From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.
Edgar Allan Poe
also…
This is Just to Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Of the poems previously mentioned, count me as another fan of Prufrock, and also The Naming of Parts:
*And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers
They call it easing the Spring. *
To this list I’d add Yeats’ “He wishes for the cloths of heaven”:
*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: *
It was one of the poems selected for the London Underground’s Poems on the Underground (pasted up alongside the advertisements in tube trains), and I remember the almost visceral shiver of losing the smelly, sweaty surroundings to something of such stately elegance.
My stepfather often quoted from Wordsworth’s “On Westminster Bridge”, and it still reminds me of childhood adventures:
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
One of my all-time favourites is “The Second Coming” - chock-full of memorable lines:
The Second Coming – W. B. Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Generally speaking, I am not a big fan of poetry, but I do have a few favorites. Langston Hughes, “The South”: “The lazy, laughing South / With blood on its mouth.”
Also, Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est”.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
I think I have to say right off that my favorite poem is whatever one I happen to be reading or the last one I read – even if it’s some miserable thing written by some lovesick fourteen-year-old, wailing away at the injustice of life. It usually takes a while for me to decide if I love the poem itself or the idea of poetry. So, the poems following are the ones that I’ve digested, rather than chewed and spit out, the flavor not being quite what I expected.
Funeral Blues by WH Auden. For this poem alone (well, and Gareth) I love the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral. Which probably means my eyes should be plucked out or something.
The Oubit by Charles Kingsley Scroll down about halfway. It’s after A Christmas Carol but before Three Fishers. I like this, not because of the meaning behind it, but because it was the first poem in an “accent” I read. I know there’s another name for them, but, bless my boots, I can’t remember it. Y’know, like the kind written by Robert Burns.
I’m still not sure what you mean by “altered”. Are you talking about the fact that Ozymandias was so vain that he assumed his statue would stand forever, and now it’s almsot buried in sand in an antique land? Or is there something more subtle than that going on?
My favourite poem was written by uruguayan poet Mario Benedetti. It’s name is “Corazón Coraza” and you’ll have to speak spanish to enjoy it:
Porque te tengo y no
porque te pienso
porque la noche está de ojos abiertos
porque la noche pasa y digo amor
porque has venido a recoger tu imagen
y eres mejor que todas tus imágenes
porque eres linda desde el pie hasta el alma
porque eres buena desde el alma a mí
porque te escondes dulce en el orgullo
pequeña y dulce
corazón coraza
porque eres mía
porque no eres mía
porque te miro y muero
y peor que muero
si no te miro amor
si no te miro
porque tú siempre existes dondequiera
pero existes mejor donde te quiero
porque tu boca es sangre
y tienes frío
tengo que amarte amor
tengo que amarte
aunque esta herida duela como dos
aunque te busque y no te encuentre
y aunque
la noche pase y yo te tenga
y no.
A close second belongs to a book called “Twenty love songs and a desperate song” by chilean poet, and nobel prize of literature Pablo Neruda (the one of “Il Postino”). it’s poem number 20 and you can enjoy both the original and a good translation here
Now hollow fires burn out to black,
And lights are guttering low.
Square your shoulders, lift your pack,
And leave your friends, and go.
Oh never fear, man, nought’s to dread,
Look not left nor right:
In all the endless road you tread
There’s nothing but the night.
—A.E. Houseman, “A Shropshire Lad”
But my favorite of all time (on a happier note) has got to be Yeats’s A Drinking Song: Short, simple, perfect, and irresistible. You should all learn it.
Pretty much – Rameses’ statement of brash arrogance (which Shelleyaltered, as you can see from the page I cited) which I can recast less poetically as “Look at what I accomplished – there’s no way you could do as well, no matter how mighty!” assumes an entirely different aspect after several milleia have obliterated his works, as if Time is saying “Yes, look upon even the mightiest works of mere man.”
Yes, I kno it’s irony. But it’s ironic because the meaning the modern Traveller takes from it has altered from Rameses’ original intent. If anything, the modern viewer has even more reason to despair than Rameses intended.
When the exhibition of the artifacts of Rameses II toured th US, this poem was placed at the end of the exhibit (I saw it in Provo Utah, then later at the Museum of Science in Boston). The poem was also used to good effect in the story “Ozymandias” in one of the Harlan Ellison-edited anthologies “Dangerous Visions”
I like lots of poetry – mostly older stuff, I’m afraid. I’m hopelessly low-brow. My dad’s all-time favorite is The Cremation of Sam McGee. I like that one too, and most of Service’s other stuff, as well.
I absolutely love masses of Edna St. Vincent Millay – it’s almost impossible to choose a favorite there. I’ll say, Alms, because it’s one of the best poems ever written about heartbreak.
