Favourite poem

[Nymphomanic]

What and why?

My favourite is Lullaby by W.H Auden - it sort of strikes a feeling I know

[hr]

I read most of the night and go south in winter - wasteland

[lauraelizabeth]

There was a young woman from Eeling
Who had a peculiar feeling
She lay on her back
And opened her crack
And pissed all over the ceiling

[The Bitter Historian]

Shakespeare's Sonnet 123. I did RADA exams a few years back, and I picked that one for my Bronze exam based on the fact that it had a nice sequence of numbers. Then I learnt it, read it out loud a lot, and realised it had a really beautiful meaning:

No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change:
Thy pyramids built up with newer might
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;
They are but dressings of a former sight.
Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire
What thou dost foist upon us that is old,
And rather make them born to our desire
Than think that we before have heard them told.
Thy registers and thee I both defy,
Not wondering at the present nor the past,
For thy records and what we see doth lie,
Made more or less by thy continual haste.
This I do vow and this shall ever be;
I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee.



I'm not a great fan of Shakespeare's plays, but I have a massive soft spot for his sonnets.

[hr]

http://bitterhistorian.blogspot.com

Life. St Andrews. Budgeting. Some history. Mostly bitterness.

[Steveo]

'They'

The Bishop tells us: 'When the boys come back
'They will not be the same; for they'll have fought
'In a just cause: they lead the last attack
'On Anti-Christ; their comrades' blood has bought
'New right to breed an honourable race,
'They have challenged Death and dared him face to face.'

'We're none of us the same!' the boys reply.
'For George lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind;
'Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die;
'And Bert's gone syphilitic: you'll not find
'A chap who's served that hasn't found some change.
' And the Bishop said: 'The ways of God are strange!'

Siegfried Sassoon

[hr]

Set your goals way too high so I can laugh when you fail.

[Laura]

This excerpt from Heaney's 'The Cure at Troy' which is actually a play, but written in verse- different bits of it read like self contained poems, and maybe this bit especially, which mirrors some of my feelings that I can't articulate myself.

Human beings suffer,
they torture one another,
they get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
can fully right a wrong
inflicted or endured.

The innocent in gaols
beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
faints at the funeral home.

History says, Don't hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells.

Call the miracle self-healing:
The utter self-revealing
double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
the outcry and the birth-cry
of new life at its term.


[hr]

"When I came back to Dublin, I was courtmartialled in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence."

[Orcas]

The Hollow Men

T. S. Eliot

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 us -- if at all -- not 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.

[Jen the Phantom Hobbit of]

THE HOLE in the ELEPHANT'S BOTTOM

I wanted to be on the stage,
And now my ambitions I've gottem!
In my grey pantaloons I'm the rage
I'm the hole in the elephant's bottom!

My friends all think I'm a wit,
In their seats in the stalls I can spot 'em!
And I wink at the girls in the pit
Through the hole in the elephant's bottom!

Last night I had some bad luck,
The manager said I was rotten!
Cos I happened to get my head stuck
Through the hole in the elephant's bottom!

My part it is not very large,
But nor is it easy forgotten.
If you're looking for me come and look
Through the hole in the elephant's bottom!

(I like this poem cos it's funny and makes me smile).


William Wordsworth.
The Solitary Reaper

BEHOLD her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?—
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;—
I listen'd, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.

(This poem I like cos it opens up new possible stories and stuff - now you see why I don't do English!)


[hr]

The voices in my head tell me I'm not insane ... but everyone else does.

[Frank]

It's not an actual poem, but it is a couplet which, in my illiterate opinion, will constitute for these purposes.

That is not dead which can eternal lie.
And with strange aeons even death may die.

Also goes nicely with

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"

which translates as

"In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."

I do quite enjoy a spot of Lovecraft these days. It seems to be one of my few literary outlets of late...

[hr]

"There is only ever one truth. Things are always black or white, there's no such thing as a shade of grey. If you think that something is a shade of grey it simply means that you don't fully understand the situation. The truth is narrow and the path of the pursuit of truth is similarly narrow."

[angel_kohaku]

"There was a young lady from Buckingham..."

[hr]

I may be a pretty sad case but I don't write jokes in base 13

[Gill]

I'm afraid i'm going to cheat because I couldn't decide.

The Raven: Edgar Allan Poe
http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/poe/works/poetry/raven.html

To His Coy Mistress: Andrew Marvell
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/coy.htm

I can't explain why i love these two in particular. I just do.

[ribs]

Love this one


Black Rook in Rainy Weather by Sylvia Plath

On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, nor seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall
Without ceremony, or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Lean incandescent

Out of kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent

By bestowing largesse, honor
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); sceptical
Yet politic, ignorant

Of whatever angel any choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur.
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance
Miracles. The wait's begun again,
The long wait for the angel,

For that rare, random descent.

[hr]

Riddick: Remember that favorite game of yours?
Kyra: "Who's the Better Killer?"
Riddick: Let's play.

[theonlyone]

can't believe no one has mentioned this one, If by Ruydard Kipling!

http://www.swarthmore.edu/~apreset1/docs/if.html

if that doesn't inspire you, nothing will!

[Jen the Phantom Hobbit of]

Nearly put that one down, but thought putting three up was just greedy.

Quoting theonlyone from 08:26, 12th Feb 2007
can't believe no one has mentioned this one, If by Ruydard Kipling!

http://www.swarthmore.edu/~apreset1/docs/if.html

if that doesn't inspire you, nothing will!

[hr]

The voices in my head tell me I'm not insane ... but everyone else does.

[Magus]

'Song' by John Donne

"GO and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet,
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three."

or
'Jabberwocky' by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson

"'Twas 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."


[hr]

When I would pray and think, I think and pray to several subjects.

[Humphrey]

Tiger Tiger, My mistake
I thought you were William Blake

[hr]

http://www.livejournal.com/users/humphrey_clarke/

[Das Feuer liebt mich]

WILLIAM BLAKE

Songs of Innocence (The Divine Image):

For Mercy has a human heart
Pity, a human face:
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Songs of Experience (A Divine Image):

Cruelty has a Human Heart
And Jealousy a Human Face
Terror, the Human Form Divine
And Secrecy, the Human Dress

The Human Dress, is forged Iron
The Human Form, a fiery Forge.
The Human Face, a Furnace seal'd
The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge.

[Telinar]

More William Blake

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.


[hr]

http://telinar-beln.deviantart.com or http://standrews.facebook.com/profile.php?id=37105240

[flarewearer]

Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom,
Boom, Boom, Boom,
Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom,
Boom, Boom, Boom

Pvt. S. Baldrick, France, 1917

[hr]

[sweet]

It's a passage but I'm sure y'all won't get pedantic:

(Hamlet: act I, scene III)

Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no
tongue,
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar;
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Be-
ware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in,
Bear't that th' opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judg-
ment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are most select and generous, chief in that.
Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.


And cheers to the person that posted 'If': always cheers me up!

[sweet]

A Silly Poem


Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I'll draw a sketch of thee,
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B?

Spike Milligan