favourite poem (1 Viewer)

[lovenotwar]

The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe

&

The Fist by Derek Walcott:

The fist clenched round my heart
loosens a little, and I gasp
brightness; but it tightens
again. When have I ever not loved
the pain of love? But this has moved
past love to mania. This has the strong
clench of the madman, this is gripping the ledge of
unreason before
plunging howling into the abyss.
Hold hard then, heart.
This way at least you live.

 

[i-love-maynard]

The Mystic Blue by D.H Lawrence

http://www.bartleby.com/127/60.html

 

[Kwayera]

Just listing my favourite stanzas, because these poems are quite long;

Coleridge's Dejection: An Ode.

A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear--
O Lady! in this wan and heartless mood,
To other thoughts by yonder throstle wooed,
All this long eve, so balmy and serene,
Have I been gazing on the western sky,
And its peculiar tint of yellow green:
And still I gaze - and with how blank an eye!
And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,
That give away their motion to the stars;
Those stars, that glide behind them or between,
Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen:
Yon crescent Moon, as fixed as if it grew
In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue;
I see them all so excellently fair
I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!

Algernon Charles Swinburne's Notre-Dame des Sept Deloures (Dolores);

Where are they, Cotytto or Venus,
Astarte or Ashtaroth, where?
Do their hands as we touch come between us?
Is the breath of them hot in thy hair?
From their lips have thy lips taken fever,
With the blood of their bodies grown red?
Hast thou left upon earth a believer
If these men are dead?

Hmm.. they're quite depressing..

 

[chelsea girl]

Cut

What a thrill ---
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of a hinge


Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.


Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls


Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz.


A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.


Whose side are they on?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill


The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man ---


The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when


The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence


How you jump ---
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.


- Sylvia Plath

.

 

[Hatta]

Unfortunatley, I liked Yeats' The Second Coming before studying it in English. Critical study saps everything out of anything. Still my favourite though
(from memory, so probably not exact)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all convistion, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand.
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert,
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again, but now I know,
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, it's hour come round at last
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

Let's hope I got that right. Oh! Fidele, too.

 

[Taskan]

i don't really read much poetry, but since i saw "dead man", i wanted to know where a quote in the movie comes from, i found it one day in a poem, and though i can make neither head nor tail of it, i like it. i bolded the quote

Auguries of Innocence

William Blake

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.
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell through all its regions.
A dog starved at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.
A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.
A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipped and armed for fight
Does the rising sun affright.
Every wolf's and lion's howl
Raises from hell a human soul.
The wild deer wandering here and there
Keeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misused breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.
The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won't believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright.
He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be beloved by men.
He who the ox to wrath has moved
Shall never be by woman loved.
The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.
He who torments the chafer's sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.
The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother's grief.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh.
He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar's dog and widow's cat,
Feed them, and thou wilt grow fat.
The gnat that sings his summer's song
Poison gets from Slander's tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of Envy's foot.
The poison of the honey-bee
Is the artist's jealousy.
The prince's robes and beggar's rags
Are toadstools on the miser's bags.
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
It is right it should be so:
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
The babe is more than swaddling bands,
Throughout all these human lands;
Tools were made and born were hands,
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;
This is caught by females bright
And returned to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar
Are waves that beat on heaven's shore.
The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes Revenge! in realms of death.
The beggar's rags fluttering in air
Does to rags the heavens tear.
The soldier armed with sword and gun
Palsied strikes the summer's sun.
The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's shore.
One mite wrung from the labourer's hands
Shall buy and sell the miser's lands,
Or if protected from on high
Does that whole nation sell and buy.
He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mocked in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.
He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.
The questioner who sits so sly
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.
The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour's iron brace.
When gold and gems adorn the plough
To peaceful arts shall Envy bow.
A riddle or the cricket's cry
Is to doubt a fit reply.
The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.
If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.
The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding sheet.
The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
We are led to believe a lie
When we see not through the eye
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.
God appears, and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night,
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

 

[horses r cool]

geebung polo club A.B patterson

MATES

I've traveled down some dusty roads,
Both crooked tracks and straight,
And I have learnt life's noblest creed
Summed up in one word, "Mate".

I'm thinkin' back across the years,
A thing I do of late
And these words stick between me ears
"You gotta have a mate."

Someone who'll take you as you are
Regardless of your state
And stand as firm as Ayers Rock
Because he is your mate.

Me mind goes back to '43
To slavery and hate
When man's one chance to stay alive
Depended on his mate.

With bamboo for a billy-can
And bamboo for a plate,
A bamboo paradise for bugs
Was bed for me and mate.

You'd slip and slither through the mud
And curse your rotten fate
But then you'd hear a quiet word
"Don't drop your bundle, mate."

And though it's all so long ago
This truth I have to state,
A man don't know what lonely means
'til he has lost his mate.

If there's a life that follers this,
If there's a Golden Gate,
The welcome that I wanna hear
Is just "Goodonya mate".

And so to all who ask us why
We keep these special dates,
Like ANZAC Day, I tell 'em "Why?!
We're thinkin' of our mates."

And when I've left the driver's seat
And 'anded in me plates
I'll tell Ol' Peter at the door
"I've come to join me mates."

and this one

The Dash

I read of a man who stood to speak
At the funeral of a friend
He referred to the dates on his tombstone
From the beginning ... to the end

He noted that first came the date of his birth
And he spoke of the following dates with tears.
But he said what mattered most of all
Was the dash between those years.

For that dash represents all the time
That he spent alive on earth
And now only those who loved him
Know what that little line is worth.

So think about this long and hard...
Are there things you'd like to change?
What matters is how we live and love
And how we spend our dash.
(You could be at "dash mid-range")

If we could just slow down enough
To consider what's true and real
And always try to understand
The way other people feel.

And be less quick to anger
And show appreciation more
And love the people in our lives
Like we've never loved before.

If we treat each other with respect
And more often wear a smile...
Remembering that this special dash
Might only last a little while

So, when your eulogy's being read
With your life's actions to rehash...
Would you be proud of the things they say
About how you spent your dash?

not sure who wrote them though if any one has any ideas could u please let me know thanks

 

[carrots please!]

To Others Than You

Friend by enemy I call you out.

You with a bad coin in your socket,
You my friend there with a winning air
Who palmed the lie on me when you looked
Brassily at my shyest secret,
Enticed with twinkling bits of the eye
Til the sweet tooth of my love bit dry,
Rasped at last, and I stumbled and sucked,
Whom I now conjure to stand as thief
In the memory worked by mirrors,
With unforgettably smiling act,
Quickness of hand in the velvet glove
And my whole heart under your hammer,
Were once such a creature, so gay and frank
A desireless familiar
I never thought to utter or think
While you displaced a truth in the air,

That though I loved them for their faults
As much as for their good,
My friends were enemies on stilts
With their heads in a cunning cloud.


- dylan thomas...genius.