Favorite Poems

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SophiaGrace

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Ok, I realize that I've posted something else recently.

But, bear with me here. I'm just trying to kick-start the forum which seems to have been lagging a bit ;)

So, I thought I would make a thread where people could post their favorite poems.

Here's One of Mine, i believe it represents all I feel about the nature of Love.

SONNET 116

By: William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
 
I don't many know many poems (hopefully this thread will change that :), great idea SophiaGrace! ).

GREENAWAY
by John Betjeman

I know so well this turfy mile,
These clumps of sea-pink withered brown,
The breezy cliff, the awkward stile,
The sandy path that takes me down.

To crackling layers of broken slate
Where black and flat sea-woodlice crawl
And isolated rock pools wait
Wash from the highest tides of all.

I know the roughly blasted track
That skirts a small and smelly bay
And over squelching bladderwrack
Leads to the beach at Greenaway.

Down on the shingle safe at last
I hear the slowly dragging roar
As mighty rollers mount to cast
Small coal and seaweed on the shore,

And spurting far as it can reach
The shooting surf comes hissing round
To heave a line along the beach
Of cowries waiting to be found.

Tide after tide by night and day
The breakers battle with the land
And rounded smooth along the bay
The faithful rocks protecting stand.

But in a dream the other night
I saw this coastline from the sea
And felt the breakers plunging white
Their weight of waters over me.

There were the stile, the turf, the shore,
The safety line of shingle beach
With every stroke I struck the more
The backwash sucked me out of reach.

Back into what a water-world
Of waving weed and waiting claws?
Of writhing tentacles uncurled
To drag me to what dreadful jaws?
 
To One in Paradise
Edgar Allan Poe


Thou wast all that to me, love,
For which my soul did pine-
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
"On! on!"- but o'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!

For, alas! alas! me
The light of Life is o'er!
"No more- no more- no more-"
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree
Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy grey eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams-
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.
 
There once was man from Peru
Who never knew what he should do
So he tore out his hair
and behaved like a bear,
that intrinsic old man from Peru

- Edward Lear
 
Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse

They fresia you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were messed up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

(Feel free to delete this post if you don't like or whatever)
 
Cet Amour by Jacques Prevert

Cet amour
Si violent
Si fragile
Si tendre
Si désespéré
Cet amour
Beau comme le jour
Et mauvais comme le temps
Quand le temps est mauvais
Cet amour si vrai
Cet amour si beau
Si heureux
Si joyeux
Et si dérisoire
Tremblant de peur comme un enfant dans le noir
Et si sûr de lui
Comme un homme tranquille au millieu de la nuit
Cet amour qu faisait peur aux autres
Qui les faisait parler
Qui les faisait blêmir
Cet amour guetté
Parce que nous le guettions
Traqué blessé piétiné achevé nié oublié
Parce que nous l’avons traqué blessé piétiné achevé nié oublié
Cet amour tout entier
Si vivant encore
Et tout ensoleillé
C’est le tien
C’est le mien
Celui qui a été
Cette chose toujours nouvelle
Et qui n’a pas changé
Aussi vrai qu’une plante
Aussi tremblante qu’un oiseau
Aussi chaude aussi vivant que l’été
Nous pouvons tous les deux
Aller et revenir
Nous pouvons oublier
Et puis nous rendormir
Nous réveiller souffrir vieillir
Nous endormir encore
Rêver à la mort,
Nous éveiller sourire et rire
Et rajeunir
Notre amour reste là
Têtu comme une bourrique
Vivant comme le désir
Cruel comme la mémoire
Bête comme les regrets
Tendre comme le souvenir
Froid comme le marble
Beau comme le jour
Fragile comme un enfant
Il nous regarde en souriant
Et il nous parle sans rien dire
Et moi je l’écoute en tremblant
Et je crie
Je crie pour toi
Je crie pour moi
Je te supplie
Pour toi pour moi et pour tous ceux qui s’aiment
Et qui se sont aimés
Oui je lui crie
Pour toi pour moi et pour tous les autres
Que je ne connais pas
Reste là
Lá où tu es
Lá où tu étais autrefois
Reste là
Ne bouge pas
Ne t’en va pas
Nous qui sommes aimés
Nous t’avons oublié
Toi ne nous oublie pas
Nous n’avions que toi sur la terre
Ne nous laisse pas devenir froids
Beaucoup plus loin toujours
Et n’importe où
Donne-nous signe de vie
Beaucoup plus tard au coin d’un bois
Dans la forêt de la mémoire
Surgis soudain
Tends-nous la main
Et sauve-nous.

Suicide in the Trenches by Siegfried Sassoon

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
 
i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense

plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself

--
The Lesson Of The Moth
by Don Marquis, in "archy and mehitabel," 1927
 
One fine day in the middle of the night
Two dead boys got up to fight
Back to back they faced each other
Drew their swords and shot each other

One was blind and the other couldn't see
So they chose a dummy for a referee
A blind man went to see fair play
A dumb man went to shout "hooray!"

A paralyzed donkey passing by
Kicked the blind man in the eye
Knocked him through a 9 inch wall
Into a dry ditch and drowned them all

A deaf policeman heard the noise
And came to arrest the 2 dead boys
If you don't believe this story's true
Ask the blind man, he saw it, too!
 
They shut me up in Prose –
As when a little Girl
They put me in the Closet –
Because they liked me "still" –

Still! Could themself have peeped –
And seen my Brain – go round –
They might as wise have lodged a Bird
For Treason – in the Pound –

Emily Dickinson, c. 1862[1
 
Probably my favourite poem. Well at least my fav poem so far:p I need to read more.

Friday Night at the Royal Station Hotel

Light spreads darkly downwards from the high
Clusters of lights over empty chairs
That face each other, coloured differently.
Through open doors, the dining-room declares
A larger loneliness of knives and glass
And silence laid like carpet. A porter reads
An unsold evening paper. Hours pass,
And all the salesmen have gone back to Leeds,
Leaving full ashtrays in the Conference Room.

In shoeless corridors, the lights burn. How
Isolated, like a fort, it is -
The headed paper, made for writing home
(If home existed) letters of exile: Now
Night comes on. Waves fold behind villages.

Philip Larkin
 
Alone- By: Edgar Allen Poe

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were-- I have not seen
As others saw-- I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From that same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I lov'd, I loved alone.
Then--in my childhood--in the dawn
Of a most stormy life--was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold--
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by--
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

[youtube]avKxInSbGuQ&feature=related[/youtube]

September Is - By: Mary Jo Bang

September is work to the center
Of arguments and controversies.
Prejudgements and incomprehensions.
What will I love if that that
That was enigma?
The years of infancy, Memory says,
And there we are, with the demon
Of the art of living
Traced on the glass of some window

In the beauty of the night of May,
Clear of moon, to the lume of a candle
There was a design like the profile
Of a landscape almost abandoned. Gone
But not gone yet. It's fascinating,
These mysterious uncovered feelings.
Enigma of an afternoon of autumn, the picture
Of which is a composition
Of the eye of my mind. Every hour

That I watch this picture
I see again still that moment
Nevertheless the moment is an enigma
For me, in how much is inexplicable.
The physical things hide in the architecture
Of the event.
The enigma of a mock-up,
Of a shadow, the spectral and eternal aspect
Of the moment. Praises to you for being
One great box of suprise,

Your head the scene of a wonderful theater
Of the most tender gray of the fog
That joins the sky to the earth.
A tangling of truth and memory,
Mythology and iconography,
I watch with the eye
Of the mind the city that accomodates
That one beautiful day that is now infinite.
It deepens. It begins. The cyclical method.

Memory is deeply not alive; it is a mock-up
And this renders it hateful. Yet, it is not a fiction,
Is a truth, indeed a sad and monstrous truth.
I was assigned to you, together we were
A beautiful and melancholic picture.
This last picture is the realization
Of the overwhelming moment
In which the acute eye percieves you as a now
That is over. A now that is now fixed
In the swept past.

Hope - By: Emily Dickenson

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
 
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, misteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

- e.e. cummings
 
Is there for honest poverty by Robert Burns


Is there for honest Poverty
That hings his head, an' a' that;
The coward slave-we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, an' a' that.
Our toils obscure an' a' that,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The Man's the gowd for a' that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an' a that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
A Man's a Man for a' that:
For a' that, and a' that,
Their tinsel show, an' a' that;
The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that.

Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that:
For a' that, an' a' that,
His ribband, star, an' a' that:
The man o' independent mind
He looks an' laughs at a' that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's abon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their dignities an' a' that;
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,
Are higher rank than a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that

Please check the Burns page on BBC Scotland's website

http://www.bbc.co.uk/robertburns/works/a_mans_a_man_for_a_that/
 
Scheherazade - by Richard Siken (probably my favourite poet, this is my favourite poem by him anyway)...


Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake
and dress them in warm clothes again.
How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running
until they forget that they are horses.
It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
it's more like a song on a policeman's radio,
how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple
to slice into pieces.
Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon, that means
we're inconsolable.
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it.


I get goosebumps every single time I read this poem, there's just something about the first 4 lines and the last 5 lines...
 
I'm not big on poetry, but there are some I like. A few of my favorites are: "The Raven" (Edgar Allan Poe), "I Would I Were a Careless Child" (Lord Byron), "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" (Robert Frost), "Sonnet 116" (William Shakespeare), "Snow" (Archibald Lampman), "The Lady of Shalott" (Alfred, Lord Tennyson), and "The Song of Hiawatha" (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow). There are others, but I can't recall them at the moment.


"I Would I Were a Careless Child" (Excerpt)

Few are my years, and yet I feel
The world was ne'er designed for me:
Ah! Why do darkening shades conceal
The hour when Man must cease to be?

Once I beheld a splendid dream,
A visionary scene of bliss.
Truth! Wherefore did thy hated beam
Awake me to a world like this?

I loved, but those I loved are gone;
Had friends, my early friends are fled.
How cheerless feels the heart alone
When all its former hopes are dead!

Though gay companions o'er the bowl
Dispel awhile the sense of ill;
Though pleasure stirs the maddening soul,
The heart, the heart is lonely still.

Fain would I fly the haunts of men –
I seek to shun, not hate mankind;
My breast requires the sullen glen,
Whose gloom may suit a darken’d mind.

Oh! That to me the wings were given,
Which bear the turtle to her nest!
Then would I cleave the vault of Heaven,
To flee away, and be at rest.

- Lord Byron​
 
Solivagant said:
I'm not big on poetry, but there are some I like. A few of my favorites are: "The Raven" (Edgar Allan Poe), "I Would I Were a Careless Child" (Lord Byron), "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" (Robert Frost), "Sonnet 116" (William Shakespeare), "Snow" (Archibald Lampman), "The Lady of Shalott" (Alfred, Lord Tennyson), and "The Song of Hiawatha" (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow). There are others, but I can't recall them at the moment.

this is enough to make me like you a little bit :D

ATM I'm into T.S Eliot's poem the waste land
(excerpt)
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink 335
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit 340
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mud-cracked houses
 
Another I just remembered: "The Author to Her Book" (Anne Bradstreet).



Solivagant said:
I'm not big on poetry, but there are some I like. A few of my favorites are: "The Raven" (Edgar Allan Poe), "I Would I Were a Careless Child" (Lord Byron), "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" (Robert Frost), "Sonnet 116" (William Shakespeare), "Snow" (Archibald Lampman), "The Lady of Shalott" (Alfred, Lord Tennyson), and "The Song of Hiawatha" (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow). There are others, but I can't recall them at the moment.
 
What I always think about when I see an old, abandoned home....

The House With Nobody In It

Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track
I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.
I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute
And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.

I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;
That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.
I know this house isn't haunted, and I wish it were, I do;
For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.

This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass,
And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass.
It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied;
But what it needs the most of all is some people living inside.

If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid
I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade.
I'd buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be
And I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free.

Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door,
Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store.
But there's nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone
For the lack of something within it that it has never known.

But a house that has done what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life,
That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,
A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and held up his stumbling feet,
Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.

So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track
I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back,
Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart,
For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.

- Joyce Kilmer
 

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