# Your Favorite Passage of Poetry **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 7, 2016, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-passage-of-poetry/774116 "2016-12-07T16:10:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-passage-of-poetry/774116/21 "2016-12-07T19:56:04Z")
\*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. \* – W.B. Yeats _Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned._ – Edna St. Vincent Millay ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-passage-of-poetry/774116/22 "2016-12-07T20:12:53Z")
From Norwegian Rolf Jacobsen’s 1935 poem “Myrstrå vipper” - Marsh reeds teeter, where he contrasts human society with the constancy of nature. My translation: -Fifty years and others live in the houses, the street cars have new signs and new leather on the seats. -A hundred years and the cars have stopped in long rows, side by side they stand in never ending caravans, piled up in large heaps, lie with their wheels up like dead insects. - A thousand years and the iron girder is a red line in the sand. Marsh reeds teeter, bend to the east, to the west and whisper. ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-passage-of-poetry/774116/23 "2016-12-07T20:16:13Z")
> [@SpoilerVirgin](#): > > \*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. \* > > – W.B. Yeats That’s a pretty good description of 2016, actually. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![kayT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayt/32/3633_2.png) [@kayT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayT)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-passage-of-poetry/774116/24 "2016-12-07T20:21:00Z")
What, no Shakespeare? I’m going to put Sonnet 29 in here because it’s short, and public domain, and it’s beautiful. SONNET 29 When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d, Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate; For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings. ---
**Author:** ![MonkeyMensch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@MonkeyMensch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MonkeyMensch)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-passage-of-poetry/774116/25 "2016-12-07T20:24:33Z")
_Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible then marriage would be possible– Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover so I wait–bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life._ Gregory Corso, \*Marriage \*That explains me. ---
**Author:** ![pinkfreud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pinkfreud/32/17603_2.png) [@pinkfreud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinkfreud)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-passage-of-poetry/774116/26 "2016-12-07T21:03:06Z")
From _Dover Beach_, by Matthew Arnold: Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. ---
**Author:** ![cwthree](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9de0a6/32.png) [@cwthree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cwthree)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-passage-of-poetry/774116/27 "2016-12-07T21:48:53Z")
> [@Sattua](#): > > 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 whole poem is in the style of Anglo-Saxon poetry, but the verse that jumps out at me is this one: Trove of the turfcutters’ Honeycombed workings. Now his stained face Reposes at Aarhus. perhaps because it has the meter, the alliteration, and the internal rhyme down perfectly. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-passage-of-poetry/774116/28 "2016-12-07T21:54:47Z")
Bertolt Brecht: “Slave, who is it that shall free you? Those in deepest darkness lying. Comrade, only these can see you Only they can hear you crying. Comrade, only slaves can free you. Everything or nothing. All of us or none. One alone his lot can’t better. Either gun or fetter. Everything or nothing. All of us or none.” ---
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-passage-of-poetry/774116/29 "2016-12-07T21:55:13Z")
Easy answer, for me. Somewhere I Have Never Traveled, by ee cummings. (first and last stanzas) > [@](#): > > somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond > any experience, your eyes have their silence: > in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, > or which i cannot touch because they are too near > > (i do not know what it is about you that closes > and opens; only something in me understands > the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) > nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-passage-of-poetry/774116/30 "2016-12-07T22:10:45Z")
My wife gave me this one, changing the words slightly from the original: \*You are my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I will love you forever, at least that long. - And the original: _He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong._ -W.H. Auden ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-passage-of-poetry/774116/31 "2016-12-07T22:11:39Z")
It’s a huge cliche, especially in geek circles, but it still imight be my favorite: _The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, ‘T is 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 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._ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ---
**Author:** ![cwthree](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9de0a6/32.png) [@cwthree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cwthree)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-passage-of-poetry/774116/32 "2016-12-07T22:15:47Z")
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz… –Allen Ginsburg _Howl_, Part I ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-passage-of-poetry/774116/33 "2016-12-07T22:52:46Z")
All of Poe’s **THE BELLS** , but especially the first part. ## HEAR the sledges with the bells – Silver bells ! What a world of merriment their melody foretells ! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night ! While the stars that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight ; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells – From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. also…and yes, I understand that this is not only politically correct, but outright racist–and even by the standards of the time, it’s pretty…um…backwards…but.: FAT black bucks in a wine-barrel room, Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable, Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, Pounded on the table, Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom, Hard as they were able, Boom, boom, BOOM, With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom, Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM. THEN I had religion, THEN I had a vision. I could not turn from their revel in derision. THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK, CUTTING THROUGH THE JUNGLE WITH A GOLDEN TRACK. Then along that riverbank A thousand miles Tattooed cannibals danced in files; Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song And a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong. And “BLOOD” screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors, “BLOOD” screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors, “Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle, Harry the uplands, Steal all the cattle, Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle, Bing! Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM,” A roaring, epic, rag-time tune From the mouth of the Congo To the Mountains of the Moon. Death is an Elephant, Torch-eyed and horrible, Foam-flanked and terrible. BOOM, steal the pygmies, BOOM, kill the Arabs, BOOM, kill the white men, Like the wind in the chimney. HOO, HOO, HOO. Listen to the yell of Leopold’s ghost Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host. Hear how the demons chuckle and yell Cutting his hands off, down in Hell. Listen to the creepy proclamation, Blown through the lairs of the forest-nation, Blown past the white-ants’ hill of clay, Blown past the marsh where the butterflies play:— “Be careful what you do, Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo, And all of the other Gods of the Congo, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.” Vachel Lindesy **THE CONGO** (part one) Both poems are ok on paper but awesome as hell in their meter/rhythm and language when read aloud. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-passage-of-poetry/774116/34 "2016-12-07T22:54:20Z")
The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, The furrow followed free; We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea. –“Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, Samuel Coleridge _Also:_ I will teach you my townspeople how to perform a funeral –“Tract”, William Carlos Williams ---
**Author:** ![P-man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/p-man/32/3606_2.png) [@P-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P-man)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-passage-of-poetry/774116/35 "2016-12-07T23:03:33Z")
I got a craving need for blazing speed I got a souped up Mustang Ford Climb into my wagon, throw your panties overboard. I can write you poems, make a strong man lose his mind I’m no pig without a wig; you better treat me kind. ---
**Author:** ![P-man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/p-man/32/3606_2.png) [@P-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P-man)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-passage-of-poetry/774116/36 "2016-12-07T23:04:35Z")
> [@P-man](#): > > I got a craving need for blazing speed > I got a souped up Mustang Ford > Climb into my wagon, throw your panties overboard. > I can write you poems, make a strong man lose his mind > I’m no pig without a wig; you better treat me kind. Bob Dylan, “High Water (For Charlie Patton)” ---
**Author:** ![Translucent\_Daydream](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/translucent_daydream/32/16170_2.png) [@Translucent\_Daydream](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Translucent_Daydream)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-passage-of-poetry/774116/37 "2016-12-07T23:08:02Z")
> [@](#): > > Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow, > And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go, > For the children, they mark, and the children, they know > The place where the sidewalk ends. Shel Silverstein from “Where the sidewalk ends” ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stainless_steel_rat/32/5727_2.png) [@The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stainless_Steel_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-passage-of-poetry/774116/38 "2016-12-07T23:19:18Z")
Dylan Thomas: _And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light._ Rudyard Kipling: _For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!” But it’s “Saviour of 'is country” when the guns begin to shoot; An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please; An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool – you bet that Tommy sees!_ Robert Service: _There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee._ ---
**Author:** ![kayT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayt/32/3633_2.png) [@kayT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayT)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-passage-of-poetry/774116/39 "2016-12-07T23:26:33Z")
> [@MonkeyMensch](#): > > _Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible > then marriage would be possible– > Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover > so I wait–bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life._ > > Gregory Corso, \*Marriage > > \*That explains me. Oh yes, II love this one. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-passage-of-poetry/774116/40 "2016-12-07T23:28:01Z")
Lord Byron: So, we’ll go no more a roving So late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving, And the moon be still as bright. For the sword outwears its sheath, And the soul wears out the breast, And the heart must pause to breathe, And love itself have rest. Though the night was made for loving, And the day returns too soon, Yet we’ll go no more a roving By the light of the moon. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-passage-of-poetry/774116.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-passage-of-poetry/774116.md?page=3)