To ask what poem you return to to lift your spirits

[bobbleb]

Just that really. Is there a poem that you love to read which inspires you, cheers you up or lifts your spirits. I will find a link to mine.

Digging by Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:

My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds

Bends low, comes up twenty years away

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

Always reminds me of my beloved and much-missed Grandad, which makes me smile.

Such a lovely thread but now I am crying. Not really sure why. Bit emotional

Not very highbrow, but I do love this one by A. A Milne:

She wore her yellow sun-bonnet,
She wore her greenest gown;
She turned to the south wind
And curtsied up and down.
She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbour:
‘Winter is dead.’

Desiderata, by Max Ehrmann. I wasn't sure if it was a poem, but apparently it's a prose poem, so there you go.

GO PLACIDLY amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

My Mum had a tea towel with it on, and hung (rather oddly, I suppose) in the bathroom, next to the loo. It got read a lot

@crosstalk

The Good-Morrow BY JOHN DONNE I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then? But sucked on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den? ’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be. If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

I did this for A level, forgotten how wonderful it is

In that still and still and settled place,
There's nobody but you,
You're where I breathe my oxygen,
You're where I see my view,
And when the world feels full of noise,
My heart knows what to do,
It finds that still and settled place,
And dances there with you.

If I’m having a down day I like to read this poem and be the best version of myself.

These are definitely not highbrow, but they've always made me smile - used to recite them to my baby (who is now 15)

I eat my peas with honey
I've done it all my life
It makes them taste quite funny
But it keeps them on the knife

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear
Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair
So Fuzzy Wuzzy
Wasn't fuzzy, was he?

Moses supposes his toeses are roses
But Moses supposes erroneously because
Nobody's toeses are posies or roses
As Moses supposes his toeses to be

To the woman crying uncontrollably in the next stall -
If you ever woke in your dress at 4am ever
closed your legs to a man you loved opened
them for one you didn’t moved against
a pillow in the dark stood miserably on a beach
seaweed clinging to your ankles paid
good money for a bad haircut backed away
from a mirror that wanted to kill you bled
into the back seat for lack of a tampon
if you swam across a river under rain sang
using a dildo for a microphone stayed up
to watch the moon eat the sun entire
ripped out the stitches in your heart
because why not if you think nothing &
no one can / listen I love you joy is coming

• Kim Addonizio

Wild geese by Mary Oliver, there is something so affirming and compassionate about it.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes,over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

Also Duvet by Brian Bilston never fails to make me smile!

DUVET

Duvet,
you are so groovet,
I'd like to stay under you
all of Tuesdet.

Prayer - Carol Ann Duffy

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

If, Rudyard Kipling
My grandad died aged 99, having repeated that poem every day to himself from the mid 1950s when his wife died, until about 6 months before his death. It was both his motto for life and his way of checking that his memory was still working.

Love After Love
Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Cats like milk
Mice like cheese
But little dogs
Like sausageees

Circles go round
Squares are square
But whirligigs
Go everywhere

Mirror in February

@StormyWindow
My ds recited “somebody said it couldn’t be done” for a speech and drama exam and got a distinction.

@Fleurdecerisier
I grew up on the same street as Carol Ann Duffy. Her brother used to come and call for mine. Our families went to the same church.

If was my Dad's favourite @Scarby9. I used to think that it was ridiculous that noone could achieve all those things but my Dad said it was trying to that mattered.

@saveforthat
My grandad said the same - he was such a positive person, and I still 'hear' the poem in his voice.

My dad had this framed in the downstairs loo when I was little. I always loved it and it still makes me smile now 🥰

The Value of a Smile
by Author Unknown
A smile costs nothing, but gives much.
It enriches those who receive,
without making poorer those who give.
It takes but a moment,
but the memory of it sometimes lasts forever.

None is so rich or mighty that he can get along without it.
and none is so poor but that he can be made rich by it.
A smile creates happiness in the home,
fosters good will in business,
and is the countersign of friendship.
It brings rest to the weary,
cheer to the discouraged,
sunshine to the sad,
and is nature’s best antidote for trouble.

Yet it cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen,
for it is something that is of no value to anyone
until it is given away.
some people are too tired to give you a smile.
Give them one of yours,
as none needs a smile so much as he who has no more to give.

Whenever I see a field being ploughed I the j of this poem. It also helps me to worry less at times of (global) crisis:

In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’
BY THOMAS HARDY

                    I

Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.

                   II

Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.

                   III

Yonder a maid and her wight
Come whispering by:
War’s annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die.

Invictus, every time.

The Lion and Albert. Never fails to cheer.

There's a famous seaside place called Blackpool
That's noted for fresh air and fun
And Mr. and Mrs. Ramsbottom
Went there with young Albert, their son
A fine little lad were young Albert
All dressed in his best, quite a swell
He'd a stick with an 'orse's 'ead 'andle;
The finest that Woolworth's could sell
They didn't think much to the ocean
The waves they were piddlin' and small
There were no wrecks and nobody drownded
'Fact, nothin' to laugh at at all!
So, seeking for further amusement
They paid, and went into the zoo
Where they'd lions and tigers and camels
And cold ale and sandwiches, too
There were one great big lion called Wallace
Whose nose was all covered with scars;
He lay in a som-no-lent posture
With the side of 'is face on the bars
Now Albert 'ad 'eard about lions-
'Ow they was ferocious and wild;
To see lion lyin' so peaceful
Just didn't seem right to the child
So straightway the brave little feller
Not showin' a morsel of fear
Took 'is stick with the 'orse's 'ead 'andle
And stuck it in Wallace's ear
You could see that the lion din't like it
For givin' a kind of a roll
'E pulled Albert inside the cage with 'im
And swallered the little lad - 'ole!
Now Mother 'ad seen this occurrence
And not knowin' what to do next
She 'ollered "Yon lion's et Albert!"
An' Father said "Ee, I am vexed."
They complained to an animal keeper
Who said "My, wot a nasty mis'ap;
Are you sure it's your boy 'e's eaten?"
Pa said, "Am I sure? There's 'is cap!"
The manager 'ad to be sent for;
'E came and 'e said "Wot's to-do?"
Ma said "Yon lion's et Albert
And 'im in 'is Sunday clothes, too!"
Father said "Right's right, young feller-
I think it's a shame and a sin
To 'ave our son et by a lion
And after we paid to come in."
The manager wanted no trouble;
He took out his purse right away
Sayin' "'Ow much to settle the matter?"
Pa said "Wot do you usually pay?"
But Mother 'ad turned a bit awkward
When she saw where 'er Albert 'ad gone
She said "No, someone's got to be summonsed!"
So that was decided upon
And off they all went to p'lice station
In front of a Magistrate chap;
They told what 'ad 'appened to Albert
And proved it by showing 'is cap
The Magistrate gave 'is opinion
That no one was really to blame
And 'e said that 'e 'oped the Ramsbottoms
Would 'ave further sons to their name
At that Mother got proper blazin':
"And thank you, sir, kindly, " said she-
"Wot, spend all our lives raisin' children
To feed ruddy lions? Not me!"

A baby sardine
Saw her first submarine:
She was scared and watched through a peephole.

“Oh come, come, come,”
Said the sardine’s mum.
“It’s only a tin full of people.”

Spike Milligan

Dylan Thomas - Fern Hill

This version of Richard Burton reading it is just marvellous