I downloaded September 1, 1939. From a site in internet wich has all of those poet works. I didn’t even knew it before someone mention it here. And regarding my critic of modern poetry, it’s my opinion at least in spanish modern poets are no match to old ones. Don’t know much about english poetry that is the reason why I started this thread
Ooops! If only I had looked it up in my Watchman first. But I’m not a Librarian to the T. 
Just so you know for the future, your ability to find a site with the poem in question on the internet does not mean it isn’t copyrighted. Its availability isn’t what determines whether or not you can post it here, it’s whether or not it has a copyright. I can find Metallica mp3s online, that doesn’t mean they aren’t copyrighted.
That said, I don’t really have a favorite poem. I’m going to see if I can find “The Listeners” and read it, though.
I believe the statute of limitations for copyrighted material is 75 years, which would make anything written after 1926 automatically copyrighted. At least that’s what they tell us in English classes when it comes to citing material.
Complete and utter nonsense. Robert Penn Warren, Stephen Dunn, Gwendolyn Brooks, Muriel Rukeyser, N. Scott Momaday, Theodore Roethke, Mark Doty, William Carlos Williams, Sylvia Plath, Pablo Neruda, and Michael Ondaajte are all excellent examples of relatively modern poetry that is masterful. I could get into a Great Debate about this, if you’re interested.
Anyway, all of my favorite poems are copyrighted, but here’s the list:
[ul][li]Tenderness by Stephen Dunn. Dunn doesn’t use extravagent metaphors or any particular form, but his subject matter is both deeply personal and somehow universal. This poem is about a love affair he had with a women much older than him when he was in his early twenties. The woman was abused by her husband, and in loving her he discovers what it is to feel tenderness. This is my favorite line: “It’s a word I see now/ you must be older to use,/ you must have experianced the absence of it/ often enough to know what silk and deep balm/ it is/ when at last it comes.”[/li][li]Birth of Love by Robert Penn Warren. This poem contains some of the most beautiful, haunting imagery I’ve ever read. A man and a woman are swimming; he watches her leave the water and dry off and walk into the house. My favorite part is this: “…if only/ He had such strength, he would put his hand forth/ And maintain it over her to guard, in all/ Her out-goings and in-comings, from whatever/ Inclemency of sky or slur of the world’s weather/ Might ever be. In his heart/ He cries out.”[/li][li]the mother by Gwendolyn Brooks. This poem is rather disturbing, because the persona is remembering abortions she had had, children she never gave birth to. It’s very poignant and not political at all (at the time it was written, in 1945, abortions were of course still illegal.) The end is lovely, I think: “You were born, you had body, you died./ It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried./Believe me, I loved you all. Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you/ All.”[/li][li]Bill’s Story by Mark Doty. The entire collection of poetry, “My Alexadria,” is a masterpiece. But this poem is my most favorite. It’s about someone’s sister who returns from Africa in the late 70’s with AIDS. She begins buying out used clothing stores, has more clothes than she knows what to do with. Later, Bill’s mother tries to help her die, telling her to look for the white light. Bill says we are all so different, how can our light be the same? And he claims his sister’s light is garbardine and plaid, the colors and patterns of all the clothes she bought years ago. Finally she dies, and Bill tells her that where ever he is in the world, if she calls him, he will come running to her.[/ul][/li]
Those are the Big Four.
Xanadu, by Coleridge.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran.
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
I owe my love of Coleridge to Iron Maiden, by the way.
Oh, that one’s great – let’s see if I can remember it all…
At the round earth’s imagined corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go;
All whom the flood did, and fire shall, o’erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain; and you whose eyes
Shall behold God, and never taste death’s woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For if, above all these, my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace
When we are there. Here on this holy ground,
Teach me how to repent, for that’s as good
As if Thou hadst sealed my pardon with Thy blood.
We did a musical setting of that in choir a couple of years ago – it was terrific!
I love Donne. I’m not sure whether to post “The Flea” or “A Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness” – but since I don’t think I have the latter memorized and don’t feel like pulling the Norton Anthology off the shelf, I’ll go with “The Flea”:
Mark but this flea, and mark in this
How little that which thou deniest me is;
Me it sucked first, and then sucked thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do.
O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, nay, more than married are;
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we are met
And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege – three sins in killing three.
Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein should this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?
Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou
Find’st not thyself, nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true – then learn how false fears be:
Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,
Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.
Let’s see, a few more I like…
“Caliban upon Setebos,” by Robert Browning
“Strange Meeting,” by Wilfrid Owen
“A Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness,” by John Donne
I know there are lots I’ve forgotten…I’ll post more later.
Nacho4sara, I hope you read my second statement on modern poetry. I concede that Neruda is a great poet (I don’t like his work though) anyway here goes another poem by Mr. Longfellow.
- A Psalm of Life
What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist
TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!—
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,—act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait
From Pablo Neruda’s Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada number 20.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Escribir, por ejemplo: “La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos”.
El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.
En las noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos.
La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.
Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería.
Cómo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.
Oir la noche inmensa, más inmensa sin ella.
Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío.
Qué importa que mi amor no pudiera guardarla.
La noche está estrellada y ella no está conmigo.
Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.
Mi corazón la busca, y ella no está conmigo.
La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos árboles.
Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cuánto la quise.
Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oído.
De otro. Será de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.
Porque en noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos,
mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
Aunque éste sea el último dolor que ella me causa,
y éstos sean los últimos versos que yo le escribo
And the English transaltion:
Tonight I can write the most sorrowful verse.
I can write, for example: “The night is star-filled
and the blue stars are shivering in the distance.”
The night wind turns in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the most sorrowful verse.
I loved her then, and sometimes she also loved me.
Through nights like tonight I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under endless skies
She loved me then, and sometimes I also loved her.
How could I not love her giant, still eyes?
Tonight I can write the most sorrowful verse.
To think I no longer have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the vast night, still vaster without her.
And the words settle on my soul like dew on the fields.
It matters not that my love couldn’t keep her.
The night is star-filled and she is not with me.
That is all that matters. Someone is singing far away. Far away.
My soul cannot be content, for I have lost her.
As if to bring her near, my eyes try to find her.
My heart searches for her, and she is not with me.
The same nightfall whitening the same trees.
We are no longer the same as then.
I no longer love her, it’s true, but how I once loved her.
My voice sought the wind to touch her ear.
Another’s. She will be another’s. As before I had kissed her.
Her voice, her pale body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, it’s true, but then maybe I love her.
Love is so short; memories last so long.
Because through nights like tonight I held her in my arms,
my soul cannot be content, for I have lost her.
Even if this is the last pain she makes me suffer,
and this is the last verse that I write for her
I am also moved by
Dorothy Parker’s “Resume”.
Quoted from memory I take it? Pretty close except for two lines. Here’s the right version.
Dulce et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!–An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime. . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Genseric, ndorward:
You’re both right, I guess. The British Museum collection of Wilfred Owen’s autograph poems contains the “gas shells” line, and Harold Owen (brother) claims it’s the “Five Nines” line.
You get your ass shot off in the Great War, and you leave just an awful muddle behind when it comes to your “Definitive Collected Poems.”
(See the notes to THE COLLECTED POEMS OF WILFRED OWEN, New Directions, 1964)
Hmm, no I copied it from a website.
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/owen4.html
I’d also like to mention The Twelve Hours Of The Night by William Ashbless.
Well, it’s just like the University of Toronto to suck up the British Museum.
Poetry fans take note! If you haven’t read these, do so, they are vastly amusing.
http://modernhumorist.com/mh/0005/anagram/index.cfm
http://modernhumorist.com/mh/0006/anagram2/index.cfm
http://modernhumorist.com/mh/0009/anagram3/index.cfm
http://modernhumorist.com/mh/0012/anagram4/index.cfm
Starting this thread gives me no privilege but the fact is I found over internet another poem I love “the destruction of sennacherib” by lord byron.
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.
And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!
Another vote from me for Invictus.
I believe the following poems are all out of copyright:
My favorite poem is from Dylan Thomas, written as his father was on his deathbed:
Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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.
My other two favorites are both wartime poems.
First, ‘Tommy’ from Kipling, who should be back in favor in the new wartime spirit of the nation:
Tommy
I went into a public-‘ouse to get a pint o’ beer,
The publican ‘e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here.”
The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:
O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, go away”;
But it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins”, when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins”, when the band begins to play.
I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but ‘adn’t none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-‘alls,
But when it comes to fightin’, Lord! they’ll shove me in the stalls!
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, wait outside”;
But it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide,
The troopship’s on the tide, my boys, the troopship’s on the tide,
O it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide.
Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;
An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.
Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, 'ow’s yer soul?”
But it’s “Thin red line of 'eroes” when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it’s “Thin red line of 'eroes” when the drums begin to roll.
We aren’t no thin red ‘eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints;
While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be’ind”,
But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind,
There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind,
O it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind.
You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires, an’ all:
We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.
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!
Then there is ‘High Flight’, by John Gillespie Magee Jr., a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force who was killed in action in WWII when his Spitfire collided with another aircraft in mid-air. When his effects were shipped home, this poem was found scrawled on some scrap paper:
**High Flight**
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never Lark, or even Eagle flew -
And while with silent lifting mind, I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
There’s another one: “Killed in action in WWII” is less than 75 years ago.
While I’m here, I feel like I should chime in, but it’s hard to pick one… Maybe “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” or “The Road Less Travelled” by Frost, or “The Raven” by Poe, or “Sick” by Silverstein, or “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Coleridge, or…
Funeral Blues by W.H. Auden
First Fight, Then Fiddle (an excerpt from “The Children of the Poor”) by Gwendolyn Brooks
And Shakespeares’s Sonnet XXIX:
And another vote for “Dulce et Decorum Est” and “Do Not Go Gentle” and “A Psalm of Life” and, oh, just about everything by Donne and Yeats, and thanks to Sam Stone for quoting “Tommy” there, which I’d never heard before but it’s wonderful…and there’s a whole lot that I’m probably forgetting. Sigh. I think I’ll be back to this thread…