Favorite Poem

In My Humble Opinion
41

I have loads of favorites, but the one that immediately leaps to mind is “The Garden of Proserpine” by A. C. Swinburne.

http://www.wsu.edu/~i9538999/poetry/proserpi.htm

42

Decisions, decisions…Well, I have to give three.

e e cummings “The Cambridge ladies…”

John Donne “The Good-Morrow”

Robert Burns “To a Mouse…”

43

I love just about anything by T.S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, and e.e. cummings, but the all-time favorite poem award goes to Choose Something Like a Star by Robert Frost.

44

The love song of J Alfred Prufrock always bears re-reading, but I like:

Surgeons must be careful
when they take the knife
for beneath their fine incisions
stirs the culprit - Life
Emily Dickinson

45

“Mistaking water hemlock for parsley” by Arthur Sze

46

Mine is a wee bittle too long to type out, right now… but I have a link… it’s A Buried Life by Matthew Arnold. And ah, t’is good.

47

Hate to say it kids, but the suicide intepretation is certainly a valid one for Stopping by Woods.

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”
OK, on one level it’s a guy stopping to watch the snow fall. On another level the last stanza casts a much more sinister interpretation over the episode. For what it’s worth, an analysis of this poem was my first published work (for a teacher’s textbook when I was in high school).
Too many favorite poems to select one…

I always did like:

 Of my threescore years and ten,
 Twenty will not come again...

 And since to look at things in bloom
 Fifty springs are little room,
 About the woodlands I will go
 To see the cherry hung with snow.

And
Whenas in silks my Julia goes,

48

I just read The Wanderer, an anonymous Old English poem. It just zoomed to the top of my list.

MR

49

I am so happy to see some others mentioning Robert Service. He is my favorite poet(in fact, he is the only poet who I can really sit down and read all night).

There are so many poems of his that I would like to recommend, but, of these two I am particularly fond:

http://www.ude.net/verse/sun_lover.html#Euthansia

and on a lighter note:

http://www.ude.net/verse/sun_lover.html#The Battle of the Bulge

I like these because they showcase his wide range, going from some very touching works to the just plain humorous

I would suggest to all those who liked “The Cremation of Sam McGee” and “The Shooting Of Dan McGrew” go and read some more of his works, they only get better.

50

Of course Jabberwocky has to be listed - for a long time it was the only poem I liked besides the Walrus and the Carpenter. No wonder folks look at me strange…

Then I discovered Scotland’s favorite poet, Robert Burns. If you can wade through the dialect (he wrote them as he said them, with a thick accent…) Two of his are two of my favorites: My Love is like a Red Red Rose" (very sappy, I’ll admit, but check this verse out and you tell me:

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.

besides that one, there’s “Robert Bruce’s march to Bannockburn” that goes something like this:

Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to Victorie!

sigh just makes ya wanna pop Braveheart in the VCR and sit back with a good single-malt, doesn’t it?

51

Had I the heaven’s 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.

      William Butler Yeats
52

Without doubt ** The Hunting of The Snark ** by Lewis Carrol. It’s way too long to post, however I highly recommend it to those who have yet to do so.

I also like **The Man From Snowy River ** . Yes, a tad parochial and patriotic but it tells a great tale.