Books : Favourite poem

Favourite poem

The raven by Edgar Allan Poe

Jesus Christ is Lord ✝️

Re: Favourite poem

Glad to see that you have a nice new hobby Ashleigh. One time I wrote a poem in high school English that was so good, that the teacher thought that I had plagiarized it from Roethke. I remember him looking through the big book of poetry, and slamming it shut when he couldn’t find any evidence of such copying. Because of course, I did not plagiarize it. I just accidentally wrote something that was very good

Speaking of Roethke, this is one of my all time favorite poems.

Elegy For Jane
(My student, thrown by a horse)


I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;
And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile;
And how, once started into talk, the light syllables leaped for her.
And she balanced in the delight of her thought,
A wren, happy, tail into the wind,
Her song trembling the twigs and small branches.
The shade sang with her;
The leaves, their whispers turned to kissing,
And the mould sang in the bleached valleys under the rose.

Oh, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth,
Even a father could not find her:
Scraping her cheek against straw,
Stirring the clearest water.
My sparrow, you are not here,
Waiting like a fern, making a spiney shadow.
The sides of wet stones cannot console me,
Nor the moss, wound with the last light.

If only I could nudge you from this sleep,
My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon.
Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love:
I, with no rights in this matter,
Neither father nor lover.

https://allpoetry.com/Elegy-For-Jane

If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.

Re: Favourite poem

I remember him looking through the big book of poetry, and slamming it shut when he couldn’t find any evidence of such copying.

That must have been very frustrating for him.

Travel influenser, Skyrizi theme song writer and Most Handsome

Re: Favourite poem

He was actually a pretty cool guy Jas. But rather eccentric. He lived in Berkeley California, and it has a reputation of being somewhat whack a doodle That’s why it’s been nick-named Berserkley

If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.

Re: Favourite poem

I never heard that nickname for the city. I love it. 👍

And yes it does have that reputation.

Travel influenser, Skyrizi theme song writer and Most Handsome

Re: Favourite poem

The Hollow Men by T S Eliot

Mistah Kurtz-he dead
A penny for the Old Guy



I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.


II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom


III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.


IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.


V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.


Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Re: Favourite poem

Damn it you beat me to it. I was going to post something by TS Elliot but wasn't sure which one.

👍😁
I still need to study his works more to really understand all of it.

Travel influenser, Skyrizi theme song writer and Most Handsome

Re: Favourite poem

I was going to post something by TS Elliot but wasn't sure which one.

"The Waste Land" is another great one.

Re: Favourite poem

I’m not huge into written poetry (but I love it when set to music) but hands down for me would be Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It’s awesomely awesome.

Re: Favourite poem

Anything is better than the really bad jazz "poetry" in So I Married an Ax Murderer.

"Please vote to preserve the unique character of Warren…" - Robert Duvall

Re: Favourite poem

You just gotta be a hep cat, ya dig daddio?

Re: Favourite poem

"227 Waverly Place" by W.S. Merwin

Re: Favourite poem

Ulysses
BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45392/ulysses

Re: Favourite poem

The Lady of Shalott. Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Re: Favourite poem

The shortest poem in the world:

Troubles

Adam had'em.



😺 Schrodinger's Cat walks into a bar, and doesn't. 🤨 Let's go, Brandon! 🤨 Try that in a small town.

Re: Favourite poem

Masterpiece!

Re: Favourite poem

Thank you! Thank you! I'm here all week, so be sure to tip your wait staff!



😺 Schrodinger's Cat walks into a bar, and doesn't. 🤨 Let's go, Brandon! 🤨 Try that in a small town.

Re: Favourite poem

Re: Favourite poem

I don't read poems much at all. I don't even have a favorite one. I couldn't image having a favorite. I did quote a few though cuz other people like poetry.

Re: Favourite poem

Bobby Shafto's gone to sea
He'll come back to marry me
Bonny Bobby Shafto

Bobby Shafto's fat and fair
Combing down his yellow hair
He's my love forevermore
Bonny Bobby Shafto

Untitled by Christina Barrett, on Flickr

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Christina Barrett
½ American ½ European-Asian

Re: Favourite poem

by William Hughes Mearns
Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there! He wasn't there again today, Oh how I wish he'd go away!”
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