Favorite poem?

[Equality72521]

My teacher read this poem to our group when I was in a Literary Criticism competition for practice one day. Oh my god, I fell in love with it immediately. He read it so well! This has been my favorite poem ever since.


La Belle Dame Sans Merci
John Keats 1884



O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.

I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look’d at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
“I love thee true.”

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sigh’d fill sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream’d
On the cold hill’s side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!”

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.

And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

[quasimodo1]

RED HANRAHAN'S SONG ABOUT IRELAND

THE old brown thorn-trees break in two high over Cummen Strand,
Under a bitter black wind that blows from the left hand;
Our courage breaks like an old tree in a black wind and dies,
But we have hidden in our hearts the flame out of the eyes
Of Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.

The wind has bundled up the clouds high over Knock- narea,
And thrown the thunder on the stones for all that Maeve can say.
Angers that are like noisy clouds have set our hearts abeat;
But we have all bent low and low and kissed the quiet feet
Of Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.

The yellow pool has overflowed high up on Clooth-na-Bare,
For the wet winds are blowing out of the clinging air;
Like heavy flooded waters our bodies and our blood;
But purer than a tall candle before the Holy Rood
Is Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.

[Equality72521]

This one is funny. It's good to read, but if you actually hear Billy Collins reading it, it's hilarious. My entire class was cracking up. lol. It was one of the best weeks all year, we were going over contemporary american poetry. I my copy of the poem and my annotations...



Nostalgia
by Billy Collins

Remember the 1340s? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color of the decade,
and I was draped in one of thos caps that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called "Find the Cow."
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.

Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet
marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of ston.
Out on the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle
while you sister practiced the Daphne all alone in her room.
We borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang.
These days language seems transparent, a badly broken code.

The 1790s will never come again. Childhood was big.
People would take walks to the very tops of hills
and write down that they saw in their journals without speaking.
Our collars were high and our hats were extremely soft.
We would surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs.
It was a wonderful time to be alive, or dead.

I am very fond of the period between 1815 and 1821.
Europe trembled while we sat still for our portraits.
And I would love to return to 1901 if only for a moment,
time enough to wind up a music box and do a few dance steps.

or shoot me back to 1922 or 1941, or at least let me
recapture the serenity of last month when we picked
berries and glided through afternoons in a canoe.

Even this morning would be an improvement over the present.
I was in the garden then, surrounded by the hum of bees
and the Latin names of flowers, watching the early light
flash off the slanted windows of the greenhouse
and silver the limbs on the rows of dark hemlocks.

As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past,
letting my memory rush over them like water
rushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream.
I was even thinking a little about the future, that place
where people are doing a dance we cannot imagine,
a dance whose name we can only guess.

[wessexgirl]

I love this thread, I have so many favourite poems. Here's one of my all-time favs.

To his Coy Mistress
by Andrew Marvell


Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

I also love:


Ode to a Nightingale

MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, 5
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 10

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South! 15
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim: 20

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, 25
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;
Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. 30

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night, 35
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. 40

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; 45
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. 50

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 55
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod. 60

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 65
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that ofttimes hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 70

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades 75
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep? 80

And of course some of the greatest Shakespeare sonnets:


SONNET 116
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.


My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"


My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak,--yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress when she walks, treads on the ground;
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.


When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,--and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings'.


They that have power to hurt and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow;
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces
And husband nature's riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others but stewards of their excellence.
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.


I'll be back with more when I have more time. :D

[Nikola]

FAITH
Here am I - breathing,
Working,
Living
And writing my poetry
(My best ti it giving).
Life and I glower
Across at each other,
And with it I struggle
With all my power.
Life and I quarrel,
But don't draw the moral
That I despise it.
No, just the opposite!
Though I should perist,
Life with its brutal
Claws of steel
Still would I cherish,
Still would I cherish!
Supose round my neck they tie fast
The rope
And they ask:
"Would you like one more hour to live?"
I would instantly cry:
"Untie!
Untie!
Come, quickly untie
The rope, you devils!"
For Life there is nothing
I would not dare.
I would fly
A prototype plane in the sky,
I'd climb in a roaring
Rocket, exploring
Alone
In space
Distant
Planets.
Still would I feel
A joyous thrill
Gazing
Up
At the blue sky.
Still would I feel
A joyous thrill
To be alive,
To go on living.
But look, suppose
You took - how much? -
A single grain
From this my faith,
Then would I rage,
I would rage from pain
Like a panter
Pierced to the heart.
For what of me
Would there remain?
After the theft
I'd be distraught.
To put it plainly
And more directly -
After the theft
I would be naught.
Maybe you wish
You could erase
My faith
In happy days,
My faith -
That tomorrow
Life will be finer,
Life will be wiser?
Pray, how will you smash it?
With bullets?
No! That is unless!
Stop! It's not worth it!
My faith has strong armour
In my sturdy breast,
And bullets able to shatter
My faith
Do not exist,
Do not exist!



This is from Nikola Vapcarov, one of the best bulgarian poets and this is one of my favourite !

[wessexgirl]

I've thought of some more:


When we two are parted
Lord Byron

When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted,
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sank chill on my brow
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well:
Long, long shall I rue thee
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met
In silence I grieve
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.


Christina Rossetti
Remember

REMEMBER me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad


W B Yeats
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.


'Timothy Winters'
Timothy Winters comes to school
With eyes as wide as a football-pool,
Ears like bombs and teeth like splinters:
A blitz of a boy is Timothy Winters.

His belly is white, his neck is dark,
And his hair is an exclamation-mark.
His clothes are enough to scare a crow
And through his britches the blue winds blow.

When teacher talks he won't hear a word
And he shoots down dead the arithmetic-bird,
He licks the pattern off his plate
And he's not even heard of the Welfare State.

Timothy Winters has bloody feet
And he lives in a house on Suez Street,
He sleeps in a sack on the kithen floor
And they say there aren't boys like him anymore.

Old Man Winters likes his beer
And his missus ran off with a bombardier,
Grandma sits in the grate with a gin
And Timothy's dosed with an aspirin.

The welfare Worker lies awake
But the law's as tricky as a ten-foot snake,
So Timothy Winters drinks his cup
And slowly goes on growing up.

At Morning Prayers the Master helves
for children less fortunate than ourselves,
And the loudest response in the room is when
Timothy Winters roars "Amen!"

So come one angel, come on ten
Timothy Winters says "Amen
Amen amen amen amen."
Timothy Winters, Lord. Amen

Charles Causley

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.


My Last Duchess
Robert Browning

That's my last duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps
"Over my lady's wrist too much," or "Paint
"Must never hope to reproduce the faint
"Half-flush that dies along her throat": such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart how shall I say? too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favor at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men good! but thanked
Somehow I know not how as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech which I have not to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
"Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
"Or there exceed the mark" and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and make excuse,
E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

[lolacola]

dulce et decorum est wilfred owen
and tyger tyger william blake and poison tree willaim blake

[quasimodo1]

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 the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every 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 rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed 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. -- {"Alone" by Edgar Allen Poe}

[quasimodo1]

An Apology for the Bottle Volcanic


Sometimes I dip my pen and find the bottle full of fire,
The salamanders flying forth I cannot but admire.
It's Etna, or Vesuvius, if those big things were small,
And then 'tis but itself again, and does not smoke at all.
And so my blood grows cold. I say, "The bottle held but ink,
And, if you thought it otherwise, the worser for your think."
And then, just as I throw my scribbled paper on the floor,
The bottle says, "Fe, fi, fo, fum," and steams and shouts some more.
O sad deceiving ink, as bad as liquor in its way—
All demons of a bottle size have pranced from you to-day,
And seized my pen for hobby-horse as witches ride a broom,
And left a trail of brimstone words and blots and gobs of gloom.
And yet when I am extra good and say my prayers at night,
And mind my ma, and do the chores, and speak to folks polite,
My bottle spreads a rainbow-mist, and from the vapor fine
Ten thousand troops from fairyland come riding in a line.
I've seen them on their chargers race around my study chair,
They opened wide the window and rode forth upon the air.
The army widened as it went, and into myriads grew,
O how the lances shimmered, how the silvery trumpets blew!

Vachel Lindsay

[Mr. Vandemar]

Either "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe or "Tiger" by William Blake.

[carino]

Here something from Pablo Neruda I find this poem extremely passionate as are some of his other love poems.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart. .

[Guinivere]

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of Circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of Chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

[quasimodo1]

Autumn Song

Soon we will plunge ourselves into cold shadows,
And all of summer's stunning afternoons will be gone.
I already hear the dead thuds of logs below
Falling on the cobblestones and the lawn.


All of winter will return to me:
derision, Hate, shuddering, horror, drudgery and vice,
And exiled, like the sun, to a polar prison,
My soul will harden into a block of red ice.


I shiver as I listen to each log crash and slam:
The echoes are as dull as executioners' drums.
My mind is like a tower that slowly succumbs
To the blows of a relentless battering ram.


It seems to me, swaying to these shocks, that someone
Is nailing down a coffin in a hurry somewhere.
For whom? --It was summer yesterday; now it's autumn.
Echoes of departure keep resounding in the air.

--Charles Baudelaire

[quasimodo1]

UNCONQUERABLE



OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud:
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbow'd.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

[quasimodo1]

CROQUIS

by: William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)

THE beach was crowded. Pausing now and then,
He groped and fiddled doggedly along,
His worn face glaring on the thoughtless throng
The stony peevishness of sightless men.
He seemed scarce older than his clothes. Again,
Grotesquing thinly many an old sweet song,
So cracked his fiddle, his hand so frail and wrong,
You hardly could distinguish one in ten.
He stopped at last, and sat him on the sand,
And, grasping wearily his bread-winner,
Staring dim towards the blue immensity,
Then leaned his head upon his poor old hand.
He may have slept: he did not speak nor stir:
His gesture spoke a vast despondency.

[quasimodo1]

Speed the Parting—



I shall not sprinkle with dust
A creature so clearly lunar;
You must die—but of course you must—
And better later than sooner.
But if it should be in a year
That year itself must perish;
How dingy a thing is fear,
And sorrow, how dull to cherish!
And if it should be in a day
That day would be dark by evening,
But the morning might still be gay
And the noon have golden leavening.
And beauty’s a moonlight grist
That comes to the mills of dying;
The silver grain may be missed
But there’s no great good in crying.
Though luminous things are mould
They survive in a glance that crossed them,
And it’s not very kind to scold
The empty air that has lost them.
The limpid blossom of youth
Turns into a poison berry;
Having perceived this truth
I shall not weep but be merry.
Therefore die when you please;
It’s not very wise to worry;
I shall not shiver and freeze;
I shall not even be sorry.
Beautiful things are wild;
They are gone, and you go after;
Therefore I mean, my child,
To charm your going with laughter.
Love and pity are strong,
But wisdom is happily greater;
You will die, I suppose, before long,
Oh, worser sooner than later!

[Guinivere]

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W.H. Auden

[AdoreroDio]

My favorite poem is by Octavio Paz and was originally written in Spanish but Paz rewrote it in English as well.

Here is both ( I personally like the Spanish sound better) :
LA LLAMA, EL HABLA

En un poema leo:
conversar es divino
Pero los dioses no hablan
hacen, deshacen mundos
mientras los hombres hablan
Los dioses, sin palabras,
juegan juegos terribles.

El espíritu baja
y desata las lenguas
pero no habla palabras:
habla lumbre. El lenguaje,
por el dios encendido,
es una profecía
de llamas y una torre
de humo y un desplome
de sílabas quemadas:
ceniza sin sentido.

La palabra del hombre
es hija de la muerte.
Hablamos porque somos
mortales: las palabras
no son signos, son años
Al decir lo que dicen
los nombres que decimos
dicen tiempo: nos dicen.
Somos nombres del tiempo.

Mudos, también los muertos
pronuncian las palabras
que decimos los vivos.
El lenguaje es la casa
de todos en el flanco
del abismo colgada.
Conversar es humano .

FLAME, SPEECH

I read in a poem:
to talk is divine.
But the gods don't speak.
while men do the talking.
They play frightening games
without words.

The spirit descends,
loosening tongues,
but doesn't speak words:
¡t speaks fire.
by the ignited god, language becomes
a prophecy
of flames and a tower
of smoke and a collapse
of syllables burned:
ash without meaning.

The word of man
is the daughter of death.
We talk because we are mortal:
words are not signs,
they are years.
Saying what they say,
the words we are saying
say time: they name us.
We are time's names.
The dead are mute
but they also say
what we are saying.
Language is the house
of all, hanging over
the abyss.
To talk is human.

[lolie]

I love that poetry from Charles Baudelaire ( 19th century)

Reversibility


Angel full of gaiety, do you know anguish,
Shame, remorse, sobs, vexations,
And the vague terrors of those frightful nights
That compress the heart like a paper one crumples?
Angel full of gaiety, do you know anguish?


Angel full of kindness, do you know hatred,
The clenched fists in the darkness and the tears of gall,
When Vengeance beats out his hellish call to arms,
And makes himself the captain of our faculties?
Angel full of kindness, do you know hatred?


Angel full of health, do you know Fever,
Walking like an exile, moving with dragging steps,
Along the high, wan walls of the charity ward,
And with muttering lips seeking the rare sunlight?
Angel full of health, do you know Fever?


Angel full of beauty, do you know wrinkles,
The fear of growing old, and the hideous torment
Of reading in the eyes of her he once adored
Horror at seeing love turning to devotion?
Angel full of beauty, do you know wrinkles?


Angel full of happiness, of joy and of light,
David on his death-bed would have appealed for health
To the emanations of your enchanted flesh;
But of you, angel, I beg only prayers,
Angel full of happiness, of joy and of light!

[quasimodo1]

Chicago



Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:


They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness, ..... {excerpt}

[quasimodo1]

If by dull rhymes our English must be chain’d...



If by dull rhymes our English must be chain’d,

And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet

Fetter’d, in spite of pained loveliness;

Let us find out, if we must be constrain’d,

Sandals more interwoven and complete

To fit the naked foot of poesy;

Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress

Of every chord, and see what may be gain’d

By ear industrious, and attention meet:

Misers of sound and syllable, no less

Than Midas of his coinage, let us be

Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath crown;

So, if we may not let the Muse be free,

She will be bound with garlands of her own.



(1818-1819)

[quasimodo1]

Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight


(In Springfield, Illinois)


It is portentous, and a thing of state
That here at midnight, in our little town
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
Near the old court-house pacing up and down.


Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards
He lingers where his children used to play,
Or through the market, on the well-worn stones
He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.


A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black,
A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl
Make him the quaint great figure that men love,
The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.


He cannot sleep upon his hillside now.
He is among us:—as in times before!
And we who toss and lie awake for long
Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door.


His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings.
Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep?
Too many peasants fight, they know not why,
Too many homesteads in black terror weep. ... {excerpt}

[JoanS]

many... today i cried hearing a not written poem... when shelley died with keats poems in the pocket... amazing...

[DecemberSun]

Love and Friendship

Love is like a wild rose briar
Friendship like the holly tree -
The holly is dark when the rose briar blooms
But which will bloom more constantly?

The wild rose briar is sweet in spring,
It's summer blossoms scent the air,
Yet wait till winter come again
And who will call the briar fair?

Then scorn the silly rose wreath now
And deck thee with the holly's sheen
And when December blights thy brow
He still may leave thy garland green.

Emily Bronte

That's a beautiful poem indeed

[Emil Miller]

There are certainly some very good poems in this thread, but I wonder if anyone can confirm who wrote the following. It might be by Keats or possibly Byron.

Give 'em Hell Liddel

The whitest man I ever knew was give 'em hell Liddel
A nom de guerre appropriate to those who knew him well
Our enemies on hearing it would stand with mouths agape
And tremble at that name renowned from Cairo to the Cape
The Kalahari bedouin and dark Senegalese
Would gaze in wide-eyed wonder at the pinkness of his knees
And whisky drinking Majors were sometimes heard to say
Britannia's rule was safe as long as Liddel chose to stay
But on shaded club verandahs at the setting of the sun
The Majors never realised that Britannia's course was run
For in contemplating empires, it is only true to say
They carry, each within them, the seeds of their decay
As time went by the word went round that all was not quite well
And rumours strange were sometimes heard of give 'em hell Liddel
T'was said that he had lost his nerve while hunting in the bush
Then beaten all his bearers and given them the push
A story ran that in Sudan he got drunk in his room
Then went and wrote four letter words on General Gordon's tomb
His brother officers began to speak of him with fear
They heard that he'd gone native and was carrying a spear
And one told how while on a trek across the open veldt
He'd seen him wearing nothing but a grubby Sam Browne belt
The Governor General hearing this and fearful for the flag
Dashed off a quick report to go by diplomatic bag
The whole of the apalling tale was known within the hour
By those who spend their days within the corridors of power
'Bring Liddel home' the cry went out 'and save the nation's name
Great men like these should never fall into the pit of shame'
They took away his Sam Browne belt, for pinstripe was the norm
In England where they sent him in the hope of his reform
Alas the whole thing was in vain for him there seemed no hope
Some said that drink would get him and others said the rope
Those critics and the Empire have long since passed from sight
But sometimes in the season when the sun is at its height
A wild and unkempt figure dressed in faded khaki drill
Frequents that part of London that is known as Gypsy Hill
By strangers to the region he's identified with ease
Not by his old pith helmet but the pinkness of his knees
There is warning deep within this cautionary tale
For those of you whose knees are of a hue that's rather pale
So if distraught on kneecaps wan you sometimes tend to dwell
Then give a thought to what was done to give 'em hell Liddel
For should your knees be pink as his or even pinker still
You may be led by fate to tread the road to Gypsy Hill

[thedharmabum]

Hymn to Lucifer

Ware, nor of good nor ill, what aim hath act?
Without its climax, death, what savour hath
Life? an impeccable machine, exact
He paces an inane and pointless path
To glut brute appetites, his sole content
How tedious were he fit to comprehend
Himself! More, this our noble element
Of fire in nature, love in spirit, unkenned
Life hath no spring, no axle, and no end.

His body a bloody-ruby radiant
With noble passion, sun-souled Lucifer
Swept through the dawn colossal, swift aslant
On Eden's imbecile perimeter.
He blessed nonentity with every curse
And spiced with sorrow the dull soul of sense,
Breathed life into the sterile universe,
With Love and Knowledge drove out innocence
The Key of Joy is disobedience.

Aleister Crowley

[jjohn488]

I like pomes very much. friend ship and love friend ship means who helped to friend that is friend ship. love means when two heart closed to shared the problems that is love.
===================================
jjohn488

SuperBabyGuide (http://www.superbabyguide.com)

[ntropyincarnate]

Once there came a man
Who said,
"Range me all men of the world in rows."
And instantly
There was terrific clamour among the people
Against being ranged in rows.
There was a loud quarrel, world-wide.
It endured for ages;
And blood was shed
By those who would not stand in rows,
And by those who pined to stand in rows.
Eventually, the man went to death, weeping.
And those who staid in bloody scuffle
Knew not the great simplicity.

~Stephen Crane

[Epistemophile]

'Death Fugue' by Paul Celan

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at evening
we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night
we drink and we drink
we shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie too cramped
A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes
he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Marguerite
he writes it and steps out of doors and the stars are all sparkling
he whistles his hounds to come close
he whistles his Jews into rows has them shovel a grave in the ground
he orders us strike up and play for the dance

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at morning and midday we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes
he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Margeurite
your ashen hair Shulamith we shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie too cramped
He shouts jab this earth deeper you lot there you others sing up and play
he grabs for the rod in his belt he swings it his eyes are blue
jab your spades deeper you lot there you others play on for the dancing

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday and morning we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
a man lives in the house your goldenes Haar Margeurite
your aschenes Haar Shulamith he plays with his vipers
He shouts play death more sweetly Death is a master from Deutschland
he shouts scrape your strings darker you'll rise then in smoke to the sky
you'll have a grave then in the clouds there you won't lie too cramped

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday Death is a master aus Deutschland
we drink you at evening and morning we drink and we drink
this Death is ein Meister aus Deutschland his eye it is blue
he shoots you with shot made of lead shoots you level and true
a man lives in the house your goldenes Haar Margarete
he looses his hounds on us grants us a grave in the air
he plays with his vipers and daydreams
der Tod is ein Meister aus Deutschland
dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Shulamith


(Translated by John Felstiner)

[mmaria]

When I am happy, when I am sad
poems are always around my head
to make me happier, sadness to quit,
and here are my favourite!

Silver
Walter de la Mare

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;

One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;

From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in silver feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws, and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.


Some One
Walter de la Mare

Some one came knocking
At my wee, small door;
Some one came knocking;
I'm sure-sure-sure;
I listened, I opened,
I looked to left and right,
But nought there was a stirring
In the still dark night;
Only the busy beetle
Tap-tapping in the wall,
Only from the forest
The screech-owl's call,
Only the cricket whistling
While the dewdrops fall,
So I know not who came knocking,
at all, at all, at all.

[alakungfu]

This is my all-time favourite poem:

Alfred Noyes (1880-1958)
The Highwayman

PART ONE

I

THE wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

II

He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;
They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

III

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

IV

And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's red-lipped daughter,
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—

V

"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize to-night,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."

VI

He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
(Oh, sweet, black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonliglt, and galloped away to the West.



PART TWO

I

He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon;
And out o' the tawny sunset, before the rise o' the moon,
When the road was a gypsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor,
A red-coat troop came marching—
Marching—marching—
King George's men came matching, up to the old inn-door.

II

They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,
But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
There was death at every window;
And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.

III

They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;
They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
"Now, keep good watch!" and they kissed her.
She heard the dead man say—
Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for me by moonlight;
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!

IV

She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years,
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

V

The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more for the rest!
Up, she stood up to attention, with the barrel beneath her breast,
She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins in the moonlight throbbed to her love's refrain .

VI

Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding,
Riding, riding!
The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still!

VII

Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.

VIII

He turned; he spurred to the West; he did not know who stood
Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!
Not till the dawn he heard it, his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

IX

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.

* * * * * *

X

And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding—
Riding—riding—
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

XI

Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard;
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

[Serenity5815]

I can't remember the author or the title, but I really enjoyed this cute one:

"Shake and shake the ketchup bottle.
None'll come and then alottle."

[qspeechc]

Hhhmmph, just thought I'd add this one, not so sure of my favourite poem of all time, but I really enjoy this one. Wilfred Owen "Greater Love", I really enjoy Owen.

RED lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
O Love, your eyes lose lure
When I beheld eyes blinded in my stead!

Your slender attitude
Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,
Rolling and rolling there
Where God seems not to care;
Till the fierce love they bear
Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude.

Your voice sings not so soft,-
Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft,-
Your dear voice is not dear,
Gentle, and evening clear,
As theirs whom none now hear,
Now earth has stopped their piteous mouthes that coughed.

Heart, you were never hot
Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
And though your hand be pale,
Paler are all which trail
Your cross through flame and hail:
Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.

[Domer121]

"I Remember You As You Were"
By Pablo Neruda

I remember you as you were in the last autumn.
You were the grey beret and the still heart.
In your eyes the flames of the twilight fought on.
And the leaves fell in the water of your soul.

Clasping my arms like a climbing plant
the leaves garnered your voice, that was slow and at peace.
Bonfire of awe in which my thirst was burning.
Sweet blue hyacinth twisted over my soul.

I feel your eyes travelling, and the autumn is far off:
grey beret, voice of a bird, heart like a house
towards which my deep longings migrated
and my kisses fell, happy as embers.

Sky from a ship. Field from the hills:
Your memory is made of light, of smoke, of a still pond!
Beyond your eyes, farther on, the evenings were blazing.
Dry autumn leaves revolved in your soul.

[PhilLFM]

Anything by Poe, Yeats, Eliot and Lawrence is great. With poetry i tend to go with what relates to my life and i find most poetry does not. Howl by Ginsberg is probably my all time favourite poem as i can relate alot to it same goes with Bukowski poems maybe simple but they personally affect me due to the relation i have with the author. For instance the Shoelace by Bukowski.
"It is not the big things that send a man to the mad house
death he is ready for,
or murder, incest, robbery, fires, floods.
No, it is the continuing series of small tragedies that send a man to a mad house"

[ichatfilipina]

my favorite is my created poems.

[prendrelemick]

The Highwayman (a few posts above) is one of my all time faves as well. I love the irrepressible drama of the rhythm.

At this time of year ( that is Rememberance Week) I often think of Wilfred Owen's all too few poems.

Futility

Move him to the sun-
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds,-
Woke, once the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved - still warm- too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
-O what made fatuous sun beams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

[hoope]

Alone

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 the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every 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 rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed 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.

by : Edgar Allan Poe

[Janine]

I have many favorite poems but this one always stands out to me; I first heard it quoted in the "Shakleton" mini-series movie and then after looking up the entire poem I found it to be quite compelling.

Prospice ~ Robert Browning

Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:
For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall,
Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all.
I was ever a fighter, so—one fight more,
The best and the last!
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
And bade me creep past.
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
Of pain, darkness and cold.
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute's at end,
And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
Then a light, then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!

While looking this up online; I found a site with an analysis of the poem. I hope to explore that further when I have time.
The line quoted in the miniseries is: "For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,"...this is my favorite line of the poem.

[Janine]

This is my all-time favourite poem:

The Highwayman ~ Alfred Noyes (1880-1958)

alakungfu,This poem was set to music by Loreena Mckennitt and it is one of my favorites of hers. I always get chills when I listen to the lyrics or read the poem. It is so beautiful.

[prendrelemick]

The Highwayman ~ Alfred Noyes (1880-1958)

alakungfu,This poem was set to music by Loreena Mckennitt and it is one of my favorites of hers. I always get chills when I listen to the lyrics or read the poem. It is so beautiful.


JANINE .Can you tell me the album it's on, I love the singer and the poem. They seem made for each other

[weltanschauung]

parched with thirst am i, and dying.
nay, drink of me, the ever-flowing spring
where on the right is a fair cypress.
who are you? where are you?--i am the son
of earth and of star-filled heaven, but
from heaven alone is my house.



you will find to the left of the house of hades a spring,
and by the side thereof standing a white cypress.
to this spring approach not near.
but you shall find another, from the lake of memory
cold water flowing forth, and there are guardians before it.
say, "i am a child of Earth and starry heaven;
but my race is of heaven alone. this you know yourselves.
but i am parched with thirst and i perish. give me quickly
the cold water flowing forth from the lake of memory."
and of themselves they will give you to drink of the holy spring:
and thereafter you will have lordship among the other heroes.
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c224/facist_jockitch/sh/Unihex.gif

[Guinivere]

Who's the poet ?

[weltanschauung]

Who's the poet ?

its an ancient greek tomb prayer
http://www.metalrecordsonline.com/metalcds/celtic%20frost%202.JPG

[weltanschauung]

on topic:

Tristesses de la lune


Ce soir, la lune rêve avec plus de paresse;
Ainsi qu'une beauté, sur de nombreux coussins,
Qui d'une main distraite et légère caresse
Avant de s'endormir le contour de ses seins,


Sur le dos satiné des molles avalanches,
Mourante, elle se livre aux longues pâmoisons,
Et promène ses yeux sur les visions blanches
Qui montent dans l'azur comme des floraisons.


Quand parfois sur ce globe, en sa langueur oisive,
Elle laisse filer une larme furtive,
Un poète pieux, ennemi du sommeil,


Dans le creux de sa main prend cette larme pâle,
Aux reflets irisés comme un fragment d'opale,
Et la met dans son coeur loin des yeux du soleil.

— Charles Baudelaire

soundtrack included <3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--OfNFi8GJw

[adi_lcool_007]

[LEFT]Sometimes you want to talk

about love and despair

and the ungratefulness of children

A man is no use whatever then .

You want then your mother

or your sister

or the girl with whom you went to through the school,

and your first love ,and her -

first child -a girl-

and your second.

You sit with them and talk .

She sews and you sit and sip

and speak of the rate of rice

and the price of tea

and the scarcity of cheese.

You know both that you 've spoken

of love,despair and ungratefulness of children.

[Vintage34]

Because I'm growing old and will not be here much longer, I like poetry about age, the past, death, people you loved who have died, etc. This is one that I especially like.

Rock Me To Sleep, by Elizabeth Akers Allen

Backward, turn backward, O time, in your flight,
Make me a child again just for tonight;
Mother, come back from that echoless shore,
Take me again to your heart as of yore.

Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,
Smooth all the silver threads out of my hair;
Over my slumbers your loving watch keep;
Rock me to sleep, Mother, rock me to sleep.

Backward, flow backward, oh, tide of the years,
I am so weary of toil and of tears;
Toil without recompense, tears all in vain -
Take them, and give me my childhood again.
I have grown weary of dust and decay -
Weary of flinging my soul - wealth away,
Weary of sowing for others to reap -
Rock me to sleep, Mother rock me to sleep.

Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue;
Mother, O Mother, my heart calls for you!
Many a summer the grass has grown green,
Blossomed and faded, our faces between.
Yet, with strong yearning and passionate pain,
Long I tonight for your presence again.
Come from the silence so long and so deep;
Rock me to sleep, Mother-rock me to sleep.

Over my heart, in the days that are flown,
No love like mother-love ever has shone;
No other worship abides and endures-
Faithful, unselfish, and patient like yours:
None like a mother can charm away pain
From the sick soul and the world-weary brain.
Slumber's soft calms over my heavy lids creep;
Rock me to sleep, Mother-rock me to sleep.

Mother, dear Mother, the years been long,
Since I last listened to your lullaby song.
Sing, then, and unto my soul it shall seem
Womanhood's years have been only a dream.

Clasped to your heart in a loving embrace,
With your light lashes just sweeping my face,
Never hereafter to wake or to weep;
Rock me to sleep, Mother-rock me to sleep.

[Dr. Hill]

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

-Wordsworth

[mercy_mankind]

Qasida in praise of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)
When I saw his light shining forth,
In fear I covered my eyes with my palms,
Afraid for my sight because of the beauty of his form.
So I was scarcely able to look at him at all.
The lights from his light are drowned in his light
and his face shines out like the sun and moon in one.
A spirit of light lodged in a body like the moon,
a mantle made up of brilliant shining stars.
I bore it until I could bear it no longer.
I found the taste of patience to be like bitter aloes.
I could find no remedy to bring me relief
other than delighting in the sight of the one I love.
Even if he had not brought any clear signs with him,
the sight of him would dispense with the need for them.
Muhammad is a human being but not like other human beings.
Rather he is a flawless diamond and the rest of mankind is just stones.
Blessings be on him so that perhaps Allah may have mercy on us
on that burning Day when the Fire is roaring forth its sparks

-Hassan ibn Thabit.
[written 1400 years ago]

[Saladin]

Prometheus

Shroud your heaven, Zeus,
With cloudy vapours,
And do as you will, like the boy
That knocks the heads off thistles,
With oak-trees and mountain-tops;
Now you must leave alone
My Earth for Me,
And my hut, which you did not build,
And my hearth,
The glowing whereof
You envy me.

I know of nothing poorer
Under the sun, than you, you Gods!
Your majesty
Is barely nourished
By sacrificial offerings
And prayerful exhalations,
And should starve
Were children and beggars not
Fools full of Hope.

When I was a child,
And did not know the in or out,
I turned my wandering eyes toward
The sun, as if, beyond, there were
An ear to hear my lament,
A heart, like mine,
To be moved to pity for the afflicted.

Who helped me
Against the pride of the Titans?
Who delivered me from Death,
From Slavery?
Did you not accomplish it all yourself,
My holy, burning Heart?
And shone, young and good,
Deceived, your thanks for salvation
To the sleeping one above?

Should I honour you? Why?
Have you softened the sufferings,
Ever, of the burdened?
Have you stilled the tears,
Ever, of the anguished?
Was I not forged as a Man
By almighty Time
And eternal Fate,
My masters and thine?

Do you somehow imagine
That I should hate Life,
Flee to the desert,
Because not every
Flowering dream should bloom?
Here I sit, I form humans
After my own image;
A race, to be like me,
To sorrow, to weep,
To enjoy and delight itself,
And to heed you not at all -
Like Me!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

[chasestalling]

www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/forians.htm

at the site click on "news" (upper left), scroll down page 1, click on to page 2, scroll and search for orpheus/ballada by vladislav khodasevich as translated to english from the russian by frazier.

[chasestalling]

saladin:

wunderbar und fantastiche. danke schoen.

[backline]

Dover Beach
by Mathew Arnold

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair.
Upon the straights;-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 sea meets the moon-blanched sand,
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 begin again,
With tremendous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the AEgaean, 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 folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear
Its meloncholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wild, 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.

-1848

[Saladin]

Elysium

Past the despairing wail--
And the bright banquets of the Elysian vale
Melt every care away!
Delight, that breathes and moves forever,
Glides through sweet fields like some sweet river!
Elysian life survey!
There, fresh with youth, o'er jocund meads,
His merry west-winds blithely leads
The ever-blooming May!
Through gold-woven dreams goes the dance of the hours,
In space without bounds swell the soul and its powers,
And truth, with no veil, gives her face to the day.
And joy to-day and joy to-morrow,
But wafts the airy soul aloft;
The very name is lost to sorrow,
And pain is rapture tuned more exquisitely soft.

Here the pilgrim reposes the world-weary limb,
And forgets in the shadow, cool-breathing and dim,
The load he shall bear never more;
Here the mower, his sickle at rest, by the streams,
Lulled with harp-strings, reviews, in the calm of his dreams,
The fields, when the harvest is o'er.
Here, he, whose ears drank in the battle roar,
Whose banners streamed upon the startled wind
A thunder-storm,--before whose thunder tread
The mountains trembled,--in soft sleep reclined,
By the sweet brook that o'er its pebbly bed
In silver plays, and murmurs to the shore,
Hears the stern clangor of wild spears no more!
Here the true spouse the lost-beloved regains,
And on the enamelled couch of summer-plains
Mingles sweet kisses with the zephyr's breath.
Here, crowned at last, love never knows decay,
Living through ages its one bridal day,
Safe from the stroke of death!


- Friedrich von Schiller

[prendrelemick]

[LEFT]Sometimes you want to talk

about love and despair

and the ungratefulness of children

A man is no use whatever then .

You want then your mother

or your sister

or the girl with whom you went to through the school,

and your first love ,and her -

first child -a girl-

and your second.

You sit with them and talk .

She sews and you sit and sip

and speak of the rate of rice

and the price of tea

and the scarcity of cheese.

You know both that you 've spoken

of love,despair and ungratefulness of children.


Love it!

It answers Iago's; "To suckle fools and chronicle small beer." jibe, better than Desdemona's retort.

[Shadow Poet]

I enjoy the Promethean bard Percy Bysshe Shelley. One of my favorite verses by him is lines 147 to 159 in the poetical achievement Epipsychidion:


Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare
Beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wrecked.
I never was attached to that great sect,
Whose doctrine is, that each one should select
Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,
And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend
To cold oblivion, though it is in the code
Of modern morals, and the beaten road
Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread,
Who travel to their home among the dead
By the broad highway of the world, and so
With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe,
The dreariest and the longest journey go.

[Lady Marian]

I like the poem "Bells" by Poe. The man was a genius, whether or not you go for morbid stories about crazy people. I don't have it with me at the moment, but he used repetition, euphony, and cacaphony so that you could literally hear the beat of wedding bells and alarm bells. The first are joyful, the second are compared to a demon king dancing "in a happy runic rhyme."

[Pecksie]

I enjoy the Promethean bard Percy Bysshe Shelley. One of my favorite verses by him is lines 147 to 159 in the poetical achievement Epipsychidion:


Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare
Beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wrecked.
I never was attached to that great sect,
Whose doctrine is, that each one should select
Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,
And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend
To cold oblivion, though it is in the code
Of modern morals, and the beaten road
Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread,
Who travel to their home among the dead
By the broad highway of the world, and so
With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe,
The dreariest and the longest journey go.

This fragment is read and mused upon by Freddie, the main character of E. M. Forster's "The Longest Journey" (guess where he got the title!), who reaches some interesting conclusions...

I like "Epipsychidion" too... there are some quite moving passages, such as the one in which he refers to the Moon, the Planet and the Comet...

[Silas Thorne]

I love 'The Mask' by W.B. Yeats.

[Peggy-O]

There's too many, my favourite poets are Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire though.

[Cat_Brenners]

I have always enjoyed The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe.
Cat

[semi-fly]

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

....

- Dylan Thomas

[dafydd manton]

I think that one of the best poets of all time was Idris Davies, a Valley poet from Rhymney, in South Wales. Some of his work is actually in Welsh, the best of the bunch being "Cwm Rhymni", which tells if a youn Silurian poet returning to the coal-minig town in which he grew up. His best work ever, in my humble opinion, was the series Gwalia Deserta, the history of the hardships in the South Wales coalfiele from 1926 to about 1935. Superb

[lotus_flower123]

A Poem that touches my heart and the one i can think of right now is "Is My Team Ploughing" by A. E. Houseman
It is simple but it touches upon the everlasting question of death and mortality...

'Is my team ploughing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?'

Ay, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plough.

'Is football playing
Along the river shore,
With lads to chase the leather,
Now I stand up no more?'

Ay, the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands up, the keeper
Stands up to keep the goal.

'Is my girl happy,
That I thought hard to leave,
And has she tired of weeping
As she lies down at eve?'

Ay, she lies down lightly,
She lies not down to weep:
Your girl is well contented.
Be still, my lad, and sleep.

'Is my friend hearty,
Now I am thin and pine,
And has he found to sleep in
A better bed than mine?'

Yes, lad, I lie easy,
I lie as lads would choose;
I cheer a dead man's sweetheart,
Never ask me whose.

[jasicasth]

I like this poem very much

A special world for you and me
A special bond one cannot see
It wraps us up in its cocoon
And holds us fiercely in its womb.

Its fingers spread like fine spun gold
Gently nestling us to the fold
Like silken thread it holds us fast
Bonds like this are meant to last.

And though at times a thread may break
A new one forms in its wake
To bind us closer and keep us strong
In a special world, where we belog

World Connect (http://www.wconnect.us/)

[jasicasth]

i like this poem
A special world for you and me
A special bond one cannot see
It wraps us up in its cocoon
And holds us fiercely in its womb.

Its fingers spread like fine spun gold
Gently nestling us to the fold
Like silken thread it holds us fast
Bonds like this are meant to last.

And though at times a thread may break
A new one forms in its wake
To bind us closer and keep us strong
In a special world, where we belong.



World Connect (http://www.wconnect.us/)

[PoeticPassions]

I have a lot of favorite poems and so many poets are amazing: Pablo Neruda, William Blake, Shakespeare, Federico Garcia Lorca, Mak Dizdar, Dylan Thomas, John Updike, T.S. Eliot, Yeats, Keats, Byron, Khalil Gibran...

But here are a few poems that I really like:

Clown in the Moon

My tears are like the quiet drift
Of petals from some magic rose;
And all my grief flows from the rift
Of unremembered skies and snows.

I think, that if I touched the earth,
It would crumble;
It is so sad and beautiful,
So tremulously like a dream.

Dylan Thomas

****

Poetry

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.

Pablo Neruda

***

The Gypsy and the Wind

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes
along a watery path of laurels and crystal lights.
The starless silence, fleeing
from her rhythmic tambourine,
falls where the sea whips and sings,
his night filled with silvery swarms.
High atop the mountain peaks
the sentinels are weeping;
they guard the tall white towers
of the English consulate.
And gypsies of the water
for their pleasure erect
little castles of conch shells
and arbors of greening pine.

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes.
The wind sees her and rises,
the wind that never slumbers.
Naked Saint Christopher swells,
watching the girl as he plays
with tongues of celestial bells
on an invisible bagpipe.

Gypsy, let me lift your skirt
and have a look at you.
Open in my ancient fingers
the blue rose of your womb.

Precosia throws the tambourine
and runs away in terror.
But the virile wind pursues her
with his breathing and burning sword.

The sea darkens and roars,
while the olive trees turn pale.
The flutes of darkness sound,
and a muted gong of the snow.

Precosia, run, Precosia!
Or the green wind will catch you!
Precosia, run, Precosia!
And look how fast he comes!
A satyr of low-born stars
with their long and glistening tongues.

Precosia, filled with fear,
now makes her way to that house
beyond the tall green pines
where the English consul lives.

Alarmed by the anguished cries,
three riflemen come running,
their black capes tightly drawn,
and berets down over their brow.

The Englishman gives the gypsy
a glass of tepid milk
and a shot of Holland gin
which Precosia does not drink.

And while she tells them, weeping,
of her strange adventure,
the wind furiously gnashes
against the slate roof tiles.

Federico García Lorca

***

On Pain

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses
your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its
heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the
daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem
less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart,
even as you have always accepted the seasons that
pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the
winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen.

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within
you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy
in silence and tranquillity:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by
the tender hand of the Unseen,

And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has
been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has
moistened with His own sacred tears.

Khalil Gibran

[wsww]

I like this poem.its really nice!
Fire & Ice - Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

[wsww]

Then, this too, its lovely!

A Farewell to False Love
a poem by Sir Walter Raleigh

Farewell false love, the oracle of lies,
A mortal foe and enemy to rest,
An envious boy, from whom all cares arise,
A bastard vile, a beast with rage possessed,
A way of error, a temple full of treason,
In all effects contrary unto reason.

A poisoned serpent covered all with flowers,
Mother of sighs, and murderer of repose,
A sea of sorrows whence are drawn such showers
As moisture lend to every grief that grows;
A school of guile, a net of deep deceit,
A gilded hook that holds a poisoned bait.

A fortress foiled, which reason did defend,
A siren song, a fever of the mind,
A maze wherein affection finds no end,
A raging cloud that runs before the wind,
A substance like the shadow of the sun,
A goal of grief for which the wisest run.

A quenchless fire, a nurse of trembling fear,
A path that leads to peril and mishap,
A true retreat of sorrow and despair,
An idle boy that sleeps in pleasure's lap,
A deep mistrust of that which certain seems,
A hope of that which reason doubtful deems.

Sith* then thy trains my younger years betrayed,[since]
And for my faith ingratitude I find;
And sith repentance hath my wrongs bewrayed*,[revealed]
Whose course was ever contrary to kind*:[nature]
False love, desire, and beauty frail, adieu.
Dead is the root whence all these fancies grew.

[rozreads]

I love so much poetry I could never pick one. But I do especially love Poe's 'Dream Within a Dream' and W.H. Auden's 'Funeral Blues' (Stop All the Clocks).

[Fellow]

I have to go with Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno cynarae by Ernest Dowson When I first came across it online I couldn't get some verses out of my head. So I ended up copying it out by hand(for want of a printer) and committing it to memory. Now it's all there to stay (hopefully) . Morning By Rimbaud comes in at a close second. Of course these are likely to change. I will have to update when the time comes.

[Jeremiah Jazzz]

Shakespeare's Sonnet 116
Shelley's 'Ode to the West Wind'
and this lovely poem by Heather McHugh:

What He Thought
For Fabbio Doplicher

We were supposed to do a job in Italy
and, full of our feeling for
ourselves (our sense of being
Poets from America) we went
from Rome to Fano, met
the Mayor, mulled a couple
matters over. The Italian literati seemed
bewildered by the language of America: they asked us
what does "flat drink" mean? and the mysterious
"cheap date" (no explanation lessened
this one's mystery). Among Italian writers we

could recognize our counterparts: the academic,
the apologist, the arrogant, the amorous,
the brazen and the glib. And there was one
administrator (The Conservative), in suit
of regulation gray, who like a good tour guide
with measured pace and uninflected tone
narrated sights and histories
the hired van hauled us past.
Of all he was most politic--
and least poetic-- so
it seemed. Our last
few days in Rome
I found a book of poems this
unprepossessing one had written: it was there
in the pensione room (a room he'd recommended)
where it must have been abandoned by
the German visitor (was there a bus of them?) to whom
he had inscribed and dated it a month before. I couldn't
read Italian either, so I put the book
back in the wardrobe's dark. We last Americans

were due to leave
tomorrow. For our parting evening then
our host chose something in a family restaurant,
and there we sat and chatted, sat and chewed, till,
sensible it was our last big chance to be Poetic, make
our mark, one of us asked

"What's poetry?
Is it the fruits and vegetables
and marketplace at Campo dei Fiori

or the statue there?" Because I was
the glib one, I identified the answer
instantly, I didn't have to think-- "The truth
is both, it's both!" I blurted out. But that
was easy. That was easiest
to say. What followed taught me something
about difficulty,

for our underestimated host spoke out
all of a sudden, with a rising passion, and he said:

The statue represents
Giordano Bruno, brought
to be burned in the public square
because of his offence against authority, which was to say
the Church. His crime was his belief
the universe does not revolve around
the human being: God is no
fixed point or central government
but rather is poured in waves, through
all things: all things
move. "If God is not the soul itself,
he is the soul OF THE SOUL of the world." Such was
his heresy. The day they brought him forth to die

they feared he might incite the crowd (the man
was famous for his eloquence). And so his captors
placed upon his face
an iron mask
in which he could not speak.

That is how they burned him.
That is how he died,
without a word,
in front of everyone. And poetry--

(we'd all put down our forks by now, to listen to
the man in gray; he went on softly)-- poetry

is what he thought, but did not say.

[Jassica]

I love poetry of Sergei Yesenin... for example, such poem (translated fron Russian to English). But, of course, in Russian it sounds better


No sorrow, no calls, no tears.
Now it's gone, white foam from apple-tree.
Faded, seized by tarnished golden flares,
I will not feel youthful. Never me.

Now you slow down, that's the matter,
You, my heart, that suffered a cold jet.
And the land of calico birch pattern
Hardly tempts my feet to walk o'er that.

Hobo spirit! You're so rare, rare,
Waking flame in mouth. It's now tense.
Oh, my freshness, that I couldn't spare.
Brawling eyes and overflowing sence!

I've become too greedy for desires.
Life of mine? Perhaps, it was a dream?
Me, alone, in early vernal hours
Riding a pink horse, as it cood seem.

We are mortal. In this world none's ever.
Copper leaves are floating. Let them fly.
Be you blest, you beautiful forever
That has come to blossom and to die.

[bazarov]

Oh yes, Yesenin is great! Who am I, what am I?, Black men, Farewell my dear...

[Jassica]

Oh yes, Yesenin is great! Who am I, what am I?, Black men, Farewell my dear...
And "Hooligan's confession", "To the Kachalov's dog", "A letter to mother", "The golden grove has ceased to speak...", "The unspoken, blue, tender..."

[bazarov]

''Don't shout at me...'' It's above my bed.

I hate translate name of poems :lol:

[Jassica]

I hate translate name of poems :lol:
I support you)

[iCherry]

I like everything by Pushkin 'cause his poems arouse so many feelings in me. Love and sadness, laughter and tears... "I loved you once" is amasing. "I loved you so sincerely and so mildly,/As, God permit, may love you someone else" though in Russian it sounds much better: "Я Вас любил так искренно, так нежно/Как дай Вам Бог любимой быть другим".

Also Love Lermontov, especially "the death of the Poet" and "Prophet". Here are the last 12 lines of " The death of the Poet":
And you, oh, vainglory decedents
Of famous fathers, so mean and base,
Who've trod with ushers' feet the remnants
Of clans, offended by the fortune's plays!
In greedy crowd standing by the throne,
The foes of Freedom, Genius, and Repute --
You're hid in shadow of a law-stone,
For you, and truth and justice must be mute! ...

But there is Court of God, you, evil manifold! --
The terrible court: it waits;
It's not reached by a ring of gold,
It knows, in advance, all thoughts' and actions' weights.
Then you, in vain, will try to bring your evil voice on:
It will not help you to be right,
And you will not wash of with all your bloody poison,
The Poet's righteous blood!

Unforgettable. I really was crying while reading them.

[appearances]

I would like to share a favorite of mine by Donald Justice:

FROM

Incident in a Rose Garden


Gardener
Sir, I encountered Death
Just now among our roses
Thin as a scythe he stood there.

I knew him by his pictures
He had on his black coat
Black gloves, and broad black hat.

I think he would have spoken,
Seeing his mouth stood open.
Big it was, with white teeth.

As soon as he beckoned, I ran.
I ran untill I found you.
Sir, I'm quitting my job.

....

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=80787

There is something about it I just seem to love. There have been some great pieces posted so far that I enjoy as well.

[~Sophia~]

I can't narrow down a favorite (there are so many fabulous works) but this one is up there. Also not sure if it's been posted before. Apologies if it has.

The Cinnamon Peeler
by Michael Ondaatje


If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under the rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbour to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...

When we swam once
I touched you in the water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

this is how you touch other women
the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume

and knew

what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in the act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me.

[Sapphire]

Wow... there are so many! It's impossible to choose a favourite!

I'd like to post here though, as I see that nobody mentioned a work of Stephen Crane - and I think he deserves to be mentioned ;)

Amongst my favourites (and one of the few poems I know by heart):

The ocean said to me once,
"Look!
Yonder on the shore
Is a woman, weeping.
I have watched her.
Go you and tell her this -
Her lover I have laid
In cool green hall.
There is wealth of golden sand
And pillars, coral-red;
Two white fish stand guard at his bier.

"Tell her this
And more -
That the king of the seas
Weeps too, old, helpless man.
The bustling fates
Heap his hands with corpses
Until he stands like a child
With a surplus of toys."

In the end, everybody is helpless... even the ones who seem so mighty.

[blithe_spirit]

I have lots of favourite poems but one that never fails to move me is by
W. B.Yeats:


He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven


Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

[Pryderi Agni]

Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gently Into the Good Night", and Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" and "Stopping by Woods..." are the poems closest to my heart.

[Desolation]

'Howl' by Allen Ginsberg changed my life, and the way I view poetry.

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving,
hysterical naked,
Dragging themselves through the negro street at dawn looking for
an angry fix,
Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to
the starry dynamo in the machinery of night"

[greenfroggsplat]

Love Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet 35. It was the first poem of hers that I appreciated :)

If I leave all for thee wilt thou exchange
And be all to me? Shall I never miss
Home-talk and blessings and the common kiss
That comes to each in turn nor count it strange,
When I look up to drop on a new range
Of walls and floors...another home than this?
Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me which is
Filled with dead eyes to tender to know change?
That's hardest if to conquer love has tried,
To conquer grief tries more...as all things prove;
For grief indeed is love and grief beside.
Alas! I have grieved so I am hard to love.
Yet love me--wilt thou? Open thine heart wide,
And fold within the wet wings of thy dove.

[Dubliner]

I suppose it's a bit of an old guy's poem, really, but as I 'mature', a favourite short poem of mine is W B Yeats' 'Politics', which was written towards the end of his life, at which time, although an important political figure of the day, he reflected on what he considered to be the true significance of the situations he was encountering.

HOW can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here's a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there's a politician
That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms!

[dmm]

:yawnb:Pessoa is a must for everyone who loves poetry:


"Autopsychography"

The poet is a fake.
His faking seems so real
That he will fake the ache
Which he can really feel.


And those who read his cries
Feel in the paper tears
Not two aches that are his
But one that is not theirs.


And so in its ring
Giving the mind a game
Goes this train on a string
And the heart is its name.


(translation by Keith Bosley)

This is one of his most notable and known poems. But to have the slightest idea about the difficulty to translate poetry, you may visit http://www.disquiet.com/thirteen.html, where there are thirteen versions of this poem in english.
By the way, thank you, Fontainhas. I was very, very worried before reading ten forum-pages without finding any mention about Pessoa. How it comes? His poems are so beautiful, so real:
(i have a spanish laptop, so forget the grammar)

Vem dos lados da montanha
una cançao que me diz
que, por mais que a alma tenha,
sempre há-de ser infeliz.

O mundo nao é seu lar
e todo que ele lhe der
sao coisas que estao a dar
a quem nao quer receber.

diz isto? Nao sei. Nem voz
ouço, música, à janela
onde me medito a sós
como o luzir de uma estrela.

here it comes my terrible translation:

From the side of the mountain
comes a song saying to me
that, as much as the soul has got
unhappy always has to be

this world is not its home,
and everything offered to it,
are things given
to one who wants not to receive

does it says this? Neither voice
nor music
comes to my open window,
where i meditate alone,
like the shine of a star

Does this translation means something for english readers? I missed both rime and rhythm. Please, let it me know if so.:confused:

One last thing: Has anyone here read "Itaca" (C. Cavafis)?









Okay.... here it goes:

Onda que enrolada tornas, pequena
Ao mar que te trouxe.
E ao recuar te transtornas
Como se o mar nada fosse.

Porque é que levas contigo
só a tua cessação?
E ao voltar ao mar antigo
não levas meu coração?

Á tanto tempo que o tenho
que me pesa de o sentir
Leva-o no som sem tamanho
Com que te oiço fugir!

You're going to have to wait awhile until I get this translated though.

[dmm]

dont you like Marina Tsvietáieva (sorry, translated name in spanish:lol: her "letter to the horsewoman (and other french writings)" is one of the best poetic-prose texts i have ever read!






And "Hooligan's confession", "To the Kachalov's dog", "A letter to mother", "The golden grove has ceased to speak...", "The unspoken, blue, tender..."

[dmm]

i didnt know this poem, which is very beautiful, and reminds me of a couple Pessoa´s poems, although i only have the spanish version. But if you like this poem, ill recommend you to read "Alberto Caeiro´s poems" (one of Pessoa´s pseodonyms)






I suppose it's a bit of an old guy's poem, really, but as I 'mature', a favourite short poem of mine is W B Yeats' 'Politics', which was written towards the end of his life, at which time, although an important political figure of the day, he reflected on what he considered to be the true significance of the situations he was encountering.

HOW can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here's a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there's a politician
That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms!

[Kayrose]

I think one of my favoite poets right now is Carol Ann Duffy. I like the fact that almost all of her poems are sexual in nature....but that it's a more classy kind of sexualness. My favoite from her right now is

Stuffed!

I put two yellow peepers in an owl.
Wow. I fix the grin of Crocodile.
Spiv. I sew the slither of an eel.
I jerk, kick-start, the back hooves of a mule.
Wild. I hold the red rag to a bull.
Mad. I spread the feathers of a gull.

I screw a tight snarl to a weasel.
Fierce. I stitch the flippers on a seal.
Splayed. I pierce the heartbeat of a quail.

I like her to be naked and to kneel.
Tame. My motionless, my living doll.
Mute. And afterwards I like her not to tell.

[Silas Thorne]

Yes, that is an excellent poem, and the imagery in it is very erotic. I must admit, I was at first disturbed by the last stanza. I didn't realise that the speaker in the poem was also a woman.

I love this one, among others:
Dylan Thomas, 'The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower'

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

from http://www.fen.bilkent.edu.tr/~tanatar/theforce.htm

[Kayrose]

Yeah almost all of her poems are like that in nature... I like the poem you posted by the way.

[Moshu]

My favorite right now is by Edna St Vincent Millay... "The Dirge Without Music." Although, my favorite changes quite often and drastically. I have such a love for classic poetry.

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, --- but the best is lost.

The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

I think that says so much; and her words are so enchandting to read aloud.

[Stargazer86]

My very favorite poem is Ryme of the Ancient Mariner by S.T. Coleridge
But for more modern works, I enjoy the works of Allen Ginsberg.

"A Supermarket in California"

"What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the
streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.

In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit
supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles
full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! --- and you,
Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the
meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price
bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and
followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting
artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does
your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel
absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to
shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in
driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you
have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and
stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?"

[kelby_lake]

http://englishhistory.net/byron/poems/dead.html

[pokefreak]

My favorite poem is one by T.S. Eliot called "Whispers of Immortality"


Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.

Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.
Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense;
To seize and clutch and penetrate,
Expert beyond experience,

He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.

Grishkin is nice: her
Russian eye is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.

The couched Brazilian jaguar
Compels the scampering marmoset
With subtle effluence of cat;
Grishkin has a maisonette;

The sleek Brazilian jaguar
Does not in its arboreal gloom
Distil so rank a feline smell
As Grishkin in a drawing-room.

And even the Abstract Entities
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm.

[Nightshade]

I have anew favourite poem, and ok I only know it from a beer ad ( maybe they wrote it? ) but its a GOOD poem or maybe I just like it?anyone copyright being what it is, Im not posting it sepratley but rather linking straight to the ad on youtube. :nod:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7fKmx0Fhfk

[amarna]

maggie and milly and molly and mae

e.e. cummings

maggie and milly and molly and mae
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

mae came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

[Skipetyboo]

II

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied

Who told me time would ease me of my pain!

I miss him in the weeping of the rain;

I want him at the shrinking of the tide;

The old snows melt from every mountain-side,

And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;

But last year's bitter loving must remain

Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.

There are a hundred places where I fear

To go, — so with his memory they brim.

And entering with relief some quiet place

Where never fell his foot or shone his face

I say, "There is no memory of him here!"

And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

- Edna St Vincent Millay

[Seraphina]

probably my favourite poem is Whoso List To Hunt? by Thomas Wyatt, because some of the imagery is beautiful.

Whoso list to hunt? I know where is an hind!
But as for me, alas! I may no more,
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore;
I am of them that furthest come behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer; but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow; I leave off therefore,
For in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt
As well as I, may spend his time in vain!
And graven with diamonds in letters plain,
There is written her fair neck round about;
'Noli me tangere; for Caeser's I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.'

[Beyle]

You Men (English)

Silly, you men-so very adept
at wrongly faulting womankind,
not seeing you're alone to blame
for faults you plant in woman's mind.

After you've won by urgent plea
the right to tarnish her good name,
you still expect her to behave--
you, that coaxed her into shame.


....



http://www.sappho.com/poetry/j_ines.html#Death

[NovemberGuest]

I love Frost...his melencholy voice really draws you in. When you read his poems, you realize the beauty is everywhere. I like "My November Guest" (hence my name).

Poe is another favorite...I'm a peppy sort of person, but when it comes to literature I love his eldrich style.

Tennysson.
Wilde.

"The Wasteland" has a very moving fist line "April is the cruelist month, breeding lilacs from the dead land, mixing memory with desire..." I love it!

[Nick Capozzoli]

This short medieval lyric is haunting:

I have labored sore and suffered death
And now I rest and draw my breath;
But I shall come and call right soon
Heaven and Earth and Hell to doom;
And then shall know, both devil and man
What I was and what I am.

[kilted exile]

It Is Later Than You Think



Lone amid the cafe's cheer,
Sad of heart am I to-night;
Dolefully I drink my beer,
But no single line I write.
There's the wretched rent to pay,
Yet I glower at pen and ink:
Oh, inspire me, Muse, I pray,
~It is later than you think!~

Hello! there's a pregnant phrase.
Bravo! let me write it down;
Hold it with a hopeful gaze,
Gauge it with a fretful frown;
Tune it to my lyric lyre . . .
Ah! upon starvation's brink,
How the words are dark and dire:
It is later than you think.

Weigh them well. . . . Behold yon band,
Students drinking by the door,
Madly merry, ~bock~ in hand,
Saucers stacked to mark their score.
Get you gone, you jolly scamps;
Let your parting glasses clink;
Seek your long neglected lamps:
It is later than you think.

Look again: yon dainty blonde,
All allure and golden grace,
Oh so willing to respond
Should you turn a smiling face.
Play your part, poor pretty doll;
Feast and frolic, pose and prink;
There's the Morgue to end it all,
And it's later than you think.

Yon's a playwright -- mark his face,
Puffed and purple, tense and tired;
Pasha-like he holds his place,
Hated, envied and admired.
How you gobble life, my friend;
Wine, and woman soft and pink!
Well, each tether has its end:
Sir, it's later than you think.

See yon living scarecrow pass
With a wild and wolfish stare
At each empty absinthe glass,
As if he saw Heaven there.
Poor damned wretch, to end your pain
There is still the Greater Drink.
Yonder waits the sanguine Seine . . .
It is later than you think.

Lastly, you who read; aye, you
Who this very line may scan:
Think of all you planned to do . . .
Have you done the best you can?
See! the tavern lights are low;
Black's the night, and how you shrink!
God! and is it time to go?
Ah! the clock is always slow;
It is later than you think;
Sadly later than you think;
Far, far later than you think.


by Robert Service

[DanielleMarie]

Several Donne fans i see...hehe....I have to admit i do love metaphysical poetry, especially Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" simply because I feel it could be put into a modern context....now I have to be careful how i put this....but there is a general sense in todays culture that men gain respect for luring women into bed with them....I'm not saying thats true of every man!!! But i feel Marvell's poem reflects this crudeness! little lines in it make me giggle and I don't know why, it really does emphasise how we are all getting older so quickly! make the most of life! haha!

Then again, I do also like Elliot's "Prufrock". I think this reflects the complexity of our social fears! maybe its just a reflction of my own bizarre mind but i think most people can relate to that poem in some sense and plus its a good one to pick out all the little references to other literature :) xxxxx

[acdouglas92]

Ah! Shel Silverstein?! That brings back some memories. I should pick up one of his anthologies sometime...Anyways, these days I'm into some heavy stuff (or so I'd like to think!):

Percy Shelley
T.S. Eliot
Lord Byron
Robert Frost
the occasional Wordsworth
Maya Angelou

Anybody know of any good poets that follow in the styles of those above? Much thanks in advance!

[acdouglas92]

Then again, I do also like Elliot's "Prufrock". I think this reflects the complexity of our social fears! maybe its just a reflction of my own bizarre mind but i think most people can relate to that poem in some sense and plus its a good one to pick out all the little references to other literature :) xxxxx

Sorry for another post, but I completely agree. His diction is so impressive in "Prufrock", though I don't really understand the mermaid reference. His ideas on social fears are all the more intriguing though!

[UFO420]

One of my favorite poems is one I wrote myself. I know that sound conceited but it was a 150 line poem in iambic pentameter about Shaq saving his neighborhood and Lil Kim from Christopher Walken. Hilarious.

But my real favorite poem is Greater Love by Wilfred Owen:

Red lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
O Love, your eyes lose lure
When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!

Your slender attitude
Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,
Rolling and rolling there
Where God seems not to care;
Till the fierce Love they bear
Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude.

Your voice sings not so soft,—
Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft,—
Your dear voice is not dear,
Gentle, and evening clear,
As theirs whom none now hear
Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.

Heart, you were never hot,
Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
And though your hand be pale,
Paler are all which trail
Your cross through flame and hail:
Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.

[alakungfu]

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud---and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
`Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.

But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
>From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersed vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shall learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

By Samuel Taylor Coleridge

[Silenced Chaos]

Right now, it must be:

'To Autumn'

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

by John Keats


A pleasure for the senses and the intellect. Many poems suggest a mood, but not many actually create an atmosphere as this magnificent piece does.

[PoeticPassions]

There are so many... and amongst the ones I have already posted, I re-read this on the other night and fell in love with it again:

THE CHIMNEY SWEEPER
by William Blake

A little black thing in the snow,
Crying "weep! weep!" in notes of woe!
"Where are thy father and mother? Say!"
"They are both gone up to the church to pray.
"Because I was happy upon the heath,
And smiled among the winter's snow,
They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

"And because I am happy and dance and sing,
They think they have done me no injury,
And are gone to praise God and his priest and king,
Who make up a heaven of our misery."

[rozreads]

love this as well

[angel92]

My Favorite Poem is


Cinderella
by Sylvia Plath

The Prince leans to the girl in scarlet heels,
Her green eyes slant, hair flaring in a fan
Of silver as the rondo slows; now reels
Begin on tilted violins to span

The whole revolving tall glass palace hall
Where guests slide gliding into light like
wine;
Rose candles flicker on the lilac wall
Reflecting in a million flagons' shine,

And glided couples all in whirling trance
Follow holiday revel begun long since,
Until near twelve the strange girl all at once
Guilt-stricken halts, pales, clings to the
prince

As amid the hectic music and cocktail talk
She hears the caustic ticking of the clock.

Read this poem when we had to do presentation on a poem using new critical anylisis.

[PoeticPassions]

Another favorite by someone so sublime, Pablo Neruda:

A SONG OF DESPAIR

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.

Pilot’s dread, fury of a blind diver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed the infinite tenderness,
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle.

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

How terrible and brief was my desire of you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.

And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.

This was my destiny and in it was the voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!

Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!

From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.

You still flowered in songs, you still broke in currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.

Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only the tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one.

ORIGINAL VERSION:

LA CANCIÓN DESESPERADA

Emerge tu recuerdo de la noche en que estoy.
El río anuda al mar su lamento obstinado.

Abandonado como los muelles en el alba.
Es la hora de partir, oh abandonado!

Sobre mi corazón llueven frías corolas.
Oh sentina de escombros, feroz cueva de náufragos!

En ti se acumularon las guerras y los vuelos.
De ti alzaron las alas los pájaros del canto.

Todo te lo tragaste, como la lejanía.
Como el mar, como el tiempo. Todo en ti fue naufragio!

Era la alegre hora del asalto y el beso.
La hora del estupor que ardía como un faro.

Ansiedad de piloto, furia de buzo ciego,
turbia embriaguez de amor, todo en ti fue naufragio!

En la infancia de niebla mi alma alada y herida.
Descubridor perdido, todo en ti fue naufragio!

Te ceñiste al dolor, te agarraste al deseo.
Te tumbó la tristeza, todo en ti fue naufragio!

Hice retroceder la muralla de sombra,
anduve más allá del deseo y del acto.

Oh carne, carne mía, mujer que amé y perdí,
a ti en esta hora húmeda, evoco y hago canto.

Como un vaso albergaste la infinita ternura,
y el infinito olvido te trizó como a un vaso.

Era la negra, negra soledad de las islas,
y allí, mujer de amor, me acogieron tus brazos.

Era la sed y el hambre, y tú fuiste la fruta.
Era el duelo y las ruinas, y tú fuiste el milagro.

Ah mujer, no sé cómo pudiste contenerme
en la tierra de tu alma, y en la cruz de tus brazos!

Mi deseo de ti fue el más terrible y corto,
el más revuelto y ebrio, el más tirante y ávido.

Cementerio de besos, aún hay fuego en tus tumbas,
aún los racimos arden picoteados de pájaros.

Oh la boca mordida, oh los besados miembros,
oh los hambrientos dientes, oh los cuerpos trenzados.

Oh la cópula loca de esperanza y esfuerzo
en que nos anudamos y nos desesperamos.

Y la ternura, leve como el agua y la harina.
Y la palabra apenas comenzada en los labios.

Ese fue mi destino y en él viajó mi anhelo,
y en él cayó mi anhelo, todo en ti fue naufragio!

Oh, sentina de escombros, en ti todo caía,
qué dolor no exprimiste, qué olas no te ahogaron!

De tumbo en tumbo aún llameaste y cantaste.
De pie como un marino en la proa de un barco.

Aún floreciste en cantos, aún rompiste en corrientes.
Oh sentina de escombros, pozo abierto y amargo.

Pálido buzo ciego, desventurado hondero,
descubridor perdido, todo en ti fue naufragio!

Es la hora de partir, la dura y fría hora
que la noche sujeta a todo horario.

El cinturón ruidoso del mar ciñe la costa.
Surgen frías estrellas, emigran negros pájaros.

Abandonado como los muelles en el alba.
Sólo la sombra trémula se retuerce en mis manos.

Ah más allá de todo. Ah más allá de todo.

Es la hora de partir. Oh abandonado!

[PoeticPassions]

Neruda's Poem 20... Tonight I write the saddest lines... is stunning as well!

[Amarilis]

I like a lot of poems... I think I can´t choose just one :lol: I don´t know whether you all know a Spanish poet who lived in the 19the century, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. He is one of our most knowns writers... Here you have a little poem by him...


What is poetry? you say while you pierce
in my pupil your blue pupil.
What is poetry! You are asking me?
Poetry is you.

[Beautifull]

the awesomest poem i ever read?! ugh, can't pick! The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost is one of the goodies though!

[Mr. Dark]

Stopping By Woods Ona Snowy Evening - Robert Frost
Through a Glass, Darkly - George S. Patton
Auguries of Innocence - William Blake


a few others I'm forgetting

[dara.cv]

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,--act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;--

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

[Ivan_Karamazov]

Favorite poems are hard to pick, aren't they? I'd probably say that, while there are a lot of old poets whose works I love, there's something about Dylan Thomas that really gets me.

Find Meat On Bones - Dylan Thomas
And Death Shall Have No Dominion - Dylan Thomas

[David R]

Who Goes With Fergus by W.B. Yeats

Who will go drive with Fergus now,
And pierce the deep woods woven shade,
And dance upon the level shore?
Young man, lift up your russet brow,
And lift your tender eyelids, maid,
And brood on hopes and fear no more

And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love's bitter mystery;
For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breast of the dim sea
And all dishevelled wandering stars.

[LMK]

To Make a Prairie
by Emily Dickenson

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

[JuniperWoolf]

Ophelia by Rimbaud made me cry and stare into space for a good long while the first time that I ever read it, but you have to get the right English translation which I can't find on the internet and I can't find my book to copy it right now. I remember that the one that I like starts off:

Where the stars sleep in the calm black stream,
like some great lily, pale Ophelia floats,
slowly floats, wrapped in her veils like a dream.
Half heard from the woods, halloo's from distant throats.

[David R]

Hi guys,

I've just been reading Keats' Ode to a Nightingale, one of my favourite poems. I like the second stanza especially - it is like an Ode to drink!

Here it is:

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep delved earth,
Tasting of flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunbirth mirth!
O, for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim.

I don't think any poet could best that, except maybe Rimbaud? What do you think, Juniperwoolf?

David

[Angry Young Man]

El Pueblo by Pablo Neruda. When I was 16 I was looking for some left-wing poetry and picked up the Fully Empowered collection. I love all of the poems in that collection, but in particular the more political poems. I have a particular affection for Neruda because he was a poet believing in Marxism rather than a Marxist writing poetry. It's defeating that so much left-wing poetry is just Politburo-approved toss.

Another favourite is Shelley's Sensitive Plant. I can't quite explain why exept that I adore Shelley.

[DanielBenoit]

T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land has always been a personal favorite.

I love John Milton's Lycidas for its sound and rhythm, though its multiple references to Greek myths and Christain symbols has left me a bit overwhelmed the first or second time reading.

Anything by Wallace Stevens mezmorizes me.

Lets see. . . . .

Recently I've discovered Tennyson's Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal which I find so elegant and natural:

Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:
The firefly wakens: waken thou with me.

Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.

Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.

Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.

Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake:
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.

[white camellia]

This one...from Emily Dickinson:


There's a certain Slant of light
Winter Afternoons -
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes -

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us -
We can find no scar
But internal difference
Where the Meanings, are -

None may teach it - Any -
'T is the Seal Despair -
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air -

When it comes, the Landscape listens -
Shadows - hold their breath -
When it goes, 't is like the Distance
On the look of Death -

[Virgil]

This one...from Emily Dickinson:


There's a certain Slant of light
Winter Afternoons -
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes -

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us -
We can find no scar
But internal difference
Where the Meanings, are -

None may teach it - Any -
'T is the Seal Despair -
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air -

When it comes, the Landscape listens -
Shadows - hold their breath -
When it goes, 't is like the Distance
On the look of Death -

That is a great one Camelia.

I came across this little poem by Denise Levertov that just sparkeled:


The Avowal
by Denise Levertov

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit's deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.

[white camellia]

Glad you like it, Virgil.

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,


How beautiful. : --)

[Dry_Snail]

its difficult to pick one facourite poem...but Death of a Poet by rainer Marial Rilke is one of them for sure...this is how it starts..

He Lay.
His high-propped face could only peer
in pale rejection at the silent cover,
now that the world an all this knowledge of her,
torn from the senses of her lover,
had fallen back to the unfeeling year.

[Albion]

I am reminded of the pianist, Arthur Rubinstein's, reply to a journalist who asked him to name his favourite piece. "Favourites are for amateurs", he replied dismissively.

One ought to be reticent in blazoning any particular poet or writer because ones knowledge, even in today's literate society, cannot embrace the totality of all literature. Furthermore, one may choose a poet or writer as one's favourite but one should not necessarily assume that he or she wrote one's favourite work. It is possible that a minor poet or writer has, exceptionally, written a work exceeding any of those in the favourite's canon.

Nonetheless, I confess to being an unrepentant amateur and have my favourites. In poetry, it is Tennyson, whose 200th anniversary it is this year, 2009. Unfortunately, with such a huge output as his, I cannot maintain that I like all his works; but I admire him for his facility with words and his ability to conjure mood and atmosphere from imagination. However, my favourite poem must be Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind". What lyrical flights does that portray! What limitations to mankind!

My favourite author is George Eliot. I am reasonably well read (but only in European literature and with many gaps) but consider even Tolstoy's "War and Peace", often proclaimed as the worlds greatest novel, inferior to her "Middlemarch" (a case of my favourite author writing my favourite book). This is a novel weaving at least four stories into one with deep psychological insight together with love, death and resolution.

I would also like to nominate Richard Wagner. He is known as one of the greatest composers but the fact that he set texts written by himself is often overlooked. Many disparage his efforts but I suspect they have not read his works as poetry. Each music drama offers huge lengths of great poetic text far beyond the achievement of most poets. Even great playwrights such as Shakespeare (another favourite) were not always able to write poetry throughout their plays; and Wagner not only wrote consistently throughout a particular work but also varied his style to suit each piece.

These are personal choices which may be disparaged by others, particularly since I prefer 19th century works to any others. But, in accordance with my observation above, I do not claim that other periods or continents cannot offer better examples. Indeed, I recommend absorbing modern writers: we cannot live constantly in the past but should look forward to new creations. In particular, we cannot be forever immersed in 19th century music, much as I love it: but that is matter for another forum.

[Natalia Andria]

Thanks for this fantastic idea , it makes me read several poems for the first time .
Really my favorite poem is " There is a certain slant of light " by Emilly Dickinson :

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons--
That opresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes--

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us--
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the meanings are--

None may teach it--Any--
'Tis the Seal Despair--
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air--

When it comes, the Landscape listens--
Shadows--hold their breath--
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death--

-- Emily Dickinson

[Pryderi Agni]

Thanks for this fantastic idea , it makes me read several poems for the first time .
Really my favorite poem is " There is a certain slant of light " by Emilly Dickinson :

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons--
That opresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes--

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us--
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the meanings are--

None may teach it--Any--
'Tis the Seal Despair--
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air--

When it comes, the Landscape listens--
Shadows--hold their breath--
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death--

-- Emily Dickinson

WOW. That is inspirational, not to mention wonderful. Dickinson is just the best for these kinds of poems.

[The Comedian]

I listen to Edward Hirsch's "Wild Gratitude" almost daily, like a favorite song, on my way to work.

[rimbaud]

Ophelia by Rimbaud made me cry and stare into space for a good long while the first time that I ever read it, but you have to get the right English translation which I can't find on the internet and I can't find my book to copy it right now. I remember that the one that I like starts off:

Where the stars sleep in the calm black stream,
like some great lily, pale Ophelia floats,
slowly floats, wrapped in her veils like a dream.
Half heard from the woods, halloo's from distant throats.

i love that one, it's definitely one of my favorites
also you can find every poem by Rimbaud on www.mag4.net in both english and french

[isidro]

I confess myself far more interested in "that Latin stuff" than in Pound.

Browning "My Last Duchess" and "Porphyria's Lover" are definitely up there as well as anything by William Blake and am currently studying Dante in the original tongue and terza rima. Good stuff.

[D.P.Trottier]

personally Ill always be a fan of Arthur Rimbaud:

Departure

Enough seen. The vision has been met in every air.
Enough had. Distant sounds of cities, in the evening,
and in the sun, and always.
Enough known. Life's injunctions. O sounds and visions!
Departure in new affection and new noise.

[Hurricane]

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.

-William Ernest Henley

Simple, but says it all.

[soundofmusic]

I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.

:nod:Thank you for the reminder of this wonderful poem; a favorite of mine since childhood.

[sadparadise]

Do not go gentle into that good night by. Dylan Thomas

The first time I encountered this poem was while listening to a radio program. The program was a live to air from Toronto a day or so after the assassination of John Lennon. It was a candlelight vigil. One of the readers was Long John Baldry and he read the best version that I have ever heard of Do not go gentle into that good night. It was fantastic! I wish I could get a copy of that.


Do not go gentle into that good night

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I also loved Ode to a mouse by Robbie Burns. My grandfather use to recite it to me when I was a wee lad . I thought it was a horror story! I guess I was too young to understand the language e.g Wee sleekit cowrin tim'rous beastie. Too funny!!!

[Olympia]

There are great the poets that I like, especially Spanish speakers, since still I can´t read well in other languages and believe that the poetry ... loses with the translations.

Between the poets of my country, Spain, that I recommend... the great Lorca, Miguel Hernández, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Leopoldo Maria Panero, Pedro Salinas...

Out of my Language I give up myself to Poe, Rilke, Paul Valery, Rimbaud and Baudelaire among different many...

A Francisco
Suave como el peligro atravesaste un día
con tu mano imposible la frágil medianoche
y tu mano valía mi vida, y muchas vidas
y tus labios casi mudos decían lo que era el pensamiento.
Pasé una noche a ti pegado como a un árbol de vida
porque eras suave como el peligro,
como el peligro de vivir de nuevo.

L. Mª Panero

Posesión del miedo

¿A qué fuerza convoco, yo que un tiempo hice brotar
los tallos con mi aliento y ahuyenté las sombras?
Hoy esta sal en los labios, ¿de qué mar la traigo?
¿De dónde este temblor que me desarma?
Conozco tu perfil: eres el miedo
que vive agazapado en la quimera.

Y llamo al amor, a sus huestes de plata, a sus naves
de fuego que surcan seguras
las aguas encrespadas de un espejo.
Voy a hacer el amor con mi miedo,
a inventarle un cuerpo firme, a penetrarlo
a hacerle gemir de deseo.

Quiero al miedo desnudo, rendido, tendido en el suelo,
excitado, sudoroso, imberbe.
Quiero una fiesta de carne con el espíritu aterido,
el intruso que ciega las ventanas.
Que se vuelva boca abajo y se ofrezca
rogando fuerza en su flaqueza.
Entrar y salir. Dentro y fuera. Dar y amagar con quitar
y que la auténtica paz sea la guerra.
Y liberar mi alma prisionera
con gritos de placer en sus entrañas.

De "La posesión del miedo" 1996

I´m sorry, I suppose that is difficult to many of you to read spanish

[isidro]

Me gusta espanol! LOL! And Dylan Thomas is awesome!

[Dr Jekyll]

I am a big fan of Thomas Dylan :)

"Never and never, my girl riding far and near
In the land of the hearthstone tales, and spelled asleep,
Fear or believe that the wolf in the sleepwhite hood
Loping and bleathing roughly and blithely shall leap,
My dear, my dear
Out of a lair in the flocked leaves in the dew dipped year
To eat your heart in the house in the rosy wood.

Sleep good, for ever, slow and deep, spelled rare and wise,
My girl ranging the night in the rose and shire
Of the hobnail tails: no gooseherd or swine will turn
Into a homestall king or hamlet of fire
And prince of ice
To court the honeyed heart from your side before sunrise
In a spinney of ringed boys and ganders, spike and burn,

Nor the innocent lie in the rooting dingle wooed
And staved, and riven among plumes my rider weep.
From the broomed witch's spume you are shielded by fern
And flower of country sleep and the greenwood keep.
Lie fast and soothed,
Safe be and smooth from the bellows of the rushy brood."

[bsbdesja]

Tintern Abbey is one of my favourite poems as well! It's so powerfully emotional, even now having read it many times and memorised it, I can still feel its pull.

I also really like Yeat's 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' (it reminds me a little of Thoreau's philosophy of life in 'Walden' which I have just finished); Thomas Hardy's 'The Darkling Thrush' which always cheers me up; 'Ode to a Nightingale' by Keats; and another of Wordsworth's which makes me ache in sympathy with his grief--'Surprised by Joy'.

[Arwenstar]

Not thou but I by Philip Bourke
Anyone likes this poem? Or has anyone got an opinion- positive or negative- about that?

[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.

[MarkBastable]

...just one? Well, I might go for Prufrock, or some cummings, a Frost or a Graves, or one of Harsent's Punch sequence.

But today - and tomorrow it might be different - I'll choose this...

Musee des Beaux Arts - Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on

[GypsyDream]

One of my favorite poems is a fairly simple one (but I think it is better for that) It is by Leigh Hunt:

Jenny Kiss'd me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss'd me
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kissed me.

I have many other poems that I love, but for some reason this one has stayed with me.

[JackieGinger]

why, this thread is addictive...

[Pensive]

One of my favorite poems is a fairly simple one (but I think it is better for that) It is by Leigh Hunt:

Jenny Kiss'd me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss'd me
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kissed me.

I have many other poems that I love, but for some reason this one has stayed with me.
A beautiful poem indeed, I must add. :)

[wlz]

Sestina: Altaforte by Ezra Pound

LOQUITUR: En Bertans de Born. Dante Alighieri put this man in hell
for that he was a stirrer up of strife. Eccovi! Judge ye! Have I dug
him up again? The scene is at his castle, Altaforte. "Papiols" is his
jongleur. "The Leopard," the device of Richard Coeur de Lion.

I

Damn it all! all this our South stinks peace.
You whoreson dog, Papiols, come! Let's to music!
I have no life save when the swords clash.
But ah! when I see the standards gold, vair, purple, opposing
And the broad fields beneath them turn crimson,
Then howl I my heart nigh mad with rejoicing.

II

In hot summer I have great rejoicing
When the tempests kill the earth's foul peace,
And the lightning from black heav'n flash crimson,
And the fierce thunders roar me their music
And the winds shriek through the clouds mad, opposing,
And through all the riven skies God's swords clash.

III

Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash!
And the shrill neighs of destriers in battle rejoicing,
Spiked breast to spiked breat opposing!
Better one hour's stour than a year's peace
With fat boards, bawds, wine and frail music!
Bah! there's no wine like the blood's crimson!

IV

And I love to see the sun rise blood-crimson.
And I watch his spears through the dark clash
And it fills all my heart with rejoicing
And pries wide my mouth with fast music
When I see him so scorn and defy peace,
His long might 'gainst all darkness opposing.

V

The man who fears war and squats opposing
My words for stour, hath no blood of crimson
But is fit only to rot in womanish peace
Far from where worth's won and the swords clash
For the death of such sluts I go rejoicing;
Yea, I fill all the air with my music.

VI

Papiols, Papiols, to the music!
There's no sound like to swords swords opposing,
No cry like the battle's rejoicing
When our elbows and swords drip the crimson
And our charges 'gainst "The Leopard's" rush clash.
May God damn for ever all who cry "Peace!"

VII

And let the music of the swords make them crimson!
Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash!
Hell blot black for always the thought "Peace!"

[sammyuk]

This might have already been posted in this thread, but I'm not going through 45 pages, so I'll just post it anyway :)
I haven't really read that much poetry to be honest, but my favourite I've read so far is Ted Hughes' Thistles, as you may be able to tell from my signature. The poem in full:



Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men
Thistles spike the summer air
And crackle open under a blue-black pressure.

Every one a revengeful burst
Of resurrection, a grasphed fistful
Of splintered weapons and Icelandic frost thrust up

From the underground stain of a decayed Viking.
They are like pale hair and the gutturals of dialects.
Every one manages a plume of blood.

Then they grow grey like men.
Mown down, it is a feud. Their sons appear
Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground.

[boomin0024]

I like Stopping by Woods on A Snowy Evening by Robert Frost....

[Armand2u]

Don't know much on poetry,lol.Rhime Of The Ancient Mariner,Beowulf,the Robert Frost poem I quoted from below,The Boy Who Laughed At Santa Claus,Casey At The Bat,Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven and To Helen.That's about my limit.Oh and Four Ruthless Rhymes,but I only remember three of them

Making toast by the fireside Nurse fell in the grate and died
But what makes it ten times worse All the toast was burnt with nurse.

There's been an accident they said Your servant's cut in half,He's dead
Oh that is terrible but please Send me the half that's got my keys.

Billy in one of his nice new sashes Fell in the fire and was burned to ashes
Now although the room groes chilly I haven't the heart to poke up Billy.

[alexar]

Oh yes - I remember scraps -

Always hold on tight to nurse
For fear of finding Something Worse

good advice.

[LeavesOfGrass]

Keats' Ode To A Nightingale is one that I'm fond of, but also, Whitman's Crossing Brooklyn Ferry. Someone referenced William Carlos Williams earlier, but I never could enjoy his work. Another antiquated and overlooked poem is Timor Mortis Conturbat Me. I suggest everyone check it out.

[Babyguile]

Blackberrying by Sylvia Plath

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,
Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,
A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea
Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries
Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes
Ebon in the hedges, fat
With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.
I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.
They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides

Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks --
Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.
Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.
I do not think the sea will appear at all.
The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within.
I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,
Hanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.
The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.
One more hook, and the berries and bushes end.

The only thing to come now is the sea.
From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,
Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.
These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.
I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me
To the hills' northern face, and the face is orange rock
That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space
Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths
Beating and beating at an intractable metal

[yunxin]

It Is the Hour 此刻 --George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron

It is the hour when from the boughs
The nightingale's high note is heard;
It is the hour -- when lover's vows
Seem sweet in every whisper'd word;
And gentle winds and waters near,
Make music to the lonely ear.
Each flower the dews have lightly wet,
And in the sky the stars are met,
And on the wave is deeper blue,
And on the leaf a browner hue,
And in the Heaven that clear obscure
So softly dark, and darkly pure,
That follows the decline of day
As twilight melts beneath the moon away.

[L.M. The Third]

Great thread! Can't figure out why my computer won't let me get to the last page here:crash:
I have so many favorites, but here are two Milton poems that I've been obsessed with lately, and I bet no one has posted. Very religious, I know, but they are so packed with meaning on music, poetry, and humanity. And besides that, I just love the flow and choice of words. You can judge if they deserve the attention I'm giving them.


At A Solemn Music

Blest pair of sirens, pledges of heaven's joy,
Sphere-born harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse,
Wed your divine sounds, and mixed power employ,
Dead things with inbreathed sense able to pierce,
And to our high-raised fantasy present
That undisturbed song of pure concent,
Aye sung before the sapphire-coloured throne
To him that sits thereon,
With saintly shout and solemn jubilee;
Where the bright seraphim in burning row
Their loud uplifted angel-trumpets blow,
And the cherubic host in thousand choirs
Touch their immortal harps of golden wires,
Hymns devout and holy psalms
Singing everlastingly.

That we on earth, with undiscording voice,
May rightly answer that melodious noise;
As once we did, till disproportioned sin
Jarred against nature's chime, and with harsh din
Broke the fair music that all creatures made
To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed
In perfect diapason, whilst they stood
In first obedience, and their state of good.
O may we soon again renew that song,
And keep in tune with heaven, till God ere long
To his celestial consort us unite,
To live with him, and sing in endless morn of light.

[idnami]

Has anyone put this one up yet? Sailing to Byzantium by W.B. Yeats.
My favorite bit is the first half on the second stanza.

THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come

[woody247]

this has always been a personal favourite.
it is exceptionally beautiful in its simplicity.

On a Discovered Curl of Hair

When your soft welcomings were said,
This curl was waving on your head,
And when we walked where breakers dinned
It sported in the sun and wind,
And when I had won your words of grace
It brushed and clung about my face.
Then, to abate the misery
Of absentness, you gave it me.

Where are its fellows now? Ah, they
For brightest brown have donned a gray,
And gone into a caverned ark,
Ever unopened, always dark!

Yet this one curl, untouched of time,
Beams with live brown as in its prime,
So that it seems I even could now
Restore it to the living brow
By bearing down the western road
Till I had reached your old abode.

February 1913.

By Thomas Hardy, in memory of his darling Emma

[Emmaline]

Elizabeth Bishop - One Art

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.

[Emmaline]

I carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is doneby only me is your doing, my darling)

I fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you

Here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

I carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

I carry your heart with me - EE Cummings

[Emmaline]

Love is always patient and kind; it is never jealous. Love
is never boastful or conceited...
It is never rude or selfish...It does not take offense, and it
is not resentful.

Love takes no pleasure in other people's sins but
delights in truth. It is always ready to excuse, to trust, to
hope, and to endure whatever comes.

[Emmaline]

I feel like I've known you forever
Although I only met you sometime this past year
But our friendship will remain forever
No matter what shall cross our paths and hearts

The best thing that's happened to me
Is finding a forever friend like you
You're there to listen, help, and talk to
And best of all, I know I can confide in you

Some say the best love is one sprung from friendship
So I feel this is why we should try
Time leads us in this direction
Should we follow on down the line?

Friendship and love are always intertwined
Too close which sometimes causes confusion
But if we don't try, we will never know if it was meant to be
But forever you will remain my friend

I don't know if this is going to work
I'm not totally sure we should try
But I have all these mixed feelings
Bottled up inside

I love you both inside and out as my best friend
And I know that you love me that way too
So when I say "best friends forever"
That even means when I'm saying" Goodbye, I love you, too."

[Emmaline]

The Highwayman--Alfred Noyes

The wind was a torrent of darkness upon the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight looping the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding--
Riding--riding--
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door.

He'd a French cocked hat on his forehead, and a bunch of lace at his chin;
He'd a coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of fine doe-skin.
They fitted with never a wrinkle; his boots were up to his thigh!
And he rode with a jeweled twinkle--
His rapier hilt a-twinkle--
His pistol butts a-twinkle, under the jeweled sky.

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred,
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter--
Bess, the landlord's daughter--
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

Dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim, the ostler listened--his face was white and peaked--
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord's daughter--
The landlord's black-eyed daughter;
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say:

"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart; I'm after a prize tonight,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light.
Yet if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."

He stood upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair in the casement! His face burnt like a brand
As the sweet black waves of perfume came tumbling o'er his breast,
Then he kissed its waves in the moonlight
(O sweet black waves in the moonlight!),
And he tugged at his reins in the moonlight, and galloped away to the west.

He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon.
And out of the tawny sunset, before the rise of the moon,
When the road was a gypsy's ribbon over the purple moor,
The redcoat troops came marching--
Marching--marching--
King George's men came marching, up to the old inn-door.

They said no word to the landlord; they drank his ale instead,
But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed.
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets by their side;
There was Death at every window,
And Hell at one dark window,
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.

They had bound her up at attention, with many a sniggering jest!
They had tied a rifle beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
"Now keep good watch!" and they kissed her. She heard the dead man say,
"Look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though Hell should bar the way."

She twisted her hands behind her, but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years,
Till, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

The tip of one finger touched it, she strove no more for the rest;
Up, she stood up at attention, with the barrel beneath her breast.
She would not risk their hearing, she would not strive again,
For the road lay bare in the moonlight,
Blank and bare in the moonlight,
And the blood in her veins, in the moonlight, throbbed to her love's refrain.

Tlot tlot, tlot tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hooves, ringing clear;
Tlot tlot, tlot tlot, in the distance! Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding--
Riding--riding--
The redcoats looked to their priming! She stood up straight and still.

Tlot tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot tlot, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
Her eyes grew wide for a moment, she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight--
Her musket shattered the moonlight--
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him--with her death.

He turned, he spurred to the West; he did not know who stood
Bowed, with her head o'er the casement, drenched in her own red blood!
Not till the dawn did he hear it, and his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
Blood-red were his spurs in the golden noon, wine-red was his velvet coat
When they shot him down in the highway,
Down like a dog in the highway,
And he lay in his blood in the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.

And still on a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a gypsy's ribbon looping the purple moor,
The highwayman comes riding--
Riding--riding--
The highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard,
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred,
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter--
Bess, the landlord's daughter--
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

[ConstantReader]

If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

–Rudyard Kipling

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms

I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voide. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my sould is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
-Pablo Neruda

The Prophet, Joy and Sorrow
Then a woman said, "Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow."

And he answered:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.

Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.

When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.
-Khalil Gibran

Each of these has touched my soul and influenced my life at one point or another in my life.
Now I have shared them with you! Comments welcome!
ConstantReader

[jet.thursday]

__________
Look back with longing eyes and know that I will follow,
Lift me up in your love as a light wing lifts a swallow,
Let our flight be far in sun or blowing rain--
But what if I heard my first love calling me again?

Hold me on your heart as the brave sea holds the foam,
Take me far away to the hills that hide your home:
Peace shall thatch the roof and love shall latch the door--
But what if I heard my first love calling me once more?

[Il Dante]

Choosing an all-time favorite poem is extremely difficult. But I can say with certitude that the following is my favorite romantic era poem:

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap'd for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

—Percy Bysshe Shelley

[rondon9898]

I have two favourites, which may have been mentioned before. Either Browning's 'My Last Duchess', or perhaps even better, Charles Baudelaire's 'Hymne à la Beauté'. if you haven't read it, PLEASE do so one day - it's utterly wonderful. Certainly worth learning French for.

De Satan ou de Dieu, qu'importe? Ange ou Sirène,
Qu'importe, si tu rends, — fée aux yeux de velours,
Rythme, parfum, lueur, ô mon unique reine! —
L'univers moins hideux et les instants moins lourds?


CJ

[Revolte]

I have a bit of a bias on this one, it was the poem that got me heavy into poetry.

Edgar Allan Poe - The Happiest Day

I. The happiest day--the happiest hour
My seared and blighted heart hath known,
The highest hope of pride and power,
I feel hath flown.

II. Of power! said I? Yes! such I ween
But they have vanished long, alas!
The visions of my youth have been--
But let them pass.

III. And pride, what have I now with thee?
Another brow may ev'n inherit
The venom thou hast poured on me--
Be still my spirit!

IV. The happiest day--the happiest hour
Mine eyes shall see--have ever seen
The brightest glance of pride and power
I feel have been:

V. But were that hope of pride and power
Now offered with the pain
Ev'n _then_ I felt--that brightest hour
I would not live again:

VI. For on its wing was dark alloy
And as it fluttered--fell
An essence--powerful to destroy
A soul that knew it well.

[MUMUKSHA]

The Highwayman--Alfred Noyes

The wind was a torrent of darkness upon the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight looping the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding--
Riding--riding--
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door.

He'd a French cocked hat on his forehead, and a bunch of lace at his chin;
He'd a coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of fine doe-skin.
They fitted with never a wrinkle; his boots were up to his thigh!
And he rode with a jeweled twinkle--
His rapier hilt a-twinkle--
His pistol butts a-twinkle, under the jeweled sky.

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred,
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter--
Bess, the landlord's daughter--
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

Dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim, the ostler listened--his face was white and peaked--
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord's daughter--
The landlord's black-eyed daughter;
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say:

"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart; I'm after a prize tonight,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light.
Yet if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."

He stood upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair in the casement! His face burnt like a brand
As the sweet black waves of perfume came tumbling o'er his breast,
Then he kissed its waves in the moonlight
(O sweet black waves in the moonlight!),
And he tugged at his reins in the moonlight, and galloped away to the west.

He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon.
And out of the tawny sunset, before the rise of the moon,
When the road was a gypsy's ribbon over the purple moor,
The redcoat troops came marching--
Marching--marching--
King George's men came marching, up to the old inn-door.

They said no word to the landlord; they drank his ale instead,
But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed.
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets by their side;
There was Death at every window,
And Hell at one dark window,
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.

They had bound her up at attention, with many a sniggering jest!
They had tied a rifle beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
"Now keep good watch!" and they kissed her. She heard the dead man say,
"Look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though Hell should bar the way."

She twisted her hands behind her, but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years,
Till, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

The tip of one finger touched it, she strove no more for the rest;
Up, she stood up at attention, with the barrel beneath her breast.
She would not risk their hearing, she would not strive again,
For the road lay bare in the moonlight,
Blank and bare in the moonlight,
And the blood in her veins, in the moonlight, throbbed to her love's refrain.

Tlot tlot, tlot tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hooves, ringing clear;
Tlot tlot, tlot tlot, in the distance! Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding--
Riding--riding--
The redcoats looked to their priming! She stood up straight and still.

Tlot tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot tlot, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
Her eyes grew wide for a moment, she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight--
Her musket shattered the moonlight--
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him--with her death.

He turned, he spurred to the West; he did not know who stood
Bowed, with her head o'er the casement, drenched in her own red blood!
Not till the dawn did he hear it, and his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
Blood-red were his spurs in the golden noon, wine-red was his velvet coat
When they shot him down in the highway,
Down like a dog in the highway,
And he lay in his blood in the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.

And still on a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a gypsy's ribbon looping the purple moor,
The highwayman comes riding--
Riding--riding--
The highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard,
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred,
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter--
Bess, the landlord's daughter--
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

I had loved it when we read it in school. It still has a special place in my heart.:nod: But, now there others too.:biggrin5: Esp. in the ballad form I love The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

[Lost_Souls]

*Double Post*

[Lost_Souls]

I agree with The Waste Land. There are many ways of reading it, but once you figure out the network of allusions you just have to stand back and marvel at the 'fragments he has shored against his ruin'

On a lighter note, Emily Dickinson's release of supressed passion is quite powerful:



Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile the winds
To a heart in port,
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.

Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!

[Perscors]

I turned to speak to God
About the world's despair:
But to make matters worse
I found He wasn't there.

God turned to speak to me
(don't anybody laugh)
God found I wasn't there _
At least not over half.

Robert Frost

I hadn't read this before, great poem! I love many Frost poems, particularly Design which I always read to my fundie Creationist or rather "Intelligent Design" friends:

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

[Darkling]

'Ode to a Nightingale' by Keats.

Ode to a Nightingale

MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, 5
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 10

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South! 15
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim: 20

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, 25
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;
Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. 30

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night, 35
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. 40

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; 45
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. 50

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 55
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod. 60

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 65
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that ofttimes hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 70

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades 75
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?

[Wilde woman]

A few people have mentioned my favorite poet - Gerard Manley Hopkins - so I'm going to post my two favorites by him.



Carrion Comfort

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist - slack they may be - these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, or choose not to be.

But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlamb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?

Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.
Cheer whom though? The hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.



The Windhover

Caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on a swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend; the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, - the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

[kittypaws]

Here’s my two cents.....

Nothing Gold Can Stay
By Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

— Robert Frost

Canis Major
By Robert Frost

The great Overdog
That heavenly beast
With a star in one eye
Gives a leap in the east.

He dances upright
All the way to the west
And never once drops
On his forefeet to rest.

I'm a poor underdog,
But to-night I will bark
With the great Overdog
That romps through the dark.
- Robert Frost

I am a huge admirer of Robert Frost and am glad to see I am in good company here at LitNet! These two are my favorite and I have read many different interpretations of both. The best ever was the one on Canis Major I stumbled upon on a site called MxxXxxxxxx.....gotta luv it!

"The whole poem is, to put it bluntly, quite obviously a masturbation fantasy put into verse." By Berlepsch.

Kittypaws

[Whistle]

I don't know why but for some reason I LOVE Shel Silverstein

Rain

I opened my eyes
And looked up at the rain,
And it dripped in my head
And flowed into my brain,
And all that I hear as I lie in my bed
Is the sli****y-slosh of the rain in my head.

I step very softly,
I walk very slow,
I can't do a handstand--
I might overflow,
So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said--
I'm just not the same since there's rain in my head.

[sonia1234]

I like Catullus, Mike and Shel Silverstein poems a lot......

[Alexander III]

The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever,
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle;--
Why not I with thine?

See! the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven,
If it disdained it's brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea;--
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?


Percy Bysshe Shelley

[Gregory Samsa]

Tomas Tranströmer

Allegro

I play Haydn after a black day
and feel a simple warmth in my hands.

The keys are willing. Soft hammers strike.
The resonance green, lively, and calm.

The music says freedom exists
and someone doesn't pay the emperor tax.

I push down my hands in my Haydnpockets
and imitate a person looking on world calmly.

I hoist the Haydnflag––it signifies:
"We don't give in. But want peace."

The music is a glass-house on the slope
where the stones fly, the stones roll.

And the stones roll right through
but each pane stays whole.



Madrigal

I inherited a dark wood where I seldom go. But a day will come when the dead and the living change places. The wood will be set in motion. We are not without hope. The most serious crimes will remain unsolved in spite of the efforts of many policemen. In the same way there is somewhere in our lives a great unsolved love. I inherited a dark wood, but today I’m walking in the other wood, the light one. All the living creatures that sing, wriggle, wag and crawl! It’s spring and the air is very strong. I have graduated from the university of oblivion and am as empty-handed as the shirt on the washing-line.


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

Czeslaw Milosz

So Little

I said so little.
Days were short.

Short days.
Short nights.
Short years.

I said so little.
I couldn't keep up.

My heart grew weary
From joy,
Despair,
Ardor,
Hope.

The jaws of Leviathan
Were closing upon me.

Naked, I lay on the shores
Of desert islands.

The white whale of the world
Hauled me down to its pit.

And now I don't know
What in all that was real.

[Pryderi Agni]

Czeslaw Milosz

So Little

I said so little.
Days were short.

Short days.
Short nights.
Short years.

I said so little.
I couldn't keep up.

My heart grew weary
From joy,
Despair,
Ardor,
Hope.

The jaws of Leviathan
Were closing upon me.

Naked, I lay on the shores
Of desert islands.

The white whale of the world
Hauled me down to its pit.

And now I don't know
What in all that was real.

It's interesting that you should quote Milosz, as I was just reading about his Captive Minds in the New York Review of Books blog. A link (http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/jul/13/captive-minds-then-and-now/), if you wanna follow it.

[Sebas. Melmoth]

Baudelaire's 'A Carrion' from The Flowers of Evil:

Une Charogne
Rappelez-vous l'objet que nous vîmes, mon âme,
Ce beau matin d'été si doux:
Au détour d'un sentier une charogne infâme
Sur un lit semé de cailloux,
Les jambes en l'air, comme une femme lubrique,
Brûlante et suant les poisons,
Ouvrait d'une façon nonchalante et cynique
Son ventre plein d'exhalaisons.
Le soleil rayonnait sur cette pourriture,
Comme afin de la cuire à point,
Et de rendre au centuple à la grande Nature
Tout ce qu'ensemble elle avait joint;
Et le ciel regardait la carcasse superbe
Comme une fleur s'épanouir.
La puanteur était si forte, que sur l'herbe
Vous crûtes vous évanouir.
Les mouches bourdonnaient sur ce ventre putride,
D'où sortaient de noirs bataillons
De larves, qui coulaient comme un épais liquide
Le long de ces vivants haillons.
Tout cela descendait, montait comme une vague
Ou s'élançait en pétillant;
On eût dit que le corps, enflé d'un souffle vague,
Vivait en se multipliant.
Et ce monde rendait une étrange musique,
Comme l'eau courante et le vent,
Ou le grain qu'un vanneur d'un mouvement rythmique
Agite et tourne dans son van.
Les formes s'effaçaient et n'étaient plus qu'un rêve,
Une ébauche lente à venir
Sur la toile oubliée, et que l'artiste achève
Seulement par le souvenir.
Derrière les rochers une chienne inquiète
Nous regardait d'un oeil fâché,
Epiant le moment de reprendre au squelette
Le morceau qu'elle avait lâché.
— Et pourtant vous serez semblable à cette ordure,
À cette horrible infection,
Etoile de mes yeux, soleil de ma nature,
Vous, mon ange et ma passion!
Oui! telle vous serez, ô la reine des grâces,
Apres les derniers sacrements,
Quand vous irez, sous l'herbe et les floraisons grasses,
Moisir parmi les ossements.
Alors, ô ma beauté! dites à la vermine
Qui vous mangera de baisers,
Que j'ai gardé la forme et l'essence divine
De mes amours décomposés!

======================

A Carrion
Do you remember the thing we saw, my soul,
That summer morning, so beautiful, so soft:
At a turning in the path, a filthy carrion,
On a bed sown with stones,
Legs in the air, like a lascivious woman,
Burning and sweating poisons,
Opened carelessly, cynically,
Its great fetid belly.
The sun shone on this fester,
As though to cook it to a turn,
And to return a hundredfold to great Nature
What she had joined in one;
And the sky saw the superb carcass
Open like a flower.
The stench was so strong, that you might think
To swoon away upon the grass.
The flies swarmed on that rotten belly,
Whence came out black battalions
Of spawn, flowing like a thick liquid
Along its living tatters.
All this rose and fell like a wave,
Or rustled in jerks;
One would have said that the body, fun of a loose breath,
Lived in this its procreation.
And this world gave out a strange music,
Like flowing water and wind,
Or a winnower's grain that he shakes and turns
With rhythmical grace in his basket.
The forms fade and are no more than a dream,
A sketch slow to come
On the forgotten canvas, and that the artist completes
Only by memory.
Behind the boulders an anxious b!+ch
Watched us with angry eyes,
Spying the moment to regain in the skeleton
The morsel she had dropped.
— And yet you will be like this excrement,
This horrible stench,
O star of my eyes, sun of my being,
You, my angel, my passion.
Yes, such you will be, queen of gracefulness,
After the last sacraments,
When you go beneath the grasses and fat flowers,
Moldering amongst the bones.
Then, my beauty, say to the vermin
Which will eat you with kisses,
That I have kept the shape and the divine substance
Of my decomposed loves!

[Gregory Samsa]

It's interesting that you should quote Milosz, as I was just reading about his Captive Minds in the New York Review of Books blog. A link (http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/jul/13/captive-minds-then-and-now/), if you wanna follow it.


I really like Milosz. Thank you for the interesting link.

[Zothar]

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost.

[pandorama]

What You Should Know to be a Poet

all you can know about animals as persons.
the names of trees and flowers and weeds.
the names of stars and the movements of planets
and the moon.
your own six senses, with a watchful elegant mind.
at least one kind of traditional magic:
divination, astrology, the book of changes, the tarot;

dreams.
the illusory demons and the illusory shining gods.
kiss the *** of the devil and eat sh*t;
**** his horny barbed ****,
**** the hag,
and all the celestial angels
and maidens perfum’d and golden-

& then love the human: wives husbands and friends
children’s games, comic books, bubble-gum,
the weirdness of television and advertising.

work long, dry hours of dull work swallowed and accepted
and lived with and finally lovd. exhaustion,
hunger, rest.

the wild freedom of the dance, extasy
silent solitary illumination, entasy

real danger. gambles and the edge of death.

- Gary Snyder

[ladderandbucket]

Robinson Jeffers is my favourite poet. I don't know how he is regarded by the literary establishment. I suspect he is deeply unfashionable. His poems can be depressing but I see a kind of joy in his view of the world and the insignificance of human beings within it.

From The Bloody Sire

What but the wolf’s tooth whittled so fine
The fleet limbs of the antelope?
What but fear winged the birds, and hunger
Jewelled with such eyes the great goshawk’s head?
Violence has been the sire of all the world’s values.

Who would remember Helen’s face
Lacking the terrible halo of spears?
Who formed Christ but Herod and Caesar,
The cruel and bloody victories of Caesar?
Violence, the bloody sire of all the world’s values.

[iamnobody]

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
"It is futile," I said,
" You will never-"

"You lie," he cried,
And ran on.
-Stephen Crane

[iamnobody]

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance fo their doubting too
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies
Or being hated, don't give way to hating
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise
If you can Dream and not make dreams your master
If you can Think and not make thouhgts your aim
If you can meet wih Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken
And stoop, and build 'em up with worn out tools
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch and toss
And lose and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss
If you can force all your heart, and nerve, and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone
And so hold on, when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them,"Hold on"
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds worth of distance run
Yours is the Earth, and everything thats in it
And, which is more, you will be a man my son

[LostNBrevity]

Anabelle Lee by Edgar Allen Poe. I love how he talks about a topic that can be almost gruesome in a way that makes it sound like a nursery rhyme. Its fascinating how the style contrasts so starkly with the content.

[Sine_lege]

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe and
Five o' Clock Shadow by John Betjeman

[Jassy Melson]

Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas

[MUMUKSHA]

I don't know how many souls I have... by Fernando Pessoa (http://portugal.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=7084&x=1/)

and

A Dream Within A Dream by Edgar Allan Poe (http://www.online-literature.com/poe/2140//)

[Verisimilitude]

The Quiet World by Jeffrey McDaniel and
Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold

[The Ol' Man]

A Coat by W.B. Yeats


I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eyes
As though they'd wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there's more enterprise
In walking naked.



Whatever You Say, Say Nothing by Seamus Heaney


I
I'm writing this just after an encounter
With an English journalist in search of 'views
On the Irish thing.' I'm back in winter
Quarters where the bad news is no longer news,

Where media-men and stringers sniff and point,
Where zoom lenses, recorders and coiled leads
Litter the hotels. The times are out of joint
But I incline as much to rosary beads

As to the jottings and analyses
Of politicians and newspapermen
Who've scribbled down the long campaign from gas
And protest to gelignite and Sten,

Who proved upon their pulses 'escalate,'
'Backlash' and 'crack down,' 'the provisional wing,'
'Polarization' and 'long-standing hate.'
Yet I live here, I live here too, I sing,

Expertly civil-tongued with civil neighbours
On the high wires of first wireless reports,
Sucking the fake taste, the stony flavours
Of those sanctioned, old, elaborate retorts:

'Oh, it's disgraceful, surely, I agree.'
'Where's it going to end?' 'It's getting worse.'
'They're murderers,' 'Internment, understandably...'
The 'voice of sanity' is getting hoarse.

III
'Religion's never mentioned here,' of course.
'You know them by their eyes,' and hold your tongue.
'One side's as bad as the other,' never worse.
Christ, it's near time some small leak was sprung

In the great dykes the Dutchman made
To dam the dangerous tide that followed Seamus.
Yet for all this art and sedentary trade
I am incapable. The famous

Northern reticence, the tight gag of place
And times: yes, yes. Of the 'wee six' I sing
Where to be saved you only must save face
And whatever you say, you say nothing.

Smoke-signals are loud-mouthed compared with us:
Manoeuvrings to find out name and school,
Subtle discrimination by addresses
With hardly an exception to the rule

That Norman, Ken and Sidney signalled Prod
And Seamus (call me Sean) was sure-fire Pape.
O land of password, handgrip, wink and nod,
Of open minds as open as a trap,

Where tongues lie coiled, as under flames lie wicks,
Where half of us, as in a wooden horse,
Were cabin'd and confined like wily Greeks,
Besieged within the siege, whispering morse.

IV
This morning from a dewy motorway
I saw the new camp for the internees:
A bomb had left a crater of fresh clay
In the roadside, and over in the trees

Machine-gun posts defined a real stockade.
There was that white mist you get on a low ground
And it was deja-vu, some film made
Of Stalag 17, a bad dream with no sound.

Is there a life before death? That's chalked up
In Ballymurphy. Competence with pain,
Coherent miseries, a bite and sup:
We hug our little destiny again.




A dream of jealousy and punishment, by Heaney, are good poems.
Eliot's work is profound, as is Auden's, who, to my consternation, I haven't
seen mentioned on the thread.



Funeral Blues by W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.


In Praise Of Limestone by W.H. Auden


If it form the one landscape that we, the inconstant ones,
Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly
Because it dissolves in water. Mark these rounded slopes
With their surface fragrance of thyme and, beneath,
A secret system of caves and conduits; hear the springs
That spurt out everywhere with a chuckle,
Each filling a private pool for its fish and carving
Its own little ravine whose cliffs entertain
The butterfly and the lizard; examine this region
Of short distances and definite places:
What could be more like Mother or a fitter background
For her son, the flirtatious male who lounges
Against a rock in the sunlight, never doubting
That for all his faults he is loved; whose works are but
Extensions of his power to charm? From weathered outcrop
To hill-top temple, from appearing waters to
Conspicuous fountains, from a wild to a formal vineyard,
Are ingenious but short steps that a child's wish
To receive more attention than his brothers, whether
By pleasing or teasing, can easily take.

Watch, then, the band of rivals as they climb up and down
Their steep stone gennels in twos and threes, at times
Arm in arm, but never, thank God, in step; or engaged
On the shady side of a square at midday in
Voluble discourse, knowing each other too well to think
There are any important secrets, unable
To conceive a god whose temper-tantrums are moral
And not to be pacified by a clever line
Or a good lay: for accustomed to a stone that responds,
They have never had to veil their faces in awe
Of a crater whose blazing fury could not be fixed;
Adjusted to the local needs of valleys
Where everything can be touched or reached by walking,
Their eyes have never looked into infinite space
Through the lattice-work of a nomad's comb; born lucky,
Their legs have never encountered the fungi
And insects of the jungle, the monstrous forms and lives
With which we have nothing, we like to hope, in common.
So, when one of them goes to the bad, the way his mind works
Remains incomprehensible: to become a pimp
Or deal in fake jewellery or ruin a fine tenor voice
For effects that bring down the house, could happen to all
But the best and the worst of us...
That is why, I suppose,
The best and worst never stayed here long but sought
Immoderate soils where the beauty was not so external,
The light less public and the meaning of life
Something more than a mad camp. 'Come!' cried the granite wastes,
"How evasive is your humour, how accidental
Your kindest kiss, how permanent is death." (Saints-to-be
Slipped away sighing.) "Come!" purred the clays and gravels,
"On our plains there is room for armies to drill; rivers
Wait to be tamed and slaves to construct you a tomb
In the grand manner: soft as the earth is mankind and both
Need to be altered." (Intendant Caesars rose and
Left, slamming the door.) But the really reckless were fetched
By an older colder voice, the oceanic whisper:
"I am the solitude that asks and promises nothing;
That is how I shall set you free. There is no love;
There are only the various envies, all of them sad."

They were right, my dear, all those voices were right
And still are; this land is not the sweet home that it looks,
Nor its peace the historical calm of a site
Where something was settled once and for all: A back ward
And dilapidated province, connected
To the big busy world by a tunnel, with a certain
Seedy appeal, is that all it is now? Not quite:
It has a worldy duty which in spite of itself
It does not neglect, but calls into question
All the Great Powers assume; it disturbs our rights. The poet,
Admired for his earnest habit of calling
The sun the sun, his mind Puzzle, is made uneasy
By these marble statues which so obviously doubt
His antimythological myth; and these gamins,
Pursuing the scientist down the tiled colonnade
With such lively offers, rebuke his concern for Nature's
Remotest aspects: I, too, am reproached, for what
And how much you know. Not to lose time, not to get caught,
Not to be left behind, not, please! to resemble
The beasts who repeat themselves, or a thing like water
Or stone whose conduct can be predicted, these
Are our common prayer, whose greatest comfort is music
Which can be made anywhere, is invisible,
And does not smell. In so far as we have to look forward
To death as a fact, no doubt we are right: But if
Sins can be forgiven, if bodies rise from the dead,
These modifications of matter into
Innocent athletes and gesticulating fountains,
Made solely for pleasure, make a further point:
The blessed will not care what angle they are regarded from,
Having nothing to hide. Dear, I know nothing of
Either, but when I try to imagine a faultless love
Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur
Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.

[Feddie]

I hate to admit that I'm not very widely read when it comes to poetry, but this would have to be the most beautiful poem I have ever read.

Desiderata by Max Ehrmann

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexatious to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

[Gizlam]

My favourite poem.... oh what a question.

In my mind Larkin and Duffy are having a rather epic tooth and nail fight. And although Duffy fights an interesting if not a little unfeminine battle Larkin comes out on top.

Nevermind Duffy. She fought well.

Larkin you are the winner with the poem.... This be the verse.

However much this poem enchants me I dont think I'll write it out. Being relatively new I dont know the forums guide of the naughty words. So I'll leave it to you to do the research.

It is just fascinating

Goodbye world... See you further down the path

[rosenoir]

When it comes to poetry, the Romantic poets are the best! Namely, William Wordsworth with his childhood nostalgia; John Keats with his piercing melancholy; and William Blake, with his superb observations of good, evil and nature in his cryptic poetry. I love William Blake! Oh, and of course, William Shakespeare. It is so hard to choose only one!

[Truth teller]

Dream within a dream - Poe

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty - Shelley

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell - Blake

[Revolte]

I've had a new favorite poem for a while now. Hawkman wrote it :) "The Anarchist And The Cat".

[tonywalt]

Charles Bukowski
I Met A Genius
I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.

it was the first time I'd
realized
that.

[Lod Nael]

Great poem Monica