SCERT Maharashtra solutions for English Standard 10 Maharashtra State Board chapter III - Section 3: Poetry [Latest edition]

Thing of Beauty is a Joy For Ever

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves a way the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old, and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep, and such are daffoldils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
‘Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink
Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.
Nor do we merely feel these essences
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple’s self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite,
Haunt us till they become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast,
That, whether there be shine, or gloom o’ercast
They always must be with us, or we die.

- John Keats

The Will to Win

If you want a thing bad enough

to go out and fight for it,

work day and night for it,

give up your time and your peace and your sleep for it

If all that you dream

and scheme is about it and life

seems useless and worthless without it

If you gladly sweat for, fret for and plan for it and lose

all your terror of the opposition for it.

If you simply go after that thing that you want with all

of your capacity, strength and sagacity, faith, hope and

confidence and stern pertinacity

If neither cold or poverty, famished or gaunt

or sickness or pain

of body and brain

can keep you away from the thing that you want,

If dogged and grim you besiege and beset it,

with the help of GOD you’ll get it!

                                                  - Berton Braley

Animals

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are
so placid and self-containe’d 
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition, 
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with
the mania of owning things. 
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that
lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
So they show their relations to me and I accept them,
They bring me tokens of myself, they evince
them plainly in their possession
I wonder where they get those tokens,
Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop
them?
                                                             - Walt Whitman