favourite poems?

Pate

Pate

Pate

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I'm stuck on this dreary oppressive train, and wish to distract myself from my own thoughts. Thus I was wondering if anyone had any poems to share?

Anything that captivates or provokes emotion.

If you could paste it here(dire internet) I'd be obliged.

Thanks.

My poem is: how do I love thee
 
A teddybear sits on a mattress
One glass eye and threadbare paw
Looking at a cuckoo clock
Which tells it's nearly ten to four

Four o'clock is teddy's tea time
Lots of friends and fancy cake
Although it's only pretend eating
Oh how long ten minutes take

Shadows grow on distant hillside
Orange sun on glassy sea
All in his amber eye reflected
And still ten minutes left 'til tea

The mattress striped is old and broken
Rusty springs through stuffing show
The cuckoo clock is also broken
But how's a teddy supposed to know?

Unaware he's been abandoned
That this is not the nursery cot
The hills and sea just glass, old papers
On a disused rubbish plot

A telephone that no one answers
Empty tins that once held tea
The clock that still says nearly tea time
Where can all the children be?

For ages now he's lain unwanted
Saluting with a threadbare paw
He'll never know he's been discarded
'Til the clock reads after four

Don't tell him that the clock is broken
As long as teddy doesn't know
It will always soon be teatime
As it was so long ago.
 
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i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)


E.E Cummings
 
Kubla Khan
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In Xanadu did Kublai Khan
A stately Pleasure-Dome decree,
Where Alph, the sacred river ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers was girdled ’round,
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But, oh! That deep, romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill, athwart a cedarn cover:
A savage place! As holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath the waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her Demon Lover!
And from this chasm with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this Earth in fast, thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced,
Amid whose swift, half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail;
And ‘midst these dancing rocks at once and ever,
It flung up momently the sacred river!
Five miles meandering with ever a mazy motion,
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean.
And ‘mid this tumult, Kublai heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the Dome of Pleasure
Floated midway on the waves,
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device:
A sunny Pleasure-Dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such deep delight ‘twould win me
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome within the air!
That sunny dome, those caves of ice,
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry: “Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle ’round him thrice,
And close your eyes in holy dread:
For he on honeydew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise!”
 
Perhaps because it makes me run that little bit faster on my regular route.

Edwin Morgan - Glasgow Green

Clammy midnight, moonless mist.
A cigarette glows and fades on a cough.
Meth-men mutter on benches,
pawed by river Fog. Monteith Row
sweats coldly, crumbles, dies
slowly. All shadows are alive.
Somewhere a shout's forced out - 'No!' -
it leads to nothing but silence,
except the whisper of the grass
and the other whispers that fills the shadows.

'What d'ye mean see me again?
D'ye think I came here jist for that?
I'm no finished with you yet.
I can get the boys t'ye, they're no that faur away.
You wouldny like that eh? Look there's no two ways aboot it.
Christ but I'm gaun to have you Mac
if it takes all night, turn over you *******
turn over, I'll -
Cut the scene.
Here there's no crying for help,
it must be acted out, again, again.

This is not a delicate nightmare
you carry to the point of fear
and wake from, it is life, the sweat
is real, the wrestling under a bush
is real, the dirty starless river
is the real Clyde, with a dishrag dawn
it rinse the horrors of the night
but cannot make them clean:
though washing blows
where the women watch
by day,
and children run,
on Glasgow Green.

And how shall these men live?
Providence, watch them go!
Watch them love, and watch them die!
How shall the race be served?
It shall be served by anguish
as well as by children at play.
It shall be served by loneliness
as well as family love.
It shall be served by hunter and hunted in the endless chain
as well as by those who turn back the sheets in peace.

The thorn in the flesh!
Providence water it!
Do you think it is not watered?
Do you think it is not planted?
Do you think there is not a seed of the thorn
as there is also a harvest of the thorn?
Man, take in that harvest!
Help that tree bear its fruit!
Water the wilderness, walk there, reclaim it!
Reclaim, regain, renew! Fill the barns and the vats!

Longing,
longing
shall find its wine.

Let the women sit in the Green
and rock their prams as the sheets
blow and whip in the sunlight.
But the beds of married love
are islands in the sea of desire.
It waves break here, in this park,
splashing the fresh as it trembles
like driftwood in the dark.
 
I was going to post my favourite poem, Paradise Lost by Milton. However it is a bit of a long one so I posted my second favourite...Kubla Khan.

The Ancient Mariner was another one I considered, again it is exceptionally long though.
 
Gwae fi fy myw mewn oes mor ddreng,
A Duw ar drai ar orwel pell;
O'i ôl mae dyn, yn deyrn a gwreng,
Yn codi ei awdurdod hell.

Pan deimlodd fyned ymaith Dduw
Cyfododd gledd i ladd ei frawd;
Mae sŵn yr ymladd ar ein clyw,
A'i gysgod ar fythynnod tlawd.

Mae'r hen delynau genid gynt
Ynghrog ar gangau'r helyg draw,
A gwaedd y bechgyn lond y gwynt,
A'u gwaed yn gymysg efo'r glaw.

http://www.lgac.org/poetry/HeddWynPoems.html

Word-for-word Translation

Woe is me that I live in an age so boorish*,
And God at ebb on a distant horizon;
After him, man, (both) lord and commoner,
Raising his ugly authority.

When he felt God's going away
He raised a sword to kill his brother;
The sound of battle is on our ear,
And its shadow on poor cottages.

The old harps that were played before are
Suspended on the branches of yonder willows,
And the scream of the boys filling the wind,
And their blood mixed with the rain.

*perverse/churlish/peevish/morose


Poetic Translation

Alas, this is an age so mean
That everyman is made a Lord,
For all authority's absurd
When God himself fades from the scene.

As quick as God is shown the door
Out come the cannons and the sword:
Hate on hate on brother poured
And scored the deepest on the poor.

The harps that once could help our pain
Hang silent, to the willows pinned.
The cry of battle fills the wind
And blood of lads--it falls like rain.
 
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Daffodils: William Wordsworth...

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
 
Robosapien said:
Gwae fi fy myw mewn oes mor ddreng,
A Duw ar drai ar orwel pell;
O'i ôl mae dyn, yn deyrn a gwreng,
Yn codi ei awdurdod hell.

Pan deimlodd fyned ymaith Dduw
Cyfododd gledd i ladd ei frawd;
Mae sŵn yr ymladd ar ein clyw,
A'i gysgod ar fythynnod tlawd.

Mae'r hen delynau genid gynt
Ynghrog ar gangau'r helyg draw,
A gwaedd y bechgyn lond y gwynt,
A'u gwaed yn gymysg efo'r glaw.
Click to expand...
So, basically you like sheep?
 
Crow's Fall by Ted Hughes

When Crow was white he decided the sun was too white.
He decided it glared much too whitely.
He decided to attack it and defeat it.

He got his strength up flush and in full glitter.
He clawed and fluffed his rage up.
He aimed his beak direct at the sun's centre.

He laughed himself to the centre of himself

And attacked.

At his battle cry trees grew suddenly old,
Shadows flattened.

But the sun brightened—
It brightened, and Crow returned charred black.

He opened his mouth but what came out was charred black.

"Up there," he managed,
"Where white is black and black is white, I won."


I could post pretty much anything from "From The Life and Songs of The Crow" by Ted Hughes, which i have read to death over the years but if i had to choose just one it would be this.


Castiel said:
The Ancient Mariner was another one I considered, again it is exceptionally long though.
Click to expand...


I considered posting a segment of that also, but it would be doing it a disservice not to post it all.
 
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.
Click to expand...
 
Castiel said:
I was going to post my favourite poem, Paradise Lost by Milton. However it is a bit of a long one so I posted my second favourite...Kubla Khan.

The Ancient Mariner was another one I considered, again it is exceptionally long though.
Click to expand...

If you could post them or even one I'd be obliged. The night is long.
 
I quite like The British by Benjamin Zephaniah, but i haven't quite got out of the phase where i can't appreciate poetry properly due to the way it was drilled into you at school yet. I can't seem to remember the ones i liked prior...
 
Pate said:
If you could post them or even one I'd be obliged. The night is long.
Click to expand...

Ok....here is a short one to be going on with...


Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away

Percy Bysshe Shelley
 
[FnG]magnolia;20782648 said:
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)


E.E Cummings
Click to expand...

I was going to post that :(
 
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