Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (1830 – 1886) was an American poet. Her works were largely unpublished and unknown during her lifetime.

To my quick war the Leaves – conferred
The Bushes – they were Bells –
I could not find a Privacy
From nature’s sentinels –

In Cave if I presumed to hide
The Walls – begun to tell –
Creation seemed a mighty Crack –
To make me visible –

The Past is such a curious Creature
To look her in her Face
A transport may receipt us
Or a Disgrace –
Unarmed if any meet her

I charge him fly
Her faded Ammunition
Might yet reply.

The Months have ends – the Years – a knot –
No Power can untie
To stretch a little further
A Skein of misery –

The Earth lays back these tired lives
In her mysterious Drawers
Too tenderly, that any doubt
An ultimate Repose –

The manner of the Children –
Who weary of the Day –
Themselves – the noisy Plaything
They cannot put away –

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – Too?
Then there’s a pair of us?
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

If what we could – were what we should –
Criterion – be small –
It is the Ultimate of Talk –
The impotence to Tell –

‘Speech’ – is a prank of Parliament –
‘Tears’ – a trick of the nerve –
But the Heart with the heaviest freight on
Doesn’t – always – move

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag toady
Can tell the definition
So clear of Victory

As he defeated – dying –
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!

Source : “Romantic Writings: An Anthology” edited by W.E. Owens and Hamish Johnson. Printed by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall, UK. “Emily Dickinson – Poems selected by Ted Hughes”. Published by Faber and Faber Limited.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (1830 – 1886) was an American poet. Her works were largely unpublished and unknown during her lifetime.

Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Gain –
We passed the Setting Sun –

Or rather – He passed Us –
The Dews drew quivering and chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – ‘tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity –

  ***********                     

It’s such a little thing to weep –
So short a thing to sigh –
And yet – by Trades – the sizes of these
We men and women die!

  ************

The Heart asks for Pleasure – first
And then – Excuse from Pain –
And then – those little Anodynes
That deaden suffering –

And then – to go to sleep –
And then – if it should be
The will of its Inquisitor
The privilege to die –

  **********

I was the slightest in the House –
I took the smallest Room –
At night, my little Lamp, and Book –
And one Geranium –

So stationed I could catch the Mint
That never ceased to fall –
And just my Basket –
let me think – I’m sure
That this was all –

I never spoke – unless addressed –
And then, ’twas brief and low –
I could not bear to live – aloud –
The Racket shamed me so –

And if I had not been so far –
And any one I knew
Were going – I had often thought
How noteless – I could die –

Source: “Romantic Writings: An Anthology” edited by W.E. Owens and Hamish Johnson. Printed by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall, UK. “Emily Dickinson – Poems selected by Ted Hughes”. Published by Faber and Faber Limited.

When we tell jokes we are often intending to amuse or surprise by manipulating our listener’s expectations in a way which makes the punchline a violation of those expectations. Jokes are a special case involving an element of misleading information. More often in dialogues and in narratives, speakers are at pains to ensure that their listeners do not misunderstand or get lost. In order to do this speakers need to be aware of what their listeners know on the basis of the story so far, and what they can be expected to know on the basis of their sharing the same cultural knowledge as the speaker. As well as this knowledge, speakers need to be able to use a range of linguistic devices for developing stories and dialogues in a way that ensures their listeners’ continued understanding.

The ability to tell jokes is an extremely sophisticated form of verbal behaviour requiring both knowledge of language and the ability to identify and manipulate the mental state of another person.

Some Examples of English Jokes

The Queue Jumper

It was a cold spring morning in the city of London in England. The weather was very cold, and many people were ill. So there were many people in the doctor’s waiting room. At the head of the queue was an old woman. The woman was a visitor. She did not live in London. She lived in the country. She was in the city to visit her daughter. She wanted to see the doctor because her back hurt.

“If I get there early, I can see the doctor quickly”, she though. So she was first in the queue. She sat nearest to the doctor’s door.

An Indian came into the waiting room, and walked quickly to the doctor’s door. The old woman thought he was a queue jumper. She stood up and took his arm. Slowly, she said, “We were all here before you. You must wait for your turn. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ?”

The Indian answered : “No madam. You don’t understand! You’re all after me!” The woman was puzzled.

The Indian continues, “I’m the doctor!”

• This is a joke on culture. There is also a gentle anti-racist lesson in the story for us to learn. Many people think that Britain is a European country and all high occupational positions should be held by the Englishmen. Some people don’t understand what is the Indian doing in London. Others have asked why not we make the doctor in the story to be an Englishman. This is possible, but it will destroy the point of this story.

Banana and Milk

A man was running to catch a moving bus but when he got there the conductor refused him entrance and he was ……….. He fell off the bus and was run over by a car. The conductor was taken to court on trial for murder and was later sentenced to be electrocuted. On the day when he was to be electrocuted his last request was a bowl of mashed bananas and milk. The conductor had this bowl of mashed bananas and milk and the prison people switched the current on and it didn’t work, so they tried again and again the conductor’s last request was a bowl of mashed bananas and milk. This time the prison people put on a higher current but it still didn’t work and the third time ………. after the third time it means that they have to free the prisoner. And so they tried again and the last request was again a bowl of bananas and milk. And it still didn’t work even though they switched the power up higher. And the con ……… and they asked the conductor how he did it and the conductor said maybe it’s just because I’m a bad conductor.

• This joke is constructed in a way so that listeners are likely to think that the conductor’s choice of food was related to the malfunctioning of the electric chair. But for the punch-line to be effective, it is of course crucial that listeners are aware of the alternative uses in English for the term ‘conductor’, so that they would recognised they have been misled.

Joke based on phonetic patterns

Cow go moo.
Mommy go mamoo
Daddy go dadoo

Joke which has a regular discourse format

A : How do aspirins make ?
B : They make you feel better.

Jokes used to set up a linguistically misleading context

A : Do you love me
B : Yes
A : Do you love me to hit you ? Ha, ha!

A :Do you kick John ?
B : No, we don’t kick John!
A : Do you kick Jack ?
B : No, we don’t kick Jack!
A : Do you kick the swimming pool ?
B : No, we don’t the swimming pool!
A : We kick in the swimming pool Ha, ha!

Jokes of humour

A : What do you get if you cross a kangaroo and a sheep ?
B : I don’t know.
A : A woolly jumper ! (because the sheep gives the wool and the kangaroo is the jumper)

A : Please call me a taxi
B : OK. You are a taxi

Jokes from the Marx brothers

I could dance with you till the cows come home, on second thoughts, I’d rather dance with the cows till you come back.

A man and a woman are making love on bed. The woman heard the sound of her husband opening the front door and say to her lover, “Oh! For heaven’s sakes, whatever you do, don’t make a sound. If you’re found, you’re lost.” The man asked, “Oh! You’re crazy. How can I be lost if I’m found ?”

I hear they’re going to build a new eye hospital here. It will be a state for sore eyes.

A : Notables from every country are gathered here in your honour. There is a gala day for you.
B : Well, a gal a day is enough for me. I don’t think I could handle any more.

A : You are testing my patient.
B : Why not you come and be my patient one day.

(1) A butcher in Italy would want to put up a sign in this shop window to attract more customers. He tries to avoid using the word ‘preservatives’ in case it has any taboo connotation in English. So, he displayed a sign in Romance language (descended from Latin) saying . “Sausages made without conservatives.” The joke is that the sign did not draw much people to come into the shop. This is because in Italy, conservanti are
preservatives and preservativi are condoms.

(2) Some people would like to make jokes out of others’ poor attempts at the translation of their language into English. In hotel restaurant it was written, “The waitress will give you the bill and you may sign her on the backside.”

(3) A common joke amongst children is for one child to ask: “ What’s a baby pig called?” The response is of course “piglet”. So, what’s a baby toy
called? And the other child will say “toilet”.

(4) Here is a joke about man.
Tri-weekly
Try weekly
Try weakly

Jokes playing around with syntax

(5) A Scotsman takes all his money out of the bank once a year for a holiday; once it’s had holiday he puts it back again.

(6) Child: “Mummy, can I go out and play?”
Mother: “With those holes in your trousers?”
Child: “No, with the girl next door.”

(7) Trimmets treacle puddings have caused several people to be taken to hospital with badly scalded feet. This is because the instructions read: “Open tin and stand in boiling water for twenty minutes.”

(8) In a church hall, “Ladies are asked to rinse out teapots and stand upside down in the sink.”

(9) Advertising slogan: “Nothing acts faster than Anadin.”
Traditional response: “Then take nothing!”

(10) During a statistics lesson, the teacher says: “In Tokyo a man gets run over every five hours.” “Oh, poor thing!” remarks a pupil.”

Jokes playing around with the rules of conversation

(11) At the customs, the customer officer asks, “Cigarettes, brandy, whisky…….”
The passenger replies, “How kind you are in this country. I’ll have a coffee
please.”

(12) “You know your great great great grandfather?”
“Yeah.”
“No, you don’t, he’s dead!”

(13) “Oh Nigel, I hear you buried your mother-in-law last week.”
“Had to. She was dead.”

(14) Kenneth Rome: “Do you know anything about Professor Composture?”
Stooge: “Oh, he’s the world’s leading expert in ballistic missiles; he won last
year’s Nobel Prize in Physics and he’s head of the science department at Yales.
Why do you ask?”
Kenneth Rome: “He asked me to lend him five shillings.”

(15) “Waiter, waiter, there’s a fly in the soup!”
“Don’t worry sir, there’ll be no extra charge!”

(16) “I say, I say, I say, my dog has no nose!”
“Really! Hen how does it smell?”
“Awful!”

(17) Why is sex like a bank account?
Because as soon as you withdraw you lose interest.

(18) Beauty is skin deep, but ugly is ugly to the bone.
An apple a day keeps the doctor away but an onion a day keeps everyone away.

Source: “The Language of Jokes – Analysing Verbal Play” by Delia Chiaro. Published by Routledge, London.

Edwin Thumboo is one of Singapore’s most distinguished poets. Thumboo has published four collections of poems: Rib of Earth (1956), Gods can Die (1997), Ulysses by the Merlion (1970) and A Third Map (1993). Here is one of his well-known poems.

Ulysses By The Merlion
I have sailed many waters,
Skirted islands of fire,
Contended with Circe
Who loved the squeal of pigs;
Passed Scylla and Charybdis
To seven years with Calypso,
Heaved in battle against the gods.
Beneath it all
I kept faith with Ithaca, travelled,
Travelled and travelled,
Suffering much, enjoying a little;
Met strange people singing
New myths; made myths myself.

But this lion of the sea
Salt-maned, scaly, wondrous of tail,
Touched with power, insistent
On this brief promontory….
Puzzles.

Nothing, nothing in my days
Foreshadowed this
Half-beast, half-fish,
This powerful creature of land and sea.

People settled here,
Brought to this island
The bounty of these seas,
Built towers topless as llium’s

They make, they serve,
They buy, they sell.

Despite unequal ways,
Together they mutate,

Explore the edges of harmony,
Search for a centre;
Have changed their gods,
Kept some memory of their race
In prayer, laughter, the way
Their women dress and greet.
They hold the bright, the beautiful,
Good ancestral dreams
Within new visions,
So shining, urgent,
Full of what is now.
Perhaps having dealt in things,
Surfeited on them,
Their spirits yearn again for images,
Adding to the dragon, phoenix,
Garuda, naga those horses of the sun,
This lion of the sea,
This image of themselves.

by Edwin Thumboo
from Ulysses By The Merlion (1979)

(1) Love is a game whereby two persons compare their acting skills.

(2) Love is when you ask a question and get an irrelevant answer.

(3) Love begins with novelty and ends when another novelty comes along.

(4) Love is a one-episode drama full of surprises whereby marriage is a boring soap opera.

(5) Love is like a bathtub of water – it gets cold after a while. Even if you don’t mind soaking in lukewarm water, your skin gets wrinkled after some time.

(6) Love torments almost everyone. The only revenge is to get married. Marriage will destroy love twice as much.

(7) Love that comes too easily cannot be trusted. Love that comes with much difficulty does not last long.

(8) The power of love lies in its ability to make people believe in things they otherwise would not.

(9) When a person falls in love, he either ends up in self-destruction or marriage.

(10) The most effective way to preserve your youth is to fall in love. But in the event of a break-up, you’ll lose twice as much of that youthfulness.

Source: “Uptown Singles” by Ronald Chu, translated by Clara Show. Published by Asiapac Books Pte Ltd.

Though there are considerable individual differences in how much people experience and express anger, there are some display rules that govern what is and isn’t appropriate for us to express our anger in various situations. Some display rules are widely shared within a society, while others are more personal, such as how we think others present will react to the emotions we display.

Through their research, Mesquita and Frijda (1992) found out some interesting strategies people around the world use in their expression of anger.

(1) Expressions of violent anger were traditionally discouraged amongst the Utku Eskimos. Hostility was expressed in sulking, silence and withdrawal. The only legitimate outlet for aggression for the Utku was towards their dogs.

(2) Among the Hare Indians of Colville Lake, USA, displays of anger, happiness or jealously were only approved of when a person was drunk. Not only were these emotions sanctioned by intoxication, they were eagerly observed by onlookers.

(3) Among the Kaluli of Papua New Guinea, strong expressions of anger are encouraged. When a man has been wronged he may stamp furiously up and down outside his longhouse, shouting out the details of the problem for all the neighbours to hear in order to get sympathetic support.

(4) Bedouin living in Western Egypt tend to react to bereavement by expressing anger and indignation as much as sadness. This is because sadness in seen as an expression of weakness which can undermine their sense of honour.

So, how do you express your anger? Sallow it, voice it out to the computer, talk to your close friends, pass the anger to another person or just ignore the anger and let it goes off naturally.

Source: “Development Perspectives on Emotion” by Martin Woodhead, Peter Barners and Dorothy Miell.

 Romantic Writing refers to those works produced between 1780 and 1830 in Great Britain. This period is also known as the Romantic Period. The six well-known poets during the Romantic Period are:
• William Blake (1757 – 1827)
• William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850)
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834)
• George Gordon Lord Byron (1788 – 1824)
• John Keats (1795 – 1821)
• Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822).

Here are some of the poems written by these six big poets during the Romantic Period.

The Lily (Blake)
The modest rose puts forth a thorn,
The humble sheep a threatening horn,
While the lily white shall in love delight,
Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright.

The Pains of Sleep (Coleridge)
Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to Love compose,
In humble trust mine eye-lids close,
With reverential resignation
No wish conceived, no thought exprest,
Only a sense of supplication;
A sense o’er all my soul imprest
That I am weak, yet not unblest,
Since in me, round me, every where
Eternal strength and Wisdom are.

But yester-night I prayed aloud
In anguish and in agony,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd
Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me:
A lurid light, a trampling throng,
Sense of intolerable wrong,
And whom I scorned, those only strong!
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled, and yet burning still!
Desire with loathing strangely mixed
On wild or hateful objects fixed.
Fantastic passions! maddening brawl!
And shame and terror over all!
Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which all confused I could not know
Whether I suffered, or I did:
For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe,
My own or others still the same
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.

So two nights passed: the night’s dismay
Saddened and stunned the coming day.
Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me
Distemper’s worst calamity.
The third night, when my own loud scream
Had waked me from the fiendish dream,
O’ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
I wept as I had been a child;
And having thus by tears subdued
My anguish to a milder mood,
Such punishments, I said, were due
To natures deepliest stained with sin,—
For aye entempesting anew
The unfathomable hell within,
The horror of their deeds to view,
To know and loathe, yet wish and do!
Such griefs with such men well agree,
But wherefore, wherefore fall on me?
To be loved is all I need,
And whom I love, I love indeed.

She Walks in Beauty (Lord Byron)
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

When I have fears that I may cease to be (Keats)
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Ozymandias (Shelley)
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away

She Dwelt Among Th’ Untrodden Ways (Wordsworth)
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
—Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!

Source : “Romantic Writings: An Anthology” edited by W.E. Owens and Hamish Johnson. Printed by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall, UK.

(1)       The most powerful weapon known is the weapon of blessing. Therefore, a clever person relies on it. He wins with peace, not with war.

(2)       To be strong, you have to be like water: if there are no obstacles, it flows; if there is an obstacle it stops; if a dam is broken, then it flows further; if a vessel is square, then it has a square form; if a vessel is round, then it has a round form. Because it is so soft and flexible, it is the most necessary and the strongest thing.

(3)       Kind people are never involved in arguments, and those who like to argue are never kind. Truthful words are not always pleasant, and pleasant words are not necessarily truthful.

(4)       The rivers and seas are the masters of the valleys across which they flow. This is because they are lower than the valleys. In the same way, a person who wants to be higher than other people should be lower than they; if he wants to guide people, he should be below them.

(5)       A person who stands on his tiptoes cannot stand long, and a person who is too proud of himself cannot set a good example.

(6)       In order not to pour out a vessel full of water, you should hold it evenly. In order to have a razor sharp, you should sharpen it. The same should happen with your soul if you are looking for real goodness.

(7)       He who is really skilful in communicating with people is usually a humble and quiet person. This is called the virtue of non-resistance. This is called harmony with Heaven.

(8)       A wise man innately knows how to act without searching, because he has the divine within himself. The further you search and seek, the less you know.

(9)       Those who have weak faith themselves cannot arouse faith in others.

(10)     There is nothing in this world more tender and more pliable than water, yet harder and rigid things cannot resist it. Weakness defeats strength, tenderness defeats rigidity. Everyone knows this law, but no one acts upon it. The weakest in the world gain victory over the strongest; therefore, there is a great advantage in humility and silence. Only a few people in this world are truly humble.

Source: “A Calendar of Wisdom : Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul written and selected from the world’s scared tests” by Leo Tolstoy, translated into English from the Russian by Peter Sekirin. Published by Simon and Schuster Inc, USA.

(1) You can achieve wisdom in three ways. The first way is the way of meditation. This is the most noble way. The second way is the way of imitation. This is the easiest and least satisfying way. Thirdly, there is a way of experience. This is the most difficult way.

(2) When an arrow does not hit its target, the marksman blames himself, not another person. A wise person behaves in the same way

(3) In order to reach spiritual perfection, you should first of all take care of the purity of your soul. This can be reached when the heart looks for truth, and strives for wholeness, and depends on true knowledge.

(4) Wisdom is knowing the purpose of life, and knowing how to achieve it.

(5) Even if people do not know what real kindness is, they nevertheless have it within them.

(6) Be attentive to what you do; never consider anything unworthy of your attention.

(7) The more strictly and mercilessly you judge yourself, the more just and kind you will be in the judgment of others.

(8) The goodness which you do give you pleasure, but not satisfaction. No matter how much goodness you do, you should wish to do more and more.

(9) What is no clear should be cleared up. What is no easy to do should be done with great persistence.

(10) Work toward the purification of your thoughts. Without bad thoughts you will be incapable of bad deeds.

(11) A wise man looks for everything inside of himself; a madman seeks for everything in others.

(12) The journey of the wise to virtue is as a journey to a remote land, or the ascent of a high mountain. People who travel to a faraway place start with a single step, and those who climb a high mountain start from the bottom.

(13) The law of right living is not immediately clear to the wish man, but it becomes much clearer when he follows it. The law of right living is immediately clear to the ordinary person, but it becomes less obvious when he tries to follow it.

Source: “A Calendar of Wisdom : Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul written and selected from the world’s scared tests” by Leo Tolstoy, translated into English from the Russian by Peter Sekirin. Published by Simon and Schuster Inc, USA.