chilly, and everything dies. My favorite thing about this poem is the word choice; it’s so dark. Using imagery representing a funeral with words such as hearse and mass, and colors brought to mind by gray field-stone and dry grass, the reader feels transported to those dreadful last few days.
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 23: As An Unperfect Actor On The Stage
As an unperfect actor on the stage,
Who with his fear is put beside his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart;
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love’s rite,
And in mine own love’s strength seem to decay,
O’ercharg’d with burthen of mine own love’s might.
O! let my looks be then the eloquence.
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
More than that tongue that more hath more express’d.
O! learn to read what silent love hath writ:
To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.
In the beginning, Shakespeare is comparing himself to a fumbling actor or an animal or thing that is too overcome with emotion to articulate what he really means. Because his love is too great to adequately describe, he worries that one that he is trying to profess his love to will not see his love for all that it is. I think that many people (especially teenage boys) can relate to this because although they feel ardently towards somebody, they cannot explain it in words. “I love you! No, really. I do. Please beleive me,” is the best anybody can do, however it does not even come close to how they really feel.
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