What Is Your Favorite Poem

[garro]

I know that we are a very cultured lot here on TV and I was wondering what everybody's favorite poems were. Mine is 'Lake Isle of Innisfree' by W.B. Yeats

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

Edited March 2, 2008 by garro

[BFD]

I think this might be the hardest question I've ever seen posed on TV. I couldn't even begin to answer it, so I'm just going to confine myself to Yeats' poetry.

I'd have to go with 'The Second Coming' as my favorite Yeats poem.

For others, I'd have to sift through Plath, Spenser, Shakespeare and Bukowski before I could even begin to make a top 50 list.

BFD!

[lawling]

Mine would have to be Gray's Elegy - surely one of the most beautiful poems ever written - but if it has to be Yeats then

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

[lazeeboy]

the only one i can think of is the owl and the pussycat went to sea in a beautoful pea green boat

[Neeranam]

Mary has a big, fat ass

All slippy and slimy and hairy

On big boys she sits

While they milk both her tits

She's just like a coo in the dairy!

[Ijustwannateach]

what if a much of a which of a wind

gives the truth to summer's lie;

bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun

and yanks immortal stars awry?

Blow king to beggar and queen to seem

(blow friend to fiend: blow space to time)

-when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,

the single secret will still be man

what if a keen of a lean wind flays

screaming hills with sleet and snow:

strangles valleys by ropes of thing

and stifles forests in white ago?

Blow hope to terror; blow seeing to blind

(blow pity to envy and soul to mind)

-whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees,

it's they shall cry hello to the spring

what if a dawn of a doom of a dream

bites this universe in two,

peels forever out of his grave

and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?

Blow soon to never and never to twice

(blow life to isn't; blow death to was)

-all nothing's only our hugest home;

the most who die, the more we live

-- e. e. cummings

[lanny]

Personally, I like epic poetry. I don't know if I could choose one particular "favorite" but my top picks would be (in no particular order):

Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade

Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Longfellow's Midnight Ride of Paul Revere

[suegha]

I agree that this is a difficult post to answer. I agree that Yeats has his greats, as does wordsworth, Keats and let's not forget Auden. I'll be back...

[meandwi]

Everyone has skeletons

it's hard to deny

Due to the raven and the dove

deep inside

fears of tears

are not part of the plan

It's the loyalty and love

that we all demand.

If you see a raven in my eyes

I hope it flies away for miles

and replaced with a dove

here, in the land of smiles.

Meandwi

03/02/08

[garro]

Everyone has skeletons

it's hard to deny

Due to the raven and the dove

deep inside

fears of tears

are not part of the plan

It's the loyalty and love

that we all demand.

If you see a raven in my eyes

I hope it flies away for miles

and replaced with a dove

here, in the land of smiles.

Meandwi

03/02/08

I like it.

[Zpete]

Personally, I like epic poetry. I don't know if I could choose one particular "favorite" but my top picks would be (in no particular order):

Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade

Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Longfellow's Midnight Ride of Paul Revere

Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade

Yes, remember it from school, never for gotten it.

[game4shame]

'jack and jill,

went up the hill,

so jack could lick jills fa...

...actually, I better not lower the tone.

kor toht.

[stiffoak571]

Yeats would be "No Second Troy"

Keats: Fall of Hyperion

Hardy the great 1912-13 Emma poems

Then Whitman - Leaves of Grass

and the then 2 books - both linked

Ariel - Plath

and Birthday Letters - Ted Hughes his memorial to Sylvia which came out just before he died

[crowbait]

IF.....Rudyard Kipling

IF you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;

If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,

if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

[Tilokarat]

This is really difficult: Perhaps Ulysses by Tennyson, many poems by Lei Po (China) and Ho Xuan Hu'o'ng (Vietnam) and Rudyard Kipling (England).

[FBN]

The Men That Don't Fit In

There's a race of men that don't fit in,

A race that can't stay still;

So they break the hearts of kith and kin,

And they roam the world at will.

They range the field and they rove the flood,

And they climb the mountain's crest;

Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,

And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;

They are strong and brave and true;

But they're always tired of things that are,

And they want the strange and new.

They say: "Could I find my proper groove,

What a deep mark I would make!"

So they chop and change, and each fresh move

Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs

With a brilliant, fitful pace,

It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones

Who win in the lifelong race.

And each forgets that his youth has fled,

Forgets that his prime is past,

Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,

In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;

He has just done things by half.

Life's been a jolly good joke on him,

And now is the time to laugh.

Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;

He was never meant to win;

He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;

He's a man who won't fit in.

Robert B Service

[garro]

Nice poem. Did you write it?

[FBN]

Nice poem. Did you write it?

Nope; but I do identify...

Robert B Service; 1890's; written during the Yukon gold rush years about the diggers...