Great Regulars: In other words, if I understand them

correctly, it is one thing to try to reconstruct the way an individual in late 16th-century England might have felt about the vanishing, or the abiding, legacy of Catholicism--what Shakespeare could have thought about the afterlife, for instance, about purgatory or intercession for the souls of the departed--and quite another to try to involve him or his father in some plot.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Was Shakespeare a crypto-Catholic?

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In [Agi] Mishol's free verse poem, "Woman Martyr," the speaker describes a horrific event of a young woman walking into a bakery and blowing herself up. About how she wrote the poem, Mishol says, "With that poem it was the suicide bomber's last name, Takatka. . . .Her name sounded like the ticking of a bomb--taka-taka like tick-tock. . . ."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Agi Mishol's 'Woman Martyr'

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In stanza 4-7, the speaker muses on the sun, and declares that the sun is surely an amazing entity: "The more I looked, the more I grew amaz'd/And softly said, what glory's like to thee?" Her amazement led her to understand how some civilizations have considered the sun a god: "Soul of this world, this Universe's Eye,/No wonder some made thee a Deity."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Anne Bradstreet's 'Contemplations'

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She also loves the beloved with a kind of respect and admiration that she thought she had outgrown; this group of people could be a fairly large one, including friends, teachers, relatives, and even religious "saints," the term she uses. But the key word is that she "seemed" to lose this love, but with her beloved, that love is returned to her.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Browning's 'How do I love thee?'

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In the first stanza, the speaker says she likes "to see it lap the Miles/And lick the Valleys up/And stop to fee itself at Tanks." The subject of this riddle sounds like an animal lapping up water perhaps, and licking up a salt lick or food, but then it stops to "feed itself at Tanks."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Dickinson's Riddles

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José Rizal was in prison waiting to be executed when he wrote this poem as a final statement to his fellow Filipino countrymen. He had been involved in activity to secure his native country's independence from Spain. In the first stanza, the patriot says his final farewell to his native land, describing it as "Pearl of the Orient seas, our Eden lost."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: José Rizal's 'My Last Farewell'

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The speaker tells the lad that the lad did not have to earn his loveliness from nature. Because nature has been so unselfish in bestowing on the young man his pleasing qualities, the speaker hopes to instill in the young man a duty to continue what nature has begun.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 4

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The speaker's final warning uses an accounting metaphor: though nature may delay her "audit" or reckoning of the youth's years, they will definitely be counted, because it is just the way she operates. She will make him aged and feeble in the end.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 126

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