Post a poem you think is great

[California Tanker]

Originally Posted by Godwhacker

Oh freddled gruntbuggly,

Doh! Why didn't I think of that?!

Quick, where's the Ode to the Small Lump of Green Putty I Found Under My Armpit One Midsummer's Morning?!

Oh Putty, putty
Green putty green...

NTM

[JoeP]

We need a "Poetry Appreciation Chair" smilie.

eta: We really need it. Imagine the usefulness in a drive-by "god is science" post.

[Godwhacker]

check out:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhiker...e/poetry.shtml

and you can make your own!:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhiker...ettergen.shtml

[Perry]

I hate poems cuz they suck,
yet I'm writing one...
what the fuck?
Limericks and rhymes,
I cannot define,
but my narrow mind
will learn in time...

[California Tanker]

Originally Posted by Godwhacker

check out:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhiker...e/poetry.shtml

IT HAS VIDEO CLIPS WITH THE CHEESY GRAPHICS!!!!! YIPPEE!!!!

Excellent. They must have added the clips since I was last there.

NTM

[TomJoe]

Originally Posted by Philosophy

I love this poem! Certainly one of Blake's greatest. Great themes: industrialisation (hammer, anvil, etc.), nature (fire, tyger, forests of the night), and gnosticism (the Lamb).

Gotta love Blake.

I think you have the themes behind this all wrong. But nevermind ...

One of my favorite poems is another one by Blake called:

A Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole,
When the night had veiled the pole.
In the morning, glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

by : William Blake

[TomJoe]

The Heaviest Cross of All

I’ve borne full many a sorrow; I’ve suffered many a loss –
But now, with a strange, new anguish, I carry this last dread cross;
For of this be sure, my dearest, whatever thy life befall,
The cross that our own hands fashion is the heaviest cross of all.

Heavy and hard I made it in the days of my fair youth,
Veiling mine eyes from the blessed light, and closing my heart to truth.
Pity me, Lord, whose mercy passeth my wildest thought,
For I never dreamed of the bitter end of the work my hands had wrought!

In the sweet morn’s flush and fragrance I wandered o’er dewy meadows,
And I hid from the fervid noontide glow in the cool green woodland shadows;
And I never recked, as I sang aloud in my wilful, selfish glee,
Of the mighty woe that was drawing nigh to darken the world for me.

But it came at last, my dearest – what need to tell thee how?
Mayest never know of the wild, wild woe that my heart is bearing now?
Over my summer’s glory crept a damp and chilling shade,
And I staggered under the heavy cross that my sinful hands had made.

I go where the shadows deepen, and the end seems far off yet –
God keep thee safe from the sharing of this woeful late regret!
For of this be sure, my dearest, whatever thy life befall,
The crosses we make for ourselves, alas! are the heaviest ones of all.

by : Katherine Eleanor Conway

[lady cop]

for my darling, whose mother just died ~~by Cristina Rossetti.... Remember

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

[Lauri D]

I found this framed and hanging in my parents' bathroom, never noticed it before but I don't really hang out there so it makes sense that I never saw it.

Count That Day Lost

If you sit down at set of sun
And count the acts that you have done,
And, counting, find
One self-denying deed, one word
That eased the heart of him who heard,
One glance most kind
That fell like sunshine where it went --
Then you may count that day well spent.

But if, through all the livelong day,
You've cheered no heart, by yea or nay --
If, through it all
You've nothing done that you can trace
That brought the sunshine to one face--
No act most small
That helped some soul and nothing cost --
Then count that day as worse than lost.

~ George Eliot

[ceptimus]

I bamp this thread in honour of my birthday!

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. Wallace Stevens.

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

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.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

[The Lone Ranger]

There Is Pleasure In The Pathless Woods

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

-- George Gordon Byron, from Childe Harold, Canto iv, Verse 178

[ceptimus]

THE SHADES OF NIGHT. A.E. Houseman

The shades of night were falling fast
And the rain was falling faster,
When through an Alpine village passed
An Alpine village pastor;
A youth who bore mid snow and ice
A bird that wouldn't chirrup,
And a banner, with the strange device —
'Mrs. Winslow's soothing syrup.

''Beware the pass,' the old man said,
'My bold and desperate fellah;
Dark lowers the tempest overhead,
And you'll want your umberella;
And the roaring torrent is deep and wide —
You may hear how it washes.'
But still that clarion voice replied:
'I've got my old galoshes.'

'Oh stay,' the maiden said, 'and rest
(For the wind blows from the nor'ward)
Thy weary head upon my breast —
And please don't think me forward.'
A tear stood in his bright blue eye
And gladly he would have tarried;
But still he answered with a sigh:
'Unhappily I'm married.'

[Nullifidian]

Here's one of my favorites:

The Death of Queen Dido
from the Aeneid, Book IV, of Publius Vergilius Maro, translated by John Dryden (link to complete work)

This said, within her anxious mind she weighs
The means of cutting short her odious days.
Then to Sichaeus' nurse she briefly said
(For, when she left her country, hers was dead):
"Go, Barce, call my sister. Let her care
The solemn rites of sacrifice prepare;
The sheep, and all th' atoning off'rings bring,
Sprinkling her body from the crystal spring
With living drops; then let her come, and thou
With sacred fillets bind thy hoary brow.
Thus will I pay my vows to Stygian Jove,
And end the cares of my disastrous love;
Then cast the Trojan image on the fire,
And, as that burns, my passions shall expire."
The nurse moves onward, with officious care,
And all the speed her aged limbs can bear.
But furious Dido, with dark thoughts involv'd,
Shook at the mighty mischief she resolv'd.
With livid spots distinguish'd was her face;
Red were her rolling eyes, and discompos'd her pace;
Ghastly she gaz'd, with pain she drew her breath,
And nature shiver'd at approaching death.
Then swiftly to the fatal place she pass'd,
And mounts the fun'ral pile with furious haste;
Unsheathes the sword the Trojan left behind
(Not for so dire an enterprise design'd).
But when she view'd the garments loosely spread,
Which once he wore, and saw the conscious bed,
She paus'd, and with a sigh the robes embrac'd;
Then on the couch her trembling body cast,
Repress'd the ready tears, and spoke her last:
"Dear pledges of my love, while Heav'n so pleas'd,
Receive a soul, of mortal anguish eas'd:
My fatal course is finish'd; and I go,
A glorious name, among the ghosts below.
A lofty city by my hands is rais'd,
Pygmalion punish'd, and my lord appeas'd.
What could my fortune have afforded more,
Had the false Trojan never touch'd my shore!"
Then kiss'd the couch; and, "Must I die," she said,
"And unreveng'd? 'T is doubly to be dead!
Yet ev'n this death with pleasure I receive:
On any terms, 't is better than to live.
These flames, from far, may the false Trojan view;
These boding omens his base flight pursue!"
She said, and struck; deep enter'd in her side
The piercing steel, with reeking purple dyed:
Clogg'd in the wound the cruel weapon stands;
The spouting blood came streaming on her hands.
Her sad attendants saw the deadly stroke,
And with loud cries the sounding palace shook.
Distracted, from the fatal sight they fled,
And thro' the town the dismal rumor spread.
First from the frighted court the yell began;
Redoubled, thence from house to house it ran:
The groans of men, with shrieks, laments, and cries
Of mixing women, mount the vaulted skies.
Not less the clamor, than if- ancient Tyre,
Or the new Carthage, set by foes on fire-
The rolling ruin, with their lov'd abodes,
Involv'd the blazing temples of their gods.
Her sister hears; and, furious with despair,
She beats her breast, and rends her yellow hair,
And, calling on Eliza's name aloud,
Runs breathless to the place, and breaks the crowd.
"Was all that pomp of woe for this prepar'd;
These fires, this fun'ral pile, these altars rear'd?
Was all this train of plots contriv'd," said she,
"All only to deceive unhappy me?
Which is the worst? Didst thou in death pretend
To scorn thy sister, or delude thy friend?
Thy summon'd sister, and thy friend, had come;
One sword had serv'd us both, one common tomb:
Was I to raise the pile, the pow'rs invoke,
Not to be present at the fatal stroke?
At once thou hast destroy'd thyself and me,
Thy town, thy senate, and thy colony!
Bring water; bathe the wound; while I in death
Lay close my lips to hers, and catch the flying breath."
This said, she mounts the pile with eager haste,
And in her arms the gasping queen embrac'd;
Her temples chaf'd; and her own garments tore,
To stanch the streaming blood, and cleanse the gore.
Thrice Dido tried to raise her drooping head,
And, fainting thrice, fell grov'ling on the bed;
Thrice op'd her heavy eyes, and sought the light,
But, having found it, sicken'd at the sight,
And clos'd her lids at last in endless night.
Then Juno, grieving that she should sustain
A death so ling'ring, and so full of pain,
Sent Iris down, to free her from the strife
Of lab'ring nature, and dissolve her life.
For since she died, not doom'd by Heav'n's decree,
Or her own crime, but human casualty,
And rage of love, that plung'd her in despair,
The Sisters had not cut the topmost hair,
Which Proserpine and they can only know;
Nor made her sacred to the shades below.
Downward the various goddess took her flight,
And drew a thousand colors from the light;
Then stood above the dying lover's head,
And said: "I thus devote thee to the dead.
This off'ring to th' infernal gods I bear."
Thus while she spoke, she cut the fatal hair:
The struggling soul was loos'd, and life dissolv'd in air.

[chunksmediocrites]

“This way lies madness, is that what you’re saying?”
I should have respected the batarang.