Fun Stuff > ENJOY

Post a favorite poem!

<< < (10/26) > >>

alper:
I mostly read Dutch and Flemish poems, but it's not much use posting that here. I want to read more Arabic and Persian poems and I probably should read up on English language poetry some day.

I'll skip Neruda, Borges, Rilke, Goethe, Kunitz and others. Right now I'm reading Cavafy's collected works and one of his best is:

Cavafy, Constantine P. - Ithaca

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon -- do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.

Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.

(1911)

Liz:
Okay so this thread is super old but I am not necroposting, as I have something really good to add to it. I discovered this poem today through StumbleUpon, and it is glorious.

"Why Do You Stay Up So Late?" - Marvin Bell

Late at night, I no longer speak for effect.
I speak the truth without the niceties.
I am hundreds of years old but do not know how many hundreds.
The person I was does not know me.
The young poets, with their reenactments of the senses, are asleep.
I am myself asleep at the outer reaches.
I have lain down in the snow without stepping outside.
I am frozen on the white page.
Then it happens, a spark somewhere, a light through the ice.
The snow melts, there appear fields threaded with grain.
The blue moon blue sky returns, that heralded night.
How earthly the convenience of time.
I am possible.
I have in me the last unanswered question.
Yes, there are walls, and water stains on the ceiling.
Yes, there is energy running through the wires.
And yes, I grow colder as I write of the sun rising.
This is not the story, the skin paling and a body folded over a table.
If I die here they will say I died writing.
Never mind the long day that now shrinks backward.
I crumple the light and toss it into the wastebasket.
I pull down the moon and place it in a drawer.
A bitter wind of new winter drags the dew eastward.
I dig in my heels.

It has its own really cool website that is totally worth checking out as well.

Vendetagainst:
I have so much to add to this.


From Childhood's hour I have not been
As others were--I have not seen
As others saw--I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I lov'd, I lov'd alone.
Then--in my childhood--in the dawn
Of a most stormy life--was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold--
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by--
From the thunder and the storm
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

-Alone, Edgar Allan Poe


The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one,
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one,
Yet the light of a whole life dies,
When love is done.

-Light, F. W. Bourdillon


Among the far grey mountains,
There lies a lonely grave;
In rain and sunshine ever,
Unkept the grasses wave.

'Twas there the shepherds buried
The little shepherd lad,
With rude hands fond and tender,
With voices hush'd and sad.

No sound was heard of organ,
No note of funeral psalm,
But only sobs of brother hearts
To bless the mountain calm.

No priestly voice has hallowed,
The shepherds place of rest;
No priestly hands of blessed it,
And yet -- it has been blessed.

For there the little shepherd's flock
Bleats thankfully to God;
And grateful songs the sweet birds sing
Above the grassy sod.

-Consecrated, Unknown?


The Rose disdainfuly has shed
Her wealth of petals perfected.
She gave the unrequiting earth
The sweetness that but  late had birth.
The passing zephyr saw and sigh'd --
And in the morning they had died.

So she I love sheds round on all
The smiles that hold one heart in thrall,
She gives, nor cares, it seems to me,
To gain of Love an equal fee.
And so her smiles like rose leaves shed --
Are unregarded and are dead.

-A Conceit, "H.S.C." in Athenaeum


Calm as that moonbeam on the wall
Sleep broods on baby's eyes;
Arms, hushed and still, but pulsing quick,
Enfold him as he lies,
My brain is full of thronging thoughts,
Strange passions thrill my breast,
My heart aches with a load of love,
That will not let me rest.

The dim years stand about my bed,
They neither smile nor weep;
Like softest kisses, on my face,
The little fingers creep.
I hear slow footfalls, in the night,
Of fates upon his track, --
O love, I cannot let you go!
I cannot keep you back!

Lord, let him shelter in my arms,
Or take us both to thine:
Or, if a troublous life must come,
Make all the trouble mine.
Or let Thy sharp swords pierce my heart,
To blunt them for the child --
What care I, Lord, for stain and shame,
So he keep undefiled!

Nay, Lord, I know nought what I ask,
I know nought how to pray:
Hear Thou the crying mother-soul,
And not the words I say.
Do Thou what seemeth good to Thee,
So he be spared from sin;
And oh! if love can aught avail,
Let mine be counted in.

-Awake, Ada Cambridge


Dead eyes are gazing on her from the pictures on the wall,
Dead voices in the wailing winds that sweep the uplands call,
Dead feet seem pattering round her as the raindrops lash the pane,
Till she stretches hands of greeting, dumb hands that yearn in vane,

Like one in fairy legend, like one in dreamland lost,
At every turn by dead man's steps her onward way is crossed,
The very flowers whisper of one who plucked them long ago,
The very birds have echoes in their trillings soft and low,

The chords she touches breathe for her the music of the past,
On every page the shadow of old memories is cast,
The "brooding sense of something" gone falls solemn all around,
Making the common paths of life her hushed heart's holy ground.

On the table-ground of middle life, the dull and dreary band,
Where shadowless as sunless lies the stretch of beaten sand,
She stands alone and listens, all behind her veiled in mist,
In front dim hills beyond the vale, their summits promise kissed,

Sob on, oh wind, sigh on, oh rain, sweet faces form and die,
There, where amid the caverned coals the fairy fancies lie,
For in sleeping as in walking, till she crosses the dark stream,
The sunshine of her lonely heart from the peopled past must gleam.

-By the Fire, Unknown?


Fair scenes of thought's dominions dwell,
When we have wondered far away,
Soft strains through memory's caverns swell,
though every chord hath ceased to play,
So, thy kind voice, thine earnest face,
From fond rememberance nought shall sever,
Though from my path thine every trace,
Hath passed away forever.

When some bright dream of vanished hours,
Is in thy heart upspringing,
When some loved song through fancy's bow'rs
In faded tones is ringing,
When some faint chord, long hushed and mute,
'Neath memory's touch doth quiver,
Then, think of one whose wayward foot,
Hath passed away forever.

-Parted, "E.H."

Dissy:
I know this is horribly morbid, but it is probably my favourite poem.

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

"The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner"
by Randall Jarrell

Oli:
Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson.


It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea.  I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known -- cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all --
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy,
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

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

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


The first time I heard this poem, in a lecture during my first year studying English Lit, was the moment that I really and concretely fell in love with all aspects of English literature. I'd loved studying novels and plays before that lecture but I'd never really gotten into the studying of poetry before that. I think the exact moment was the line:

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page