Tell me your favourite poem

[Januarycold]

Want to get into reading and poetry
Need some starters Thanks!

This is probably going to sound extremely weird, but there's a poem that was recited in an episode of the fabulous Bob & Margaret, which I've always remembered. The first half of it is from an Emily Dickinson poem, but they changed the second half completely. Much as I like Emily's work, I have to say that I find the original ending that she wrote very dull, but the original beginning coupled with the new ending (no idea who wrote it) works wonderfully.

The original poem goes:

When roses cease to bloom, Sir,
And violets are done —
When bumblebees in solemn flight
Have passed beyond the Sun —
The hand that paused to gather
Upon this Summer's day
Will idle lie — in auburn —
Then take my flowers — pray!

The version on Bob & Margaret went:

When roses cease to bloom, Dear
When violets are done
When bumblebees in solemn flight
Have passed beyond the Sun
When Winter's melancholy hand
Moves quick and cold and keen
As shrouding faded petals
What remains is evergreen

Beautiful

This one is deeply sad, but bitterly beautiful at the same time - by Walter Savage Landor:

Child of a day, thou knowest not
The tears that overflow thy urn
The gushing eyes that read thy lot
Nor, if thou knewest, couldst return

And why the wish, the pure and blest
Watch like thy mother o'er thy sleep
O peaceful night O envied rest
Thou wilt not ever see her weep

Edgar Allen Poe - The Raven
Walter De La Mare - The Listeners

The suicide poem from The Perks of Being a Wallflower www.wattpad.com/63826189-wonderful-quotes-poetry-and-lyrics%E2%99%A5-the-suicide

Karma - Dominique Christina (actually love most of her poems)

Explaining my depression to my mother - Sarah Benheim

Jenny Joseph - when I am an old woman I will wear purple.

I read this for the first time doing Alevel English 12 years ago. Loved it then and love it now, it appeals to me because I'm quite unconventional in the way I do things.
Plus the Red Hat Society facinate me.

As I Walked Out One Evening

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

And the rest but that is my favourite part!

To a mouse

www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/mouse/

To a Mouse
Robert Burns

On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough,
November, 1785

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murdering pattle!

I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion
An’ fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen-icker in a thrave
‘S a sma’ requet;
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
An’ never miss’t!

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
Its silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,
O’ foggage green!
An’ bleak December’s win’s ensuing,
Baith snell an’ keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,
An’ weary Winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro’ thy cell.

That wee bit heap o’ leaves and stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turned out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the Winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ cranreuch cauld!

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

Still thou are blest, compared wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I cannot see,
I guess an’ fear!

allpoetry.com/Among-The-Narcissi By Sylvia Plath

Following this thread to catch up later. Love poetry. One of my favourites is the poison tree by Blake.

Officers’ Mess (1916)
By Harold Monro

The Outlaw
R.W. Service

Anything by Siegfried Sassoon

Ohh, so many, but one I always come back to is Clear Night by Charles Wright who was an American Poet Laureate.

Clear Night

By Charles Wright

Clear night, thumb-top of a moon, a back-lit sky.

Moon-fingers lay down their same routine

On the side deck and the threshold, the white keys and the black keys.

Bird hush and bird song. A cassia flower falls.

I want to be bruised by God.

I want to be strung up in a strong light and singled out.

I want to be stretched, like music wrung from a dropped seed.

I want to be entered and picked clean.

And the wind says “What?” to me.

And the castor beans, with their little earrings of death, say “What?” to me.

And the stars start out on their cold slide through the dark.

And the gears notch and the engines wheel.

It just makes me feel all shivery and small.

Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light, I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night. Sarah Williams

The little bat screamed out in fright
Turn on the dark, I’m afraid of the light! Shel Silverstein

I think Fleur Adcock's, 'For a Five Year Old', contains some essential truths too.

For a Five-Year-Old

A snail is climbing up the window-sill
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see, and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
it might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful hand,
to eat a daffodil.

I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
your gentleness is moulded still by words
from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
your closest relatives, and who purveyed
the harshest kind of truth to many another.
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
and we are kind to snails.

Gerard Manley Hopkins 'Pied Beauty'
Walter de la Mare 'The Listeners'

I bought a lovely book just before Christmas called A Poem for Every Night of the Year. I read one to DS most days (even though he's 8 weeks old and couldn't care less!)

Cut Grass
By Philip Larkin

Cut grass lies frail:
Brief is the breath
Mown stalks exhale.
Long, long the death

It dies in the white hours
Of young-leafed June
With chestnut flowers,
With hedges snowlike strewn,

White lilac bowed,
Lost lanes of Queen Anne's lace,
And that high-builded cloud
Moving at summer's pace

These were in a book of poetry I had as a child and have never forgotten.

Way down south were bananas grow
A grasshopper stood on an elephants toe
The elephant said with tears in his eyes
Pick on someone your own size.

And

I eat my peas with honey
I've done it all my life
It might taste kind of funny
But it keeps them on the knife.

Haha Jonny, I read poems to my children all the time, now they're tweens they just look at me as though I've gone mad. I do hope that constant and early exposure may filter down in later life much like classical music and dance did to me when my Dad used to drag my reluctant self to various concerts and my Mother hauled me to contemporary dance and ballet.

Three ha'pence a foot: One of the Stanley Holloway monologues-The Lion and Albert is the best known:
You have to say it in a northern accent.

I'll tell you an old-fashioned story
That grandfather used to relate,
Of a builder and joining contractor
Who's name it were Sam Oswaldthwaite.

In a shop on the banks of the Irwell
There Sam used to follow his trade,
In a place you'll have heard of called Bury
You know, where black puddings is made.

One day Sam were filling a knot hole
With putty when in through the door,
Came an old man fair reeked i'whiskers
An th'old man said, "good morning I'm Noah."

Sam asked Noah what were his business
And t'old chap went on to remark,
That not liking the look of the weather
He was thinking of building an ark.

He'd got all the wood for the bulwarks
And all t'other shipbuilding junk,
Now he wanted some nice birds-eye maple
To panel the sides of his bunk.

Now maple were Sam's monopoly
That means it were all his to cut,
And nobody else hadn't got none
So he asked Noah three ha'pence a foot.

"A ha'penny too much," replied Noah.
"Penny a foot's more the mark,
A penny a foot and when rain comes
I'll give you a ride in my ark."

But neither would budge in the bargain
The whole thing were kind of a jam,
So Sam put his tongue out at Noah
And Noah made long bacon at Sam.

In wrath and ill-feeling they parted
Not knowing when they'd meet again,
And Sam 'ad forgot all about it
'Til one day it started to rain.

It rained and it rained for a fortnight
It flooded the whole countryside,
It rained and it still kept on raining
'Til th'Irwell were fifty miles wide.

The houses were soon under water
And folks to the roof had to climb,
They said t'was the rottenest summer
As Bury had had for some time.

The rain showed no sign of abating
And water rose hour by hour,
'Til th'only dry land were at Blackpool
and that were on top of the tower.

So Sam started swimming for Blackpool
It took him best part of a week,
His clothes were wet through when he got there
And his boots were beginning to leak.

He stood to his watch-chain in water
On tower-top just before dark,
When who should come sailing towards him
But old Noah steering his ark.

They stared at each other in silence
'Til ark were alongside all but,
Then Noah said, "what price yon maple?"
Sam answered, "three ha'pence a foot."

Noah said, "nay I'll make thee an offer
Same as I did t'other day,
A penny a foot and a free ride
Now come on lad what do thee say?"

"Three ha'pence a foot," came the answer
So Noah his sail had to hoist,
And sail off again in a dudgeon
While Sam stood determined but moist.

So Noah cruised around flying his pigeons
'Til fortieth day of the wet,
And on his way home passing Blackpool
He saw old Sam standing there yet.

His chin just stuck out of the water
A comical figure he cut,
Noah said, "now what's the price of yon maple?"
And Sam answered, "three ha'pence a foot."

Said Noah, "you'd best take my offer
It's the last time I'll be hereabouts,
And if water comes half an inch higher
I'll happen get maple for nowt."

"Three ha'pence a foot it'll cost you.
And, as for me," Sam says, "don't fret,
Sky's took a turn since this morning
I think it'll brighten up yet."

**ILikeyourHairyHands I love that one! This is a great thread thank you everyone x

Prayer For The Man Who Mugged My Father, 72, by Charles Harper Webb, is a incredibly powerful poem.

That last line!

Novia that Edna St Vincent Millay is a favourite of mine too but also this one...

First sight by Philip Larkin.

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth's immeasureable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.

How To Triumph Like A Girl by Ada Limon.

@Clawdy - I'm flattered! It was me that posted The Two-Headed Calf by Laura Gilpin in a similar thread to this some time ago - I remember you liking it then.

It's still my favourite poem. Here it is in its entirety - I almost know it by heart, but I still fill up when I read it.

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.
But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass. And
as he stares into the sky, there are
twice as many stars as usual.

I wish I was a glow worm 🐛
A glow worm is never glum
Because how can you be sad
When the sun shines out yer bum?!