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Your favourite poems that you learned at school

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  • Registered Users Posts: 241 ✭✭Dizraeligears


    This Is Just To Say by William Carlos Williams
    I have eaten
    the plums
    that were in
    the icebox

    and which
    you were probably
    saving
    for breakfast

    Forgive me
    they were delicious
    so sweet
    and so cold


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,312 ✭✭✭AskMyChocolate


    eightyfish wrote: »
    Most memorable poem from school was:

    September 1913.

    What need you, being come to sense,
    But fumble in a greasy till
    And add the halfpence to the pence
    And prayer to shivering prayer, until
    You have dried the marrow from the bone?
    For men were born to pray and save:
    Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
    It's with O'Leary in the grave.

    Yet they were of a different kind,
    The names that stilled your childish play,
    They have gone about the world like wind,
    But little time had they to pray
    For whom the hangman's rope was spun,
    And what, God help us, could they save?
    Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
    It's with O'Leary in the grave.

    Was it for this the wild geese spread
    The grey wing upon every tide;
    For this that all that blood was shed,
    For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
    And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
    All that delirium of the brave?
    Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
    It's with O'Leary in the grave.

    Yet could we turn the years again,
    And call those exiles as they were
    In all their loneliness and pain,
    You'd cry, 'Some woman's yellow hair
    Has maddened every mother's son':
    They weighed so lightly what they gave.
    But let them be, they're dead and gone,
    They're with O'Leary in the grave.

    William Butler Yeats

    Beautiful. And more applicable today than it ever was.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,783 ✭✭✭Pj!


    IF you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
    If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;
    If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
    Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
    And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

    If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
    If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
    If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;
    If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
    Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

    If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
    And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
    If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,
    And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

    If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
    ' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
    if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
    If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
    Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
    And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,783 ✭✭✭Pj!


    A song which nearly broke my heart
    A tramp lay dying in the park.
    I knelt beside him to hear him speak
    And the words he spoke, they were oh so weak.
    He told me a story of long since past,
    Of a sailing ship with its long grey mast,
    Of his captain's cap with it's shining braid
    And the wonderful voyages that he'd made.
    "Silent Annie" was his great ship's name.
    Like a token of love he spoke her name.
    She sailed 'round the Horn, aye, more that once.
    She could cut through the waves like a sharpened lance.

    "Believe me," he said. His eyes filled with tears
    Like a drunk on a corner, trying to remember his years.
    He reached out his hand and I took it in mine.
    "I believe you," I said, and he gave a sad smile.
    "I remember the day when they towed her away.
    Her sides they were sore from the sea's angered spray.
    They said she's unfit for to sail out once more
    (And they towed her more inward from her own sandy shore)?
    And as they broke my Silent Annie. I watched with a sigh.
    I remembered her beauty when I was a boy.
    She was my one love, my life's only dream,
    When we sailed out together as captain and queen."

    It started to drizzle, and I felt my hand tight
    And he squeezed even harder as he ended the fight.
    And a crowd they had gathered, and they watched with dismay
    As some ambulance men came, and they took him away.
    So I got to my feet, and I walked through that park.
    The sun it was gone, but it was not yet dark.
    My body was wet, and my clothes were not many,
    But my mind was aroused by the ship Silent Annie.


  • Registered Users Posts: 833 ✭✭✭barbarians


    Mid-Term Break

    I sat all morning in the college sick bay
    Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
    At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.

    In the porch I met my father crying -
    He had always taken funerals in his stride -
    And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

    The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
    When I came in, and I was embarrassed
    By old men standing up to shake my hand

    And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'
    Whispers informed strangers that I was the eldest,
    Away at school, as my mother held my hand

    In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
    At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
    With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

    Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
    And candles soothed the bedside I saw him
    For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

    Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple.
    He lay in a four foot box, as in his cot.
    No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

    A four foot box, a foot for every year.

    ###########

    As mentioned before, Mid-Term Break in its entirety, brilliant poem.

    ###########


    Pat Ingoldsby was some man too, very hard to find his poetry though unless you actually meet him personally and buy his books.
    The poems about him cutting himself and him being alone were depressingly sad but brilliant but he had some very funny poems, like the one for ordering coffee, his record player and the bedlam poem. Great stuff.
    My teacher in 6 th class was a big fan of his poetry and we were too so we all wrote to him telling him what our favourite poem of his was and how great we thought he was. Our teacher didn't think we would get a response from him in time because we wrote to him in the last week or two of school but lo and behold a few days before the end of term and primary school we received a poster from the man himself, signed and all thanking us for out kind words. The teacher was speechless and it was great to get a response from the man himself.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 2,312 ✭✭✭AskMyChocolate


    Sergeant wrote: »
    Never a huge fan of poetry, brevity is overrated.

    But I remember Patrick Kavanagh.

    You clogged the feet of my boyhood
    And I believed that my stumble
    Had the poise and stride of Apollo
    And his voice my thick-tongued mumble.

    You told me the plough was immortal!
    O green-life-conquering plough!
    Your mandril strained, your coulter blunted
    In the smooth lea-field of my brow.

    You sang on steaming dunghills
    A song of coward's brood,
    You perfumed my clothes with weasel itch,
    You fed me on swinish food.

    You flung a ditch on my vision
    Of beauty, love and truth.
    O stony grey soil of Monaghan
    You burgled my bank of youth!

    Mullahinsha, Drummeril, Black Shanco
    Wherever I look I see
    In the stoney grey soil of Monaghan
    Dead loves that were born for me


    Or something like that, yup, pat kavanagh was a legend.


  • Registered Users Posts: 32,370 ✭✭✭✭Son Of A Vidic


    "If I was a dog
    and you were a flower
    I'd lift up my leg
    and give you a shower."



    Poet: Unknown.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Politics Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 81,310 CMod ✭✭✭✭coffee_cake


    I didn't like a lot of them, but
    "dulce et decorum est
    pro patria mori"
    always stuck with me.
    I loved keats too.

    My favourite poems are the raven (cliche I'm sure) and "hope is the thing with feathers" by dickinson


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,462 ✭✭✭red menace


    Ozymandias

    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".


    or this one by Ogden Nash

    The cow is of the bovine ilk: One end is moo, the other, milk.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 80 ✭✭Mr Marston


    Filling Station by Elizabeth Bishop

    (to add to daffodils, road not taken and September 1913)


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 80 ✭✭Mr Marston


    Filling Station by Elizabeth Bishop

    (to add to daffodils, road not taken and September 1913)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,228 ✭✭✭epgc3fyqirnbsx


    Michael Longley, "Ceasefire"

    I
    Put in mind of his own father and moved to tears
    Achilles took him by the hand and pushed the old king
    Gently away, but Priam curled up at his feet and
    Wept with him until their sadness filled the buidling.

    II
    Taking Hector's corpse into his own hands Achilles
    Made sure it was washed and, for the old king's sake,
    Laid out in uniform, ready for Priam to carry
    Wrapped like a present home to Troy at daybreak.

    III
    When they had eaten together, it pleased them both
    To stare at each other's beauty as lovers might,
    Achilles built like a god, Priam good-looking still
    And full of conversation, who earlier had sighed:

    IV
    'I get down on my knees and do what must be done
    And kiss Achilles' hand, the killer of my son.'


  • Registered Users Posts: 11,331 ✭✭✭✭bronte


    But You Didn't

    Remember the time you lent me your car and I dented it?
    I thought you'd kill me...
    but you didn't.

    Remember the time I forgot to tell you the dance was formal
    and you came in jeans?
    I thought you'd hate me...
    But you didn't

    Remember the times I'd flirt with other boys
    just to make you jealous, and you were?
    I thought you'd drop me...
    But you didn't.

    There were plenty of things you did to put up with me,
    to keep me happy, to love me and there are so many things
    I wanted to tell you when you returned from Vietnam...
    But you didn't.

    by: Merrill Glass


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,053 ✭✭✭Aldebaran


    Glad to see Yeats getting a lot of love in this thread, my favourite of his:
    The Second Coming

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,214 ✭✭✭wonton


    This has always been a favourite for me.



    Inniskeen Road: July Evening


    The bicycles go by in twos and threes -
    There's a dance in Billy Brennan's barn to-night,
    And there's the half-talk code of mysteries
    And the wink-and-elbow language of delight.
    Half-past eight and there is not a spot
    Upon a mile of road, no shadow thrown
    That might turn out a man or woman, not
    A footfall tapping secrecies of stone.
    I have what every poet hates in spite
    Of all the solemn talk of contemplation.
    Oh, Alexander Selkirk knew the plight
    Of being king and government and nation.
    A road, a mile of kingdom, I am king
    Of banks and stones and every blooming thing.

    Patrick Kavanagh


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,228 ✭✭✭bluto63


    Came here to post that same Kavanagh poem. I love his work, especially that. His resignation to being nothing more than an observer.


  • Registered Users Posts: 7,814 ✭✭✭TPD


    Forget the poem/poet, but one line is something like -

    "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born"

    More because the poet was an absolute nutjob (but not in a Sylvia Plath way, blergh) than for the poem itself.

    W.B. Yeats. He was completely, batshit crazy by the time he wrote that.


  • Registered Users Posts: 338 ✭✭MightyMighty737


    Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse.


    They **** 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.


  • Moderators, Education Moderators, Regional South East Moderators Posts: 12,466 Mod ✭✭✭✭byhookorbycrook


    A Ballad of Athlone
    by Aubrey DeVereDoes any man dream that a Gael can fear?-
    Of a thousand deeds let him learn but one!
    The Shannon swept onward broad and clear,
    Between the leaguers and broad Athlone

    Break down the bridge!"- Six warriors rushed
    Through the storm of shot and the storm of shell:
    With late but certain victory flushed
    The grim Dutch gunners eyed them well

    They wrench’d at the planks’mid a hail of fire:
    They fell in death, their work half done:
    The bridge stood fast; and nigh and nigher
    The foe swarmed darkly, densely on.

    "Oh, who for Erin will strike a stroke?
    Who hurl yon planks where the waters roar?"
    Six warriors forth from their comrades broke,
    And flung them upon that bridge once more


    Again at the rocking planks they dashed;
    And four dropped dead: and two remained:
    The huge beams groaned, and the arch down-crashed;-
    Two stalwart swimmers the margin gained]

    St Ruth is his stirrups stood up and cried,
    "I have seen no deed like that in France!"
    With a toss of his head, Sarsfield replied,
    "They had luck, the dogs! "Twas a merry chance!"

    Many a year, upon Shannon’s side,
    They sang upon moor and they sang upon health,
    Of the twain that breasted that raging tide,
    And the ten that shook bloody hands with Death


    The Ballad Of Father Gilligan by William Butler Yeats

    The old priest Peter Gilligan
    Was weary night and day;
    For half his flock were in their beds,
    Or under green sods lay.

    Once, while he nodded on a chair,
    At the moth-hour of eve,
    Another poor man sent for him,
    And he began to grieve.

    'I have no rest, nor joy, nor peace,
    For people die and die';
    And after cried he, 'God forgive!
    My body spake, not I!'

    He knelt, and leaning on the chair
    He prayed and fell asleep;
    And the moth-hour went from the fields,
    And stars began to peep.

    They slowly into millions grew,
    And leaves shook in the wind;
    And God covered the world with shade,
    And whispered to mankind.

    Upon the time of sparrow-chirp
    When the moths came once more.
    The old priest Peter Gilligan
    Stood upright on the floor.

    'Mavrone, mavrone! the man has died
    While I slept on the chair';
    He roused his horse out of its sleep,
    And rode with little care.

    He rode now as he never rode,
    By rocky lane and fen;
    The sick man's wife opened the door:
    'Father! you come again!'

    'And is the poor man dead?' he cried.
    'He died an hour ago.'
    The old priest Peter Gilligan
    In grief swayed to and fro.

    'When you were gone, he turned and died
    As merry as a bird.'
    The old priest Peter Gilligan
    He knelt him at that word.

    'He Who hath made the night of stars
    For souls who tire and bleed,
    Sent one of His great angels down
    To help me in my need.

    'He Who is wrapped in purple robes,
    With planets in His care,
    Had pity on the least of things
    Asleep upon a chair.'

    Anseo i lár an ghleanna

    Bhí an tAifreann léite is gach rud déanta,
    Bhí pobal Dé ag scaipeadh
    Nuair a chualamar gleo ag teacht 'nár dtreo
    Anseo i lár an ghleanna.

    "Cén gleo é siúd ag teacht 'nár dtreo?"
    "Sin torann cos na gcapall."
    "Seo chugainn saighdiúirí airm an rí
    Anseo i lár an ghleanna."

    Do chas an seanfhear Brian Ó Laoi
    Is shiúil i dtreo an tsagairt,
    Is chuir sé cogar ina chluais
    Anseo i lár an ghleanna.

    "Ó a Athair Seán, Ó a Athair Seán.
    Seo chugainn na cótaí dearga;
    Ní féidir leatsa teitheadh anois
    Anseo i lár an ghleanna."

    "Tá tusa óg, a Athair Séan,
    Táim féin i ndeireadh beatha;
    Déan malairt éadaigh liom anois
    Anseo i lár an ghleanna."

    Do deineadh malairt gan ró-mhoill
    I gcoinne toil an tsagairt,
    Is shíl sé deora móra bróin
    Anseo i lár an ghleanna.

    Do ghaibh na Sasanaigh Brian Ó Laoi,
    Is d'imigh saor an sagart;
    Do chroch siad Brian ar chrann caol ard
    Anseo i lár an ghleanna.

    Ach mairfigh cáil an tsean-fhir áigh
    Fad fhásfaidh féar ar thalamh;
    Beidh a scéal á ríomh ag fearaibh Fáil,
    Is anseo i lár an ghleanna.

    Seamus Heaney - Requiem for the Croppies

    The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley..
    No kitchens on the run, no striking camp...
    We moved quick and sudden in our own country
    .The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.
    A people hardly marching... on the hike..
    We found new tactics happening each day:
    We'd cut through reins and rider with the pike
    And stampede cattle into infantry,
    Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown
    .Until... on Vinegar Hill... the final conclave.
    Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.
    The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.
    They buried us without shroud or coffin
    And in August... the barley grew up out of our grave


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 4,013 ✭✭✭kincsem


    The Lady of Shalott

    On either side the river lie
    Long fields of barley and of rye,
    That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
    And thro' the field the road runs by
    To many-tower'd Camelot;
    And up and down the people go,
    Gazing where the lilies blow
    Round an island there below,
    The island of Shalott.

    Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
    Little breezes dusk and shiver
    Through the wave that runs for ever
    By the island in the river
    Flowing down to Camelot.
    Four grey walls, and four grey towers,
    Overlook a space of flowers,
    And the silent isle imbowers
    The Lady of Shalott.

    .... another seventeen verses.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 1,867 ✭✭✭lorweld


    We were taught this in 6th class, I can still remember it word for word.
    An Old Woman of the Roads
    by Padraic Colum

    O, to have a little house!
    To own the hearth and stool and all!
    The heaped up sods upon the fire,
    The pile of turf against the wall!

    To have a clock with weights and chains
    And pendulum swinging up and down!
    A dresser filled with shining delph,
    Speckled and white and blue and brown!

    I could be busy all the day
    Clearing and sweeping hearth and floor,
    And fixing on their shelf again
    My white and blue and speckled store!

    I could be quiet there at night
    Beside the fire and by myself,
    Sure of a bed and loth to leave
    The ticking clock and the shining delph!

    Och! but I'm weary of mist and dark,
    And roads where there's never a house nor bush,
    And tired I am of bog and road,
    And the crying wind and the lonesome hush!

    And I am praying to God on high,
    And I am praying Him night and day,
    For a little house—a house of my own—
    Out of the wind's and the rain's way.


  • Registered Users Posts: 116 ✭✭histories


    The Listeners - Walter de la Mare

    ‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
    Knocking on the moonlit door;
    And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
    Of the forest’s ferny floor:
    And a bird flew up out of the turret,
    Above the Traveller’s head:
    And he smote upon the door again a second time;
    ‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
    But no one descended to the Traveller;
    No head from the leaf-fringed sill
    Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
    Where he stood perplexed and still.
    But only a host of phantom listeners
    That dwelt in the lone house then
    Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
    To that voice from the world of men:
    Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
    That goes down to the empty hall,
    Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
    By the lonely Traveller’s call.
    And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
    Their stillness answering his cry,
    While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
    ’Neath the starred and leafy sky;
    For he suddenly smote on the door, even
    Louder, and lifted his head:—
    ‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,
    That I kept my word,’ he said.
    Never the least stir made the listeners,
    Though every word he spake
    Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
    From the one man left awake:
    Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
    And the sound of iron on stone,
    And how the silence surged softly backward,
    When the plunging hoofs were gone.

    Sea Fever - John Masefield (one of my favs)
    I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
    And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
    And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
    And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.

    I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
    Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
    And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
    And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

    I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
    To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
    And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
    And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

    Rudyard Kipling's Mandalay, Poe's The Raven


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,812 ✭✭✭Precious flower


    Child of our time by Eavan Boland - Read it first time and didn't think it was great, read it a second time, slowly and actually thought about the story behind it and I just found it so powerful.

    [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Yesterday I knew no lullaby
    But you have taught me overnight to order
    This song, which takes from your final cry
    Its tune, from your unreasoned end its reason;
    Its rhythm from the discord of your murder,
    Its motive from the fact you cannot listen.
    [/FONT]

    [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT]
    [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]We who should have known how to instruct
    With rhymes for your waking, rhythms for your sleep
    Names for the animals you took to bed,
    Tales to distract, legends to protect,
    Later an idiom for you to keep
    And living, learn, must learn from you, dead.
    [/FONT]

    [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT]
    [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]To make our broken images rebuild
    Themselves around your limbs, your broken
    Image, find for your sake whose life our idle
    Talk has cost, a new language. Child
    Of our time, our times have robbed your cradle.
    Sleep in a world your final sleep has woken.
    [/FONT]
    [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT]


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,871 ✭✭✭Corsendonk


    Primary School teacher was a huge Roald Dahl fan.

    Roald Dahl

    Mary, Mary, quite contrary
    How does your garden grow?
    'I live with my brat in a high-rise flat,
    So how in the world would I know.'


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,110 ✭✭✭Aodan83


    Invictus by William Henley

    Out of the night that covers me,
    Black as the pit from pole to pole,
    I thank whatever gods may be
    For my unconquerable soul.

    In the fell clutch of circumstance
    I have not winced nor cried aloud.
    Under the bludgeonings of chance
    My head is bloody, but unbowed.

    Beyond this place of wrath and tears
    Looms but the Horror of the shade,
    And yet the menace of the years
    Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

    It matters not how strait the gate,
    How charged with punishments the scroll.
    I am the master of my fate:
    I am the captain of my soul.

    Didn't actually study it for the leaving or anything, but it's still a fantastic piece.


  • Registered Users Posts: 13,439 ✭✭✭✭briany


    One that always stuck in my mind was a Heaney poem about a supposed entry in one of the Annals regarding an encounter between some monks and a ship of possibly divine or extraterrestrial origin. Or something like that.

    From Lightenings: VIII
    The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise
    Were all at prayers inside the oratory
    A ship appeared above them in the air.
    The anchor dragged along behind so deep
    It hooked itself into the altar rails
    And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,
    A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope
    And struggled to release it. But in vain.
    ‘This man can’t bear our life here and will drown,’
    The abbot said, ‘Unless we help him.’ So
    They did, the freed ship sailed, and the man climbed back
    Out of the marvellous as he had known it.


  • Registered Users Posts: 55 ✭✭Brandog


    The Dong with the luminous nose by Edward Lear.Really got to this pubescent 12 yr old
    [SIZE=+2]W[/SIZE]hen awful darkness and silence reign
    Over the great Gromboolian plain,
    Through the long, long wintry nights;--
    When the angry breakers roar
    As they beat on the rocky shore;--
    When Storm-clouds brood on the towering heights
    Of the Hills of the Chankly Bore:--
    Then, through the vast and gloomy dark,
    There moves what seems a fiery spark,
    A lonely spark with silvery rays
    Piercing the coal-black night,--
    A Meteor strange and bright:--
    Hither and thither the vision strays,
    A single lurid light.
    Slowly it wanders,--pauses,--creeeps,--
    Anon it sparkles,--flashes and leaps;
    And ever as onward it gleaming goes
    A light on the Bong-tree stems it throws.
    And those who watch at that midnight hour
    From Hall or Terrace, or lofty Tower,
    Cry, as the wild light passes along,--
    'The Dong!--the Dong!
    'The wandering Dong through the forest goes!
    'The Dong! the Dong!
    'The Dong with a luminous Nose!'
    Long years ago
    The Dong was happy and gay,
    Till he fell in love with a Jumbly Girl
    Who came to those shores one day,
    For the Jumblies came in a sieve, they did,--
    Landing at eve near the Zemmery Fidd
    Where the Oblong Oysters grow,
    And the rocks are smooth and gray.
    And all the woods and the valleys rang
    With the Chorus they daily and nightly sang,--
    'Far and few, far and few,
    Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
    Their heads are green, and their hands are blue
    And they went to sea in a sieve.'

    Happily, happily passed those days!
    While the cheerful Jumblies staid;
    They danced in circlets all night long,
    To the plaintive pipe of the lively Dong,
    In moonlight, shine, or shade.
    For day and night he was always there
    By the side of the Jumbly Girl so fair,
    With her sky-blue hands, and her sea-green hair.
    Till the morning came of that hateful day
    When the Jumblies sailed in their sieve away,
    And the Dong was left on the cruel shore
    Gazing--gazing for evermore,--
    Ever keeping his weary eyes on
    That pea-green sail on the far horizon,--
    Singing the Jumbly Chorus still
    As he sate all day on the grassy hill,--
    'Far and few, far and few,
    Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
    Their heads are green, and their hands are blue
    And they went to sea in a sieve.'

    But when the sun was low in the West,
    The Dong arose and said;--
    --'What little sense I once possessed
    'Has quite gone out of my head!'--
    And since that day he wanders still
    By lake or forest, marsh and hill,
    Singing--'O somewhere, in valley or plain
    'Might I find my Jumbly Girl again!
    'For ever I'll seek by lake and shore
    'Till I find my Jumbly Girl once more!'
    Playing a pipe with silvery squeaks,
    Since then his Jumbly Girl he seeks,
    And because by night he could not see,
    He gathered the bark of the Twangum Tree
    On the flowery plain that grows.
    And he wove him a wondrous Nose,--
    A Nose as strange as a Nose could be!
    Of vast proportions and painted red,
    And tied with cords to the back of his head.
    --In a hollow rounded space it ended
    With a luminous Lamp within suspended,
    All fenced about
    With a bandage stout
    To prevent the wind from blowing it out;--
    And with holes all round to send the light,
    In gleaming rays on the dismal night.
    And now each night, and all night long,
    Over those plains still roams the Dong;
    And above the wall of the Chimp and Snipe
    You may hear the sqeak of his plaintive pipe
    While ever he seeks, but seeks in vain
    To meet with his Jumbly Girl again;
    Lonely and wild--all night he goes,--
    The Dong with a luminous Nose!
    And all who watch at the midnight hour,
    From Hall or Terrace, or lofty Tower,
    Cry, as they trace the Meteor bright,
    Moving along through the dreary night,--
    'This is the hour when forth he goes,
    'The Dong with a luminous Nose!
    'Yonder--over the plain he goes,
    'He goes!
    'He goes;
    'The Dong with a luminous Nose!'


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 37,215 ✭✭✭✭Dudess


    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.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 141 ✭✭Dr conrad murray


    The wind that shakes the barley (Robert dwyer joyce)

    I sat within a valley green
    I sat me with my true love
    My sad heart strove to choose between
    The old love and the new love
    The old for her, the new that made
    Me think on Ireland dearly
    While soft the wind blew down the glade
    And shook the golden barley
    Twas hard the woeful words to frame
    To break the ties that bound us
    But harder still to bear the shame
    Of foreign chains around us
    And so I said, "The mountain glen
    I'll seek at morning early
    And join the bold United Men
    While soft winds shake the barley"
    While sad I kissed away her tears
    My fond arms 'round her flinging
    The foeman's shot burst on our ears
    From out the wildwood ringing
    A bullet pierced my true love's side
    In life's young spring so early
    And on my breast in blood she died
    While soft winds shook the barley
    I bore her to some mountain stream
    And many's the summer blossom
    I placed with branches soft and green
    About her gore-stained bosom
    I wept and kissed her clay-cold corpse
    Then rushed o'er vale and valley
    My vengeance on the foe to wreak
    While soft winds shook the barley
    But blood for blood without remorse
    I've taken at Oulart Hollow
    And laid my true love's clay-cold corpse
    Where I full soon may follow
    As 'round her grave I wander drear
    Noon, night and morning early
    With breaking heart when e'er I hear
    The wind that shakes the barley
    [edit]


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 37,215 ✭✭✭✭Dudess


    ADORED this...

    Let us go then, you and I,
    When the evening is spread out against the sky
    Like a patient etherised upon a table;
    Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
    The muttering retreats
    Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
    And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
    Streets that follow like a tedious argument
    Of insidious intent
    To lead you to an overwhelming question…
    Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
    Let us go and make our visit.

    In the room the women come and go
    Talking of Michelangelo.

    The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
    The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
    Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
    Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
    Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
    Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
    And seeing that it was a soft October night,
    Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

    And indeed there will be time
    For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
    Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
    There will be time, there will be time
    To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
    There will be time to murder and create,
    And time for all the works and days of hands
    That lift and drop a question on your plate;
    Time for you and time for me,
    And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
    And for a hundred visions and revisions,
    Before the taking of a toast and tea.

    In the room the women come and go
    Talking of Michelangelo.

    And indeed there will be time
    To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
    Time to turn back and descend the stair,
    With a bald spot in the middle of my hair
    [They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
    My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
    My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin
    [They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
    Do I dare
    Disturb the universe?
    In a minute there is time
    For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

    For I have known them all already, known them all:
    Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
    I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
    I know the voices dying with a dying fall
    Beneath the music from a farther room.
    So how should I presume?

    And I have known the eyes already, known them all
    The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
    And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
    When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
    Then how should I begin
    To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
    And how should I presume?

    And I have known the arms already, known them all
    Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
    [But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
    It is perfume from a dress
    That makes me so digress?
    Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
    And should I then presume?
    And how should I begin?

    Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
    And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
    Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

    I should have been a pair of ragged claws
    Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

    And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
    Smoothed by long fingers,
    Asleep… tired… or it malingers,
    Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
    Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
    Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
    But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
    Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
    I am no prophet and here’s no great matter;
    I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
    And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
    And in short, I was afraid.

    And would it have been worth it, after all,
    After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
    Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
    Would it have been worth while,
    To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
    To have squeezed the universe into a ball
    To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
    To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
    Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”
    If one, settling a pillow by her head,
    Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
    That is not it, at all.”

    And would it have been worth it, after all,
    Would it have been worth while,
    After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
    After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor
    And this, and so much more?
    It is impossible to say just what I mean!
    But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
    Would it have been worth while
    If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
    And turning toward the window, should say:
    “That is not it at all,
    That is not what I meant, at all.”

    No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
    Am an attendant lord, one that will do
    To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
    Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
    Deferential, glad to be of use,
    Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
    Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
    At times, indeed, almost ridiculous
    Almost, at times, the Fool.

    I grow old… I grow old…
    I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

    Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
    I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
    I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

    I do not think that they will sing to me.

    I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
    Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
    When the wind blows the water white and black.

    We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
    By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
    Till human voices wake us, and we drown.


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