To ask for your favourite poem

[Rebeccaslicker]

I was just going to post this on the "middle aged woman is too old for fairy lights" thread - but it's being zapped for GF-ery!

So here is one of my favourite poems:

www.barbados.org/poetry/wheniam.htm

I like it because I think the imagery and the humour are fantastic. Anyone else like poetry? What do you like - I love reading poetry so would be great to find some new stuff :)

Gah link fail AGAIN

www.barbados.org/poetry/wheniam.htm

I love "Hummingbird" by Raymond Carver

Suppose I say "summer"
Write the word hummingbird
Put it in an envelope
Take it down the hill to the box.
When you read my letter you will recall those days
And how much, just how much I love you

(typing from memory but I think that's right)

Mine is “To His Coy Mistress”
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_His_Coy_Mistress

The Rolling English Road

BYG. K. CHESTERTON

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,

The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.

A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,

And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;

A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread

The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.

I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,

And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;

But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed

To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,

Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,

The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.

His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run

Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?

The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,

But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.

God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear

The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.

My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,

Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,

But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,

And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;

For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,

Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

It's a short excerpt, but this is my favourite by far. It reminds me of my relationship with my fiancé

'we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright' - Hemingway

I also like Dulce est Decorum Est

So many, but I love Ulysses by Tennyson. It also suggests that when you are getting older you don’t have to just give up on everything! The ending:

and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
BY ROBERT FROST
Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Moaning of the Bar (might be called something else) by Tennyson

First stanza

Sunset and evening star
And one clear call for me
But may there be no moaning of the bar
When I put out to sea

It's about dying.

Those are two of my favourites, Toss! I blame Anne Shirley for the latter one - "captain Jim has crossed the bar".

I love poetry.

There's far too many poems to mention them all but Tennyson in memorial, Byron when we two parted, T.S. Eliot jellicle cats, Elizabeth Bishop on loss, Maya Angelou sense of insecurity, Matthew Arnold...can't remember the name of the exact poem but it was something like:

Weary of myself and sick of asking what I am and ought to be, at the vessels prow I stand which bears me forwards, forwards o'er the starlit sea

Loved the ancient mariner by Coleridge as well.

Teen Crossing the Bar - lov that one too.

Funeral blues.. I know it was used in a movie but god that poem makes me cry everytime

Dulce et Decorum Est

BY WILFRED OWEN

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

King John's Christmas by AA Milne. I always seem to shed a little tear at the end.

The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe

Toss that is in my top 5. It was my Uncle's favourite too. When he died I wrote and read out his eulogy at his funeral. I ended the eulogy by reading 'Stopping by Woods' and finished with;

"You have travelled so far through such a good life Uncle X and kept all your promises. And now you can sleep. And now you can sleep."

Not a dry eye in the house

Gray's 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard', and Wordsworth's 'Ode on Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood'.

www.lukewright.co.uk/shows/what-i-learned-from-johnny-bevan/

Practically anything by Luke Wright tbh.

Seamus Heaney’s Scaffolding is my favourite-

Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

And yet all this comes down when the job’s done
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall.

Another vote here for Stopping by Woods - it makes me so happy.

I love that Seamus Heaney one too JustHere

TossDaily,
My fave is the Robert Frost poem too. Check out this beautiful version of it:

What a beautiful eulogy, TheOtherGirl.

Beneath this slab
John Brown is stowed
He watched the ad's
And not the road

Ogden Nash

Thank you Toss. He was a lovely man, so it was easy to write his eulogy.