What is your favorite poem?

Cafe Society
61

*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

62

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 :smiley: )

63

But is that translation? :smiley:

64

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:

Oh, and we can’t forget Shel Silverstein…

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

65

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?

66

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?

67

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.

68

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” :cool:

69

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…

70

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

71

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

72

Just about anything by Charles Bukowski.

73

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 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.

74

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.

75

Yes, I love that one and his The Hollow Men. Very much a “long dark night of the soul” type of poem.

Sample:

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

76

Many, many poems leap to mind, but standing over them all is Philip Larkin’s Aubade.

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

77

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.

78

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. :smiley: “. . . 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.

79

I’ve always been partial to The Mary Gloucester by Kipling. Here’s a link - not especially well presented, unfortunately.

80

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, 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.