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Thread: your favourite poem/s of all time

  1. #1
    confidentially pleased cacian's Avatar
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    Thumbs up your favourite poem/s of all time

    please post your favourite poem of all time here.
    look forward to reading them.
    it may never try
    but when it does it sigh
    it is just that
    good
    it fly

  2. #2
    On the road, but not! Danik 2016's Avatar
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    Good idea cacian. I'll post it tomorrow (I'm using the tablet now).
    "I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
    Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row

  3. #3
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    It's hard to say, Cacian. Here are a few I have taken along with me in life. Storm Fear is probably the most personally meaningful, Sennacherib the most beautiful to hear (well, tied with A Midsummer Night's Dream, but that's too long to post here), Ozymandias the most insightful about what the world is, and The Flea the funniest (plus the worst pick up line in history).

    STORM FEAR
    by Robert Frost

    When the wind works against us in the dark,
    And pelts with snow
    The lowest chamber window on the east,
    And whispers with a sort of stifled bark,
    The beast, 'Come out! Come out!'--
    It costs no inward struggle not to go,
    Ah, no! I count our strength,
    Two and a child,
    Those of us not asleep subdued to mark
    How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,--
    How drifts are piled,
    Dooryard and road ungraded,
    Till even the comforting barn grows far away
    And my heart owns a doubt
    Whether 'tis in us to arise with day
    And save ourselves unaided.


    THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB
    by George Gordon, Lord Byron

    The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
    And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
    And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
    When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

    Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
    That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
    Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
    That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

    For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
    And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
    And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
    And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

    And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
    But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
    And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
    And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

    And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
    With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
    And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
    The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

    And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
    And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal
    And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
    Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

    Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelly

    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.”

    THE FLEA
    by John Donne

    Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
    How little that which thou deniest me is;
    It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
    And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
    Thou know’st that this cannot be said
    A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,
    Yet this enjoys before it woo,
    And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
    And this, alas, is more than we would do.

    Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
    Where we almost, nay more than married are.
    This flea is you and I, and this
    Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
    Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met,
    And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
    Though use make you apt to kill me,
    Let not to that, self-murder added be,
    And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

    Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
    Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?
    Wherein could this flea guilty be,
    Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?
    Yet thou triumph’st, and say'st that thou
    Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now;
    ’Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:
    Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me
    Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from, thee.

  4. #4
    On the road, but not! Danik 2016's Avatar
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    I don´t read much poetry so I don´t have many favorite poems, but I liked this one.


    I'm nobody! Who are you?
    Are you nobody, too?
    Then there's a pair of us - don't tell!
    They'd banish us, you know.
    How dreary to be somebody!
    How public, like a frog
    To tell your name the livelong day
    To an admiring bog!

    Author: Emily Dickinson
    "I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
    Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row

  5. #5
    Registered User tailor STATELY's Avatar
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    Too many to list them all; here are a few:

    Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas
    Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson
    The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams
    Caged Bird by Maya Angelou
    I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud/Daffodils by William Wordsworth
    i carry your heart with me by E.E. Cummings

    Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
    tailor STATELY
    tailor

    who am I but a stitch in time
    what if I were to bare my soul
    would you see me origami

    7-8-2015

  6. #6
    Registered User prendrelemick's Avatar
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    A bit grim, but Spring Offensive by Wilfred Owen affects me greatly. The hapless soldiers contemplating the horizon that marks the limit of their existence, then walking towards it.. Very moving - not least because the poet was there .
    Last edited by prendrelemick; 09-01-2019 at 04:56 AM.
    ay up

  7. #7
    On the road, but not! Danik 2016's Avatar
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    Here it is:

    Spring Offensive
    By Wilfred Owen

    Halted against the shade of a last hill,
    They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease
    And, finding comfortable chests and knees
    Carelessly slept.
    But many there stood still
    To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,
    Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.
    Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled
    By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,
    For though the summer oozed into their veins
    Like the injected drug for their bones’ pains,
    Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass,
    Fearfully flashed the sky’s mysterious glass.

    Hour after hour they ponder the warm field—
    And the far valley behind, where the buttercups
    Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up,
    Where even the little brambles would not yield,
    But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands;
    They breathe like trees unstirred.
    Till like a cold gust thrilled the little word
    At which each body and its soul begird
    And tighten them for battle. No alarms
    Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste—
    Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced
    The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done.
    O larger shone that smile against the sun,—
    Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned.

    So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together
    Over an open stretch of herb and heather
    Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned
    With fury against them; and soft sudden cups
    Opened in thousands for their blood; and the green slopes
    Chasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space.

    Of them who running on that last high place
    Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up
    On the hot blast and fury of hell’s upsurge,
    Or plunged and fell away past this world’s verge,
    Some say God caught them even before they fell.
    But what say such as from existence’ brink
    Ventured but drave too swift to sink.
    The few who rushed in the body to enter hell,
    And there out-fiending all its fiends and flames
    With superhuman inhumanities,
    Long-famous glories, immemorial shames—
    And crawling slowly back, have by degrees
    Regained cool peaceful air in wonder—
    Why speak they not of comrades that went under?
    https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe...-56d23ad1f2c15
    Greetings prendelemick
    "I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
    Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row

  8. #8
    Registered User prendrelemick's Avatar
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    Hi Danik. Thanks for doing that.
    ay up

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    I have many favourites, but I often find myself reciting this short lyric by A.E. Housman.

    Into my heart an air that kills
    From yon far country blows;
    What are those blue remembered hills,
    What spires, what farms are those?

    That is the land of lost content,
    I see it shining plain,
    The happy highways where I went
    And cannot come again.

  10. #10
    Registered User kev67's Avatar
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    I am! John Clare


    I am yet what I am none cares or knows
    My friends forsake me like a memory lost
    I am the self consumer of my woes
    Which rise and vanish in oblivious host
    Like shades of love and death's oblivion lost
    And yet I am! and live with memories tossed

    Into the nothingness of scorn and noise
    into the living sea of waking dreams
    Where there is neither sense of life nor joys
    But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems
    And even the dearest that I love the best
    Are strange, nay stranger than the rest

    I long for scenes where man has never trod
    A place where woman never smiled nor wept
    There to abide with my creator, God
    And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept
    Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
    The grass below, above the vaulted sky
    According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was 'a gigantic dwarf', and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.
    Charles Dickens, by George Orwell

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    Poetry appeals when it speaks to you. This one found me in a time of loss. I love it still.

    One Art

    By Elizabeth Bishop

    The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
    so many things seem filled with the intent
    to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

    Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
    of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
    The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

    Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
    places, and names, and where it was you meant
    to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

    I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
    next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
    The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

    I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
    some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
    I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

    —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
    I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
    the art of losing’s not too hard to master
    though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

  12. #12
    On the road, but not! Danik 2016's Avatar
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    Great to read from you, spike!

    I wonder if one of the cities Bishop is referring to, is Petrópolis, where she lived for a long time with Lota de Macedo Soares.
    "I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
    Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row

  13. #13
    Registered User Marcus1's Avatar
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    The Ancient Song of My Blood

    I didn’t drink Spanish
    from my mother’s breast when I came into the world.

    My language was born
    among the trees, and tastes like earth;
    my grandparent’s language is my home,

    If I use this language that’s not mine,
    I use it like a shiny key
    to open doors to another world
    where the words have another voice
    and another way of connecting to the earth.

    This language is the memory of pain
    and I speak it without fear or pain
    because my ancestors bought it
    with their blood.

    In this new language
    I’ll show you my flowering song,
    I’ll bring you the taste of other laments
    the color of other joys….

    This language is only one more key
    to sing the ancient song of my blood.


    Humberto Ak’abal

  14. #14
    Registered User tailor STATELY's Avatar
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    Awesome poem.

    Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
    tailor
    tailor

    who am I but a stitch in time
    what if I were to bare my soul
    would you see me origami

    7-8-2015

  15. #15
    A User, but Registered! tonywalt's Avatar
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    A Bluebird (by Charles Bukowski)

    there’s a bluebird in my heart that
    wants to get out
    but I’m too tough for him,
    I say, stay in there, I’m not going
    to let anybody see
    you.
    there’s a bluebird in my heart that
    wants to get out
    but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
    cigarette smoke
    and the whores and the bartenders
    and the grocery clerks
    never know that
    he’s
    in there.
    there’s a bluebird in my heart that
    wants to get out
    but I’m too tough for him,
    I say,
    stay down, do you want to mess
    me up?
    you want to screw up the
    works?
    there’s a bluebird in my heart that
    wants to get out
    but I’m too clever, I only let him out
    at night sometimes
    when everybody’s asleep.
    I say, I know that you’re there,
    so don’t be
    sad.
    then I put him back,
    but he’s singing a little
    in there, I haven’t quite let him
    die
    and we sleep together like
    that
    with our
    secret pact
    and it’s nice enough to
    make a man
    weep, but I don’t
    weep,
    do you?

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