Favorite poem?

[olegro]

Between Destiny and Circumstance
the Human Voice speaks ...
and when it is muted
the Fingers speak ....
and when they are lamed
the Eyes speak ...
and when they are blinded
the Heart speaks ...
in Ice ... and in Flames
until the last Beat

a prosa poem by a danish poet .. in my translation

Olegro

[metamorphoser]

A Hymn to Venus
by Sappho

O Venus, beauty of the skies,
To whom a thousand temples rise,
Gaily false in gentle smiles,
Full of love-perplexing wiles;
O goddess, from my heart remove
The wasting cares and pains of love.

If ever thou hast kindly heard
A song in soft distress preferred,
Propitious to my tuneful vow,
A gentle goddess, hear me now.
Descend, thou bright immortal guest,
In all thy radiant charms confessed.

Thou once didst leave almighty Jove
And all the golden roofs above:
The car thy wanton sparrows drew,
Hovering in air they lightly flew;
As to my bower they winged their way
I saw their quivering pinions play.

The birds dismissed (while you remain)
Bore back their empty car again:
Then you, with looks divinely mild,
In every heavenly feature smiled,
And asked what new complaints I made,
And why I called you to my aid?

What frenzy in my bosom raged,
And by what cure to be assuaged?
What gentle youth I would allure,
Whom in my artful toils secure?
Who does thy tender heart subdue,
Tell me, my Sappho, tell me who?

Though now he shuns thy longing arms,
He soon shall court thy slighted charms;
Though now thy offerings he despise,
He soon to thee shall sacrifice;
Though now he freezes, he soon shall burn,
And be thy victim in his turn.

Celestial visitant, once more
Thy needful presence I implore.
In pity come, and ease my grief,
Bring my distempered soul relief,
Favour thy suppliant's hidden fires,
And give me all my heart desires.

[JulieC]

anything that edgar allen poe does.

[OrphanPip]

I think this one by Matthew Arnold is one of my favorites.

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Agaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.


Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

[Daphne]

Because I Could Not Stop for Death

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 labour, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

Emily Dickinson

[Angelasutton]

I love poems by Poe, but there's also one by Lermontov I really find amusing
"Gratitude"
For all, for all! I thank you, o my dear:
For passions' deeply hidden pledge,
For poison of a kiss, and stinging of a tear,
Abuse by friends, and enemies' revenge;
For soul's light, extinguished in a prison,
For things by which I was deceived before.
But do not give me any real reason
To give you thanks from now any more.

This is great! I have never read this one before!

[Return Journey]

I really can’t say that I have a favorite poem that I would put over others. As one comes to mind so do many others.
The following poems I enjoy equally for different reasons.

Resolution and Independence by William Wordsworth
Do not go Gentle into that Goodnight by Dylan Thomas
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
A Hymn to God the Father by John Donne
And
The Great Lover by Rupert Brooke

…These I have loved:
White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,
Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;
Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust
Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food;
Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood;
And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;
And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,
Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon;
Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon
Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss
Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is
Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen
Unpassioned beauty of a great machine;
The benison of hot water; furs to touch;
The good smell of old clothes; and other such --
The comfortable smell of friendly fingers,
Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers
About dead leaves and last year's ferns. . . .
Dear names,
And thousand other throng to me!…

[bluesun777]

Check out Taylor Mali. He is most awesome.

[Dinkleberry2010]

to a young child


Margaret, are you grieving
Over goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
with your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! As the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

[MarkC]

Hi,


My favorite poem is, A moments Indulgence by Rabindranath Tagore.

A Moments Indulgence

I ask for a moment's indulgence to sit by thy side. The works
that I have in hand I will finish afterwards.

Away from the sight of thy face my heart knows no rest nor respite,
and my work becomes an endless toil in a shoreless sea of toil.

Today the summer has come at my window with its sighs and murmurs; and
the bees are plying their minstrelsy at the court of the flowering grove.

Now it is time to sit quite, face to face with thee, and to sing
dedication of life in this silent and overflowing leisure.

Rabindranath Tagore

MarkC

[Pryderi Agni]

Currently, it's:

If You Are a Man
D.H. Lawrence

If you are a man, and believe in the destiny of mankind
then say to yourself: we will cease to care
about property and money and mechanical devices,
and open our consciousness to the deep, mysterious life
that we are now cut off from.

The machine shall be abolished from the earth again;
it is a mistake that mankind has made;
money shall cease to be, and property shall cease to perplex
and we will find the way to immediate contact with life
and with one another.

To know the moon as we have never known
yet she is knowable.
To know a man as we have never known
a man, as never yet a man was knowable, yet still shall be.

[MGK]

e.e. cummings - the bigness of cannon

the bigness of cannon
is skilful,

but i have seen
death’s clever enormous voice
which hides in a fragility
of poppies….

i say that sometimes
on these long talkative animals
are laid fists of huger silence.

I have seen all the silence
full of vivid noiseless boys

at Roupy
i have seen
between barrages,

the night utter ripe unspeaking girls.

[sadparadise]

I would like to add a new favorite poem, Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath

[thetinkris]

I ran across this poem while playing the "let's pick random books off the shelves" game at my university's library. I fell in love.


Rob Loewinsohn- Pastoral

Death.
The death of a million
honeydew melons
festering in the fields
east of Tracy.
The scent of death
narcotic in its sweetness
which we mistook for the smell
of fresh-churned butter
until I ran across the road
into the field
& was attacked by flies,
Later
on another road, I smelled myself
the fetor of the living
like locker rooms & loving beds.
& thought about the mutilated melons
which from a distance looked like
a field of wild buttercups.

[wlz]

The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot.