Favorite Poems

[MikeK]

It's good to see that many others here are interested in poetry.  I wasn't sure how many there were.  So how about this topic; a thread where people can post some of their favorite poems.

A very good one, by my favorite poet:


Good Hours
by Robert Frost

I had for my winter evening walk—   
No one at all with whom to talk,   
But I had the cottages in a row   
Up to their shining eyes in snow.   
 
And I thought I had the folk within:           
I had the sound of a violin;   
I had a glimpse through curtain laces   
Of youthful forms and youthful faces.   
 
I had such company outward bound.   
I went till there were no cottages found.           
I turned and repented, but coming back   
I saw no window but that was black.   
 
Over the snow my creaking feet   
Disturbed the slumbering village street   
Like profanation, by your leave,           
At ten o’clock of a winter eve.

[Radio Saturday]

My favorite poem is "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot (hence the signature). However, it's a little long to post in its entirety, so here's a link to a really excellent site that has side-by-side text and notes.

http://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/

Here's also a favorite by Thomas Hardy, called "Neutral Tones."

WE stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod,
--They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles solved years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro--
On which lost the more by our love.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing....

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

[MikeK]

R.S., that's a great site with notes for "The Waste Land".  Thanks for posting it.

And thanks for posting some Thomas Hardy.  I seem to be in the small minority of people who prefer Hardy as a poet.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy his stories, but I think of him foremost as a poet (which, by the way, is how he saw himself).  A couple of other good Hardy poems some people might enjoy; my two favorites of his:


The Oxen

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock,
"Now they are all on their knees",
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years!  Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
"Come; see the oxen kneel

"In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know",
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

and:


The Convergence Of The Twain
(Lines on the loss of the “Titanic”)

          I
     In a solitude of the sea
     Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

          II

     Steel chambers, late the pyres
     Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

          III

     Over the mirrors meant
     To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls—grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

          IV

     Jewels in joy designed
     To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

          V

     Dim moon-eyed fishes near
     Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: “What does this vaingloriousness down here?”. . .

          VI

     Well: while was fashioning
     This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

          VII

     Prepared a sinister mate
     For her—so gaily great—
A Shape of Ice, for the time fat and dissociate.

          VIII

     And as the smart ship grew
     In stature, grace, and hue
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

          IX

     Alien they seemed to be:
     No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history.

          X

     Or sign that they were bent
     By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,

          XI

     Till the Spinner of the Years
     Said “Now!” And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

[underworld men]

My favorite the warning of the seduction/destruction of melancholy


The Raven
by Edgar Allan Poe
First Published in 1845

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
" 'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more."


Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow, sorrow for the lost Lenore,.
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore,
Nameless here forevermore.


And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me---filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
" 'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door,
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door.
This it is, and nothing more."


Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I, "or madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is, I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you." Here I opened wide the door;---
Darkness there, and nothing more.


Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word,
Lenore?, This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word,
"Lenore!" Merely this, and nothing more.


Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping, something louder than before,
"Surely," said I, "surely, that is something at my window lattice.
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore.
Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore.
" 'Tis the wind, and nothing more."


Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven, of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door.
Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door,
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.


Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven thou," I said, "art sure no craven,
Ghastly, grim, and ancient raven, wandering from the nightly shore.
Tell me what the lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore."
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."


Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning, little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door,
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore."


But the raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered; not a feather then he fluttered;
Till I scarcely more than muttered, "Other friends have flown before;
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."
Then the bird said, "Nevermore."


Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master, whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster, till his songs one burden bore,---
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never---nevermore."


But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore --
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore
                                       Meant in croaking "Nevermore."

Thus I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl, whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o'er
She shall press, ah, nevermore!


Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee -- by these angels he hath
Sent thee respite---respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, O quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore!"


"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or devil!
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted--
On this home by horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore:
Is there--is there balm in Gilead?--tell me--tell me I implore!"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."


"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil--prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore--
Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore---
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore?
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."


"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting--
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! -- quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."


And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming.
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted---nevermore!

[Childe Harold]

A touch of Andrew Marvell on "devouring time."
To His Coy Mistress

HAD we but world enough, and time,   
This coyness, Lady, were no crime   
We would sit down and think which way   
To walk and pass our long love's day.   
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side           
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide   
Of Humber would complain. I would   
Love you ten years before the Flood,   
And you should, if you please, refuse   
Till the conversion of the Jews.     
My vegetable love should grow   
Vaster than empires, and more slow;   
An hundred years should go to praise   
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;   
Two hundred to adore each breast,     
But thirty thousand to the rest;   
An age at least to every part,   
And the last age should show your heart.   
For, Lady, you deserve this state,   
Nor would I love at lower rate.     
  But at my back I always hear   
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;   
And yonder all before us lie   
Deserts of vast eternity.   
Thy beauty shall no more be found,     
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound   
My echoing song: then worms shall try   
That long preserved virginity,   
And your quaint honour turn to dust,   
And into ashes all my lust:     
The grave 's a fine and private place,   
But none, I think, do there embrace.   
  Now therefore, while the youthful hue   
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,   
And while thy willing soul transpires     
At every pore with instant fires,   
Now let us sport us while we may,   
And now, like amorous birds of prey,   
Rather at once our time devour   
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.     
Let us roll all our strength and all   
Our sweetness up into one ball,   
And tear our pleasures with rough strife   
Thorough the iron gates of life:   
Thus, though we cannot make our sun     
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

And since I can't forget Tennyson, I give you the final stave of his exquisite Ulysses:

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in the 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.

[lerik]

I love Pushkin and Esenin's poems but right now can't find them online

[woland]

Pablo Neruda... The name says enough... But "Residence on Earth" is absolutely beautiful, and "the Captain's Verses" is the best collection of love poetry ever written...
Here's one of the only ones you can find online.. Most of the online translations are garbage as well, but poetseers.org has decent translations... translated poetry can be so terrible... the ideas become lost if the translator does even a mediocre job...

IF YOU FORGET ME

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

and one more......


TIE YOUR HEART AT NIGHT TO MINE

Tie your heart at night to mine, love,
and both will defeat the darkness
like twin drums beating in the forest
against the heavy wall of wet leaves.

Night crossing: black coal of dream
that cuts the thread of earthly orbs
with the punctuality of a headlong train
that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly.

Love, because of it, tie me to a purer movement,
to the grip on life that beats in your breast,
with the wings of a submerged swan,

So that our dream might reply
to the sky's questioning stars
with one key, one door closed to shadow.

[lerik]

Don't waken the dream that is dying,
Don't stir the aim that has failed.
Life brought me too early to trial;
The loss, the defeat - what availed?
(from 'Letter to my Mother' / 'Pismak materi', in Strana Sovetskaia, 1925)

This is an extract from one of the poems of Segey Esenin.If I will find more,I will post it

[lerik]

http://www.spinfrog.com/YP.html
I decided to post this link here wher you can find some translations of Esenin's poems.

[woland]

The Night (Esenin)

The tired day droops, slowly waning ,
The noisy waves are now tranquil.
The sun has set, the moon is sailing
Above the world, absorbed and still.
 
The valley listens to the babbles
Of peaceful river in the dale.
The forest, dark and bending, slumbers
To warbling of the nightingale.
 
The river, listening in and fondling,
Talks with the banks in quiet hush.
And up above resounds,  a-rolling,
The merry rustle of the rush.


Here's another site Lerik. I love Esenin as well.. Even in translation... Though I still maintain Neruda's supremacy as best poet of all time haha...  

http://zhurnal.lib.ru/editors/v/vagapov_a_s/yesen.shtml

[woland]

I found my collected works of Neruda and with it one of my favourite poems of his, from Residence on Earth, called "Ode with a Lament"... Not online anywhere so I get to type it out.. Here it is...

Oh girl among the roses, oh crush of doves,
oh fortress of fishes and rosebushes,
your soul is a bottle filled with thirsty salt
and your skin, a bell filled with grapes.

Unfortunately I have only fingernails to give you,
or eyelashes, or melted pianos,
or dreams that come spurting from my heart,
dusty dreams that run like black horsemen,
dreams filled with velocities and misfortunes.

I can love you only with kisses and poppies,
with garlands wet by the rain,
looking at ash-gray horses and yellow dogs,
I can love you only with waves at my back,
amid vague sulfur blows and brooding waters,
swimming against the cemeteries that run in certain rivers
with wet fodder growing over the sad plaster tombs,
swimming across submerged hearts
and pale lists of unburied children.

There is much death, many funereal events
in my forsaken passions and desolate kisses,
there is the water that falls upon my head,
while my hair grows,
a water like time, a black unchained water,
with a nocturnal voice, with a shout
of birds in the rain, with an interminable
wet-winged shadow that protects my bones:
while I dress, while
interminably I look at myself in mirrors and windowpanes,
I hear someone who follows me, sobbing to me
with a sad voice rotted by time.

You stand upon the earth, filled
with teeth and lightning.
You spread the kisses and kill the ants.
You weep with health, with onion, with bee,
with burning abacus.
You are like a blue and green sword
and you ripple, when I touch you, like a river.

Come to my heart dressed in white, with a bouquet
of bloody roses and goblets of ashes,
come with an apple and a horse,
because there is a dark room there and a broken candleholder,
some twisted chairs waiting for winter,
and a dead dove, with a number



Beautiful

[Nadia]

John Milton (1608–1674)

from Paradise Lost, Book I

  Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heav'nly Muse, that, on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos; or, if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flow'd
Fast by the oracle of God, I thence
Invoke thy aid to my advent'rous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples th' upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou know'st; thou from the first
Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread,
Dovelike sat'st brooding on the vast abyss,
And mad'st it pregnant: what in me is dark
Illumine; what is low, raise and support;
That, to the height of this great argument,
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.

[Nadia]

Not all great poems come from great poets... Mr. Tim Burton is better known as a producer and film maker but also indulged his fans with simple poems with not such simple meanings...my favourite being Voodoo Girl.

http://homepage.eircom.net/~sebulbac/burton/voodoogirl.html

[omahaha]

R.S., that's a great site with notes for "The Waste Land".  Thanks for posting it.

And thanks for posting some Thomas Hardy.  I seem to be in the small minority of people who prefer Hardy as a poet.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy his stories, but I think of him foremost as a poet (which, by the way, is how he saw himself).  A couple of other good Hardy poems some people might enjoy; my two favorites of his:

Sorry, I am so very late in posting on this thread, and please don't think me lame, but hurray for Hardy! I haven't read any of his novels, but I need to.


Proud Songsters - by Thomas Hardy

The thrushes sing as the sun is going,
And the finches whistle in ones and pairs,
And as it gets dark loud nightingales
In Bushes
Pipe, as they can when April wears,
As if all Time were theirs.

These are brand new birds of twelve-month's growing
Which a year ago, or less than twain
No finches were, nor nightingales,
Nor thrushes
But only particles of grain,
And eart, and air, and rain.

[Radio Saturday]

I'm reading "the Faerie Queene" right now, which is excellent but, again, far too long to post in full. So here's one of my favorite verses so far. It's from book 3, canto 5, and consists of verses 42 and 43.

Oh foolish Physick, and unfruitfull paine,
That heales up one and makes another wound:
She his hurt thigh to him recur'd againe,
But hurt his hart, the which before was sound,
Through an unwary dart, which did rebound
From her faire eyes and gracious countenaunce.
What bootes it him from death to be unbound,
To be captivated in endlesse duraunce
Of sorrow and dispaire without aleggeaunce?

Still as his wound did gather, and grow hole,
So still his hart woxe sore, and health decayd:
Madnesse to save a part, and lose the whole.
Still whenas he beheld the heavenly Mayd,
Whiles dayly plaisters to his wound she layd,
So still his Malady the more increast,
The whiles her matchlesse beautie him dismayd.
Ah God, what other could he do at least,
But love so faire a Lady, that his life release?