Your favourite poems that you learned at school

Dr conrad murray · 30-01-2011 12:09am #1

i loved that poem i wonderd lonely as a cloud (william wordsworth)

ps im drunk

SEPT 23 1989 · 30-01-2011 12:18am

Are you drinking liquid LSD?

Gaolcon · 30-01-2011 12:19am

"The Wayfarer"

By P.H.Pearse

The last poem he wrote before being executed

Novella · 30-01-2011 12:20am

Parliament Hill Fields, by Sylvia Plath.

"On this bald hill the new year hones its edge.
Faceless and pale as china,
The round sky goes on minding its business.
Your absence is inconspicuous;
Nobody can tell what I lack..."

Subh Milis, by Séamus Ó Néill.

"Bhí subh milis
Ar bhaschrann an dorais
Ach mhúch mé an corraí
Ionam d'éirigh,
Mar smaoinigh mé ar an lá
A bheas an baschrann glan,
Agus an láimh bheag
Ar iarraidh."

I've always really loved that one.

EverEvolving · 30-01-2011 12:20am

Fleas

Adam had 'em

Badgermonkey · 30-01-2011 12:21am

Yo Conrad,

2 blueys, 3 yellows and a pack of the horsey bye bye's please.

No questions asked.

What's Joe Jackson like? Seems a decent fella to me.

ps stopping by the woods, Robert Frost

Dilynnio · 30-01-2011 12:22am

If I were a Lady by Percy French...........I learned it in 2nd class!

Over 20 years ago and I still remember it and I do say it at parties for the craic!

bigtuna · 30-01-2011 12:24am

Funeral Blues by W.H.Auden. True emotion

watna · 30-01-2011 12:25am

An Arundel Tomb by Philip Larkin.

SEPT 23 1989 · 30-01-2011 12:25am

I would say there is some crazy sh1t happening in Conrads mind right about now

stevejr · 30-01-2011 12:26am

If you've lost your Dad....very poignant...

Funeral Blues....WH Auden.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Gingersnaps · 30-01-2011 12:28am

This is the story of Mary Fox
She gave ten thousand men the pox
Soldiers, sailors, men of honour
All fought like dogs to get upon her
Here she lies but not forgotten
They dig her up and ride her rotten.

El Weirdo · 30-01-2011 12:29am

Beans, beans, they're good for your heart
The more you eat, the more you fart
The more you fart, the more you eat
The more you sit on the toilet seat

ger vallely · 30-01-2011 12:29am

Ozymandais by Shelley.Enough said. (Possibly not correct spelling though.)

Dilynnio · 30-01-2011 12:32am

There was a girl from Madrid,
who thought she had never been rid,
along came an Italian,
with balls like a stallion,
and rode her like billy the kid.

Mary had a little sheep,
and with that sheep,
she went to sleep,
the sheep turned out to be a ram,
and Mary had a little lamb!

How do I remember this! :rolleyes:

Lirange · 30-01-2011 12:33am

Desiderata by Max Ehrmann (in prose)

clikityclak · 30-01-2011 12:37am

Mid Term Break- Seamus Heaney

soooooooooooome poem.

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbors 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 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 the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

brummytom · 30-01-2011 12:38am

We never had to learn them in school.

But the only one I can recite is Sonnet 18, great poem.

OPENROAD · 30-01-2011 12:38am

Wordsworth- Composed Upon Westminster Bridge

EARTH has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

hairyfairy00 · 30-01-2011 12:44am

Ode To A Nightingale by John Keats

.same. · 30-01-2011 12:52am

Sittin on the grass
feel sometin going through my ass
DI-AR-RHEA DI-AR-RHEA

T.S Eliot, I think

mike65 · 30-01-2011 12:56am

That one about Ozym-Ozzym-Oziyman-ah the one about some empire that turns to sand or somefink.

smokie2008 · 30-01-2011 1:25am

Roses are red Violets are blue
some poems ryhme...
but this one doesn't

some_dose · 30-01-2011 1:37am

September 1913 by Mr. W.B. Yeats

orourkeda · 30-01-2011 1:42am

Poetry me bollix

stevejr · 30-01-2011 1:48am

orourkeda wrote: »

Poetry me bollix

Nearly a Haiku,..well done my learned friend.

smegmar · 30-01-2011 1:50am

see the problem is all the poetry on the Irish school curriculum, bar maybe one or two, is complete and utter shÎte. It's only when I left school I really began to appreciate poetry.

Please for the love of good art look up PAT INGOLDSBY (Irish guy, sells his books near trinity college), EDGAR ALLAN POE, Voltaire, MARK TWAIN and so many others I can't recall right now.

They're out their and they make poetry good, not the pussy tripe you read in school.

Superbus · 30-01-2011 1:53am

Leigh anois go cúramach na treoracha agus na ceisteanna a romhain le cuid B.

*piercing beep*

Catari Jaguar · 30-01-2011 1:58am

I remember a poem I learned in first year called 4C Boy about a special needs kid that the author & other classmates bullied and then he died. He had plastic glasses and ears that stuck out like pieces of pink plasticine. Can't remember how it goes....

Nulty · 30-01-2011 2:06am

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I don't remember it off by heart by the way, had to find it to read it again....I remember 4c boy alright, that was about hte handicapped kid.

TeddyTedson · 30-01-2011 2:08am

Dip dip
Dog sh!t
You are
Not it.

My mother and your mother
Were hanging out the cloths
My mother gave your mother
A box in the nose
What Colour was the blood
***** spells blood you are it

eightyfish · 30-01-2011 2:09am

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

Oranage2 · 30-01-2011 2:09am

Nulty wrote: »

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I don't remember it off by heart by the way, had to find it to read it again....I remember 4c boy alright, that was about hte handicapped kid.

Robert Frost, I love this poem so much and its how i try live my life

martic · 30-01-2011 2:09am

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Ah I still remember that girl:)

LETHAL LADY · 30-01-2011 2:16am

Up the airy mountains
and down the rushy glen
we darent go a hunting for fear of little men
we folk good folk trouping all together
green jacket red cap and white owls feather

.same. · 30-01-2011 2:22am

Siiilent night, hoooly night
aaall is calm aaall is bright
round yon

CLAP CLAP

CLAP CALP CLAP

CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP

VIRGINS!

Corsendonk · 30-01-2011 2:22am

Thomas Kinsella

Mirror in February
The day dawns, with scent of must and rain,
Of opened soil, dark trees, dry bedroom air.
Under the fading lamp, half dressed -- my brain
Idling on some compulsive fantasy --
I towel my shaven jaw and stop, and stare,
Riveted by a dark exhausted eye,
A dry downturning mouth.
It seems again that it is time to learn,
In this untiring, crumbling place of growth
To which, for the time being, I return.
Now plainly in the mirror of my soul
I read that I have looked my last on youth
And little more; for they are not made whole
That reach the age of Christ.

Below my window the wakening trees,
Hacked clean for better bearing, stand defaced
Suffering their brute necessities;
And how should the flesh not quail, that span for span
Is mutilated more? In slow distaste
I fold my towel with what grace I can,
Not young, and not renewable, but man

Blondini · 30-01-2011 2:44am

Austin Clarke - The lost Heifer

Blondini · 30-01-2011 2:46am

More Kinsella

Mirror in February

Dreams fled away, this country bedroom, raw
With the touch of the dawn, wrapped in a minor peace,
Hears through an open window the garden draw
Long pitch black breaths, lay bare its apple trees,
Ripe pear trees, brambles, windfall-sweetened soil,
Exhale rough sweetness against the starry slates.
Nearer the river sleeps St. John's, all toil
Locked fast inside a dream with iron gates.

Domestic Autumn, like an animal
Long used to handling by those countrymen,
Rubs her kind hide against the bedroom wall
Sensing a fragrant child come back again
- Not this half-tolerated consciousness
That plants its grammar in her yielding weather
But that unspeaking daughter, growing less
Familiar where we fell asleep together.

Wakeful moth wings blunder near a chair,
Toss their light shell at the glass, and go
To inhabit the living starlight. Stranded hair
Stirs on still linen. It is as though
The black breathing that billows her sleep, her name,
Drugged under judgement, waned and - bearing daggers
And balances--down the lampless darkness they came,
Moving like women : Justice, Truth, such figures.

falan · 30-01-2011 3:04am

TeddyTedson wrote: »

Dip dip
Dog sh!t
You are
Not it.

My mother and your mother
Were hanging out the cloths
My mother gave your mother
A box in the nose
What Colour was the blood
***** spells blood you are it

Dip dip
Dog sh!t
F*cking b*stard dirty dick
You are
Not it.

stevejr · 30-01-2011 3:08am

Superbus wrote: »

Leigh anois go cúramach na treoracha agus na ceisteanna a romhain le cuid B.

*piercing beep*

Reminds me of my Irish Oral....Think I said I was a Bus os Gaeilge...think I passed it cause the examiner visably pissed herself...poor old dear.

bigwormbundoran · 30-01-2011 3:10am

Toad, toad
Little toad
Be careful when
You cross the road

Spike Milligan

Kelda09 · 30-01-2011 3:34am

Ive always loved the war poets and the poetry they created, but as some of them have been mentioned I'll go with good old Yeats:P:

An Irish Airman Forsees His Death

I KNOW that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My county is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

William Butler Yeats

Twee. · 30-01-2011 5:50am

Our class did this in 3rd year and I've loved it ever since.

Late Fragment - Raymond Carver

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

seafood dunleavy · 30-01-2011 6:14am

Derek Walcott was a savage poet.

Sergeant · 30-01-2011 6:27am

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!

ballsymchugh · 30-01-2011 6:50am

Na Coisithe... Liam S Gogan

I gcoim na hoíche cloisim iad,
Na coisithe ar siúl;
Airím iad, ní fheicim iad,
Ní fios cá mbíonn a gcuaird.
I gcoim na hoíche dorcha
Is an uile ní ina shuan,
Airím teacht na gcoisithe
I lár an bhaile chiúin.
An daoine iad nach sona dhóibh,
Nó anama i bpunc?
Nach aoibhinn dóibh an t-ionad sin
'Na gcónaíd go buan?
I gcoim na hoíche dorcha,
Is cách 'na thoirchim suain,
Sea cloisimse na coisithe
Ag teacht 's ag imeacht uaim.

when read at the right pace and with the right tone it's scary as hell. about some fella hearing footsteps outside the house in the middle of the night in a quiet village.

or this,
Oíche Nollaig na mBan
Seán Ó Riordáin

Bhí fuinneamh sa stoirm a éalaigh aréir.
Aréir oíche Nollaig na mBan,
As gealt-teach iargúlta 'tá laistiar den ré
Is do scréach tríd an spéir chughainn 'na gealt
Gur ghíosc geataí comharsan mar ghogallach gé,
Gur bhúir abhainn slaghdánach mar tharbh,
Gur mhúchadh mo choinneal mar bhuille ar mo bhéal
A las 'na splanc obann an fhearg

Ba mhaith liom go dtiocfadh an stoirm sin féin
An oíche go mbeadsa go lag
Ag filleadh abhaile ó rince an tsaoil
Is solas an pheaca ag dul as,
Go líonfaí gach neomat le liúirigh ón spéir,
Go ndéanfaí den domhan scuaine scread,
Is ná cloisfinn an ciúnas ag gluaiseacht fám dhéin,
Ná inneall an ghluaisteáin ag stad.

poet is talking about a great storm that happened last night, and how he wants a similar storm to come the night he dies, so that he doesn't hear death coming, or as he put it in the last line, the engine stopping.

2 superb poems.

funnily enough, can't stand any english poetry!

wurzlitzer · 30-01-2011 6:56am

He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven
by William Butler Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

randylonghorn · 30-01-2011 7:13am

As the war poets have been mentioned, two favourites ... both by Siegfried Sassoon.

The General

"Good-morning; good-morning!" the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead,
And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
"He’s a cheery old card," grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

Base Details

If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,
I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
You'd see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
Reading the Roll of Honour. "Poor young chap,"
I'd say ... "I used to know his father well;
Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap."
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I'd toddle safely home and die ... in bed.

cassi · 30-01-2011 7:36am

wurzlitzer wrote: »

He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven
by William Butler Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

This and althought not taught it at school, If by Rudyard Kipling. I love that poem.

Sergeant · 30-01-2011 7:39am

randylonghorn wrote: »

As the war poets have been mentioned, two favourites ... both by Siegfried Sassoon.

Base Details

If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,
I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
You'd see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
Reading the Roll of Honour. "Poor young chap,"
I'd say ... "I used to know his father well;
Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap."
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I'd toddle safely home and die ... in bed.
[/I]

The most poignant ending to a comedy series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IglUmgYGxLM

Your favourite poems that you learned at school

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