# Reading > Poems, Poets, and Poetry >  your favourite poem/s of all time

## cacian

please post your favourite poem of all time here.
look forward to reading them.  :Smile:

----------


## Danik 2016

Good idea cacian. I'll post it tomorrow (I'm using the tablet now).

----------


## Pompey Bum

It's hard to say, Cacian. Here are a few I have taken along with me in life. Storm Fear is probably the most personally meaningful, Sennacherib the most beautiful to hear (well, tied with A Midsummer Night's Dream, but that's too long to post here), Ozymandias the most insightful about what the world is, and The Flea the funniest (plus the worst pick up line in history). 

STORM FEAR
by Robert Frost

When the wind works against us in the dark, 
And pelts with snow 
The lowest chamber window on the east, 
And whispers with a sort of stifled bark, 
The beast, 'Come out! Come out!'-- 
It costs no inward struggle not to go, 
Ah, no! I count our strength, 
Two and a child,
Those of us not asleep subdued to mark
How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,--
How drifts are piled, 
Dooryard and road ungraded,
Till even the comforting barn grows far away
And my heart owns a doubt
Whether 'tis in us to arise with day
And save ourselves unaided.


THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB 
by George Gordon, 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!

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelly

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who saidTwo vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

THE FLEA
by John Donne

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It sucked me first, and now sucks 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.

Oh 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, w'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 could 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 thy self, 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.

----------


## Danik 2016

I don´t read much poetry so I don´t have many favorite poems, but I liked this one.


I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us - don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

Author: Emily Dickinson

----------


## tailor STATELY

Too many to list them all; here are a few: 

 _Do not go gentle into that good night_ by Dylan Thomas 
 _Because I Could Not Stop for Death_ by Emily Dickinson
 _The Red Wheelbarrow_ by William Carlos Williams
 _Caged Bird_ by Maya Angelou
 _I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud/Daffodils_ by William Wordsworth
 _i carry your heart with me_ by E.E. Cummings

Ta ! _(short for tarradiddle)_,
tailor STATELY

----------


## prendrelemick

A bit grim, but *Spring Offensive* by Wilfred Owen affects me greatly. The hapless soldiers contemplating the horizon that marks the limit of their existence, then walking towards it.. Very moving - not least because the poet was there .

----------


## Danik 2016

Here it is:




> *Spring Offensive*
> By _Wilfred Owen_
> 
> Halted against the shade of a last hill,
> They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease
> And, finding comfortable chests and knees
> Carelessly slept.
> But many there stood still
> To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,
> ...


Greetings prendelemick

----------


## prendrelemick

Hi Danik. Thanks for doing that.

----------


## Leopard

I have many favourites, but I often find myself reciting this short lyric by A.E. Housman.

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows;
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

----------


## kev67

I am! John Clare


I am yet what I am none cares or knows
My friends forsake me like a memory lost
I am the self consumer of my woes
Which rise and vanish in oblivious host
Like shades of love and death's oblivion lost
And yet I am! and live with memories tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise
into the living sea of waking dreams
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems
And even the dearest that I love the best
Are strange, nay stranger than the rest

I long for scenes where man has never trod
A place where woman never smiled nor wept
There to abide with my creator, God
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below, above the vaulted sky

----------


## spikepipsqueak

Poetry appeals when it speaks to you. This one found me in a time of loss. I love it still.

One Art

By Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isnt hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isnt hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mothers watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isnt hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasnt a disaster.

Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shant have lied. Its evident
the art of losings not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

----------


## Danik 2016

Great to read from you, spike!

I wonder if one of the cities Bishop is referring to, is Petrópolis, where she lived for a long time with Lota de Macedo Soares.

----------


## Marcus1

The Ancient Song of My Blood 

I didnt drink Spanish 
from my mothers breast when I came into the world.

My language was born
among the trees, and tastes like earth; 
my grandparents language is my home,

If I use this language thats not mine,
I use it like a shiny key
to open doors to another world
where the words have another voice
and another way of connecting to the earth.

This language is the memory of pain
and I speak it without fear or pain
because my ancestors bought it
with their blood.

In this new language
Ill show you my flowering song,
Ill bring you the taste of other laments
the color of other joys.

This language is only one more key
to sing the ancient song of my blood.


Humberto Akabal

----------


## tailor STATELY

Awesome poem.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

----------


## tonywalt

A Bluebird (by Charles Bukowski)

theres a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but Im too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, Im not going
to let anybody see
you.
theres a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
hes
in there.
theres a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but Im too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
theres a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but Im too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybodys asleep.
I say, I know that youre there,
so dont be
sad.
then I put him back,
but hes singing a little
in there, I havent quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and its nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I dont
weep, 
do you?

----------


## tonywalt

How Is Your Heart?
Charles Bukowski

during my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
whores
I always had this certain
contentment—
I wouldn’t call it
happiness—
it was more of an inner
balance
that settled for
whatever was occuring
and it helped in the
factories
and when relationships
went wrong
with the
girls.

it helped
through the
wars and the
hangovers
the backalley fights
the
hospitals.

to awaken in a cheap room
in a strange city and
pull up the shade—
this was the craziest kind of
contentment

and to walk across the floor
to an old dresser with a
cracked mirror—
see myself, ugly,
grinning at it all.

what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire.

----------


## Danik 2016

Beautiful, Tony! But where are your own poems?

----------


## tonywalt

> Beautiful, Tony! But where are your own poems?


They're still in the personal poetry sections. Oh god, should I kiss the ocean - and then dive into her soft depths and retrieve my poems from the bottom, gasping.

----------


## tonywalt

This is a photograph of me by Margaret Atwood


It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;

then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.

In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.

(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.

I am in the lake, in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.

It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion

but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)

----------


## tailor STATELY

Rather sad, melancholy piece... enjoyed.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

----------


## tonywalt

For Jane 


225 days under grass
and you know more than I.
they have long taken your blood,
you are a dry stick in a basket.
is this how it works?
in this room
the hours of love
still make shadows.

when you left
you took almost
everything.
I kneel in the nights
before tigers
that will not let me be.

what you were
will not happen again.
the tigers have found me
and I do not care.

(charles bukowski)

----------


## tonywalt

This Be The Verse

BY PHILIP LARKIN

They f uck you up, your mum and dad. 
They may not mean to, but they do. 
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were ****ed up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats, 
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

----------


## spikepipsqueak

“Time of the Mad Atom”

This is the age of the half-read page.

And the quick hash and the mad dash.

The bright night with the nerves tight.

The plane hop and the brief stop.

The lamp tan in a short span.

The Big Shot in a good spot.

And the brain strain and the heart pain.

And the cat naps till the spring snaps—

And the fun’s done!

By Virginia Brasier

For at least 40 years I have believed that to be by Carl Sandburg. I want to believe it was misattributed by the place I first heard it (and not that I had Alzheimer's when I was relatively young).

----------


## Danik 2016

Hello,SQ, welcome back. Enjoyed the poem.

"The Big Shot in a good spot." Quite up to date!

----------


## Bluebiird

Ozymandias - Percy Shelley (to be completely honest I had to look up who it was by, I haven't read it for a while). Don't know why. I just really like it.
I just like;

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

most of all. It sticks in my mind, though I usually paraphrase it (had to look up the quote too to be correct)

----------


## tailor STATELY

Great poem  :Smile: 

Too many for me to nail down at this time... need to mull over.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor STATELY

p.s. just noticed I posted a few years ago with the same quandary... could prolly add to the list lol.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor STATELY

----------


## NikolaiI

I have been loving Rilke lately.

THE PANTHER

His weary glance, from passing by the bars,
Has grown into a dazed and vacant stare;
It seems to him there are a thousand bars
And out beyond those bars the empty air.

The pad of his strong feet, that ceaseless sound
Of supple tread behind the iron bands,
Is like a dance of strength circling around,
While in the circle, stunned, a great will stands.

But there are times the pupils of his eyes
Dilate, the strong limbs stand alert, apart,
Tense with the flood of visions that arise
Only to sink and die within his heart.

----------


## NikolaiI

> Ozymandias - Percy Shelley (to be completely honest I had to look up who it was by, I haven't read it for a while). Don't know why. I just really like it.
> I just like;
> 
> "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
> Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
> Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
> Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
> The lone and level sands stretch far away."
> 
> most of all. It sticks in my mind, though I usually paraphrase it (had to look up the quote too to be correct)


I love Shelley a lot. I love Alastor, or, the spirit of Solitude by him.

Your post of Ozymandias reminds me of Ad Olum, one of my favorite by Stevenson.

Ad Olum
Call me not rebel, though { here at every word
{in what I sing
If I no longer hail thee { King and Lord
{ Lord and King
I have redeemed myself with all I had,
And now possess my fortunes poor but glad.
With all I had I have redeemed myself,
And escaped at once from slavery and pelf.
The unruly wishes must a ruler take,
Our high desires do our low fortunes make:
Those only who desire palatial things
Do bear the fetters and the frowns of Kings;
Set free thy slave; thou settest free thyself.

https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poe...n/ad_olum.html

But in general, William Blake was more philosophically astute.

----------

