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To ask for your favourite poem

194 replies

user365241987 · 22/02/2018 22:31

Just because. Do post the words as well if you can...

OP posts:
Thread gallery
23
brizzledrizzle · 22/02/2018 23:01

I really must read poetry, that Yeats one is excellent

TheLastMermaid · 22/02/2018 23:03

Ah, Adlestrop!

I love this thread already.

@cel982 Is it Sehnsucht (a kind of yearning)? Also, are you familiar with Larkin's Whitsun Weddings? Some of that has a similar feeling to Adlestrop x

user365241987 · 22/02/2018 23:04

This makes me feel better about my lack of passion for cleaning

To ask for your favourite poem
OP posts:
Storminateapot · 22/02/2018 23:04

Vanguard oh that has moved me to tears, never seen it before.

Mine is The Jumblies by Edward Lear because my Dad used to read it to me. Silly I know.

NobodyKnowsTiddlyPom · 22/02/2018 23:06

So many to choose from!

Some particular favourites:
I wandered lonely as a cloud - Wordsworth
Pangur Ban - written by a 9th century Irish monk
The Dalliance of the Eagles - Walt Whitman
Funeral Blues - WH Auden
Most of TS Elliot's Old Possom's cat poems

I think my very favourite though is How to Sleep by Philip Larkin:

Child in the womb,
Or saint on a tomb –
Which way shall I lie
To fall asleep?
The keen moon stares
From the back of the sky,
The clouds are all home
Like driven sheep.

Bright drops of time,
One and two chime,
I turn and lie straight
With folded hands;
Convent-child, Pope,
They chose this state,
And their minds are wiped calm
As sea-levelled sands.

So my thoughts are:
But sleep stays as far,
Till I crouch on one side
Like a foetus again –
For sleeping, like death,
Must be won without pride,
With a nod from nature,
With a lack of strain,
And a loss of stature.

HorsesCourses · 22/02/2018 23:07

I'm a poetry Philistine but I quite like that one about Jim, who was eaten by a lion at the zoo.By Hilaire Belloc. I love to read it to my DS of the same name...

Oh, and the Lady of Shallott
She left the web; she left the loom
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water lily bloom
And looked down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide.
The mirror crack'd from side to side.
"The curse has come upon me"
Cried the Lady of Shallot
(Or something like that.)

Clawdy · 22/02/2018 23:08

Song of Wandering Aengus for me too. I've loved it all my life.

calmandbright · 22/02/2018 23:09

John Betjeman ‘Miss Joan Hunter Dunn’ Smile

crumbsinthecutlerydrawer · 22/02/2018 23:10

See I first thought of The Jumblies when I saw this thread Storm. My Nan, no longer around, gave me a book of poems when I was 8 and that is the only one I remember being in it. It was on Magic Hands on CBeebies once, dcs watching it not me, made me smile.

OwlinaTree · 22/02/2018 23:10

Like that dusting one...

TheDeafeningClatterofDuplo · 22/02/2018 23:15

Miss Torrent (by Gregory Harrison)

Little Miss Torrent drives a car.
Nothing surprising in that?
You'd think there was if you saw her drive by
Resplendent in flowery hat.
For Little Miss Torrent, hunched over the wheel
Scares everybody in town.
When people see her rushing along
They are sure she will batter them down.

They squirm as she crashes the gears
And screams with the stab of the brake to a stop.
They cover their faces to shut out the sight
As she spins on the ice like a top.

They daren't use the crossing for fear she is blind
To the lollipop man with his stick.
As she squeezes the curb with a squeal of her tyres
Pedestrians feel dizzy and sick.

But by far worst of all are the deep narrow lanes
If you happen to see her approach
For the lane is suddenly as dangerous as if
You were meeting a six-wheeler coach:

For she rarely pays heed to the motorists code
And invariably drives the wrong side of the road.

NobodyKnowsTiddlyPom · 22/02/2018 23:16

Others I love are Roald Dahl's Dirty Beast rhymes - I learnt them all off by heart as a child and regularly recite them to my class!

I also learnt this one, having discovered it in one of my mum's old Pony Club annuals from the 60s. Used to make me giggle:

Can't remember the title but it's by John Betjeman I think:

It’s awfully bad luck on Diana,
Her ponies have swallowed their bits
She fished down their throats with a spanner
And frightened them all into fits.

So now she’s attempting to borrow.
Do lend her some bits, Mummy, do;
I’ll lend her my own for to-morrow,
But today I’ll be wanting them too.

Just look at Prunella on Guzzle,
The wizardest pony on earth
Why doesn’t she slacken his muzzle
And tighten the breech in his girth?

I say, Mummy, there’s Mrs. Geyser
And doesn’t she look pretty sick?
I bet it’s because Mona Lisa
Was hit on the hock with a brick.

Miss Blewitt says Monica threw it,
But Monica says it was Joan,
And Joan’s very thick with Miss Blewitt,
So Monica’s sulking alone.

And Margaret failed in her paces,
Her withers got tied in a noose,
So her coronets caught in the traces
And now all her fetlocks are loose.

Oh, it’s me now. I’m terribly nervous.
I wonder if Smudges will shy.
She’s practically certain to swerve as
Her Pelham is over one eye.

Oh, wasn’t it naughty of Smudges?
Oh, Mummy, I’m sick with disgust.
She threw me in front of the Judges,
And my silly old collarbone’s bust.

He also wrote a very good one about post war Britain, called Slough.

Queenoftheblitz · 22/02/2018 23:16

I crave your mouth

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in Quittane

by Pablo Neruda

aliceinwanderland · 22/02/2018 23:17

I love Adlestrop and He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven.

But also this

A slumber did my spirit seal
I no human fears
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of human years

No motion has she now
No life,no force
Rolled round with rocks and stones and trees
In the earth's diurnal course

Wordsworth -one of the Lucy poems.

MrsUnderwood · 22/02/2018 23:18

The tiger
He destroyed his cage
Yes
YES
The tiger is out.

By Nael, Age 6.

Belmo · 22/02/2018 23:22

Ooh I’ve never heard the Highwayman, and I love it - that’s where the Highway Rat comes from I take it.

I like e e cummings I Carry Your Heart -

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Maplessglobe · 22/02/2018 23:25

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

user365241987 · 22/02/2018 23:26

I love Song of Wanndering Aengeus.
So maybe of these are new to me. Thanks for posting everyone. Grin

OP posts:
aliceinwanderland · 22/02/2018 23:33

I used to have a real fondness for William Blake when I was younger (although he was somewhat bonkers I suspect). I always think of this one is an early commentry on abuse of women and male power

O Rose though art sick
The invisible worm
That flies through the night
In the howling storm

Has found out thy bed
Of Crimson joy
And with his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy

pieceofpurplesky · 22/02/2018 23:42

@aliceinwanderland I love that poem and can recite it as I have read it so often. I love poetry and have a lot of favourites however this one reminds me of my Dad who has a caravan and lives a simple life. Everyone loves him too ...
it was a GCSE question a few years ago (but I loved it before then) and my pupils loved it and 'got' it. Beautiful words about materialism

To ask for your favourite poem
LRDtheFeministDragon · 22/02/2018 23:43

iklboo, I love your DS's sonnet. I'm so, so tempted to use it to teach my undergrads about parody - please tell him it's a keeper!

Amonk3ysButler · 22/02/2018 23:45

@aliceinwanderland I used to like reading his too, A poison tree was one of my favourites of his

I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I waterd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night.
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.

And into my garden stole,
When the night had veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see;
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

Slapdasherie · 22/02/2018 23:46

I dwell in Possibility -
A fairer House than Prose -
More numerous of Windows -
Superior - for Doors -

Of Chambers as the Cedars -
Impregnable of eye -
And for an everlasting Roof -
The Gambrels of the Sky -

Of visitors - the fairest -
For occupation - This -
The spreading wide my narrow Hands -
To gather Paradise -

Emily Dickinson

LRDtheFeministDragon · 22/02/2018 23:49

I can't choose one. The one this thread makes me think of is Charles Causley's Innocents' Song. There are others and I might come back to this, but this is what sticks in mind. It's spooky!

Who is the smiling stranger
With hair as white as gin,
What is he doing with the children
And who could have let him in?

Why has he rubies on his fingers,
A cold, cold crown on his head,
Why, when he caws his carol,
Does the salty snow run red?

Why does he ferry my fireside
As a spider on a thread,
His fingers made of fuses
And his tongue of gingerbread?

Why does the world before him
Melt in a million suns,
Why do his yellow, yearning eyes
Burn like saffron buns?

Watch where he comes walking
Out of the Christmas flame,
Dancing, double-talki ng:

Herod is his name.

KathySelden · 22/02/2018 23:51

Yeats Easter 1916

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