Favorite Poems....

Here are some of my favorite poems.....

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Robert Frost: Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love -
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me -
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud one night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we -
Of many far wiser than we -
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling -my darling -my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea -
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Edgar Allan Poe: Annabel Lee

I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth, -the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.
Emily Dickenson: I Died For Beauty, but it was Scarce

Those are some of my favorite poems! Love to hear some of your favorite poems or poems that you have wrote! :banana:

Beautiful choice of words, lukkiseven. I have adored all of the same poets; they shine brilliantly, as did their minds, as they should.
Some of my all-time favorites, which seem very difficult to narrow down, and that they incessantly change, I typed here:
http://www.online-literature.com/for...ead.php?t=4166
Welcome to the forum!

Currently my favourite is Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Although I prefer books, there are some poems which i remember well and will always treasure.
My favourite poems are Jabberwocky by Lewis Carol and The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe.

art by charles bukowski
the conqueror worm by edgar allan poe
childe roland to the dark tower came by robert browning

As a new member to this forum, and a lover of all things e.e. cummings, i add a poem or two from the anthology!

Because a lot of people say they find cummings a bit 'cold' and devoid of sentiment (at least upon first read), here is a pretty piece (his love poems do seem to get a bit more fame!) NB: I've included the long ____ in some places, because cummings had these lines indented, but the forum post seems to want to squash them back in line!

(from LATE POEMS, III.2)

love is a guess
that deepens
(time is a rose
which opens)
__________your eyes,my
darling,are two
young worlds of dew

never yet named
a stillness
(wholly undreamed
what frailness)
___________not quite may
twilight's until
rival your smile

truer how much
than yearning
(newer to touch
than morning)
____________your life is
only like one
star after rain

***********

And now one poem to absolutely prove, beyond all doubt, that e.e. is not devoid of sentiment -

(from LATE POEMS, III.5)

____________she,straddling my lap,
hinges(wherewith I tongue each eager pap)
and,reaching down,by merely fingertips
the hungry Visitor steers to love's lips
Whom(justly as she now begins to sit,
almost by almost giving her sweet weight)
O,how those hot thighs juicily embrace!
and (instant by deep instant)as her face
watches,scarcely alive,that magic Feast
greedily disappearing least by least -
through what a dizzily palpitating host
(sharp inch by inch)swoons sternly my huge Guest!
until(quite when our touching bellies dream)
unvisibly love's furthest secrets rhyme.

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

And another one, which is one of my favourites (but i have so many) -

(from 95 poems)

1(a

1e
af
fa

11

s)
one
1

iness


I have wondered how long it took cummings to compose this one, there is definitely method behind the madness. It reminds me a little of a haiku poem (they way i imagine it read). But it isn't really a poem you can read - the magic of it is in the visual reading (like so many of his poems, which is one of the reasons he tampered with syntax and placement of words and so on). How i read this poem: in a nutshell, "a leaf falls loneliness". He is using the number 1 because of its similarity to the letter 'l', but the number one also doubles as meaning "one" when you read everything outside the parentheses - it leaves you with 1,one,1 and iness (one-ness), which i think is a clever way to emphasise the loneliness theme. Outside the parentheses we find the word 'loneliness' and inside the brackets you find the phrase 'a leaf falls'. And, of course, the structure of the poem is intended to resemble a "falling" to the ground, presumably of the leaf (you can imagine it, starting off thin because you see it from the side and as it gets closer to the ground it tilts a little and finally lays flat on the ground, as i think he symbolises with the longest collection letters in the final line "iness"). It is such a beautiful little poem.

I'm new to Literature Network and this is one of my fav's

The Little Boy and the Old Man by Shel Silverstein

Said the little boy, "Sometimes I drop my spoon."
Said the old man, "I do that too."
The little boy whispered, "I wet my pants."
"I do that too," laughed the little old man.
Said the little boy, "I often cry."
The old man nodded, "So do I."
"But worst of all," said the boy, "it seems
Grown-ups don't pay attention to me."
And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.
"I know what you mean," said the little old man.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by anatomie

And another one, which is one of my favourites (but i have so many) -

(from 95 poems)

1(a

1e
af
fa

11

s)
one
1

iness


I have wondered how long it took cummings to compose this one, there is definitely method behind the madness. It reminds me a little of a haiku poem (they way i imagine it read). But it isn't really a poem you can read - the magic of it is in the visual reading (like so many of his poems, which is one of the reasons he tampered with syntax and placement of words and so on). How i read this poem: in a nutshell, "a leaf falls loneliness". He is using the number 1 because of its similarity to the letter 'l', but the number one also doubles as meaning "one" when you read everything outside the parentheses - it leaves you with 1,one,1 and iness (one-ness), which i think is a clever way to emphasise the loneliness theme. Outside the parentheses we find the word 'loneliness' and inside the brackets you find the phrase 'a leaf falls'. And, of course, the structure of the poem is intended to resemble a "falling" to the ground, presumably of the leaf (you can imagine it, starting off thin because you see it from the side and as it gets closer to the ground it tilts a little and finally lays flat on the ground, as i think he symbolises with the longest collection letters in the final line "iness"). It is such a beautiful little poem.

---

I had a teacher last year who wrote a six hundred page thesis on that poem. I don't think it's a 1, it's an L (l). The version I have has a capital I above, people often think it's a roman numeral but it's not. The poem reads : I Loneliness (a leaf falls). The leaf being a metaphor for solitude. Brilliant poem, I also love Grasshopper which would be hell to type out on the forum because of its structure.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by lukkiseven

Here are some of my favorite poems.....

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Robert Frost: Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

------------------------------------------------------

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love -
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me -
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud one night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we -
Of many far wiser than we -
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling -my darling -my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea -
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Edgar Allan Poe: Annabel Lee

---

I love both of these poems. :)

:):):):):):):)

Here's one by an Iraqi poet I just discovered:

Miracle Maker

I am the magician, agent of lost souls,
the flock and the shepherd,
the dead and the funeral.
I cross the sky to reach earth.
I spoon embers in my palms from the gods' inferno.
And I steal the temple's pearl
from under the pillow of the dying priest
with the fingers of an expert thief.
I am the miracle maker.
I always drink my toast alone
and I go on my way.
That's me.

-- Fadhil Al-Azzawi

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.

Mine's this one... It's of Shakespeare's works but it's quite nice...

New to the site; please don't shoot me down!

My current favourite poems are two by Carol Ann Duffy.

Anne Hathaway

'Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed ...'
(from Shakespeare's will)

The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed.

I find that such an interesting, moving poem; it's from a book called The World's Wife where Duffy takes the place of different women overshadowned by "their men" throughout history (I recommend!). This one stands out to me because it's so clever, from the way she writes it in sonnet form to the fabulous metaphors.

I also love...

Before You Were Mine

I’m ten years away from the corner you laugh on
with your pals, Maggie McGeeney and Jean Duff.
The three of you bend from the waist, holding
each other, or your knees, and shriek at the pavement.
Your polka-dot dress blows round your legs. Marilyn.

I’m not here yet. The thought of me doesn’t occur
in the ballroom with the thousand eyes, the fizzy, movie tomorrows
the right walk home could bring. I knew you would dance
like that. Before you were mine, your Ma stands at the close
with a hiding for the late one. You reckon it’s worth it.

The decade ahead of my loud, possessive yell was the best one eh?
I remember my hands in those high-heeled red shoes, relics,
And now your ghost clatters toward me over George Square
till I see you, clear as scent, under the tree,
with its lights, and whose small bites on your neck, sweetheart?

Cha Cha Cha! You’d teach me the steps on the way home from mass,
stamping stars from the wrong pavement. Even then
I wanted the bold girl winking in Portobello, somewhere
in Scotland, before I was born. That glamorous love lasts
where you sparkle and waltz and laugh before you were mine

I think its beautiful and intelligent; I love the imagery, "the ballroom with a thousand eyes" and "fizzy, movie tomorrows".

Generally I adore the war poets and pre-1914 poetry, most of which I expect people on here will have already read.