# Post your favorite poems

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-favorite-poems/342974>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [February 4, 2006, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-favorite-poems/342974 "2006-02-04T07:03:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 9\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\
**Post date:** [February 5, 2006, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-favorite-poems/342974/21 "2006-02-05T05:39:34Z")

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\>\>\> BLAM!!! BLAM!!! \<\<\< ::: Moderator bangs gavel for attention :::

Quoting a full poem is NOT permitted here. You may quote a line or two, and then provide a link to some site that has copyright privileges. Please see [Forum Rules: PLEASE READ](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=343601) and especially note post #2, about copyrights.

I have therefore edited away all but the first couple of lines. I do not have the time or energy to go through and try to pick the “best” line or the line that best makes your point. No way.

And some of the poems that I have edited might be long out of copyright; I don’t know and I don’t care. Moderators are far too busy to do your legwork for you, to determine whether a poem is or isn’t still under copyright. (BTW, my pref would be that you link to all poems, even Byron or Wordsworth, just so we don’t become cluttered here, but what the hell.)

All that aside: you may NOT quote full poems. We clear on this?

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**Author:** ![Bernard\_Marx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4491bb/32.png) [@Bernard\_Marx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bernard_Marx)\
**Post date:** [February 5, 2006, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-favorite-poems/342974/22 "2006-02-05T05:41:04Z")

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I hope this isn’t too long…

**The Golden Journey to Samarkand**

JAMES ELROY FLECKER

**Prologue**

We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage  
And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die,  
We Poets of the proud old lineage  
Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why

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**Author:** ![Arien](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Arien](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arien)\
**Post date:** [February 5, 2006, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-favorite-poems/342974/23 "2006-02-05T05:56:37Z")

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Whoops! Sorry about the copyright thing. I’d use the facepalm smilie here but for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to make it work. Clicking on it just scrolls the page back to the beginning.

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**Author:** ![Campion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@Campion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Campion)\
**Post date:** [February 5, 2006, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-favorite-poems/342974/24 "2006-02-05T06:19:48Z")

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> [@Jennshark](#):
>
> Elizabeth Bishop  
> One Art

That’s one of my favorites, too. Another one I like is [The Illiterate](http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~keith/poems/Illiterate.html), by William Meredith, about how difficult it can be, sometimes, to accept that someone loves you. Pure and simple and short in its language. I can’t quote enough to do it justice without potentially running afoul of the rules, but I like this line:

\*Afraid and letter-proud, he keeps it with him. \*

And then, of course, there’s Dorothy Parker, Henry Reed, William Carlos Williams…

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**Author:** ![Lola](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ed655f/32.png) [@Lola](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lola)\
**Post date:** [February 5, 2006, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-favorite-poems/342974/25 "2006-02-05T06:52:36Z")

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The sausage is a cunning bird  
It’s long and thin and wavy  
It flies around the frying pan  
And makes its home in gravy.  
Mod, it’s not a whole poem. It’s from Spenser’s “Faerie Queene”. Honest.

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**Author:** ![HazelNutCoffee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@HazelNutCoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HazelNutCoffee)\
**Post date:** [February 5, 2006, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-favorite-poems/342974/26 "2006-02-05T07:35:51Z")

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> [@Marley23](#):
>
> I’m going to post a link here, just because the poem would make for a very long post. But here’s [The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot.](http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html)

You beat me to it.

I also love Robert Frost’s “[The Line-Storm Song](http://quotations.about.com/cs/poemlyrics/a/A_Line_Storm_So.htm).” Especially this stanza:

There is the gale to urge behind  
And bruit our singing down,  
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind  
From which to gather your gown.  
What matter if we go clear to the west,  
And come not through dry-shod?  
For wilding brooch shall wet your breast  
The rain-fresh goldenrod.

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**Author:** ![Zahava424](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/76d3ee/32.png) [@Zahava424](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zahava424)\
**Post date:** [February 5, 2006, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-favorite-poems/342974/27 "2006-02-05T16:35:18Z")

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Linda Pastan’s [Near The Sacrificial Site](http://www.pshares.org/issues/article.cfm?prmarticleID=4408):  
…  
I want the only figures of the past to be  
ancestors of these wild  
poppies, of this chestnut tree  
whose blossoms break through  
the hardest wood. I know that cruelty  
flourishes just down the road, persistent  
as these gnarled roots which overrun  
the partly ruined woods…

Billy Collins’ [Some Final Words](http://www.abichal.com/html/poetry/Billy%20Collins/some_final.htm):  
I cannot leave you without saying this:  
the past is nothing,  
a nonmemory, a phantom,  
a soundproof closet in which Johann Strauss  
is composing another waltz no one can hear…

Robert Pinsky’s [Impossible To Tell (My Two-Joke Elegy)](http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/pinsky/impossible.html):  
Slow dulcimer, gavotte and bow, in autumn,  
Bashõ and his friends go out to view the moon;  
In summer, gasoline rainbow in the gutter…

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**Author:** ![Zahava424](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/76d3ee/32.png) [@Zahava424](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zahava424)\
**Post date:** [February 5, 2006, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-favorite-poems/342974/28 "2006-02-05T16:37:47Z")

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Also Linda Pastan’s [Prosody 101](http://plagiarist.com/poetry/3202/):  
…When they taught me that what mattered most  
was not the strict iambic line goose-stepping  
over the page but the variations  
in that line and the tension produced  
on the ear by the surprise of difference,  
I understood yet didn’t understand  
exactly, until just now, years later  
in spring, with the trees already lacy  
and camellias blowsy with middle age…

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**Author:** ![Eonwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eonwe/32/240_2.png) [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)\
**Post date:** [February 5, 2006, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-favorite-poems/342974/29 "2006-02-05T17:38:07Z")

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[Ulysses](http://www.gober.net/victorian/ulysses.html), by Tennyson.

\*. . . 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.

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’  
We are not now that strength which in the 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.\*

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