I know there are some poets on the board… and some posters that don’t care for poetry at all. That being said, most people seem to have at least one small passage of poetry that they enjoy, so I’d like to hear yours. I’ll start with two of my favorites:
I know a search that’s useless,
I know a code I don’t hunt for,
I know a face that’s gone
From Sandburg’s You and a Sickle Moon
and
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
From Jarrell’s The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
I stood upon that silent hill
And stared into the sky until
My eyes were blind with stars, and still
I stared into the sky
From: The Song of Honour by Ralph Hodgson, the last four lines.
The world is too much with us, late and soon
From: The world is too much with us, William Wordsworth, opening line
*Lord, I do fear
Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,—let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call. *
God’s World by Edna St. Vincent Millay, last half of the second stanza
* Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything
Prepared a sinister mate
For her — so gaily great —
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.
And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too. *
The Convergence of the Twain by Thomas Hardy, stanzas 6-8
The final lines of The Tollund Man by Seamus Heaney:
Out here in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home.
The entirety of Wallace Stevens’ Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, but especially:
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
And:
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
Speaking of Wallace Stevens, I have no idea what any of it means but I love reciting the first stanza of The Emperor of Ice Cream. The words roll out after each other so nicely and it all sounds so grand!
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
So many… but I find this one both whimsical and dark.
*“The Grizzly Bear is huge and wild;
He has devoured the infant child.
The infant child is not aware
It has been eaten by a bear."
*
-A.E. Housman
Resumé by Dorothy Parker
Razors pain you
Rivers are damp
Acids stain you
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful
Nooses give
Gas smells awful
You might as well live.
T. S. Eliot:
Edgar Allen Poe:
J.R.R. Tolkien
*Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
<snip>
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down!*
–Robert Front, New England’s Poet.
I hacked him in pieces sma,
I hacked him in pieces sma,
Robert Frost might be offended by your attribution. After all, good fences make good neighbors.
If she thinks not well of me,
What care I how fair she be.
**A Man Said to the Universe ** by **Stephen Crane **
A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
The fog comes on little cat feet
It sits looking over harbor and city
On silent haunches
And then moves on.
– Carl Sandburg
I have a 75 watt, glare-free, long-life,
Harmony House light bulb in my toilet.
I have been living in the same apartment
for over two years now
and that bulb just keeps burning away.
I believe it is fond of me.
– Richard Brautigan
My Mom’s favorite was an excerpt:
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
– Robert Frost
Thanks for posting this, I just read the full poem, and there is a real beauty in it. The last stanza is quite poignant, i can see why you selected it.
Since golden October declined into somber November
And the apples were gathered and stored
And the land became brown, sharp points of death in a waste of water and mud.
The new year waits, breathes, waits, whispers in the darkness.
And the poor shall wait for yet another decaying October.
T.S. Eliot, from Murder in the Cathedral.
From memory, so it might not be quoted perfectly. I can never remember if the points are brown sharp or sharp brown…
The Solitary Huntsman, by Ogden Nash.
Last stanza:
*For all the fox’s doubling
They track him to his den.
The chase may fill a morning,
Or threescore years and ten.
The huntsman never sated
Screaks to his saddlebow,
“I’ll catch another fox
And put him in a box
And never let him go.” *
He wrote several bog poems. Punishment, The Grauballe Man, Bogland, and Bog Queen also come to mind. They’re my favorite poetry.
There have been no dragons in my life.
Only small spiders, and stepping in gum.
I could have coped with dragons.
–author unknown (I’ve seen it attributed to several)
My favorite poem is “The Children’s Hour” by Alan Moore, but no particular passage sticks out and I don’t think I’m allowed to quote the whole thing.