# What is your favorite poem?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [February 8, 2008, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802 "2008-02-08T15:39:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 4

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\
**Post date:** [February 8, 2008, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/61 "2008-02-08T23:43:27Z")

</div>

\*In Flanders fields the poppies blow  
Between the crosses row on row,  
That mark our place; and in the sky  
The larks, still bravely singing, fly  
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago  
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,  
Loved and were loved, and now we lie  
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:  
To you from failing hands we throw  
The torch; be yours to hold it high.  
If ye break faith with us who die  
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow  
In Flanders fields  
\*

Or else -

**A Soldier’s Prayer**

\*Stay with me, God. The night is dark,  
The night is cold: my little spark  
Of courage dies. The night is long;  
Be with me, God, and make me strong.

I love a game; I love a fight.  
I hate the dark; I love the light.  
I love my child; I love my wife.  
I am no coward. I love Life,

Life with its change of mood and shade.  
I want to live. I’m not afraid,  
But me and mine are hard to part;  
Oh, unknown God, lift up my heart.

You stilled the waters at Dunkirk  
And saved Your Servants. All Your work  
Is wonderful, dear God. You strode  
Before us down that dreadful road.

We were alone, and hope had fled;  
We loved our country and our dead,  
And could not shame them; so we stayed  
The course, and were not much afraid.

Dear God that nightmare road! And then  
That sea! We got there-we were men.  
My eyes were blind, my feet were torn,  
My soul sang like a bird at dawn!

I knew that death is but a door.  
I knew what we were fighting for:  
Peace for the kids, our brothers freed,  
A kinder world, a cleaner breed.

I’m but the son my mother bore,  
A simple man, and nothing more.  
But-God of strength and gentleness,  
Be pleased to make me nothing less.

Help me, O God, when Death is near  
To mock the haggard face of fear,  
That when I fall-if fall I must-  
My soul may triumph in the Dust.  
\*

Regards,  
Shodan

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/62 "2008-02-09T00:49:13Z")

</div>

My favorite is this one from the eighth-century Japanese poet, Lady Kasa Takamochi:

To love somebody  
Who doesn’t love you  
Is like going to a temple  
And worshipping the behind  
Of a wooden statue  
Of a hungry devil

(I suspect this is public domain by now 😃 )

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/63 "2008-02-09T00:51:01Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=Phase42]  
(I suspect this is public domain by now 😃 )  
[/QUOTE]

But is that translation? 😃

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/64 "2008-02-09T01:14:59Z")

</div>

Definitely Lewis Carroll’s \*The Walrus and the Carpenter.

But four young oysters hurried up, all eager for the treat  
Their clothes were brushed, their faces washed, their shoes were clean and neat  
And this was odd, because you know, they hadn’t any feet!\*

I’m also a fan of Waterson’s epic:

[QUOTE=Calvin and Hobbes]  
_Mom once said she loved me  
Just the way I am  
But I wonder what would happen  
If I became a clam?  
If I were grey and grimey  
Slippery and slimy  
An oversized hors’doeuvre  
Would Mom still have the nerve?_  
[/QUOTE]

Oh, and we can’t forget Shel Silverstein…

[QUOTE=Wild Strawberries]

_Are wild strawberries really wild?  
Will they scratch an adult, will they snap at a child?  
Should you pet them, or let them run free where they roam?  
Could they ever relax in a steam-heated home?_  
[/QUOTE]

I’m sure you must be thinking, ‘‘But what about the meaningful stuff?’’ I assure you this is the meaningful stuff. 🙂

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rubystreak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Rubystreak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rubystreak)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/65 "2008-02-09T01:21:16Z")

</div>

Lots of my favorites are already here, but I had to mention  
W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming,” whose words I think of often. It gives me chills every time I read it.

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 conviction, 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: a waste of desert sand;  
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  
Wind 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?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/66 "2008-02-09T02:20:28Z")

</div>

Good one, **Rubystreak,** you’ve read George RR Martin’s **The Armageddon Rag,** right?

**Shodan,** thanks–I’m sending the Soldier’s Prayer to a friend in Iraq, he’ll like it. Who’s the author?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/67 "2008-02-09T02:51:04Z")

</div>

I’m fond of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV:

Batter my heart, three-person’d God ; for you  
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;  
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend  
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.  
I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,  
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.  
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,  
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.  
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,  
But am betroth’d unto your enemy ;  
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,  
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,  
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,  
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/68 "2008-02-09T02:52:24Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=OtakuLoki]  
But is that translation? 😃  
[/QUOTE]

I found it in a book of translated poems, and the book is copyrighted 1974 & 1976. So I’ll say “no”. OTOH, the copyright is on the book as a whole, so perhaps we can consider this single poem to be a “brief excerpt” 🆒

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Savannah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Savannah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Savannah)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/69 "2008-02-09T02:56:56Z")

</div>

What a great thread; there are some discoveries here to make. Though I like Plath, Sexton, and other modern angst, what comes to mind first is Yeats, too:

```
        I went out to the hazel wood,
        Because a fire was in my head,
        And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
        And hooked a berry to a thread;
         
        And when white moths were on the wing,
        And moth-like stars were flickering out,
        I dropped the berry in a stream
        And caught a little silver trout.
         
        When I had laid it on the floor
        I went to blow the fire a-flame,
        But something rustled on the floor,
        And some one called me by my name:
        
        It had become a glimmering girl
        With apple blossom in her hair
        Who called me by my name and ran
        And faded through the brightening air.
         
        Though I am old with wandering
        Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
        I will find out where she has gone,
        And kiss her lips and take her hands;
        
        And walk among long dappled grass,
        And pluck till time and times are done
        The silver apples of the moon,
        The golden apples of the sun.

```

Just… wow. Those words, that imagery…

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/70 "2008-02-09T03:05:25Z")

</div>

Ooh, forgot this one:

**Original version of La Belle Dame Sans Merci, 1819**

\*Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,  
Alone and palely loitering?  
The sedge has withered from the lake,  
And no birds sing.

Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,  
So haggard and so woe-begone?  
The squirrel’s granary is full,  
And the harvest’s done.

I see a lily on thy brow,  
With anguish moist and fever-dew,  
And on thy cheeks a fading rose  
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,  
Full beautiful - a faery’s child,  
Her hair was long, her foot was light,  
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,  
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;  
She looked at me as she did love,  
And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,  
And nothing else saw all day long,  
For sidelong would she bend, and sing  
A faery’s song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,  
And honey wild, and manna-dew,  
And sure in language strange she said -  
‘I love thee true’.

She took me to her elfin grot,  
And there she wept and sighed full sore,  
And there I shut her wild wild eyes  
With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep  
And there I dreamed - Ah! woe betide! -  
The latest dream I ever dreamt  
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,  
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;  
They cried - ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci  
Hath thee in thrall!’

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,  
With horrid warning gaped wide,  
And I awoke and found me here,  
On the cold hill’s side.

And this is why I sojourn here  
Alone and palely loitering,  
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,  
And no birds sing.\*

–John Keats

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![HazelNutCoffee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@HazelNutCoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HazelNutCoffee)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/71 "2008-02-09T03:43:43Z")

</div>

Maragaret Atwood’s “Siren Song” gave me a little chill at the end the first time I read it:  
[http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=98](http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=98)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/72 "2008-02-09T03:47:49Z")

</div>

Just about anything by Charles Bukowski.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/73 "2008-02-09T03:58:58Z")

</div>

While I love Sexton, Plath, Ginsberg and Jim Carrol, my favorite poem comes from a poet who preceeded them all. I won’t quote it because it’s so short, but I’ll include a link.

[Opal](http://www.bryantmcgill.com/World_Poetry/~A/Amy_Lowell/Amy_Lowell_Opal.html) by Amy Lowell

I don’t think there’s another poem that so thoroughly captures what love feels like. Not _idealized_ love, but in its average, every day deep and disquieting form.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Noel\_Prosequi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b19c9b/32.png) [@Noel\_Prosequi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noel_Prosequi)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/74 "2008-02-09T03:59:39Z")

</div>

Two. The first is an inscription on a war memorial by A. E. Houseman:

Here dead we lie  
Because we did not choose  
To live and shame the land  
From which we sprung.

Life, to be sure,  
Is nothing much to lose,  
But young men think it is,  
And we were young.  
And the second by a soldier in Iraq (Brian Turner):

**Here, Bullet**

If a body is what you want,  
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.  
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,  
the aorta’s opened valves, the leap  
thought makes at the synaptic gap.  
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,  
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture  
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish  
what you’ve started. Because here, Bullet,  
here is where I complete the word you bring  
hissing through the air, here is where I moan  
the barrel’s cold esophagus, triggering  
my tongue’s explosives for the rifling I have  
inside of me, each twist of the round  
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,  
here is where the world ends, every time.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/75 "2008-02-09T04:03:57Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=Marley23]  
_The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock_, by T.S. Eliot. Great imagery, wonderful language and sound, and it just connects with me on a deep level.  
[/QUOTE]

Yes, I love that one and his [The Hollow Men](http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/784/). Very much a “long dark night of the soul” type of poem.

Sample:

> [@](#):
>
> This is the dead land  
> This is cactus land  
> Here the stone images  
> Are raised, here they receive  
> The supplication of a dead man’s hand  
> Under the twinkle of a fading star.
> 
> Is it like this  
> In death’s other kingdom  
> Waking alone  
> At the hour when we are  
> Trembling with tenderness  
> Lips that would kiss  
> Form prayers to broken stone.

And the stanza you’re probably familiar with even if you haven’t read the poem:

> [@](#):
>
> This is the way the world ends  
> This is the way the world ends  
> This is the way the world ends  
> Not with a bang but a whimper.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jackelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@jackelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackelope)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/76 "2008-02-09T04:05:29Z")

</div>

Many, many poems leap to mind, but standing over them all is Philip Larkin’s [Aubade](http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/philip-larkin/aubade/).

That last line always gets me. _Postmen like doctors go from house to house._

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Noel\_Prosequi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b19c9b/32.png) [@Noel\_Prosequi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noel_Prosequi)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/77 "2008-02-09T04:49:41Z")

</div>

And another one, a deeply disturbing creation from Lola Ridge that, for a poem written in the first half of the 20C has a decidedly modern resonance:-

My doll Janie has no waist  
and her body is like a tub with feet on it.  
Sometimes I beat her  
but I always kiss her afterwards.  
When I have kissed all the paint off her body  
I shall tie a ribbon about it  
so she shan’t look shabby.  
But it must be blue-  
it mustn’t be pink-  
pink shows the dirt on her face  
that won’t wash off.

I beat Janie  
and beat her…  
but still she smiled…  
so I scratched her between the eyes with a pin.  
Now she doesn’t love me anymore…  
she scowls… and scowls…  
though I’ve begged her to forgive me  
and poured sugar in the hole at the back of her head.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![vison](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e47774/32.png) [@vison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vison)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/78 "2008-02-09T05:44:15Z")

</div>

Wonderful thread! Many of the poems mentioned here are old, beloved favourites of mine.

"With rue my heart is laden  
For golden friends I had.  
For many a rose-lipt maiden,  
For many a lightfoot lad.

By brooks too broad for leaping  
The lightfoot lads are laid.  
The rose-lipt girls lie sleeping  
In fields where roses fade."

(A. E. Housman, of course)

" . . . .That is the land of lost content,  
I see it shining plain.  
Those happy highways where I went  
And cannot come again."

(Also Housman.)

Any Housman, nearly any Frost. May Sarton. Emily Dickinson. Keats. Some Byron. Shelley. Susan Musgrave.

Too many to mention and far too many to post!  
I also particularly love the poem that ends with these immortal lines:

". . . And every time she shouted fire,  
They only answered, “Little liar!”  
(From “Matilda, who told lies and was burned to death”, by Hillaire Belloc)

Belloc wrote many poignantly touching and instructive poems of that nature. 😃 “. . . with that, the wretched child expired” is in a poem about a boy who was a glutton, I believe. My sister and I used to read these aloud in the car, and we would laugh so hard we could scarcely read the words. Our folks loved it, because otherwise we’d be fighting.

I’d post “Jim, who disobeyed his nurse and was eaten by a lion” but it’s too long and I can’t type when I’m laughing anyway.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/79 "2008-02-09T05:46:11Z")

</div>

I’ve always been partial to _The Mary Gloucester_ by Kipling. Here’s a [link](http://lockstockandbarrel.org/Poems/Kipling/mary_gloster.html) - not especially well presented, unfortunately.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/80 "2008-02-09T05:54:58Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=vison]  
I also particularly love the poem that ends with these immortal lines:

". . . And every time she shouted fire,  
They only answered, “Little liar!”  
(From “Matilda, who told lies and was burned to death”, by Hillaire Belloc)

Belloc wrote many poignantly touching and instructive poems of that nature. 😃 “. . . with that, the wretched child expired” is in a poem about a boy who was a glutton, I believe. My sister and I used to read these aloud in the car, and we would laugh so hard we could scarcely read the words. Our folks loved it, because otherwise we’d be fighting.

I’d post “Jim, who disobeyed his nurse and was eaten by a lion” but it’s too long and I can’t type when I’m laughing anyway.  
[/QUOTE]

So that’s what, and who, Edward Gorey was specifically lampooning!  
How can you mention Housman and not mention my favorite: [_Is My Team Ploughing_](http://www.amherst.edu/~rjyanco94/literature/alfrededwardhousman/poems/ashropshirelad/ismyteamploughing.html), and it’s final stanza.

Yes, lad, I lie easy,  
I lie as lads would choose;  
I cheer a dead man’s sweetheart,  
Never ask me whose.

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802.md?page=3)

[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802.md?page=5)