Ok I don’t know if anybody did this before but I thought I would be a great thing to share our favourites poems. Please don’t post a poem that you wrote (use another thread) but the one you love the most. My favourites are in spanish (after all english is not very romantic :)) Anyway here is one by Sir Walter Raleigh. Hope to see this grow.
Conclussion
EVEN such is Time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wander'd all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days;
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.
I, having built a house, reject
The feud of eye and intellect,
And find in my experience proof
One pleasure runs from root to roof,
One thrust along the streamline arches
The sudden star, the budding larches
The force that makes the winter grow
It’s feathered hexagons of snow,
And drives the bee to match at home
Their calculated honeycomb,
Is abacus and rose combined.
An icy sweetness fills my mind.
A sense that under thing and wing
Lies, taut yet living, coiled, the spring.
First of all, I think that people will post uncopyrighted poems (if they post at all) because modern poetry tastes like crap.
Second, you can download music, movies I don’t think anybody will care about a poem
Yes, but you can’t do that legally. Same thing with posting copyrighted material–the registration agreement you signed says you won’t do that. And the mods here will care about poems.
My favorite poem (at the moment, anyway) is The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe. I like the poetry Tim Burton has done, but nothing comes to mind that’s a singular masterpiece.
(Seymour H. Auden of Bayonne, New Jersey, requested that we delete the text of his great-uncle’s poem, as it is still under copyright and earns him literally dozens of dollars a year. – Uke)
I wander thro’ each charter’d street,
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear
How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls
But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse
And since The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is too long to post in its entirety here, I’ll just give you a couple of my favorite verses:
And those her ribs through which the Sun
Did peer, as through a grate?
And is that Woman all her crew?
Is that a DEATH? and are there two?
Is DEATH that woman’s mate?
Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Nightmare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,
Who thicks man’s blood with cold.
Can’t really pick one, but some favorites include:
“To His Coy Mistress,” by Andrew Marvell. The language’s greatest poem on seduction – basically saying, “Let’s screw” in the most romantic and poetic terms every used. BTW, the notes of this version are dead wrong about the meaning of the word “quaint” in the poem. It was a very bawdy pun on a vulgar word for a portion of a woman’s intimate anatomy (hint: begins with “c”). With a higher percentage of quoted lines (especially for book titles) than any other poem.
“This is Just to Say,” by William Carlos Williams. Doesn’t seem like all that much at first glance, but it manages to tell the story of a long-term relationships in a marvelously oblique way.
“pity this busy monster,manunkind,” by e.e. cummings. Also often quoted. The remarkable thing is that it’s a sonnet (counting the title as the first line) and no one seems to notice.
“Bagpipe Music” by Louis Macneice. Great use of words that nearly rhyme, but do not (python & bison), and a fine sense of rhythm.
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The Eve of St. Agnes by John Keats. (Far too long to post here.)
A technically audacious piece of work by an artist at the peak of his powers, telling one of the most searingly romantic tales in all of English literature. This has everything - complete mastery of form sustained throughout its considerable length (42 9-line stanzas), stunning imagery, overwhelmingly beautiful expression and language, atmosphere, marvellous narrative and story-telling skills, and delightful inventiveness.
What’s more, just to whet the appetites of Dopers, it contains probably the most poetic expression for penetrative sex ever written! Keats wrote the poem in 1819, and the expression he used shocked his publishers, who wrote to him suggesting it was immoral and should be censored.
The Listeners by Walter de la Mere. (Easily found in anthologies).
A sort of ‘Blair Witch Project’ of its day! One of the most haunting, evocative and mysterious stories ever told, wrapped in stunningly beautiful language, and intentionally tantalising. The author leaves you to speculate about what happened. If you like spooky stuff, read this out loud by candlelight among friends late at night.
Onegin by Alexander Pushkin.
I’ve seen the wonderful movie, read English translations and been told about it by someone who could read it in the original Russian. I gather it must be one of the most glorious poems to be able to read, but I can’t read Russian and I’m not going to learn now. The English translations are good, but you can tell they struggle to convey even a fraction of Pushkin’s brilliance.