No whole poems, just my favorite chilling lines.
“And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming.”
-E.A. Poe, The Raven
“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”
-T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
“And silent as stone he rode down alone from the floor of the double-damned.”
-Ogden Nash, A Tale Of The Thirteenth Floor
Well, it’s a start…
For the moon never beams
without bringing me dreams
of the beautiful Annabel Lee
and the stars never rise
but I feel the bright eyes
of the beautiful Annabel Lee
I won’t quote any (too long), but I adore penny-dreadful Victorian poems. “The Face on the Floor,” “Over the Hill to the Poorhouse,” “The Glacier Bed” (makes me sob helplessly, that one). I have been known to throw myself backwards out of a chair while reciting “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”
Can I offer two?
When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defac’d
The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-ras’d,
And brass eternal, slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the wat’ry main
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate –
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.
Nature’s first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf’s a flower
But only so an hour
Then leaf subsides to leaf
So Eden sank to grief
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay
But I don’t want to pay the penalty.
I just want to go home.
Wow, what a morbid thread. I feel right at home.
Hark, now every thing is still,
The screech-owl and the whistler shrill
Call upon our dame aloud,
And bid her quickly don her shroud.
Much you had of land and rent;
Your length in clay’s now competent.
A long war disturbed your mind;
Here your perfect peace is signed.
Of what is’t fools make such vain keeping?
Sin their conception, their birth weeping;
Their life, a general mist of error,
Their death, a hideous storm of terror.
Strew your hair with powders sweet;
Don clean linen, bathe your feet,
And, the foul fiend more to check,
A crucifix let bless your neck.
'Tis now full tide 'tween night and day,
End your groan, and come away.
– John Webster
“I can’t think why fancy religions should have such a ghastly effect on one’s grammar.”
– Dorothy L. Sayers
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady I swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
-the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
– e.e.cummings
For my money, the finest poem ever written, and appropriate for the season, don’t you think? Maybe I should have posted this one in the “Flirting” thread…
Not Waving but Drowning
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
–Stevie Smith
It’s certainly not the most profound piece ever written, but it was the first poem I deemed “memorizable” in the fourth grade.
Dreams
Langston Hughes
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams die,
Life is broken-winged bird
That can not fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go,
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
When I look back at the times in my life when I was the most hopeless, it was because I had lost hope in my dreams. So as simplistic as it is, I think Langston was on to something.
I don’t know who wrote the whole poem, but parts of it still stick in my mind from one of my college lit courses.
*…the King with half the east at heel
has marched from lands of morning.
His soldiers drink the rivers up,
Their shafts bedight the air.
And he that stands will die for nought,
And home, there’s no returning.
The Spartans, on that sea-wet rock,
Sat down and combed their hair.*
…send lawyers, guns, and money…
Warren ZevonSo we’ll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright!
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul outwears the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.
–Lord Byron
Hey cygnus-
Whose lines are those? It sounds like something Byron Herbert Reese might have written. Izzit?
I’m with you on the Langston Hughes, SwimmingRiddles. Didn’t he also do “Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note”? I remember that one getting to me when I first read it in Junior High.
Nope, that was Amiri Baraka.
I doubt anyone is still reading this thread with a keen eye, but if you are, read this. Remember my post in the "Brush with Greatness " thread? This is by that girl I mentioned.
The title is “Slumber”
I lost my life this morning;
It just left me without warning.
Now I don’t know where to go
Or what to do.
I see my body lying
In a box, and people crying.
But I don’t know where to go
Or what to do.
The lid is softly closing;
Must be dark in there, reposing.
And I don’t know where to go
Or what to do.
Can’t hear what the preacher’s saying
But I think he’s finished praying.
Still I don’t know where to go
Or what to do.
The people that I’m leaving
Are best left now to their grieving.
I just don’t know where to go
Or what to do.
The box is lowered slowly
And the earth recieves me wholly.
Yet I don’t know where to go
Or what to do.
I hear voices - getting stronger;
“Come with us, and wait no longer!”
Yes, I think that’s where I’ll go
And what I’ll do.
Sig! Sig a Sog! Sig it loud! Sig it Strog! – Karen Carpenter with a head cold
What a happy crew we are! In the spirit of the thread:
Little Boy Blue
Eugene Field
The little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and stanch he stands,
The little tin soldier is red with rust,
And his musket moulds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new,
And the soldier was passing fair,
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue,
Kissed them and put them there.
“Now don’t you go till I come,” he said,
“And don’t you make any noise,”
And, toddling off to his trundle-bed,
He dreamt of the pretty toys.
And while he was dreaming an angel-song,
Awakened our Little Boy Blue,
The years are many, the years are long,
But the little toy friends are true.
Faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,
Each in the same old place,
Awaiting the touch of a little hand,
The smile of a little face,
And they wonder, as waiting the long years through,
In the dust of that little chair,
What has become of our Little Boy Blue,
Since he kissed them and put them there.
Catrandom
Hey, Gaudere, you ever listen to Not drowning, Waving? Claim is a great album.
Oh yeah, the OP.
Ozymandias anyone?
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*
No, I haven’t. Is it based on the poem? I have a $5 gift certificate to Amazon that’s buring a hole in my pocket, so maybe I’ll see if they have it in stock.
To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time
GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying :
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer ;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may go marry :
For having lost but once your prime
You may forever tarry.
Duty to Tyrants
GOOD princes must be pray’d for ; for the bad
They must be borne with, and in rev’rence had.
Do they first pill thee, next pluck off thy skin?
Good children kiss the rods that punish sin.
Touch not the tyrant ; let the gods alone
To strike him dead that but usurps a throne.
-Robert Herrick
http://www.madpoet.com
“I never meant to hurt you,” you said,
And buried yourself in lies instead.
Next time I would rather be slain,
Than forced to bear your mercy again.
Well, as long as we’re on the Cavalier poets:
(From: “To Lucasta, Upon Going to the Wars”)
Yet this inconstancy is such
As thou, too, shalt adore;
I could not love thee, Dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more!
(By Lovelace, I believe.)
(This is from memory, so I may be off a hair.)
Oh yeah, and:
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage.
A couple more Cavalier relics kicking around my head:
Why so pale and wan, young lover?
Prithee, why so pale?
If looking well won’t win her
Will looking ill prevail?
Prithee, why so pale?
and:
Out! Out upon it!
I have loved thee three whole days together!
And am apt to love thee three more
(If it should prove fair weather).