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!

OMG Mrs Carrot, you too? I have The Thing in the Gap Stone Style right next to me (it's just been reprinted by Faber, so more readily available, and I just got it). I am reading "Mountains" as we speak. You are right: beautiful. But so is everything. I've yet to read a weak poem by her. She thrills me. I edited a selection recently and put her in it, a new long poem called "Dunt." (I hope she doesn't google herself and read this!) It was the star of the bunch. She came and read it in London and the whole place was electrified (rare for a poetry reading.)

TnoGu--I worry I sound poncey too.

Bink--thanks so much for the LRB subscription you passed on to me last year. It has been great. The subscription has just run out, so I guess I'll have to subscribe myself now!

Any poets on this thread by chance?

I can't believe how many readers of poetry there are here. You hear so often that only poets read poetry, and that contemporary poetry is just a private conversation with other contemporary poets. But I hate when people say that, because I don't actually think it's true. I just think poetry is a bit difficult and slow for a lot of people--hard to give it attention in this overloaded world.

Bree - fab poem! Sinister and frightening....reminds me of the Manic Street Preachers "If you tolerate this, then your children will be next..."

BTW, does anyone else think that some song lyrics are poems in their own right?

Off to have a think about favourite lyrics...maybe is should be a new thread!

Perhaps not favourite but very fond.

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fo-Sa.

Sorry am posting too much on this thread. Tend to get overenthusiastic. IG you have already posted my favourite Robert Frost, and ashamed to say I don't know more, but I do LOVE this one.

"Out, Out - "
by: Robert Frost

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behing the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside him in her apron
To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,
As if it meant to prove saws know what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap -
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all -
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart -
He saw all was spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off -
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"
So. The hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then - the watcher at his pulse took a fright.
No one believed. They listened to his heart.
Little - less - nothing! - and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

Heaven-Haven
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

A Nun Takes the Veil

I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail,
And a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.

Lament for Thomas MacDonagh

By Francis Ledwidge

HE SHALL not hear the bittern cry
In the wild sky, where he is lain,
Nor voices of the sweeter birds,
Above the wailing of the rain.

Nor shall he know when loud March blows
Thro? slanting snows her fanfare shrill,
Blowing to flame the golden cup
Of many an upset daffodil.

But when the Dark Cow leaves the moor,
And pastures poor with greedy weeds,
Perhaps he?ll hear her low at morn,
Lifting her horn in pleasant meads.

Goodbye

He said
goodbye.
I shuffled
my feet
and kept a close
watch on my shoes.
He was talking
i was listening
but he probably
thought I was
not
because I never
even lifted my
head.
I didn't want him
to see
the mess mascara
makes when it
runs.

Is It For Now Or For Always
by Phillip Larkin

Is it for now or for always,
The world hangs on a stalk?
Is it a trick or a trysting-place,
The woods we have found to walk?

Is it a mirage or miracle,
Your lips that lift at mine:
And the suns like a juggler's juggling-balls,
Are they a sham or a sign?

Shine out, my sudden angel,
Break fear with breast and brow,
I take you now and for always,
For always is always now.

"The School Boy" by William Blake
(from Songs of Experience)

This sums up much of what I feel on the subject of education and makes me wish I had the guts to home educate.

----------------

I love to rise in a summer morn
when the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the skylark sings with me;
O what sweet company!

But to go to school in a summer morn,
O it drives all joy away!
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.

Ah then at times I drooping sit,
And spend many an anxious hour;
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learnings bower,
Worn through with the dreary shower.

How can the bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child when fears annoy
But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthfull spring?

O father and mother, if buds are nipped,
And blossoms blown away;
And if the tender plants are stripped
Of their joy in the sprining day,
By sorrow and care's dismay,

How shall the summer arise in joy,
Or the summer fruits appear?
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,
Or bless the mellowing year,
When the blasts of winter appear?

UA Fanthorpe is someone I am always meaning to read. Everything of hers I come across sounds just right.

I've been trying to find a good snippet of Wallace Stevens, but a poem of his in isolation on this thread would look too tangled and allusive and difficult - even though I feel very strongly that he isn't, that what he's about is transparent simplicity - it's just that utter simplicity is hard to capture, so you have to be oblique about it.

Anyway: describing a pineapple:

"7. These lozenges are nailed-up lattices.
8. The owl sits humped. It has a hundred eyes.
9. The coconut and cockerel in one."

Quattrocentro--as we're talking about poetry. . .I came with a poetry collection last years and there was a typo: I misspelled "quattrocento"! (Please don't anyone think I'm poncey. . .I don't normally admit to being a poet.)

This one I have by heart. Lovely rhythm and cadence.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Sonnets from the Portuguese

When our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,
Until the lengthening wings break into fire
At either curving point,?what bitter wrong
Can the earth do us, that we should not long
Be here contented? Think! In mounting higher,
The angels would press on us, and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song
Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay
Rather on earth, Belovèd?where the unfit
Contrarious moods of men recoil away
And isolate pure spirits, and permit
A place to stand and love in for a day,
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.

Auden again ... my blog was called 'in headaches and in worry' for a while. It's currently called 'they may not mean to, but they do', I may have to raid this thread for a new poetic title.

As I Walked Out One Evening

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
"Love has no ending.

"I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Afica meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street.

"I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

"The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world."

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
"O let not Time deceive you
You cannot conquer Time.

"In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

"In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

"Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.

"O plunge your hands in water
Plunge them up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed."

"The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

"Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer
And Jill goes down on her back."

"O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress;
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless."

"O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbor
With your crooked heart."

It was late, late in the evening
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.

Oooh Doddle - GMH is my favourite of all time. I'm not a poetry buff at all, but GMH always sucks me in. The Windhover, God's Grandeur, Pied Beauty, Carrion Comfort. You can just wallow in them.

I LOVE this thread. The old me studied English Literature at university and was really into poetry (even wrote a bit at one time) but it is one of those things I regret I have let slip from my life. This is reminding me of so many favourites.

Does any one know 'Mid Term Break' by Heaney? It is a heartbreaking poem 'a four foot box, a foot for every year'
I challenge the toughest of you not to shed a tear on this one.

this thread has sent me back to all my poetry books!

We have out together an anthology, all in a day.

I hadn't read this previously, so thought it worth posting MumTodd's recommendation. And yes, it did make me cry

Seamus Heaney

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

That is a beautiful, sad poem.

Wonderful, and a favourite.

Brilliant thread, but just feel the need to defend Heptonstall because I live here - someone said Sylvia Plath's grave is overgrown and in a field. The old churchyard is full, and so more recent graves are in a graveyard over the lane. And there's a deliberate attempt I think not to make a theme park of it, but it's not completely neglected and overgrown (or it wasn't the last time I went) as if no-one ever cares for it.

Now I have done my village duty - back to this excellent thread.

More Donne please - had a crush on him since I read the Flea and I realised poetry could be funny and sexy.

The last line is particularly poignant.

That was me.

TnOgu - maybe they've cleared it up since you came -I'm quite a newbie here. If you come again, let me know and I'll put the kettle on (and pop out to make sure the churchyard is tidy so I don't look like a liar )

Love this thread anyway. Have just found this - one of my favourites:

The Windhover: To Christ Our Lord

I CAUGHT this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,--the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

You are very lucky to live in Hepstonstall, it is a beautiful place

I am SO glad someone posted the Windhover. Wonderful.