Favorite poem?

[Amarilis]

I like a lot of poems... I think I can´t choose just one 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.