Talk

Pam Ayres - wish I'd looked after me teeth

When I am old I shall wear purple

Philip Larkin - Old Fools think it's called

i have so many favourite poems

just loads

how about ....[thinks]

'IS there anybody there?' said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

Of the forest's ferny floor.

and a bird flew up out of the turret,


Above the Traveller's head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;

'Is there anybody there?' he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveller's call.


And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,

while his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

'Neath the starred and leafy sky;

for he suddenly smote on the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:—

'Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word,' he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake


Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,


When the plunging hoofs were gone.

bump this for the evening crowd

Valentine by John Fuller. We had it (edited) at our wedding. www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/john-fuller/valentine/

That is lovely.

I bet the nation votes for If again.

this one by Christina Rossetti. Always makes me want to cry though.

I bloody love If.

Also this by Wendy Cope (very true)

"I can't forgive you, even if I could,
You wouldn't pardon me for seeing through you,
But still I cannot cure myself of love
For what I thought you were before I knew you".

I also love almost anything by Gerard Manley Hopkins and Billy Collins.

I have several: www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/33.html

www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173667

www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/elegy20.htm

www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/goodmorrow.htm

Duchess that's beautiful.

This is one I love - it's by a poet called Adrian Mitchell

BEATTIE IS THREE

At the top of the stairs
I ask for her hand. O.K.
She gives it to me.
How her fist fits my palm,
A bunch of consolation.
We take our time
Down the steep carpetway
As I wish silently
That the stairs were endless.

I forgot this one

I was going to say 'Remember' too.

'Dulce et Decorum est' gives me goosebumps in the final stanza: www.potw.org/archive/potw3.html

Wilfred Owen's poems are heartbreaking, almost too painfully sad to read.

wendy cope is fab, but this, by Jo Bell is my fave. It was given to me on the birth of one of my children, and has been framed on my wall ever since:

Blessing for a child.

Yes, there will be times when you will have to fight.
We cannot spare you that. But then, there might
be times when you can hardly breathe for laughing.
There might be frogs in ponds to wonder at, and bumblebees,
and opportunities to disappear your toes in sinking sands.
Later on, there might be days when chestnut trees are still and fat
beside a river, or the motorway. There might be beer
in paper cups, and people throwing frisbees in the park.
You might come cold and tired from work, to find
that someone's run a bath. You might see hawthorn
in an English hedgerow; catch an urban dawn
or go to bed quite drunk, with arms around you;
might feed a private hedgehog by the door one night.
There might be snowfall, bonfires, dragonflies: a hug.
And yes, there will be rain but then, there might
be rainbows. We'll be with you. You will be alright.

whatinthewhatnow, I haven't come across that before, it's lovely. Thank you.

I might not hve this exact but...

When im sad and weary and feel all hope has gone i walk along high holburn and think of you with nothing on!

Also love philp larkins high windows...fave tho is Ted Hughes 'lovesong

'I can write the saddest lines tonight' by Pablo Neruda - here.

I adored this poem all through adolescence and you can see why - there are poems I love now that are more adult. But now when i read that one I feel all that teenage passion again, without the pain

Poster who posted 'Beattie is Three' - that just made me weep.

I adore loads of poems. We did the War poets at school so they are firmly planted in my mind. Anthem For Doomed Youth chokes me up.

Winters by Charles Causeley is a firm favourite.

I also love this bit of A E Housman's 'A Shropshire Lad'...

Into my heart on air that kills
From far yon country blows;
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain
The happy highways where I went
and cannot come again.

Sorry, it should say Timothy Winters above, not just Winters.

I would find it very very hard to pick a favourite poem tbh, there are so many I like for very different reasons. If you want an alternative pastoral take on WW1 try Edward Thomas,

In Memoriam (Easter, 1915)

The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood
This Eastertide call into mind the men,
Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should
Have gathered them and will do never again.

I'm also trying to read more French poetry, this is my current fave

Marceline DESBORDES-VALMORE (1786-1859)
Les roses de Saadi

J'ai voulu ce matin te rapporter des roses ;
Mais j'en avais tant pris dans mes ceintures closes
Que les noeuds trop serrés n'ont pu les contenir.

Les noeuds ont éclaté. Les roses envolées
Dans le vent, à la mer s'en sont toutes allées.
Elles ont suivi l'eau pour ne plus revenir ;

La vague en a paru rouge et comme enflammée.
Ce soir, ma robe encore en est tout embaumée...
Respires-en sur moi l'odorant souvenir.