Favourite poems

[ipanemagirl]

Poem lyrics of 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's 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.

I LOVE this poem and the last line reminds me to go to bed!

oooh, Saint Roy isn't short in stature at all - think someone meant short -tempered?? A hero of mine too, though I probably look upon him in a slightly different way to you...

tea caddy - yes please!!!

He has principles and pride - two admirable qualities

tha tea smells and looks really different to the stuff we drink here.

It looks weak when you pour it out, but it has a very strong taste - lovely

TN, you giddy girly girl you!

I want to add a favourite poem even though this is a really difficult thing to do. I can't even work out a favourite poet. I think TS Eliot is wonderful. Love WB Yeats' later stuff. Love most of the post-war brits. Love William Carlos Williams. Love the beats and ADORE that madman Robert Lowell. I even like bits of Tennyson and Robert Browning and Matthew Arnold and Shakespeare. Love Keats. And Donne. Let's not forget Donne.

I know - this:

etext.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Kubla_Khan.html

Commentators never say it's about sex, but it clearly is...

LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.
'A guest,' I answer'd, 'worthy to be here:'
Love said, 'You shall be he.'
'I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on Thee.'
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
'Who made the eyes but I?'

'Truth, Lord; but I have marr'd them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.'
'And know you not,' says Love, 'Who bore the blame?'
'My dear, then I will serve.'
'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.'
So I did sit and eat.

By George Herbert. An overtly Christian poem I know, but I tend to think its message applies to human love and forgiveness as well. I find this poem very moving.

Wot no Larkin?

Adore An Arundel Tomb, with that beautiful last verse:

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final balzon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Arundel_Tomb

Have to read this later as am running out - I love the Listeners so much and need to look again at Mr Ted Hughes

Love Thought Fox - is it called that "the page is printed"

And loads of Sylvia Plath

And Not Waving But Drowning - perfect line.

Here's one of my favourite Larkin poems:

'Dockery was junior to you,
Wasn't he?' said the Dean. 'His son's here now.'
Death-suited, visitant, I nod. 'And do
You keep in touch with-' Or remember how
Black-gowned, unbreakfasted, and still half-tight
We used to stand before that desk, to give
'Our recollection' of 'these incidents last night'?
I try the door of where I used to live:

Locked. The lawn spreads dazzlingly wide.
A known bell chimes. I catch my train, ignored.
Canals and clouds and colleges subside
Slowly from view. But Dockery, good Lord,
Anyone up today must have been born
In '43, when I was twenty-one.
If he was younger, did he get this son
At nineteen, twenty? Was he that withdrawn

High-collared public schoolboy, sharing rooms with
Cartwright who was killed? Well, it just shows
How much...How little...Yawning, I suppose
I fell asleep, waking at the fumes
And furnace-glares of Sheffield, where I changed
And ate an awful pie, and walked along
The platform to its end to see the ranged
Joining and parting lines reflect a strong

Unhindered moon. To have no son, no wife
No house or land still seemed quite natural.
Only a numbness registered the shock
Of finding out how much had gone of life,
How widely of the others. Dockery, now:
Only nineteen, he must have taken stock
Of what he wanted, and been capable
Of...No, that's not the difference: rather, how

Convinced he was he should be added to!
Why did he think adding meant increase?
To me it was dilution. Where do these
Innate assumptions come from? Not from what
We think truest, or most want to do:
Those warp tight-shut, like doors. They're more a style
Our lives bring with them: habit for a while,
Suddenly they harden into all we've got

And how we got it; looked back on, they loom
Like sand-clouds, thick and close, embodying
For Dockery a son, for me nothing,
Nothing with all a son's harsh patronage.
Life is first boredom, then fear.
Whether or not we use it, it goes,
And leaves what something hidden from us chose,
And age, and the only end of age.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dockery_And_Son"

This is a lovely thread.

Round the tree of Life the flowers
Are ranged, abundant, even;
Its crest on every side spread out
On the fields and plains of Heaven

Glorious flocks of singing birds
Celebrate their truth,
Green abounding branches bear
Choicest leaves and fruit.

The lovely flocks maintain their song
In the changeless weather
A hundred feathers for every bird
A hundred songs for every feather.
(10C Irish)

I love the last line.

The Irish certainly have a way with words.
The Ballad of Wandering Angus is dds hairbrushing poem)

If I Had My Life to Live Over
By Nadine Stair (age 85)

I'd dare to make more mistakes next time.
I'd relax. I would limber up.
I would be sillier than I have been this trip.
I would take fewer things seriously.
I would take more chances.
I would take more trips.
I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers.
I would eat more ice cream and less beans.

I would perhaps have more actual troubles but I'd
have fewer imaginary ones.

You see, I'm one of those people who live sensibly
and sanely hour after hour, day after day.

Oh, I've had my moments and if I had it to do over
again, I'd have more of them. In fact,
I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments.

One after another, instead of living so many
years ahead of each day.

I've been one of those people who never go anywhere
without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat
and a parachute.

If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot
earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall.

If I had it to do again, I would travel lighter next time.
I would go to more dances.
I would ride more merry-go-rounds.
I would pick more daisies.

I love that one Purplemonkey.

I'm half her age; maybe I'll take some of that advice for the next half. I can be rather over cautious too.

Another favourite of mine is, Ariel by Sylvia plath.

I'm quite fascinated by Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, as individual poets and by their relationship.

I also love Paul Durcan and Seamus Heaney.

My favourite is Ozymandias by Shelley - not sure why really but always loved it since i was in school. i think it is a very visual poem, as you read the words you can picture the statue in the sand.

i also love william carlos williams, simple and lovely poems.

the Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock by ts eliot

Ozymandias is dh's favourite poem.

I love poetry, I carry a copy of, The Hawk in the Rain, with me at all times.

[now I sound very poncey ]

yes nice thread this ...

I like loads. One that I like is by Blake - Auguries of Innocence and in particular the verse :

'To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.'

also 'O Captain, my captain' - Walt Whitman

and I like a line from a Robert Frost:

'We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.'

oh the list goes on and on!

The highway man! google it, it's long but my fave since grade 4!

I just discovered this one by Alice Oswald (b. 1966) who is, at the moment, my favorite living poet. It's a sonnet called "Wedding". So any of you looking for wedding poems, this one is the one to go for IMO. I just discovered it when re-reading her first collection, which she probably wrote in her 20s.

Wedding

From time to time our love is like a sail
and when the sail begins to alternate
from tack to tack, it's like a swallowtail
and when the swallow flies it's like a coat;
and if the coat is yours, it has a tear
like a wide mouth and when the mouth begins
to draw the wind, it's like a trumpeter
and when the trumpet blows, it blows like millions. . .
and this, my love, when millions come and go
beyond the need of us, is like a trick;
and when the trick begins, it's like a toe
tip-toeing on a rope, which is like luck;
and when the luck begins, it's like a wedding,
which is like love, which is like everything.

John Donne "No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind...therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee"

Not sure if every word correct and that's not the whole thing I know but that's my absolute favourite. So human, and humane.

Also love "Requiescat" by Oscar Wilde which is just so evocative of what it feels like to deal with death and the reality of it

"Tread lightly, she is near
under the snow,
speak gently, she can hear
the daisies grow"

and the last verse is

"Peace, peace she cannot hear
lyre or sonnet,
All my life's buried here,
Heap earth upon it"

Not in a jolly mood, am I!

ah-ha I remember another ... The Secret by John Clare -( all about secret love )which ends with :

'And all the charms of face or voice
Which I in others see
Are but the recollected choice
Of what I felt for thee. '

I have just been privileged to mark a really excellent and heartfelt essay about John Clare TMP - it's made me want to go and refresh my memory of his work

Bagsundereyes - I love An Arundel Tomb too - how spooky is that

And I see other favourites here - George Herbert and John Donne

But my all-time favourite for nostalgic reasons is Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach:

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the Straits; - on the French coast, the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the ebb meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves suck back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Written over a hundred years ago but not much seems to have changed

oldpoetry.com/opoem/show/12616-George-Gordon-Byron-I-speak-not--I-trace-not--I-breathe-not-th y-name

i love this

very poignant last verse on that one Marina ... as you say - we haven't seemed to learn much over time

Just remembered another favourite - 'She Walks in Beauty' by Byron.
Imagine someone writing this about you ..

SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that 's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light 5
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face; 10
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow, 15
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!