Your Favorite Poem

[metroidhunter9292]

The Bells By Edgar Allan Poe

[megustaleer]

My favourite poem is Timothy Winters, by Cornish poet Charles Causley. He can be heard reading it on http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarch ... poemId=124

[ClickForth]

Governors on Sominex by David Berman

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/governors-on-sominex/

[Lyn]

Somewhere I have never traveled,
Gladly beyond any experience,
Your eyes have their silence:
In your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
Or which I cannot touch because they are too near...

Your slightest look easily will unclose me
Though I have closed myself as fingers,
You open always petal by petal myself
As Spring opens (touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose...

Or if your wish be to close me,
I and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
As when the heart of this flower imagines
The snow carefully everywhere descending;

Nothing which we are to perceive in this world
Equals the power of your intense fragility:
Whose texture compels me with the color of its countries
Rendering death and forever with each breathing...

(I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;
Only something in me understands
The voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
No one, not even the rain, has such small hands.

- E.E. Cummings

[kaytie]

Sonnet 130 as read by Alan Rickman

[sleepydumpling]

Sonnet 130 as read by Alan Rickman

That man could read the phone book aloud and it would be awesome.

[Scott]

My favorite poem is "First Writing Since" by Suheir Hammad. It's sad but powerful.

[Coraline]

I love to read Fire and Ice by Robert Frost many times. I don't know why I like it. I just think that it reflects his very interesting way of thinking.

[saracen77]

My favourite poem is Timothy Winters, by Cornish poet Charles Causley. He can be heard reading it on http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarch ... poemId=124

I love this poem too. We had this as part of our anthology when I took GCSE Lit, and it stood out as a wonderful piece of writing, and storytelling.

I think my favourite has to be An Irish Airman Foresees His Death by W. B. Yeats. Very simple and poignant, portraying the decisions of the airman.

[clarebear]

The First Evening

She was very much half dressed,
and big indiscreet trees
threw out their leaves against the pane:
cunningly, and close, quite close.

Sitting half naked in my big chair,
she clasped her hands.
Her small and so delicate feet
trembled with pleasure on the floor.

The colour of wax, I watched
a little wild ray of light
flutter on her smiling lips
and on her breast - an insect on the rose-bush.

I kissed her delicate ankles.
She laughed softly and suddenly,
a string of clear trills,
a lovely laugh of crystal.

The small feet fled beneath
her petticoat: 'Stop it, do!' -
The first act of daring permitted,
her laugh pretended to punish me!

Softly I kissed her eyes -
trembling beneath my lips, poor things -
she threw back her fragile head:
'Oh come now! that's going too far!'

'Listen, sir, I have something to say to you .. '
I transferred the rest to her breast in a kiss
which made her laugh with a kind laugh that was willing...
She was very much half-dressed,
and big indiscreet tress threw out their leaves
against the pane: cunningly, and close, quite close.

Rimbaud

[KaeMartyndale]

This is one of my favourites. Its not sophisticated, but its true.


There is a pretty girl
on the
Face
of the magazine
And
all I see
is my dirty
hands
turning the page

-- Jewel Kilcher

[Erasmus_Folly]

I don't know if I have a favorite, but there I many I admire. Here are two by Stephen Crane:


*****************


Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

Hoarse, booming drums of the
regiment,
Little souls who thirst for fight,
These men were born to drill and die.
The unexplained glory files above
them,
Great is the battle-god, great, and his
kingdom--
A field where a thousand corpses lie.

Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because your father tumbled in the yellow
trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

Swift blazing flag of the regiment,
Eagle with crest of red and gold,
These men were born to drill and die.
Point for them the virtue of the slaughter,
Make plain to them the excellence of killing
And a field where a thousand corpses
lie.

Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind.


*****************


Fast rode the knight
With spurs, hot and reeking,
Ever waving an eager sword,
"To save my lady!"
Fast rode the knight,
And leaped from saddle to war.
Men of steel flickered and gleamed
Like riot of silver lights,
And the gold of the knight's good banner
Still waved on a castle wall.
. . . . . . .
A horse,
Blowing, staggering, bloody thing,
Forgotten at foot of castle wall.
A horse
Dead at foot of castle wall.

[Erasmus_Folly]

And these from the incomparable Emily Dickinson:


V.

The pedigree of honey
Does not concern the bee;
A clover, any time, to him
Is aristocracy.


IX.

THE GRASS.

The grass so little has to do, --
A sphere of simple green,
With only butterflies to brood,
And bees to entertain,

And stir all day to pretty tunes
The breezes fetch along,
And hold the sunshine in its lap
And bow to everything;

And thread the dews all night, like pearls,
And make itself so fine, --
A duchess were too common
For such a noticing.

And even when it dies, to pass
In odors so divine,
As lowly spices gone to sleep,
Or amulets of pine.

And then to dwell in sovereign barns,
And dream the days away, --
The grass so little has to do,
I wish I were the hay!


XV.

THE BEE.

Like trains of cars on tracks of plush
I hear the level bee:
A jar across the flowers goes,
Their velvet masonry

Withstands until the sweet assault
Their chivalry consumes,
While he, victorious, tilts away
To vanquish other blooms.

His feet are shod with gauze,
His helmet is of gold;
His breast, a single onyx
With chrysoprase, inlaid.

His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for a bee's experience
Of clovers and of noon!


XXV.

DEATH AND LIFE.

Apparently with no surprise
To any happy flower,
The frost beheads it at its play
In accidental power.
The blond assassin passes on,
The sun proceeds unmoved
To measure off another day
For an approving God.

[KaeMartyndale]

I definitely like Emily Dickinson.

[Inkling]

There are so many poet's I enjoy, Poe, Tennyson, Frost, Browning, Coleridge, Puschkin, Cummings--the list goes on--which makes it hard to choose one poem amongst so many, however, at the moment I find myself partial to Inchcape Rock by Robert Southey.

Inchcape Rock

No stir in the air, no stir in the sea,
The Ship was still as she could be;
Her sails from heaven received no motion,
Her keel was steady in the ocean.

Without either sign or sound of their shock,
The waves flow’d over the Inchcape Rock;
So little they rose, so little they fell,
They did not move the Inchcape Bell.

The Abbot of Aberbrothok
Had placed that bell on the Inchcape Rock;
On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung,
And over the waves its warning rung.

When the Rock was hid by the surge’s swell,
The Mariners heard the warning Bell;
And then they knew the perilous Rock,
And blest the Abbot of Aberbrothok

The Sun in the heaven was shining gay,
All things were joyful on that day;
The sea-birds scream’d as they wheel’d round,
And there was joyaunce in their sound.

The buoy of the Inchcape Bell was seen
A darker speck on the ocean green;
Sir Ralph the Rover walk’d his deck,
And fix’d his eye on the darker speck.

He felt the cheering power of spring,
It made him whistle, it made him sing;
His heart was mirthful to excess,
But the Rover’s mirth was wickedness.

His eye was on the Inchcape Float;
Quoth he, “My men, put out the boat,
And row me to the Inchcape Rock,
And I’ll plague the Abbot of Aberbrothok.”

The boat is lower’d, the boatmen row,
And to the Inchcape Rock they go;
Sir Ralph bent over from the boat,
And he cut the bell from the Inchcape Float.

Down sank the Bell with a gurgling sound,
The bubbles rose and burst around;
Quoth Sir Ralph, “The next who comes to the Rock,
Won’t bless the Abbot of Aberbrothok.”

Sir Ralph the Rover sail’d away,
He scour’d the seas for many a day;
And now grown rich with plunder’d store,
He steers his course for Scotland’s shore.

So thick a haze o’erspreads the sky,
They cannot see the sun on high;
The wind hath blown a gale all day,
At evening it hath died away.

On the deck the Rover takes his stand,
So dark it is they see no land.
Quoth Sir Ralph, “It will be lighter soon,
For there is the dawn of the rising Moon.”

“Canst hear,” said one, “the breakers roar?
For methinks we should be near the shore.”
“Now, where we are I cannot tell,
But I wish we could hear the Inchcape Bell.”

They hear no sound, the swell is strong,
Though the wind hath fallen they drift along;
Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock,
“Oh Christ! It is the Inchcape Rock!”

Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair,
He curst himself in his despair;
The waves rush in on every side,
The ship is sinking beneath the tide.

But even is his dying fear,
One dreadful sound could the Rover hear;
A sound as if with the Inchcape Bell,
The Devil below was ringing his knell.

-Robert Southey (1820).