This Poetry Machine Picks a Poem to Match who YOU Are

[roughsatori]

Click on this link and answer 10 multiple choice questions and then click submit. You will be given a poem to suit you:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/games/moodmatcher/0,5917,88087,00.html

Please copy and paste your poem, I will come back and read all replies. I am curious what will revealed. Here's what came up for me:

Eel-grass

No matter what I say,
All that I really love
Is the rain that flattens on the bay,
And the eel-grass in the cove;
The jingle-shells that lie on the beach
At the tide-line, and the trace
Of higher tides along the beach:
Nothing in this place.

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950)

[listenup]

1. I won't click on the link, but

Sunday night always feels a little
quiet
Sunday night reminds me of yesterday
times I would look out of the window
and wonder what magic was there today
Sunday night
makes one think about tomorrow
I will never again follow someone with
nothing but pain and sorrow
in their heart.
I love Sunday night
so quiet.
times I dreamed what was outside my window
was magic, and it was here today
it's alright
I love Sunday night
It's quiet.

out of my head and onto the board. there you go. that's it.

[roughsatori]

8. Thanks that was good. But you're missing some fun at the link

It is a legitimate site that I visit almost daily and have never gotten anything but my thoughts provoked there. :)

[listenup]

12. Sorry, didn't mean to get emotionally individualistic there

oops.

Okay.

[Crowdance]

2. The machine's brilliant

You're experiencing a bit of an existential crisis, aren't you? Here's a poem to help you through your long dark night of the soul.


Because I could not stop for Death -

BECAUSE I could not stop for Death -
He kindly stopped for me -
The Carriage held but just Ourselves -
And Immortality.

We slowly drove - He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labour and my leisure too,
For His Civility -

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess - in the Ring -
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain -
We passed the Setting Sun -

Or rather - He passed Us -
The Dews drew quivering and chill -
For only Gossamer, my Gown -
My Tippet - only Tulle -

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground -
The Roof was scarcely visible -
The Cornice - in the Ground -

Since then - 'tis Centuries - and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses Heads
Were toward Eternity -

Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)

[roughsatori]

14. Emily Dickinson is my chosen soul-mate

I have had an obsession with her since I was a small boy. I have visited her home and grave, have read many, many books regarding her. Read all of her poems (even the annotated version's and in her hand-writing). I have dreamed about her too. I guess she is like a leitmotif in my life. Oops, I'm sounding nutty. I really love her work.

[NashVegas]

62. Haha - Same one I Got

:)

[roughsatori]

66. the Horses legs are trotting you both into eternity. . .

Well, all of us.

[SiobhanClancy]

3. Should have been Yeats...

but this is what they came up with for me:

Goodbye

GOOD-BYE, proud world! I'm going home;
Thou art my friend, and I'm not thine.
Long through thy weary crowds I roam;
A river-ark on the ocean brine,
Long I've been tossed like the driven foam;
But now, proud world! I'm going home.

Good-bye to Flattery's fawning face;
To Grandeur with his wise grimace;
To upstart Wealth's averted eye;
To supple Office, low and high;
To crowded halls, to court and street;
To frozen hearts and hasting feet;
To those who go, and those who come;
Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home.

I am going to my own hearth-stone,
Bosomed to yon green hills alone, -
A secret nook in a pleasant land,
Whose groves the frolic fairies planned;
Where arches green, the livelong day,
Echo the blackbird's roundelay,
And vulgar feet have never trod
A spot that is sacred to thought and God.

O, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;
And when I am stretched beneath the pines,
Where the evening star so holy shines,
I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,
At the sophist schools and the learned clan;
For what are they all, in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet?

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

A cool thing,though:)

[roughsatori]

6. I was doing a bit of research this weekend about Emerson

The idea being that he has been relegated by American Academia to a conservative position that is not true to his liberal nature. That led to some very ant-Emerson feminist writings and then that led to some Feminist Scholars re-claiming him. LOL

[rucky]

114. I Got A Yeats...

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evenings full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear the lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939)

[roughsatori]

150. Another text-book warhorse but the sound when read aloud is stunning

Try reading it one night aloud after you are sure you have grasped the meaning of it for you--do it with a candle lit and a glass of Merlot(reading poetry is a multi-media event).

[Wolfman 11]

4. Kubla Khan

In Xanadu did Kubla 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 were 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 a 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 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with 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 Kubla 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 a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in 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 with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834)

didn't really read the whole thing so I don't know how accurate it is.

[roughsatori]

20. Coleridge's "Frost at Midnight" is a better poem IMHO

I have always found Kubla Khan to be tedious (heresy, I know). But the story behind the writing of it after waking from a drug induced sleep is nice.

[Fridays Child]

87. Me, too. Kubla Khan.

[roughsatori]

93. "For he on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the mild of paradise"

Some wondrous images in your poem.

[notadmblnd]

5. Heres mine

A valediction: of weeping

LET me pour forth
My tears before thy face, whil'st I stay here,
For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,
And by this Mintage they are something worth,
For thus they be
Pregnant of thee;
Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more,
When a tear falls, that thou falls which it bore,
So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore.
On a round ball
A workman that hath copies by, can lay
An Europe, Afrique, and an Asia,
And quickly make that, which was nothing, All,
So doth each tear,
Which thee doth wear,
A globe, yea world by that impression grow,
Till thy tears mixt with mine do overflow
This world, by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved
O more than Moon,
Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere,
Weep me not dead, in thine arms, but forbear
To teach the sea, what it may do too soon;
Let not the wind
Example find,
To do me more harm, than it purposeth;
Since thou and I sigh one another's breath,
Who e'r sighs most, is cruellest, and hastes the other's d

John Donne (1572 - 1631)

[roughsatori]

22. You must be very wise and sad

For the deus-ex-machina to pick that for you.

[Redneck Socialist]

51. I got that one too.

[roughsatori]

53. The vale of tears is flowing tonight. NT

[JanMichael]

7. OMFG! It nailed IT! Stephen Crane!

You're experiencing a bit of an existential crisis, aren't you? Here's a poem to help you through your long dark night of the soul.


Epigrams
from The Black Riders and Other Lines

(I)

BLACK riders came from the sea.
There was clang and clang of spear and shield,
And clash and clash of hoof and heel,
Wild shouts and the wave of hair
In the rush upon the wind:
Thus the ride of sin.

I Walked in a Desert

I walked in a desert
And I cried,
"Ah, God, take me from this place!"
A voice said, "It is no desert."
I cried, "Well but -
The sand, the heat, the vacant horizon."
A voice said, "It is no desert."

(III)

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting on the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter - bitter," he answered,
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."

Stephen Crane (1871 - 1900)

[roughsatori]

17. I like what you made BOLD and you may be pleased to know

That Stephen Crane's poetry rep is growing bigger by the moment.

[jumptheshadow]

9. James Joyce

The first poem was mine. I inadvertently cut the name off. The second poem was my partner's. Despite the tone of the poems, we're a happy couple.


I hear an army charging upon the land,
And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees:
Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand,
Disdaining the reins, with fluttering ships, the charioteers.

They cry unto the night their battle-name:
I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter.
They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame,
Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.

They come shaking in triumph their long, green hair:
They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore.
My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?
My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?

James Joyce (1882-1941)

Love's Alchemy

SOME that have deeper digg'd love's mine than I,
Say, where his centric happiness doth lie;
I have lov'd, and got, and told,
But should I love, get, tell, till I were old,
I should not find that hidden mystery.
Oh, 'tis imposture all!
And as no chemic yet th'elixir got,
But glorifies his pregnant pot
If by the way to him befall
Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal,
So, lovers dream a rich and long delight,
But get a winter-seeming summer's night.

Our ease, our thrift, our honour, and our day,
Shall we for this vain bubble's shadow pay?
Ends love in this, that my man
Can be as happy'as I can, if he can
Endure the short scorn of a bridegroom's play?
That loving wretch that swears
'Tis not the bodies marry, but the minds,
Which he in her angelic finds,
Would swear as justly that he hears,
In that day's rude hoarse minstrelsy, the spheres.
Hope not for mind in women; at their best
Sweetness and wit, they'are but mummy, possess'd.

John Donne (1572 - 1631)

[roughsatori]

15. John Donne is a wonderful poet.

I'm not a huge fan of Joyce's poems--but I admire his skill as a writer immensely. You and your partner must make an interesting couple. :)

[jumptheshadow]

116. Thank you for this thread

It is fascinating. I am going to return to it at lunchtime. You have interested me in poetry again.

My partner is so very different than me. I never would ask for a rubber catsuit as a gift!

[roughsatori]

151. I tend to draw partners with the rubber cat-suit orientation too

But my friends tend to share my love of literature. But I have been told many times by those who love me to shut-up about poetry when their friends are around.

[ornotna]

10. Here's mine

Ode to a nightingale

MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness, -
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain -
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: - Do I wake or sleep?

John Keats (1795 - 1821)

[roughsatori]

24. An anthology warhorse but a gem of genius indeed NT

[listenup]

11. A machine to choose the poetry right for your mood

Thank the progammer gods for this! I don't know how I got by without it.

what a great way to get people to read and learn a small, tiny bit of poetic history. I could probably find myself in every poem listed - that's what great poems do - they create emotion within the individual.

Argh. Enough with the computers already. Is there nothing sacred?

What's next -

I have a computer site that will tell you when you will piss next.

[roughsatori]

25. Don't be such a crank! That is my job!

I am the biggest most cynical crank most people have ever met--except when it comes to poetry. I live and breathe poetry. Anything that gets people to read and discuss it is a blessing in my life. ;)

[listenup]

26. Okay, since you put it that way, I'm

sorry that I had a negative reaction to this. I shouldn't have responded at all. I apologize.

[roughsatori]

35. Hey that's alright, everyone is welcome here. Thank you Listenup

[Metatron]

13. Wordsworth is what I was given

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,

The 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
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee;
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company;
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
What wealth to me the show 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.

William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)

[roughsatori]

27. Sounds like you are lonely but content. Another anthology warhorse

but no-less touching. I wonder about the "close" relationship of William and his Sister Dorothy though, tsk, tsk.

[Spider Jerusalem]

16. Hmmm. One of my favourite poems, surprisingly.

You're experiencing a bit of an existential crisis, aren't you? Here's a poem to help you through your long dark night of the soul.


The Waste Land

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses

If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But here there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead, up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you,
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
- But who is that on the other side of you?

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In this decayed hole among the mountains,
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract,
By this, and this only, we have existed,
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms his prison
Only at nightfall, aethereal rumors
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: the boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands

I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam uti chelidon - O swallow swallow
Le prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Da. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih

T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)

(on edit: It should've said, but didn't, that this is the fifth stanza of "The Waste Land"..."The Burial of the Dead".)

[roughsatori]

29. Great poem even if WC Williams thought it ruined poetry for 30 years

Quit a great, poet at times, despite his refusal to work the footnotes into the actual text of the poem. I love reading Eliot's work on quiet nights with a cup of tea.

[Swede]

18. Existential crisis,but I already knew that

Life

WHAT is our life? A play of passion,
Our mirth the music of division,
Our mother's wombs the tiring-houses be,
Where we are dressed for this short comedy.
Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is,
That sits and marks still who doth act amiss.
Our graves that hide us from the setting sun
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus march we, playing, to our latest rest,
Only we die in earnest, that's no jest.

Sir Walter Ralegh (1554 - 1618)

[roughsatori]

30. Your poem would be applicable to General Discussion today NT

[blondeatlast]

19. The link doesn't work for me, but here's a great link for lit lovers:

http://www.litfinder.com/poemfinder/

In constant use at the library. Absolutely amazong!

[roughsatori]

32. Sorry the Deus-ex-machina was not cooperative with you

but THANKS for the link. I bookmarked it. :)

[blondeatlast]

120. Damn, damn, damn. Still not working for me.

Can anyone give me a backdoor to it?

[roughsatori]

152. Here is a link to the home page Blondeatlast

Scroll down and then on the left, toward the bottom of the page, click "Poetry to suit your Mood." I hope it is cooperative for you when you try again,. :)
http://books.guardian.co.uk/

[Darth_Kitten]

21. Mine......this is cool..........

Solitude

When you have tidied all things for the night,
And while your thoughts are fading to their sleep,
You'll pause a moment in the late firelight,
Too sorrowful to weep.

The large and gentle furniture has stood
In sympathetic silence all the day
With that old kindness of domestic wood;
Nevertheless the haunted room will say:
"Someone must be away."

The little dog rolls over half awake,
Stretches his paws, yawns, looking up at you,
Wags his tail very slightly for your sake,
That you may feel he is unhappy too.

A distant engine whistles, or the floor
Creaks, or the wandering night-wind bangs a door

Silence is scattered like a broken glass.
The minutes prick their ears and run about,
Then one by one subside again and pass
Sedately in, monotonously out.

You bend your head and wipe away a tear.
Solitude walks one heavy step more near.

Harold Monro (1879 - 1932)

[roughsatori]

37. You got the one I am the least familiar with but it has very nice details

cloaked in sadness. :)

[Swede]

23. We sure are a gloomy bunch tonight

[roughsatori]

38. Yes the moroseness is palpable but maybe some Ogden Nash

would help. Or better yet some "Mehitabel and Archy" by Don Marquis. :)

[ForrestGump]

28. I think mine's about multiple orgasms

Sometimes you just feel like getting away from it all - to some pure, solitary mountain top where you can wander, free as a bird... but if you're stuck behind a desktop instead, take some solace in this.


The second coming

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 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: 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 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?

William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939)

[roughsatori]

34. ForrestGump, like a solicitous school-marm I jumped ahead to see yours

and once again it assists my research into the libido of Democrats. But I will confess, I can barely believe you got the Second Cumming, err I mean Coming. :P

[listenup]

42. When did you decide to limit your humorous responses

to simplistic, sexual inuendo?

You have, or had, so much more.

From: The HHHHMMMMM one.

[roughsatori]

46. Be nice, ForrestGump is one of my favorite "poetry" students.

But "Everything is permitted" here, so please don't take this as censorship. I bet your rebuke would make a good idea for a poem :)

[listenup]

49. I understand

and you're right to a degree. I want Forrest for myself?

[roughsatori]

54. Well, that would be an interesting pairing. LOL

[ForrestGump]

60. All right, you two...

Egad...no wonder my ears were burning. And me here feeling quite Yeatsish and elevated.


"Hark!"

(that's all I've finished of my Yeats-inspired poem, so far, but it's gonna be a good one)

[roughsatori]

63. I hope it was only your ears burning BUT

with your reputation it might be something else burning too. :)

[ForrestGump]

67. You mean my hunka hunka burning love?

I hope?

[roughsatori]

70. As the buxom librarian said to me as a child: SSHHH

Yes I mean that, but I would never have said it so quaintly.

[ForrestGump]

72. Well,

YOU're the one bringing up buxom librarians...

[populistmom]

92. Well, its possible even for males

It involves a technique...

[roughsatori]

94. I guess that explains how you got to be a MOM NT

[Leftist78]

31. That was pretty accurate

Thursday

And if I loved you Wednesday,
Well, what is that to you?
I do not love you Thursday -
So much is true.

And why you come complaining
Is more than I can see.
I loved you Wednesday, - yes - but what
Is that to me?

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950)

I like it. It makes me feel all...I don't know...hmmm...oh well

[roughsatori]

39. Leftist you must be a cold heart-breaker

But if people like you did not crush poets hearts, we would not have all these beautiful, sad poems to soothe our own hearts. :P

[Cheswick2.0]

33. Ashes of life

Ashes of life

Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike;
Eat I must, and sleep I will, - and would that night were here!
But ah! - to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!
Would that it were day again! - with twilight near!

Love has gone and left me and I don't know what to do;
This or that or what you will is all the same to me;
But all the things that I begin I leave before I'm through, -
There's little use in anything as far as I can see.

Love has gone and left me, - and the neighbors knock and borrow,
And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse, -
And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow
There's this little street and this little house.

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950)

[roughsatori]

41. Cheswick that is sad, I have a suicide hot-line number if you need it

I'm kidding--but I really do have the number handy. :) And as time heals your heart and you think about the person who hurt you, remember what John Lennon said: "time wounds all heals."

[Cheswick2.0]

52. I had no idea my answers were so depressing

I am not depressed, but yes the emotions in that poem are the ones that I mull over a lot. It's been a long road! :)
I keep waiting for time to wound that heal. As we say in Pa, what goes around comes around.

[roughsatori]

55. Yes I moved from Philadelphia about a year ago

and we did say that a lot. Problem is that what I send around, comes around too. :(

[RebelOne]

36. Here's the reply that I got. Though I am not really down in the dumps.

Oh dear, you're really down in the dumps ... But we understand; we won't tell you to look on the bright side of life, we'll offer you a poem with which to wallow in the depths of depression.

Solitude

When you have tidied all things for the night,
And while your thoughts are fading to their sleep,
You'll pause a moment in the late firelight,
Too sorrowful to weep.

The large and gentle furniture has stood
In sympathetic silence all the day
With that old kindness of domestic wood;
Nevertheless the haunted room will say:
"Someone must be away."

The little dog rolls over half awake,
Stretches his paws, yawns, looking up at you,
Wags his tail very slightly for your sake,
That you may feel he is unhappy too.

A distant engine whistles, or the floor
Creaks, or the wandering night-wind bangs a door

Silence is scattered like a broken glass.
The minutes prick their ears and run about,
Then one by one subside again and pass
Sedately in, monotonously out.

You bend your head and wipe away a tear.
Solitude walks one heavy step more near.

Harold Monro (1879 - 1932)

[roughsatori]

43. Break the denial. The deus-ex-machina says you are sad

feel the pain and cry a little. Hey, it's only a dumb machine--but it is spitting out some great poems. :)

[sistersofmercy]

40. Mine..

Effort At Speech Between Two People

Speak to me. Take my hand. What are you now?
I will tell you all. I will conceal nothing.
When I was three, a little child read a story about a rabbit
who died, in the story, and I crawled under a chair :
a pink rabbit : it was my birthday, and a candle
burnt a sore spot on my finger, and I was told to be happy.

Oh, grow to know me. I am not happy. I will be open.
Now, I am thinking of white sails against a sky like music,
like glad horns blowing, and birds tilting, and an arm about me.
There was one I loved, who wanted to live, sailing.

Speak to me. Take my hand. What are you now?
When I was nine, I was fruitily sentimental,
fluid : and my widowed aunt played Chopin,
and I bent my head on the painted woodwork, and wept.
I want now to be close to you. I would
link the minutes of my days close, somehow, to your days.

I am not happy. I will be open.
I have liked lamps in evening corners, and quiet poems.
There has been fear in my life. Sometimes I speculate
On what a tragedy his life was, really.

Take my hand. Fist my hand in your hand. What are you now?
When I was fourteen, I had dreams of suicide,
and I stood at a steep window, at sunset, hoping toward death :
if the light had not melted clouds and plains to beauty,
if light had not transformed that day, I would have leapt.
I am unhappy. I am lonely. Speak to me.

I will be open. I think he never loved me:
he loved the bright beaches, the little lips of foam
that ride small waves, he loved the veer of gulls:
he said with a gay mouth: I love you. Grow to know me.

What are you now? If we could touch one another,
if these our separate entities could come to grips,
clenched like a Chinese puzzle . . . yesterday
I stood in a crowded street that was live with people,
and no one spoke a word, and morning shone.
Everyone silent, moving. . . . Take my hand. Speak to me.

by Muriel Rukeyser.
The grammar and punctuation are her's. One of my favorites.
Sorry didn't do your quiz.

[roughsatori]

44. Thank you. An incredible poem. I just emailed it to a friend.

I wore out the first few Sister's of Mercy LPs and EPs I had. And love Leonard Cohen and was raised Catholic, and taught by some wonderful Priests and Nuns--so your DUnick is very evocative for me. :)

[sistersofmercy]

57. Sorry

I had to edit, I left out a line in the 5th verse. The pin is a little of both. The band and the other; the other is quite humerous to me. Long story. I almost posted Pablo Neruda, I Have Gone Marking, instead. Or Millay's, Spring. Or Plath. It was hard to decide but Muriel Rukeyser is lesser known, unfortunately.

[roughsatori]

59. Thanks for the Addendum a movie about Plath starring Gwyneth Paltrow

is starting to get hyped for release. I hope it is not awful. A Friend of mine worships Neruda the way I do Dickinson. Neruda.s love poems are among the finest I've read. I use to date someone who taught me the wonders of Rukeyser.

[sistersofmercy]

61. I love dickinson as well...

I'm a poetry junky, I worship many poets. Well, that's certainly worth dating for. It would be nice if the film does justice to the life.

[roughsatori]

64. There is a newly published version of a long Auden poem

that uses Plath's diary words on the cover blurb. I can't think of the name at the moment but know it is based on Shakespeare's final play: The Tempest.

Strange how Plath's reputation has risen as Auden's declines. Of course, he has been ranked so high that coming down a peg or two may be best.

[sistersofmercy]

65. HAHA, and I thought I was a ...

poetry junkie! Well if you figure it out PM me, if you would. I just bought the The Prophet and was trying to find a book of Venus Khoury-Ghata or is it Ghata-Khoury? Ah, the effects of red wine!

[roughsatori]

68. "The Sea and the Mirror " is the title of the Auden

here is a link to a review.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/poetry/0,6121,1050291,00.html

[sexybomber]

45. Walt Whitman

When I heard the learn'd astronomer

WHEN I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts, the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the learned astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)

[roughsatori]

47. Beautiful! Whitman broke the door-jambs off American Verse

His use of cadence is exuberant and profound as waves in the sea.

[sexybomber]

103. Indeed.

He's one of my favorite poets.

[Droopy]

48. This is the first time I've used the copy and paste feature

Woo hoo! Any way, here's my poem. They said I was experiencing and existential crisis.


I Would I Might Forget That I am I

I would I might forget that I am I,
And break the heavy chain that binds me fast,
Whose links about myself my deeds have cast.
What in the body's tomb doth buried lie
Is boundless; 'tis the spirit of the sky,
Lord of the future, guardian of the past,
And soon must forth, to know his own at last.
In his large life to live, I fain would die.
Happy the dumb beast, hungering for food,
But calling not his suffering his own;
Blessed the angel, gazing on all good,
But knowing not he sits upon a throne;
Wretched the mortal, pondering his mood,
And doomed to know his aching heart alone.

George Santayana (1863 - 1952)

[roughsatori]

56. That is the one I got the first time I used the machine tonight

A very good poem. But I did it again and got the poem I used figuring it might be more accessible to more people.

Yeah for your first cut and paste. When I posted this topic I actually wondered if it would get anyone to try cutting and pasting for the first time. So it is funny that you told me you did. :)

[sistersofmercy]

50. Thoreau from the quiz...

Smoke

Light-winged smoke, Icarian bird,
Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight.
Lark without song, and messenger of dawn,
Circling above the hamlets as thy nest;
Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form
Of midnight vision gathering up thy shirts;
By night star-veiling, and by day
Darkening the light blotting out the sun,
Go thou my incense upward from this hearth,
And ask the Gods to pardon this clear flame.

[roughsatori]

58. That is wonderful. I re-read his essay On Moonlight last week

It is a favorite of mine due to the economy of Thoreau's language in summoning the moonlit landscape.

[sistersofmercy]

69. I can't remember...

that one, guess I'll have to dig it out.

[roughsatori]

71. Here is the link to: "Night and Moonlight" from the American

Transcendentalist Website (this is the one I meant):
http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/night-moonlight.html

[sistersofmercy]

86. "Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day...

Why not walk a little way in her light?"

Blessed are the crickets and astronomers!
Astrologers to, I suppose.

"Consider the moonlight, so civil yet so savage."


Great read thanks!

[St. Jarvitude]

73. My poem

De Profundis

OH why is heaven built so far,
Oh why is earth set so remote?
I cannot reach the nearest star
That hangs afloat.

I would not care to reach the moon,
One round monotonous of change;
Yet even she repeats her tune
Beyond my range.

I never watch the scatter'd fire
Of stars, or sun's far-trailing train,
But all my heart is one desire,
And all in vain:

For I am bound with fleshly bands,
Joy, beauty, lie beyond my scope;
I strain my heart, I stretch my hands,
And catch at hope.

Christina Rossetti (1830 - 1894)

[roughsatori]

77. Christina Rossetti is another favorite and her brother was pretty good

too, at poetry and painting. What a family. I wish more people were familiar with her work. I really enjoy her long poem "Goblin Market."

[supernova]

74. Emily Dickinson is the one for me

THE Soul selects her own Society -
Then - shuts the Door -
To her divine Majority -
Present no more -

Unmoved - she notes the Chariots - pausing -
At her low Gate -
Unmoved - an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her mat -

I've known her - from an ample nation -
Choose One -
Then - close the Valves of her attention -
Like Stone -

Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)

[roughsatori]

78. #670 "One Need Not be a Chamber to be Haunted" is one I love

Here is a link if you would like to read it:

http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=7019

Dickinson is astounding.

[supernova]

91. One Need Not be a Chamber Hunted

Thank you roughsatori, That's just perfect! It is true though. The most difficult thing we confront in this life is ourselves.



One need not be a Chamber—to be Haunted
Emily Dickinson

670

One need not be a Chamber—to be Haunted—
One need not be a House—
The Brain has Corridors—surpassing
Material Place—

Far safer, of a Midnight Meeting
External Ghost
Than its interior Confronting—
That Cooler Host.

Far safer, through an Abbey gallop,
The Stones a'chase—
Than Unarmed, one's a'self encounter—
In lonesome Place—

Ourself behind ourself, concealed—
Should startle most—
Assassin hid in our Apartment
Be Horror's least.

This is beautiful

[roughsatori]

97. Thank you for reading the poem and double thanks for letting me know you

like it--and then, thanks again for posting the text of the poem. :)

[supernova]

132. Bookmarked that website

Cool stuff. :thumbsup:

[GAspnes]

75. pretty amazing

Be my mistress short or tall

Be my mistress short or tall
And distorted therewithall
Be she likewise one of those
That an acre hath of nose
Be her teeth ill hung or set
And her grinders black as jet
Be her cheeks so shallow too
As to show her tongue wag through
Hath she thin hair, hath she none
She's to me a paragon.

[roughsatori]

79. Robert Herrick, is another poet near my heart

Such a joyful poet filled with a desire to experience life and flesh-- and witty to boot. That is really a charming poem of Herrick's that you posted. Thanks.

[GAspnes]

89. I wonder if they included any Housman

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride,
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my four-score-years-and-ten
Twenty will not come again,
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room
About the woodland I will go
To see the cherry, hung with snow.

[roughsatori]

100. Thank you GAspnes, that gave me goosebumps

I would think that they must have some Housman, and since it is a UK site, I would expect a Larkin to pop-up too--I wondered earlier if anyone would get this famous Larkin one:

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

[GAspnes]

104. you're welcome

and call me Chip.

I haven't seen Larkin since I was a schoolboy. That brings back memories. At that age, my favorite was Lines For A Christmas Card by Hilaire Belloc:

May all my enemies go
to hell, Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel.

[roughsatori]

108. Thanks Chip that Belloc quote made me chortle out loud NT

[populistmom]

76. Of The Birth And Bringing-Up Of Desire

Of The Birth And Bringing-Up Of Desire

"WHEN wert thou born, Desire?" In pomp and prime of May.
"By whom, sweet boy, wert thou begot?" By good conceit, men say.
"Tell me, who was thy nurse?" Fresh youth in sug'red joy.
"What was thy meat and daily food?" Sore sighs with great annoy.
"What had you then to drink?" Unfeigned lovers' tears.
"What cradle were you rocked in?" In hope, devoid of fears.
"What brought you then asleep?" Sweet speech that liked men best.
"And where is now your dwelling-place?" In gentle hearts I rest.
"Doth company displease?" It doth in many one.
"Where would Desire then choose to be?" He likes to muse alone.
"What feedeth most your sight?" To gaze on favour still.
"Who find you most to be your foe?" Disdain of my good will.
"Will ever age or death bring you into decay?"
No, no, Desire both lives and dies ten thousand times a day.

Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (1550 - 1604)

[roughsatori]

81. Very interesting, earthy, and intelligent

Seems like a perfect poem for PopulistMom.

[populistmom]

98. blushing

thanks :)

[roughsatori]

101. You're welcome PopulistMom NT

[leftist_rebel1569]

80. wow....too true

Clouds

Down the blue night the unending columns press
In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,
Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow
Up to the white moon's hidden loveliness.
Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless,
And turn with profound gesture vague and slow,
As who would pray good for the world, but know
Their benediction empty as they bless.

They say that the Dead die not, but remain
Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth.
I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these,
In wise majestic melancholy train,
And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas,
And men, coming and going on the earth.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894)

[roughsatori]

83. Yours is a wonderful poem to read aloud, not the way they teach us

in school but by someone who understands the words and loves rhythm. Its meter, rhythm , and enjambment are great.

[Fight_n_back]

82. I wish this were true!

Miracles

WHY, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with anyone I love, or sleep in the bed at night with anyone I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim - the rocks - the motion of the waves - the ships with the men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)

[roughsatori]

85. That poem is almost a treatise on the Buddha's message to be "awake"

That way of looking at the world has been, and is, possible; I have seen it reality like that for bursts of time before plummeting back to my own sensate rut.

Here is a quote I hope you like:

"Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature." - Michael Faraday

[Fight_n_back]

111. Ive found it true

while on ectasy...

[roughsatori]

153. That and Methamphetamine as well as just "sitting practice" (Meditation)

have done it for me. But the feelings are not that pleasant after being awake for 5 days. But what did Rimbaud say about visions: That even if you came back mad with warts on the face and soul you still had seen a wondrous thing that those who lead paltry lives never see. Of course, it may lead to jails, institutions, and death. :)

[lynndew2]

84. Here was mine

Mary

I SLEEP with thee, and wake with thee,
And yet thou art not there;
I fill my arms with thoughts of thee,
And press the common air.
Thy eyes are gazing upon mine
When thou art out of sight;
My lips are always touching thine
At morning, noon, and night.

I think and speak of other things
To keep my mind at rest,
But still to thee my memory clings
Like love in woman's breast.
I hide it from the world's wide eye
And think and speak contrary,
But soft the wind comes from the sky
And whispers tales of Mary.

The night-wind whispers in my ear,
The moon shines on my face;
The burden still of chilling fear
I find in every place.
The breeze is whispering in the bush,
And the leaves fall from the tree,
All sighing on, and will not hush,
Some pleasant tales of thee.

John Clare (1793 - 1864)

[roughsatori]

88. It is said the John Clare had bi-polar disorder

There was no such diagnosis at the time. He went quite insane, but wrote some immensely touching poems. Knowing of his madness adds more poignancy to these lines: "I think and speak of other things/
To keep my mind at rest"

[lynndew2]

90. Yes Bi-polar and able to see the future

The breeze is whispering in the bush,
And the leaves fall from the tree,
All sighing on, and will not hush,
Some pleasant tales of thee.

LOLOLOL

[roughsatori]

107. I am seeing a bit of fun lecherousness in those lines

that I never saw before. LOL. All these iambs must doing something to my synapses.

[noiretextatique]

95. When I heard the learn'd astronomer

WHEN I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts, the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the learned astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)

[roughsatori]

102. That one seems appropriate for you Noiretblu

I use to think you were a male and had an internet crush on you. LOL For real, I always clicked on your posts but somehow missed the female part for a while.

[WHAT]

96. Miracles by Whitman...I love this one

.


Miracles

WHY, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with anyone I love, or sleep in the bed at night with anyone I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim - the rocks - the motion of the waves - the ships with the men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

The poetry machine got it exactly right!

[roughsatori]

105. Whitman knew what it was to be alive and awake

Here is a quote this poem always reminds me of:
"Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature." - Michael Faraday

[scarlet_owl]

99. Mine is Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll

One of my favorites and I guess it suits me. My father knows it by heart and used to recite it to me and my sister.

Jabberwocky

T'was brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought -
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Lewis Carroll (1832 - 1898)

[roughsatori]

106. That makes me wonder how you answered the questions

What a great and clever poem you were given. I was wondering if anyone on DU would get a Lewis Carroll. I am glad one of us did. :)

[Richardo]

139. I'm jealous - it's one of my all-time favorites...

Yours in uffish thought,

Richardo

[roughsatori]

109. I'm off to read some poetry. I will check back later to see if there are

new poems posted. Thank You everyone who has posted on this topic tonight. You have all done a great service lifting my mood and thoughts. Thanks :)

[GAspnes]

110. glad to help

anytime

[peekaloo]

112. Futility

must confess I hadn't heard of this person....so I checked......really odd to read his bio since I attended a "Bring Home The Troops" rally today .........

http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/LostPoets/Owen2.html

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was born on March 18, 1893. He was on the Continent teaching until he visited a hospital for the wounded and then decided, in September, 1915, to return to England and enlist. "I came out in order to help these boys-- directly by leading them as well as an officer can; indirectly, by watching their sufferings that I may speak of them as well as a pleader can. I have done the first" (October, 1918).

Owen was injured in March 1917 and sent home; he was fit for duty in August, 1918, and returned to the front. November 4, just seven days before the Armistice, he was caught in a German machine gun attack and killed. He was twenty-five when he died.

The bells were ringing on November 11, 1918, in Shrewsbury to celebrate the Armistice when the doorbell rang at his parent's home, bringing them the telegram telling them their son was dead.

Oh yeah....the poem

Futility

Move him into the sun -
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning, and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds -
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved - still warm - too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break the earth's sleep at all?

Wilfred Owen (1893 - 1918)

[roughsatori]

124. Wilfred Owen is considered a foremost War poet of the last Century

He is actually anti-war. What an appropriate poem for and anti-war. His reputation is growing lately. Also, critics are starting to see the skill in his verse. He had a way of using rhyme that is almost a combination of vers libre and more classical vowel length rhyme. Notice how he plays with the end words of each line in the way the sound relates.

Sorry, no lecture intended. Great Poem.

[peekaloo]

157. appreciate the info/input!

:hi:

[sistersofmercy]

113. The Sleeper in the Valley

It is a green hollow where a river sings
Madly catching on the grasses
Silver rags; where the sun shines from the proud mountian:
It is a small valley which bubbles over with rays.

A young soldier, his mouth open, his head bare,
And the nape of his neck bathing in the cool blue watercress,
Sleeps; he is stretched out on the grass, under clouds,
Pale on his green bed where the light rains down.

His feet in the gladiolas, he sleeps. Smiling as
A sick child would smile, he is taking a nap:
Nature, cradle him warmly: he is cold.

Odors do not make his nostrils quiver.
He sleeps in the sun, his hand on his breast,
Quieted. There are two red holes in his right side.

Of course it is much better in it's original form.
Rimbaud

[roughsatori]

125. Arthur Rimbaud, another favorite of mine and Patti Smith

Oh to be drinking absinthe with Rimbaud after he shoots Verlaine... O heavens, O incense, of drunken poesy.

[sistersofmercy]

149. HaHa!

Ah, such wit makes the world a better place. I'm going to send you a favorite poem, it's a great one to pass around to friends. Give me a while because I happen to be the world's worst typist, methinks. You rule!:toast: Also I'm going to change my avitar and sig line, methinks some frown upon my devilish display.O8)

[roughsatori]

154. I can't wait to receive the poem (and I truly mean that)

Sometime if you're bored or interested you can go to the poetry machines homepage and take literary quizzes. I did almost perfectly on Elizabethan Literature which surprised me--but got a poor score on the Orwell quiz, which also surprised me.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/

[sistersofmercy]

160. Check...

your inbox. I hope you like it.

[Cosmic_Latte]

115. Oh this is interesting! How lovely!

Oh, think not I am faithful...

Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!
Faithless am I save to love's self alone.
Were you not lovely I would leave you now:
After the feet of beauty fly my own.
Were you not still my hunger's rarest food,
And water ever to my wildest thirst,
I would desert you - think not but I would! -
And seek another as I sought you first.
But you are mobile as the veering air,
And all your charms more changeful than the tide,
Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:
I have but to continue at your side.
So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,
I am most faithless when I most am true.

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950)

----
Makes me wanna think of 'special someone' so far away. I'm on a break and I miss him so much. Awww..

Thanks roughsatori! :-)

[roughsatori]

127. You're welcome, your poem is much deeper then it first appears.

It really is charming in the real meaning of the word.

[FlaGranny]

117. Here's mine

Song

I cannot change, as others do,
But it doesn't make much sense to me.

Though you unjustly scorn;
Since that poor swain that sighs for you,
For you alone was born.
No, Phyllis, no, your heart to move
A surer way I'll try:
And to revenge my slighted love,
Will still love on, will still love on, and die.

When, killed with grief, Amintas lies
And you to mind shall call,
The sighs that now unpitied rise,
The tears that vainly fall,
That welcome hour that ends this smart
Will then begin your pain;
For such a fauthful tender heart
Can never break, can never break in vain.

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647 - 1680)

Edit: This doesn't seem to fit me at all. Just the opposite!!

[roughsatori]

128. That is funny. When I read the poem I checked to be sure it was Flagranny!

it did not seem like what little I know of you from reading so many of your posts. Maybe it is a hidden part of your psyche. Or just a damn machine that made a mistake. :)

[FlaGranny]

131. LOL,

no it is not me at all! It is so opposite, it is hysterical. I think I must have been feeling "contrary" today when I did the questionairre. Those were just "smartass" choices anyhow.

[roughsatori]

144. I should have known Flagranny would throw a stick into the cogs

of the Poetry Machine. I actually did wonder how you must have answered the questions and laughed when I read what you were given. As my mother (who is a Granny) says: "if life gives you lemons make lemonade." Well, that is a lie. She is a bit wiser and says: ""Life is the pits, so what are you gonna do?"

[Richardo]

118. I got mocked and paired up with "HMS Pinafore"

The major-general

I am the very pattern of a modern Major-Gineral,
I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral;
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical,
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;
I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical;
About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news,
With interesting facts about the square of the hypotenuse.
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus,
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous.
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral
I am the very model of a modern Major-Gineral.

I know out mythic history- KING ARTHUR'S and SIR CARADOC'S
I answer hard acrostics, I've a pretty taste for paradox;
I quote in elegaics all the crimes of HELIOGABALUS,
In conics I can floor peculiarities parabolous.
I tell undoubted RAPHAELS from GERARD DOWS and ZOFFANIES,
I know the croaking chorus from the "Frogs" of ARISTOPHANES;
Then I can hum a fugue, of which I've heard the music's din afore,
And whistle all the airs from that confounded nonsense "Pinafore".
Then I can write a washing-bill in Babylonic cuneiform,
And tell you every detail of CARACTACUS'S uniform.
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-Gineral.

In fact, when I know what is meant by 'mamelon' and 'revelin',
When I can tell at sight a Cassepot rifle from a javelin,
When such affairs as sorties and surprises I'm more wary at,
And when I know precisely what is meant by Commissariat,
When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern gunnery,
When I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery,
In short, when I've a smattering of elementary strategy,
You'll say a better Major-General has never sat a gee -
For my military knowledge, though I'm plucky and adventury,
Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century.
But still in learning vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-Gineral.

W.S. Gilbert (1835 - 1920)


Oh well, at least it wasn't "Three Little Maids from School"

[roughsatori]

129. You got a mocking yet unique response

Read the others responses posters have gotten--a very forlorn group as a whole. "Three Little Maids from School" would have raised some eyebrows, I am sure.

[Richardo]

134. Actually, the lyrics do reflect my annoying, know-it-all, nitpicky side

so there's that... :D

[roughsatori]

145. Thank you for being honest about yourself

I am told I share those traits with you.

[Khephra]

119. Solitude...seems fitting to me.

Solitude

When you have tidied all things for the night,
And while your thoughts are fading to their sleep,
You'll pause a moment in the late firelight,
Too sorrowful to weep.

The large and gentle furniture has stood
In sympathetic silence all the day
With that old kindness of domestic wood;
Nevertheless the haunted room will say:
"Someone must be away."

The little dog rolls over half awake,
Stretches his paws, yawns, looking up at you,
Wags his tail very slightly for your sake,
That you may feel he is unhappy too.

A distant engine whistles, or the floor
Creaks, or the wandering night-wind bangs a door

Silence is scattered like a broken glass.
The minutes prick their ears and run about,
Then one by one subside again and pass
Sedately in, monotonously out.

You bend your head and wipe away a tear.
Solitude walks one heavy step more near.

Harold Monro (1879 - 1932)

[roughsatori]

130. I like the dog brushing against you to let you know he is lonely too

A nice sad and sentimental touch (sentimentality is underrated in serious poetry). I've not read much of Munro but I will explore his work more now.

[Samurai_Writer]

121. I'm existential... whatever that means...

You're experiencing a bit of an existential crisis, aren't you? Here's a poem to help you through your long dark night of the soul.


Lassitude

I LAID me down beside the sea,
Endless in blue monotony;
The clouds were anchored in the sky,
Sometimes a sail went idling by.

Upon the shingles on the beach
Gray linen was spread out to bleach,
And gently with a gentle swell
The languid ripples rose and fell.

Mathilde Blind (1841-1896)

[roughsatori]

133. You got the only one so far I am not familiar with

But the deus-ex-machina has noted you are questioning the reasons and wherefores of your very being. Good Luck.

[thom1102]

122. Shelley? Wow, I didn't realize that I was so depraved!

I am not much of a poetry fan, but wasn't Shelley a bit of a debaucher? Didn't he have weekends in the country with his wife, Mary (Frankenstein), Byron, and Bram Stoker (Dracula), with absynth, and other mind altering chemicals, and lots of "free love" in the sixties context of the phrase?



Sometimes you just feel like getting away from it all - to some pure, solitary mountain top where you can wander, free as a bird... but if you're stuck behind a desktop instead, take some solace in this.


To a skylark

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of Heaven
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight:

Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see - we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud.
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aerial hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embowered
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.

Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,
All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal
Or triumphal chaunt
Matched with thine, would be all
But an empty vaunt -
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then, as I am listening now!

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822)

[roughsatori]

135. He did have a fun gang--but is blamed for the suicide of his first wife

But let he who is without sin cast the first stone at my beloved Shelly. I have a 110 year old engraving of him over my desk, beside Emily Dickinson, as I type this.

[mac56]

123. Here's mine

I am the mountainy singer

I am the mountainy singer -
The voice of the peasant's dream,
The cry of the wind on the wooded hill,
The leap of the fish in the stream.

Quiet and love I sing -
The carn on the mountain crest,
The cailin in her lover's arms,
The child at its mother's breast.

Beauty and peace I sing -
The fire on the open hearth,
The cailleach spinning at her wheel,
The plough in the broken earth.

Travail and pain I sing -
The bride on the childing bed,
The dark man laboring at his rhymes,
The ewe in the lambing shed.

Sorrow and death I sing -
The canker come on the corn,
The fisher lost in the mountain loch,
The cry at the mouth of morn.

No other life I sing,
For I am sprung of the stock
That broke the hilly land for bread,
And built the nest in the rock!

Seosamh MacCathmhaoil (1879 - 1944)

[roughsatori]

138. That was amazing for the first verse I thought that I was reading W. Blake

and just could not recall the poem. I love moments like that--they wake me up. Thanks. :)

[catpower2000]

126. Walt Whitman, excellent!

The last invocation

AT the last, tenderly,

From the walls of the powerful fortress'd house,
From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the well-closed doors,
Let me be wafted.
Let me glide noiselessly forth;
With the key of softness unlock the locks - with a whisper,
Set open the doors O soul.

Tenderly - be not impatient,
(Strong is your hold, O mortal flesh,
Strong is your hold O love.)

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)

[roughsatori]

140. With the key of softness unlock the locks - with a whisper: GOOSEBUMPS

That is so much softer then many of Whitman's poems. I went to visit his grave in Camden years ago but got lost and almost mugged. When I finally found the cemetery I never found his--but found someone buried from that time named "Feather" we joked that it must have been Walt's drag-queen" friend.

[catpower2000]

143. LOL! Cool!

Yeah, it was a good one. The machine said something about "You long for escape" and then showed the poem. Since I'm stuck at work for ten hours, it's right, I DO long for escape!! :)

Cat

[roughsatori]

155. I long for escape from my escape LOL

Which is why I am enjoying the responses of others on this thread. Odd that this escape thread is bringing me more to my "real" self. :)

[TheZoo]

136. Mine is pretty appropriate

Especially how I feel lately:

I would I might forget that I am I,
And break the heavy chain that binds me fast,
Whose links about myself my deeds have cast.
What in the body's tomb doth buried lie
Is boundless; 'tis the spirit of the sky,
Lord of the future, guardian of the past,
And soon must forth, to know his own at last.
In his large life to live, I fain would die.
Happy the dumb beast, hungering for food,
But calling not his suffering his own;
Blessed the angel, gazing on all good,
But knowing not he sits upon a throne;
Wretched the mortal, pondering his mood,
And doomed to know his aching heart alone.

- George Santayana (1863 - 1952)

[roughsatori]

141. That was the one I got the first time used the Machine tonight

I like the idea of owning up to the negative impact of our own actions in the lines: And break the heavy chain that binds me fast,/
Whose links about myself my deeds have cast.

[TheZoo]

146. That's different than what I interpretted

Tomorrow will be the 2nd anniversary of Marie's death. In the 729 days since her passing, there has not been one day that I haven't wished I could trade places with her. I would love to break that chain and get on with my life; the last lines: "Wretched the mortal, pondering his mood / And doomed to know his aching heart alone" really are ringing true now.

[roughsatori]

159. My condolences and your words moved me like a good poem

I hope it does not offend you, but I will say a prayer for you today and before I sleep too. You have caused me to re-read the poem and find deeper meaning. Thank you, and best wishes.

[TheZoo]

161. Thank you RoughSatori

You did not offend me, and I am not looking forward to tomorrow.

[spinkbottle]

137. Amintas lies like a Bush

This is what I got. I had to cheat on most of them, as "none of the above" was not an option. For the record, my "poor swain" thinks this is really bad poetry.

:D
__________________

Aaaah... you're pining for that special person, aren't you? Here's a love poem to sigh over.


Song

I cannot change, as others do,
Though you unjustly scorn;
Since that poor swain that sighs for you,
For you alone was born.
No, Phyllis, no, your heart to move
A surer way I'll try:
And to revenge my slighted love,
Will still love on, will still love on, and die.

When, killed with grief, Amintas lies
And you to mind shall call,
The sighs that now unpitied rise,
The tears that vainly fall,
That welcome hour that ends this smart
Will then begin your pain;
For such a fauthful tender heart
Can never break, can never break in vain.

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647 - 1680)

[roughsatori]

142. I am not a fan of the Earl of Rochester or Titles

There is something about me that dislikes titles in names even to this day. Princess Diana, Queen Elizabeth, Sir Paul McCartney--their very names disgust me. Sorry, my anarchistic, punk rock roots are showing.

[Boudicea]

147. Yet another existential crisis

You're experiencing a bit of an existential crisis, aren't you? Here's a poem to help you through your long dark night of the soul.


Thursday

And if I loved you Wednesday,
Well, what is that to you?
I do not love you Thursday -
So much is true.

And why you come complaining
Is more than I can see.
I loved you Wednesday, - yes - but what
Is that to me?

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950)

P.S. I don't get it.

[roughsatori]

156. She loved someone in the past who now does not understand why she is

"over it." They probably gave her some romantic malarkey about love being eternal.. She is telling them to stop complaining she loved the person then--but not now.

In a way she is stating an emotional equivalence to the Blake line about kissing a thing of beauty as it flies by--because if you attempt to restrain it you kill it. Also, for a woman at that time to write such lines was very wanton of her.

In other words, she is saying: "I love em and leave em--get over it."

[RetroLounge]

148. Sonnet to a nightingale

Oh dear, you're really down in the dumps ... But we understand; we won't tell you to look on the bright side of life, we'll offer you a poem with which to wallow in the depths of depression.


Sonnet to a nightingale

POOR melancholy bird, that all night long
Tell'st to the moon thy tale of tender woe;
From what sad cause can such sweet sorrow flow,
And whence this mournful melody of song?

Thy poet's musing fancy would translate
What mean the sounds that swell thy little breast,
When still at dewy eve thou leav'st thy nest,
Thus to the listening night to sing thy fate.

Pale Sorrow's victims wert thou once among,
Tho' now releas'd in woodlands wild to rove,
Or hast thou felt from friends some cruel wrong,
Or diedst thou martyr of disastrous love?
Ah! songstress sad! that such my lot might be,
To sigh and sing at liberty - like thee!

Charlotte Smith (1749 - 1806)

[roughsatori]

158. Poems that combine sadness and nature tend to move me in a way

more modern poems about being depressed in the city do not. And your poem ends on a high note (pardon the pun), a nice touch that most serious poets avoid these days for fear of seeming too sentimental."

[GoddessOfGuinness]

162. A little Shelley...

Love's philosophy

The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things, by a law divine,
In one another's being mingle -
Why not I with thine?

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822)

[roughsatori]

163. That Shelley poem always reminds me of Emily Dickinson

Even in the meter. Her metrics seem to be based on rhythms to be fund in The Book of Common Prayer (which she knew by rote). The shorthand way to describe this is "sixes and nines" for the syllabics. But I digress and lose the beauty of Shelley's "Love's Philosophy." Odd how he took a thought that is expressed in a saccharine way on many Greeting cards now-a-days--and spit out quiet genius.