Favorite poem?

FIRST WEEKS by contemporary poet...Sharon Olds

Those first weeks, I don’t know if I knew
how to love our daughter. Her face looked crushed,
crumpled with worry-and not even
despair, but just depression, a look of
endurance. The skin of her face was finely
wrinkled, there were wisps of hair on her ears,
she looked a little like a squirrel, suspicious,
tranced. And smallish, 6.13,
wizened-she looked as if she were wincing
away from me without moving. The first
moment I had seen her, my glasses off,
in the delivery room, a blur of blood,
and blue skin, and limbs, I had known her,
upside down, and they righted her, and there
came that faint, almost sexual, wail, and her
whole body flushed rose.
When I saw her next, she was bound in cotton,
someone else had cleaned her, wiped
the inside of my body off her
and combed her hair in narrow scary
plough-lines. She was ten days early;
sleepy, the breast so engorged it stood out nearly
even with the nipple, her lips would so much as
approach it, it would hiss and spray.
In two days we took her home, she shrieked
and whimpered, like a dream of a burn victim,
and when she was quiet, she would lie there and peer, not quite
anxiously. I didn’t blame her,
she’d been born to my mother’s daughter. I would kneel
and gaze at her, and pity her.
All day I nursed her, all night I walked her,
and napped, and nursed, and walked her. And then,
one day, she looked at me, as if
she knew me. She lay along my forearm, fed, and
gazed at me as if remembering me,
as if she had known me, and liked me, and was getting
her memory back. When she smiled at me,
delicate rictus like a birth-pain coming,
I fell in love, I became human.

it is worse than dream

the light randy slut can’t be easy

this clonic earth

all these phantoms shuddering out of focus

it is useless to close the eyes

"Samuel Becket"

Jabberwocky

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought--
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One two! One two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

I just read this in the paper yesterday, soo cool!

Eating Poetry

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man,
I snarl at her and bark,
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

By Mark Strand

tinustijger, Mark Strand does write very cool poetry. You would like "Reasons for Moving"

I'll see if I can find it and post it.

The book by Mark Strand is collection of three books, one of which is Reasons for Moving the poem I remembered is Keeping Things Whole


In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

Wow! That's a very cool poem too! Thank you so much firefangled!

I'm impressed, im off to buy some on amazon. thanks for posting those poems.

And I thank you too! I will be off to the bookstore a little later to stand in the corner and fondle his books.

My current favorite...so amazing.
"Since Feeling is First"- e.e. cummings

Quote:

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since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all the flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

and death i think is no parenthesis

---

My favourite is by Nazim Hikmet.

ON LIVING

I

Living is no laughing matter:
you must live with great seriousness
like a squirrel, for example-
I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
I mean living must be your whole occupation.
Living is no laughing matter:
you must take it seriously,
so much so and to such a degree
that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,
your back to the wall,
or else in a laboratory
in your white coat and safety glasses,
you can die for people-
even for people whose faces you've never seen,
even though you know living
is the most real, the most beautiful thing.
I mean, you must take living so seriously
that even at seventy, for example, you'll plant olive trees-
and not for your children, either,
but because although you fear death you don't believe it,
because living, I mean, weighs heavier.


II

Let's say you're seriously ill, need surgery -
which is to say we might not get
from the white table.
Even though it's impossible not to feel sad
about going a little too soon,
we'll still laugh at the jokes being told,
we'll look out the window to see it's raining,
or still wait anxiously
for the latest newscast ...
Let's say we're at the front-
for something worth fighting for, say.
There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
we might fall on our face, dead.
We'll know this with a curious anger,
but we'll still worry ourselves to death
about the outcome of the war, which could last years.
Let's say we're in prison
and close to fifty,
and we have eighteen more years, say,
before the iron doors will open.
We'll still live with the outside,
with its people and animals, struggle and wind-
I mean with the outside beyond the walls.
I mean, however and wherever we are,
we must live as if we will never die.


III

This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet-
I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space ...
You must grieve for this right now
-you have to feel this sorrow now-
for the world must be loved this much
if you're going to say ``I lived'' ...


Nazim Hikmet
February, 1948
Trans. Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk - 1993

There is much to read here so I am not sure if anyone has posted anything by Billy Collins but oh, how I like him.

Taking off Emily Dickinson's Clothes

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer's dividing water,
and slip inside.

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women's undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything-
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.

What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that Reason is a plank,
that Life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.

Autumn day

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander along the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

- Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Stephen Mitchell

OMG. You people have posted the most beautiful works of poetry I have ever seen!!! Thank you so much!!! I don't even have to buy a poetry book! I got all the greatest works right here!! LOL. Keep it up people.

This thread has so much poems to read. Thank you all. I'm very interested in poetry and literature. I wish to post my poems in this thread too.

I think this is truly my favorite.

The Vinegar Man

THE crazy old Vinegar Man is dead! He never had missed a day before!
Somebody went to his tumble-down shed by the Haunted House and forced the door.
There in the litter of his pungent pans, the murky mess of his mixing place —
Deep, sticky spiders and empty cans — with the same old frown on his sour old face.
"Vinegar - Vinegar - Vinegar Man!
Face - us - and - chase - us - and - catch - if -you - can!
Pepper for a tongue! Pickle for a nose!
Stick a pin in him and vinegar flows!
Glare -at-us- swear -at-us- catch - if - you-can!
Ketchup - and - chow - chow - and -Vinegar -Man!"

Nothing but recipes and worthless junk; greasy old records of paid and due ;
But down in the depths of a battered trunk, a queer, quaint valentine torn in two —
Red hearts and arrows and silver lace, and a prim, dim, ladylike script that said —
(Oh, Vinegar Man, with the sour old face!) —
"With dearest love, from Ellen to Ned!"

"Steel - us - and - peel - us - and - drown - us -in - brine!
He pickles his heart in" — a valentine! '
' Vinegar for blood! Pepper for his tongue!
Stick a pin in him and —" once he was young! "
Glare -at-us- swear -at-us- catch - if - you - can! " -
"With dearest love" — to the Vinegar Man!

Dingy little books of profit and loss
(died about Saturday, so they say),
And a queer, quaint valentine torn across . . .
torn, but it never was thrown away!
"With dearest love from Ellen to Ned" —
"Old Pepper Tongue! Pickles his heart in brine!"
The Vinegar Man is a long time dead:
he died when he tore his valentine.

Ruth Comfort Mitchell

that is great. :)

I'm a huge Edgar Allan Poe fan so I'd have to say that my favorite poem is "The Raven"

HTML Code:

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http://www.heise.de/ix/raven/Literature/Lore/TheRaven.html

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Someday I suppose I will have to write
a great poem about Billy Collins,

because he has written so many
about me and everyone I know,

and as if he thought that wasn't enough,
there are those descriptions of delicious meals -

osso buco, portabellos, salmon,
so real on the page, their aroma rising

in a fine ink vapor as the vowels
and consonants begin to simmer.

In the poem I write about Billy Collins
you will learn how he helped me quit smoking,

how I learned to watch, while driving at night,
for the eyes of poems on the roadside,

waiting for me to pass before crossing
and following the tail lights to my home.

I think how good my poem to him will be,
when suddenly he's there, on the jacket flap,

arms folded, and he stares at me all the way
from Lehman College, by the classroom door,

as if he is analyzing my poem,
filling its pages with circles and lines,

comments in red pencil, like a strange map
illuminated with angels, butterflies and fifth tones.

*****
This is just to introduce one of my favorites by Billy Collins, from Nine Horses:



Surprise

This —
according to the voice on the radio,
the host of a classical music program no less —
this is the birthday of Vivaldi.

He would be 325 years old today,
quite bent over, I would imagine,
and not able to see much through his watery eyes.

Surely, he would be deaf by now,
the clothes flaking off him,
hair pitiably sparse.

But we would throw a party for him anyway,
a surprise party where everyone
would hide behind the furniture to listen

for the tap of his cane on the pavement
and the sound of his dry, persistent cough.


-Billy Collins, Copyright 2002

Still havn't found a better poem to call favorite...Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.

1. The Road Not Taken


TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by firefangled

Someday I suppose I will have to write
a great poem about Billy Collins,

because he has written so many
about me and everyone I know,

and as if he thought that wasn't enough,
there are those descriptions of delicious meals -

osso buco, portabellos, salmon,
so real on the page, their aroma rising

in a fine ink vapor as the vowels
and consonants begin to simmer.

In the poem I write about Billy Collins
you will learn how he helped me quit smoking,

how I learned to watch, while driving at night,
for the eyes of poems on the roadside,

waiting for me to pass before crossing
and following the tail lights to my home.

I think how good my poem to him will be,
when suddenly he's there, on the jacket flap,

arms folded, and he stares at me all the way
from Lehman College, by the classroom door,

as if he is analyzing my poem,
filling its pages with circles and lines,

comments in red pencil, like a strange map
illuminated with angels, butterflies and fifth tones.

*****
This is just to introduce one of my favorites by Billy Collins, from Nine Horses:



Surprise

This —
according to the voice on the radio,
the host of a classical music program no less —
this is the birthday of Vivaldi.

He would be 325 years old today,
quite bent over, I would imagine,
and not able to see much through his watery eyes.

Surely, he would be deaf by now,
the clothes flaking off him,
hair pitiably sparse.

But we would throw a party for him anyway,
a surprise party where everyone
would hide behind the furniture to listen

for the tap of his cane on the pavement
and the sound of his dry, persistent cough.


-Billy Collins, Copyright 2002

---

And would not the biggest surprise be that you, firefangled, have written this introduction yourself? In the style of favored poet? Absolutely marvelous!
Thank you for sharing Surprise. I could laugh but I could cry over it, that poem.

Could it be possible that you love this one also?

Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking,
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbor's dog will not stop barking,
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.

Billy Collins, copyright 2001

I was hostess a few months ago for book club, Prose and Cons, and I chose Sailing Alone Around the Room to be read. They were to choose several of their favorites and I believe everyone had liked the one about the dog barking in the orchestra.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ampoule

And would not the biggest surprise be that you, firefangled, have written this introduction yourself? In the style of favored poet? Absolutely marvelous!
Thank you for sharing Surprise. I could laugh but I could cry over it, that poem.

Could it be possible that you love this one also?

Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking,
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbor's dog will not stop barking,
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.

Billy Collins, copyright 2001

I was hostess a few months ago for book club, Prose and Cons, and I chose Sailing Alone Around the Room to be read. They were to choose several of their favorites and I believe everyone had liked the one about the dog barking in the orchestra.

---

One of my very favorites, along with most of the other ones. I started to laugh as soon as I saw the title, it jumped right into my cerbral cortex (if that is where barking dogs jump) as if I had read it yesterday. I love it that the title doesn't give anything away and when you finish reading it, you realize there is no more perfect title. Thanks!!

The Cremation of Sam Mcgee
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way that he'd "sooner live in hell".

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;
It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
"It's the cursed cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet 'tain't being dead -- it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains."

A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: "You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains."

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows -- O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May".
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then "Here", said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared -- such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside.
I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked";. . . then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm --
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.


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

The Day of Wrath / Dies Iræ
by Ambrose Bierce


Day of Satan's painful duty!
Earth shall vanish, hot and sooty;
So says Virtue, so says Beauty.


Ah! what terror shall be shaping
When the Judge the truth's undraping—
Cats from every bag escaping!


Now the trumpet's invocation
Calls the dead to condemnation;
All receive an invitation.


Death and Nature now are quaking,
And the late lamented, waking,
In their breezy shrouds are shaking.


Lo! the Ledger's leaves are stirring,
And the Clerk, to them referring,
Makes it awkward for the erring.


When the Judge appears in session,
We shall all attend confession,
Loudly preaching non-suppression.


How shall I then make romances
Mitigating circumstances?
Even the just must take their chances.


King whose majesty amazes,
Save thou him who sings thy praises;
Fountain, quench my private blazes.


Pray remember, sacred Saviour,
Mine the playful hand that gave your
Death-blow. Pardon such behavior.


Seeking me, fatigue assailed thee,
Calvary's outlook naught availed thee;
Now 'twere cruel if I failed thee.


Righteous judge and learnèd brother,
Pray thy prejudices smother
Ere we meet to try each other.


Sighs of guilt my conscience gushes,
And my face vermilion flushes;
Spare me for my pretty blushes.


Thief and harlot, when repenting,
Thou forgavest—complimenting
Me with sign of like relenting.


If too bold is my petition
I'll receive with due submission
My dismissal—from perdition.


When thy sheep thou hast selected
From the goats, may I, respected,
Stand amongst them undetected.


When offenders are indited,
And with trial-flames ignited,
Elsewhere I'll attend if cited.


Ashen-hearted, prone and prayerful,
When of death I see the air full,
Lest I perish too be careful.


On that day of lamentation,
When, to enjoy the conflagration,
Men come forth, O be not cruel:
Spare me, Lord—make them thy fuel.









Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) was a journalist, short story writer, poet, and satirist who wrote about the culture around him.

addendum/quasimodo1....Ambrose Bierce spent much of his journalistic life working for Randolph Hearst and occaisonally would quit writing for him out of disgust with the sensensationalism of this type of newspaper or just because his interest drew him elsewhere. R. Hearst however would never stop sending Ambrose his checks no matter how long he stayed away. Always (probably because of this) he returned and resumed writing for the paper.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by quasimodo1

Still havn't found a better poem to call favorite...Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.

1. The Road Not Taken


TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20

---

That's my favourite Robert Frost poem! Last lines are really cool!

Love, by William Wordsworth


All Thoughts, all Passions, all Delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal Frame,
All are but Ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.

Oft in my waking dreams do I
Live o'er again that happy hour,
When midway on the Mount I lay
Beside the Ruin'd Tower.

The Moonshine stealing o'er the scene
Had blended with the Lights of Eve;
And she was there, my Hope, my Joy,
My own dear Genevieve!

She lean'd against the Armed Man,
The Statue of the Armed Knight:
She stood and listen'd to my Harp
Amid the ling'ring Light.

Few Sorrows hath she of her own,
My Hope, my Joy, my Genevieve!
She loves me best, whene'er I sing
The Songs, that make her grieve.

I play'd a soft and doleful Air,
I sang an old and moving Story--
An old rude Song that fitted well
The Ruin wild and hoary.

She listen'd with a flitting Blush,
With downcast Eyes and modest Grace;
For well she knew, I could not choose
But gaze upon her Face.

I told her of the Knight, that wore
Upon his Shield a burning Brand;
And that for ten long Years he woo'd
_The Lady of the Land_.

I told her, how he pin'd: and, ah!
The low, the deep, the pleading tone,
With which I sang another's Love,
Interpreted my own.

She listen'd with a flitting Blush,
With downcast Eyes and modest Grace;
And she forgave me, that I gaz'd
Too fondly on her Face!

But when I told the cruel scorn
Which craz'd this bold and lovely Knight,
And that be cross'd the mountain woods
Nor rested day nor night;

That sometimes from the savage Den,
And sometimes from the darksome Shade,
And sometimes starting up at once
In green and sunny Glade,

There came, and look'd him in the face,
An Angel beautiful and bright;
And that he knew, it was a Fiend,
This miserable Knight!

And that, unknowing what he did,
He leapt amid a murd'rous Band,
And sav'd from Outrage worse than Death
The Lady of the Land;

And how she wept and clasp'd his knees
And how she tended him in vain--
And ever strove to expiate
The Scorn, that craz'd his Brain

And that she nurs'd him in a Cave;
And how his Madness went away
When on the yellow forest leaves
A dying Man he lay;

His dying words--but when I reach'd
That tenderest strain of all the Ditty,
My falt'ring Voice and pausing Harp
Disturb'd her Soul with Pity!

All Impulses of Soul and Sense
Had thrill'd my guileless Genevieve,
The Music, and the doleful Tale,
The rich and balmy Eve;

And Hopes, and Fears that kindle Hope,
An undistinguishable Throng!
And gentle Wishes long subdued,
Subdued and cherish'd long!

She wept with pity and delight,
She blush'd with love and maiden shame;
And, like the murmur of a dream,
I heard her breathe my name.

Her Bosom heav'd--she stepp'd aside;
As conscious of my Look, she stepp'd--
Then suddenly with timorous eye
She fled to me and wept.

She half inclosed me with her arms,
She press'd me with a meek embrace;
And bending back her head look'd up,
And gaz'd upon my face.

'Twas partly Love, and partly Fear,
And partly 'twas a bashful Art
That I might rather feel than see
The Swelling of her Heart.

I calm'd her Tears; and she was calm,
And told her love with virgin Pride.
And so I won my Genevieve,
My bright and beauteous Bride!

For whom the bell tolls a poem
(No man is an island) by John Donne










No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

These famous words by John Donne were not originally written as a poem - the passage is taken from the 1624 Meditation 17, from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and is prose. The words of the original passage are as follows:

John Donne
Meditation 17
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee..."


footnote: obviously, Ernest Hemingway did not write the famous line here quasimodo1

Tim Burton's Vincent is my favorite poem. It's on my bedroom door.

Vincent

Vincent Malloy is seven years old,
He’s always polite and does what he’s told.
For a boy his age he’s considerate and nice,
But he wants to be just like Vincent Price.

He doesn’t mind living with his sister, dog and cat,
Though he’d rather share a home with spiders and bats.
There he could reflect on the horrors he’s invented,
And wander dark hallways alone and tormented.

Vincent is nice when his aunt comes to see him,
But imagines dipping her in wax for his wax museum.

He likes to experiment on his dog Abercrombie,
In the hopes of creating a horrible zombie.
So he and his horrible zombie dog,
Could go searching for victims in the London fog.

His thoughts aren’t only of ghoulish crime,
He likes to paint and read to pass the time.
While other kids read books like Go Jane Go,
Vincent’s favorite author is Edgar Allen Poe.

One night while reading a gruesome tale,
He read a passage that made him turn pale.

Such horrible news he could not survive,
For his beautiful wife had been buried alive.
He dug out her grave to make sure she was dead,
Unaware that her grave was his mother’s flower bed.

His mother sent Vincent off to his room,
He knew he’d been banished to the tower of doom.
Where he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life,
Alone with a portrait of his beautiful wife.

While alone and insane, encased in his tomb,
Vincent’s mother suddenly burst into the room.
“If you want to you can go outside and play.
It’s sunny outside and a beautiful day.”

Vincent tried to talk, but he just couldn’t speak,
The years of isolation had made him quite weak.
So he took out some paper, and scrawled with a pen,
“I am possessed by this house, and can never leave it again.”
His mother said, “You’re not possessed, and you’re not almost dead.
These games that you play are all in your head.
You’re not Vincent Price, you’re Vincent Malloy.
You’re not tormented, you’re just a young boy.”
“You’re seven years old, and you’re my son,
I want you to get outside and have some real fun.”

Her anger now spent, she walked out through the hall,
While Vincent backed slowly against the wall.
The room started to sway, to shiver and creak.
His horrid insanity had reached its peak.

He saw Abercrombie his zombie slave,
And heard his wife call from beyond the grave.
She spoke from her coffin, and made ghoulish demands.
While through cracking walls reached skeleton hands.

Every horror in his life that had crept through his dreams,
Swept his mad laugh to terrified screams.
To escape the madness, he reached for the door,
But fell limp and lifeless down on the floor.

His voice was soft and very slow,
As he quoted The Raven from Edgar Allen Poe:

“And my soul from out that shadow floating on the floor, shall be lifted –Nevermore!”





One of the best parts about this poem? There's a SHORT to go with it. Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCuiEr9rUDg

In Youth I have Known One by Edgar Allan Poe
How often we forget all time, when lone
Admiring Nature's universal throne;
Her woods - her winds - her mountains - the intense
Reply of Hers to Our intelligence!

I.

In youth I have known one with whom the Earth
In secret communing held - as he with it,
In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth:
Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit
From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth
A passionate light - such for his spirit was fit -
And yet that spirit knew - not in the hour
Of its own fervour - what had o'er it power.

II.

Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought
To a fever by the moonbeam that hangs o'er,
But I will half believe that wild light fraught
With more of sovereignty than ancient lore
Hath ever told - or is it of a thought
The unembodied essence, and no more
That with a quickening spell doth o'er us pass
As dew of the night time, o'er the summer grass?

III.

Doth o'er us pass, when as th' expanding eye
To the loved object - so the tear to the lid
Will start, which lately slept in apathy?
And yet it need not be - (that object) hid
From us in life - but common - which doth lie
Each hour before us - but then only bid
With a strange sound, as of a harpstring broken
T' awake us - 'Tis a symbol and a token -

IV.

Of what in other worlds shall be - and given
In beauty by our God, to those alone
Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven
Drawn by their heart's passion, and that tone,
That high tone of the spirit which hath striven
Though not with Faith - with godliness - whose throne
With desperate energy 't hath beaten down;
Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.

Succes is counted sweetest

Succes is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory,

As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear,
The distant strains of triumph
Break agonized and clear.

By Emily Dickinson

may i feel said he by ee cummings

may i feel said he
(i'll squeal said she
just once said he)
it's fun said she


(may i touch said he
how much said she
a lot said he)
why not said she


(let's go said he
not too far said she
what's too far said he
where you are said she)
....

Love in the Guise of Frindship
by Robert Burns

Talk not of love, it gives me pain,
For love has been my foe;
He bound me in an iron chain,
And plung´d me deep in woe.

But friendship´s pure and lasting joys,
My heart was form´d to prove;
There, welcome win and wear the prize,
But never talk of love.

Your friendship much can make me blest,
O why that bliss destroy?
Why urge the only, one request
You know I will deny?

Your thought, if Love must harbour there,
Conceal it in that thought;
Nor cause it in that thought;
Nor cause me from my bosom tear
The very friend I sought

THE FORCE THAT THROUGH THE GREEN FUSE DRIVES THE FLOWER By DYLAN tHOMAS

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 FORCE THAT THROUGH THE GREEN FUSE DRIVES THE FLOWER is beautiful.

what I consider the greatest poem of all time ?

I always get chills when I read it. sadly, it's also one of the most neglected poems, by
one of the world's most neglected writers. If I were to choose a poet whose consistency
I admire most, it would be Countee Cullen. With other poets, I like perhaps 20-40 of their
poems. With Cullen, almost everything he touched turned gold.



Heritage

by Countee Cullen


What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang?
One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?

So I lie, who all day long
Want no sound except the song
Sung by wild barbaric birds
Goading massive jungle herds,
Juggernauts of flesh that pass
Trampling tall defiant grass
Where young forest lovers lie,
Plighting troth beneath the sky.
So I lie, who always hear,
Though I cram against my ear
Both my thumbs, and keep them there,
Great drums throbbing through the air.
So I lie, whose fount of pride,
Dear distress, and joy allied,
Is my somber flesh and skin,
With the dark blood dammed within
Like great pulsing tides of wine
That, I fear, must burst the fine
Channels of the chafing net
Where they surge and foam and fret.

....

[/I]

Undoubtedly one of my favorites, from Goethe, no less:

"Sound, sweet song."

Sound, sweet song, from some far land,
Sighing softly close at hand,

Now of joy, and now of woe!

Stars are wont to glimmer so.

Sooner thus will good unfold;
Children young and children old
Gladly hear thy numbers flow.

The Angel that presided o'er my birth


The Angel that presided o'er my birth
Said, "Little creature, form'd of Joy and Mirth,
"Go love without the help of any Thing on Earth."

William Blake

I must confess that I never heard of Robert Service before this week - Aug 15th 2007

The Book Borrower

I am a mild man, you"ll agree
But red my rage is
When folks who borrow books from me
Turn down their pages

Or when a chap a book I lend
And find he"s loaned it
Without permission to a friend-
As if he owned it

But worst of all I hate those crooks
(May hell-fires burn them)
Who beg the loan of cherished books
And don"t return them

My books are tendrils of myself
No shears can sever
May he who rapes one from its shelf
Be damned forever

I can't say that this is my FAVORITE poem but I certainly like it a lot. If you are a poet you might like it too.

The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins from the book of the same name.

The trouble with poetry, I realized
as I walked along a beach one night-
cold Florida sand under my bare feet,
a show of stars in the sky-

the trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry,
more guppies crowding the fish tank,
more baby rabbits
hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass.

And how will it ever end?
unless the day finally arrives
when we have compared everything in the world
to everything else in the world.

and there is nothing left to do
but quietly close our notebooks
and sit with our hands folded on our desks.

Poetry fills me with joy
and I rise like a feather in the wind.
Poetry fills me with sorrow
and I sink like a chain flung from a bridge.

But mostly poetry fills me
with the urge to write poetry,
to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame
to appear at the tip of my pencil.

And along with that, the longing to steal,
to break into the poems of others
with a flashlight and a ski mask.

And what an unmerry band of thieves we are,
cut-purses, common shoplifters,
I thought to myself
as a cold wave swirled around my feet
and the lighthouse moved its megaphone over the sea,
which is an image I stole directly
from Lawrence Ferlinghetti-
to be perfectly honest for a moment-

the bicycling poet of San Francisco
whose little amusement park of a book
I carried in a side pocket of my uniform
up and down the treacherous halls of high school.

Why do you never print my posts?

You guys are awesome! Having the poems at the ready isn't possible but there are so many! Robert Hayden's Those Winter Sundays, Leopardi's l'Infinito, Eliot's Waste Land, Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality, Dickinson (usually) and the greatest sustained poem, Dante's Commedia. Milton's Lycidas, Keats' Ode to a Nightingale, Larkin's An Arundel Tomb oh so so many. Any one think Whitman is overrated and the Beats just God awful? Hate to be a sour puss, but I am mystified by Ginsbergites and the like.

my first post and i dedicate it to my favorite writer Rudyard Kipling and to his poem "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 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 on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe 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!