Help finding the right poems

[modulo]

Hello:

I'm putting together a scrap book for the wife's xmas present. I have all the photos separated into 4 themes:

- arrival of our daughter
- our daughters smile
- mother and daughter
- lasting love (or love in general)

I am having trouble finding beautiful poems that fit those themes, any help is appreciated!!

[quasimodo1]

Trying to avoid beating my own drum, but there are many threads you could use...try the internal search for themes that would match your interests. Also check out a closed thread called "neglected poets"; that has poetry of every stripe but you will have to spend some time looking through the postings. If you have no luck doing it this way--get back to me. Sincerely, quasimodo1

[mayneverhave]

try Yeats' "A Prayer for my Daughter"

[Dark Muse]

I like Morning Song by Syliva Plath

[modulo]

Trying to avoid beating my own drum, but there are many threads you could use...try the internal search for themes that would match your interests. Also check out a closed thread called "neglected poets"; that has poetry of every stripe but you will have to spend some time looking through the postings. If you have no luck doing it this way--get back to me. Sincerely, quasimodo1

Thanks for the advice, and really I knew that but figured I'd give it a try! Looks like it's time to roll up the sleeves and do some digging.

Thanks for the responses, I'm looking at them now.

[Niamh]

For the last theme, The Goodmorrow By John Donne. It was a poem written for his wife. As Was The Anniversary.

[Virgil]

Try this for your daughter.


A Prayer For My Daughter
by William Butler Yeats

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind.
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And-under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.

Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
And later had much trouble from a fool,
While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
Being fatherless could have her way
Yet chose a bandy-leggèd smith for man.
It's certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of plenty is undone.

In courtesy I'd have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful;
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty's very self, has charm made wisc.
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place.

My mind, because the minds that I have loved,
The sort of beauty that I have approved,
Prosper but little, has dried up of late,
Yet knows that to be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.
If there's no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of plenty's horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?

Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will;
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy Still.

And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
Where all's accustomed, ceremonious;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares
Peddled in the thoroughfares.
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.