The DU Lounge
Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsWhat's your favorite poem?
Mine:
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 is some mistake.
The only other sounds 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.
elleng
(130,732 posts)This too, The Road not Taken:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
discntnt_irny_srcsm
(18,476 posts)Brother Buzz
(36,375 posts)discntnt_irny_srcsm
(18,476 posts)Good movie too.
Lisa D
(1,532 posts)Still I Rise
Maya Angelou, 1928 - 2014
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, Ill rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
Cause I walk like Ive got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still Ill rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Dont you take it awful hard
Cause I laugh like Ive got gold mines
Diggin in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, Ill rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like Ive got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of historys shame
I rise
Up from a past thats rooted in pain
I rise
Im a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak thats wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
discntnt_irny_srcsm
(18,476 posts)Wise, creative, insightful...
Thanks
demmiblue
(36,823 posts)I sat on the throne
drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to europe
to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is nefertiti
the tears from my birth pains
created the nile
I am a beautiful woman
I gazed on the forest and burned
out the sahara desert
with a packet of goat's meat
and a change of clothes
I crossed it in two hours
I am a gazelle so swift
so swift you can't catch me
For a birthday present when he was three
I gave my son hannibal an elephant
He gave me rome for mother's day
My strength flows ever on
My son noah built new/ark and
I stood proudly at the helm
as we sailed on a soft summer day
I turned myself into myself and was
jesus
men intone my loving name
All praises All praises
I am the one who would save
I sowed diamonds in my back yard
My bowels deliver uranium
the filings from my fingernails are
semi-precious jewels
On a trip north
I caught a cold and blew
My nose giving oil to the arab world
I am so hip even my errors are correct
I sailed west to reach east and had to round off
the earth as I went
The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid
across three continents
I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal
I cannot be comprehended except by my permission
I mean...I...can fly
like a bird in the sky...
- Nikki Giovanni
discntnt_irny_srcsm
(18,476 posts)"I am so hip even my errors are correct"
Hatchling
(2,323 posts)When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
discntnt_irny_srcsm
(18,476 posts)Have more than thou showest, speak less than thou knowest, lend less than thou owest
First Speaker
(4,858 posts)...if you put him off in a category all his own, then my favorite long poem is Byron's "Don Juan". My favorite medium poem is Frost's "The Death of the Hired Man". And my favorite lyric is Dylan Thomas, "And Death Shall Have no Dominion".
discntnt_irny_srcsm
(18,476 posts)Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Joe Shlabotnik
(5,604 posts)femmocrat
(28,394 posts)Desiderata
Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.
Max Ehrmann, Desiderata, Copyright 1952.
discntnt_irny_srcsm
(18,476 posts)femmocrat
(28,394 posts)I hope I tried to live by its message.
discntnt_irny_srcsm
(18,476 posts)There are few more useful and selfless pursuits than working to inspire others.
Thank you
Who wills, Can.
Who tries, Does.
Who loves, Lives.
― Anne McCaffrey
PufPuf23
(8,755 posts)in 1967 and gave it to my grandmother for Christmas.
mak3cats
(1,573 posts)...and still have the poster.
Oh, and check out my sig line - it's my philosophy.
hamsterjill
(15,220 posts)Love the vocal by Les Crane.
HeiressofBickworth
(2,682 posts)To suffer woes which Hope thinks Infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems Omnipotent;
To Love and Bear; to Hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter nor repent;
This, like thy Glory, Titan, is to be
Good, Great and Joyous, Beautiful and Free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory.
Reading this a couple of times a day when I was going through a very difficult time in my life gave me the strength and will to not only overcome the difficulties but to rise above them.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,589 posts)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 conviction, 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: a waste of desert sand;
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
Wind shadows of the 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, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,473 posts)When I was in high school, my sophomore English teacher was an Irishman, John Sheehy. One of my clearest memories of that year is him reciting "The Second Coming" in his beautiful Dublin accent.
malthaussen
(17,175 posts)(OP -- Other Person)
-- Mal
Prisoner_Number_Six
(15,676 posts)I had a special dream last night--
I dreamed that I could fly
away, beyond the floating clouds--
I danced up in the sky.
The treetops were my stepping stones
to reach the summer air
so clear, so warm and sparkling blue!
I wish I was still there.
My dream was very real to me--
I thought of it all day.
I want to go back to my sky--
I wish there were a way!
To fly; to fly just like a bird!
To laugh at gravity!
It tasted sweet up in the sky--
like summer wine to me.
I had a special dream last night--
I dreamed that I could be
above the mountains; with the stars!
I flew, and I was free!
© 2015 Steven A. Hessler
All Rights Reserved
MizzM
(77 posts)Written as a sonnet by John Magee, an American pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force, killed in the WWII at age 19:
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds -
and done a hundred things you have not dreamed of -
wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence,
Hovering there I've chased the shouting wind along
and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
where never lark, or even eagle, flew;
and, while with silent lifting mind, I've trod
the high untrespassed sanctity of space,
put out my hand and touched the face of God.
rug
(82,333 posts)Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
- W. H. Auden
Capt.Rocky300
(1,005 posts)The Cremation of Sam McGee. Best read aloud to others around a roaring campfire.
LWolf
(46,179 posts)as a single favorite, especially when it comes to poems.
Here's one that has stuck with me my whole life, after my first reading back in the dark ages when I attended high school:
"To Autumn"
John Keats, 1795 - 1821
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the mossd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has oer-brimmd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reapd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/autumn
CTyankee
(63,889 posts)I remember checking out what an English Nightengale's sound would be that Keats was put in such a stupor listening to it. I checked it out when I was in London and now I think you can hear it on Google.
petronius
(26,597 posts)wreathed with wet poppies, waiting spring,
The ocean swelled for a far storm and beat its boundary,
the ground-swell shook the beds of granite.
I gazing at the boundaries of granite and spray,
the established sea-marks, felt behind me
Mountain and plain, the immense breadth of the continent,
before me the mass and double stretch of water.
I said: You yoke the Aleutian seal-rocks with the lava
and coral sowings that flower the south,
Over your flood the life that sought the sunrise faces ours
that has followed the evening star.
The long migrations meet across you and it is nothing to you,
you have forgotten us, mother.
You were much younger when we crawled out of the womb
and lay in the suns eye on the tideline.
It was long and long ago; we have grown proud since then
and you have grown bitter; life retains
Your mobile soft unquiet strength; and envies hardness,
the insolent quietness of stone.
The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars,
life is your child, but there is in me
Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye
that watched before there was an ocean.
That watched you fill your beds out of the condensation
of thin vapor and watched you change them,
That saw you soft and violent wear your boundaries down,
eat rock, shift places with the continents.
Mother, though my songs measure is like your
surf-beats ancient rhythm I never learned it of you.
Before there was any water there were tides of fire,
both our tones flow from the older fountain.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1018&pid=728188
ailsagirl
(22,885 posts)Though he, that ever kind and true,
Kept stoutly step by step with you,
Your whole long, gusty lifetime through,
Be gone a while before,
Be now a moment gone before,
Yet, doubt not, soon the seasons shall restore
Your friend to you.
He has but turned the corner still
He pushes on with right good will,
Through mire and marsh, by heugh and hill,
That self-same arduous way
That self-same upland, hopeful way,
That you and he through many a doubtful day
Attempted still.
He is not dead, this friend not dead,
But in the path we mortals tread
Got some few, trifling steps ahead
And nearer to the end;
So that you too, once past the bend,
Shall meet again, as face to face, this friend
You fancy dead.
Push gaily on, strong heart! The while
You travel forward mile by mile,
He loiters with a backward smile
Till you can overtake,
And strains his eyes to search his wake,
Or whistling, as he sees you through the brake,
Waits on a stile.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)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 shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd 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.
OriginalGeek
(12,132 posts)Happy to see it's already here.
Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,473 posts)"Hernando's Hideaway"?
For those of you who don't know the song,
nolabear
(41,932 posts)Four feet followed by three feet. Everything Emily Dickinson wrote was in common meter. So you sing "Because I could not stop for death/It kindly stopped for me" to Amazing Grace, The Yellow Rose of Texas, House of the rising Son or the Theme from Gilligan's Island.
malthaussen
(17,175 posts)I was made aware of it on an episode of Babylon Five. She was a big fan of Emily.
-- Mal
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)"To Althea, from Prison"; "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning"; et al.!
CTyankee
(63,889 posts)"Oh, my america
my new found land"
he wrote about his lover's body...now THAT'S a love poem!
Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,473 posts)Who was competing with his friend Horace Smith on which of the two could write a better poem on a set subject: A bit from a Greek historian describing an Egyptian statue. Shelley's poem is a classic, Smith is the answer to a trivia question about Shelley's poem.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)CTyankee
(63,889 posts)Theres a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are
None may teach it Any
Tis the Seal Despair
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air
When it comes, the Landscape listens
Shadows hold their breath
When it goes, tis like the Distance
On the look of Death
ashling
(25,771 posts)but in answer to your question. I guess it depends what mood I am in.
Different poems for different reasons
John Donne's Death Be Not Proud was read at my mother's funeral/memorial and so it has a special place
One of my dad's favorite's was Thomas Moore's The Last Rose of Summer as he got older and everybody from his past was gone, it had special meaning for us both. I recited it when we scattered my parents' ashes. It always makes me cry
'TIS the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindred,
No rosebud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes,
To give sigh for sigh.
I'll not leave thee, thou lone one!
To pine on the stem;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go, sleep thou with them.
Thus kindly I scatter
Thy leaves o'er the bed,
Where thy mates of the garden
Lie scentless and dead.
So soon may I follow,
When friendships decay,
And from Loves shining circle
The gems drop away.
When true hearts lie withered
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?
DFW
(54,293 posts)A simple minded southerner like me goes for simplicity, so.........
The Fly by Ogden Nash
God, in his wisdom, made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why
Joe Shlabotnik
(5,604 posts)Also, at a few of my cat's funerals, (where applicable; usually the Viking-like cats I've owned), some Blake has been recited:
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
AllenVanAllen
(3,134 posts)Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.
Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.
I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.
I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to
Uganda.
I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea
pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.
I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my
hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.
My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.
Peace
PushyGalore
(4 posts)"homage to my hips"
these hips are big hips
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty spaces. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have know them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!
--Lucille Clifton
"Wild Geese"
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
-Mary Oliver
Skittles
(153,113 posts)Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,473 posts)In purest song one plays the constant fool
As changes shimmer in the inner eye.
I stare and stare into a deepening pool
And tell myself my image cannot die.
I love myself: thats my one constancy.
Oh, to be something else, yet still to be!
Sweet Christ, rejoice in my infirmity;
Theres little left I care to call my own.
Today they drained the fluid from a knee
And pumped a shoulder full of cortisone;
Thus I conform to my divinity
By dying inward, like an aging tree.
The instant ages on the living eye;
Light on its rounds, a pure extreme of light
Breaks on me as my meager flesh breaks down
The soul delights in that extremity.
Blessed the meek; they shall inherit wrath;
Im son and father of my only death.
A mind too active is no mind at all;
The deep eye sees the shimmer on the stone;
The eternal seeks, and finds, the temporal,
The change from dark to light of the slow moon,
Dead to myself, and all I hold most dear,
I move beyond the reach of wind and fire.
Deep in the greens of summer sing the lives
Ive come to love. A vireo whets its bill.
The great day balances upon the leaves;
My ears still hear the bird when all is still;
My soul is still my soul, and still the Son,
And knowing this, I am not yet undone.
Things without hands take hands: there is no choice,
Eternitys not easily come by.
When opposites come suddenly in place,
I teach my eyes to hear, my ears to see
How body from spirit slowly does unwind
Until we are pure spirit at the end.
malthaussen
(17,175 posts)Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,473 posts)Ever since Vietnam, I have had a bad knee; now I have two bad knees. And a bad hip. And arthritis is starting to attack. And what the TV commercials call "erectile disfunction". No, my body from my spirit is unwinding.
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)malthaussen
(17,175 posts)Every time I pick a "favorite," another one immediately raises its head and demands attention. And of course I love my own children best of all.
Unfortunately, "Howl" is too long to post. But I've always loved the sentiment of e. e. cummings:
'pity this busy monster, manunkind'
pity this busy monster, manunkind,
not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)
plays with the bigness of his littleness
--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh
and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical
ultraomnipotence. We doctors know
a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go
-- Mal
CBGLuthier
(12,723 posts)Funeral Blues
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Response to CBGLuthier (Reply #49)
hamsterjill This message was self-deleted by its author.
reppencilgirl
(1 post)Hi there,
You have attributed my poem "Folks in Heaven" Copyright 2004 to Rod Hemphill. Rod is a pastor in Maryland who wrote a commentary of my poem. He did not write the poem. Will you please correct this. Thank you.
hamsterjill
(15,220 posts)This post was back in 2015 and Im afraid I dont remember where I may have found it. I still love the sentiment.
I will delete the post.
a la izquierda
(11,791 posts)Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)Wounded Bear
(58,601 posts)Perhaps the saddest lines of any poetry I have heard:
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
Getting old sucks.
geardaddy
(24,926 posts)Art_from_Ark
(27,247 posts)Last edited Mon Sep 14, 2015, 11:58 PM - Edit history (1)
Once there was an elephant
Who tried to use a telephant.
No, no, I mean an elephone
Who tried to use a telephone.
(Dear me, I am not certain, quite,
that even now I've got it right)
However it was, he got his trunk
Entangled in the telephunk
The more he tried to get it free
The louder buzzed the telebee.
Me thinks I'd better drop this song
Of elephunk and telephong.
Glorfindel
(9,719 posts)I remember memorizing and reciting it in grammar school - maybe 4th grade? Do you remember this one?
The rich man has his motor-car,
His country and his town estate.
He smokes a fifty-cent cigar,
And jeers at fate.
He frivols through the livelong day,
He knows not poverty, her pinch.
His lot is light, his heart is gay -
He has a cinch.
Yet, though my lamp burns low and dim,
Though I must slave for livelihood,
Think you that I would trade with him?
You bet I would!
petronius
(26,597 posts)I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
Glorfindel
(9,719 posts)Music
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let me go where'er I will,
I hear a sky-born music still:
It sounds from all things old,
It sounds from all things young,
From all that's fair, from all that's foul,
Peals out a cheerful song.
It is not only in the rose,
It is not only in the bird,
Not only where the rainbow glows,
Nor in the song of woman heard,
But in the darkest, meanest things
There alway, alway something sings.
'T is not in the high stars alone,
Nor in the cup of budding flowers,
Nor in the redbreast's mellow tone,
Nor in the bow that smiles in showers,
But in the mud and scum of things
There alway, alway something sings.
a la izquierda
(11,791 posts)It's a bit too long to post.
PushyGalore
(4 posts)in 8th grade. Not as a school assignment, but just because it struck me as so beautiful. I can still recite it, close to 30 years later.
I would "torture" a non-poetry-loving boyfriend I had later in high school by reciting it until I got my way. Never failed.
geardaddy
(24,926 posts)The Hollow Men - T.S. Eliot
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 usif at allnot 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.
and
Fern Hill - Dylan Thomas
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and
cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was
air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the
nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking
warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would
take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
elleng
(130,732 posts)THANK YOU!
IrishEyes
(3,275 posts)Richard Cory
By Edwin Arlington Robinson
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich yes, richer than a king
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
IrishEyes
(3,275 posts)Psalm of Life
BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the worlds broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howeer pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God oerhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing oer lifes solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
The Magistrate
(95,243 posts)Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries
These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earths foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.
Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earths foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.
It is Houseman, but so what....
discntnt_irny_srcsm
(18,476 posts)Blast from the past thread.
The Magistrate
(95,243 posts)I did not look at the date when I posted. I followed one of those 'say hello to the new member' links, and she had posted a claim to authorship of a poem above, about the sort of people one finds in heaven, that someone had posted as a favorite. It never occurred to me the thing might be long in archive. I guess she must search for herself and her work occasionally. I have always felt that poem, and have been reading again in Forrester's 'The General', so it was at the tip of my mind, so to speak. Though I generally associate it with the soldiers of later Rome and earlier imperiums myself, it was a sort of elegy for the British regulars of 1914.
discntnt_irny_srcsm
(18,476 posts)...I've always since college loved this one:
O I forbid you, maidens a',
That wear gowd on your hair,
To come or gae by Carterhaugh,
For young Tam Lin is there.
http://www.tam-lin.org/versions/39A.html
From old Scotland