Favourite poems - identify the writer and add your own?

[Swizzler]

(as I can't remember my Shakespeare )

What seas what shores what grey rocks and what islands
What water lapping the bow
And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog
What images return
O my daughter

Here you go FP:

HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Love it too, esp the sound of 'the blue and the dim and the dark cloths/of night and light and the half-light'

never could find it in anthologies cos it isn't called 'Tread Softly..' but 'He wishes for the cloths of heaven'. Mean trick

Is it Sylvia Plath

this is one of my favourites. Makes me want to cry:

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom
Winging wildly across the white
Orchard and dark-green fields; on; on; and out of sight.

or someone married to her????

Ooh it is Sassoon m+j

Swizzler - we had it at our wedding

well, what's mine then??

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Ted Hughes?

yes, the last of the Birthday letters. Sublime.

Good work Franny! Off to find my Palgrave Golden Treasury now...

Is that Sassoon again F&Z?

Ok how about ..

"God went on sleeping
Crowwent on laughing"

Swizzler, no, it's a woman this time

not a clue

ignorance showing through

Crow is Ted Hughes - unless it's Wendy Cope parodying Ted Hughes.

Crow is Ted Hughes again

sounds familiar though

yes, bugger - X posted with F&Z's Ted.

20th century?

ted hughes again!

oops pipped by Kathy

here is some more of mine:

Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

Edna St Vincent Millay - my fave poet.

Ooh good, yajorome has it

She is delicious isn't she?