Favourite Poem/Saying/Quote?

doctor evil

At the moment it would have to be William Wordsworth 'Daffodils' due to it being Spring;

I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the Milky Way,

They stretch'd in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Dades

There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
Herman Melville

Poetry wrecks my head.

life_is_music

not really poetic....but inspiring:

"if you don't change direction, you'll end up where you're headed" - some nasa guy

roberta c

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

-Mahatma Gandhi

suits my current mood anyway, coming from after hours!
A nice site for this type of thing when your bored
http://www.inspirationpeak.com

Psychedelic

"it was the best of times, it was the worst of times" - opening lines of Charles Dickens 'A Tale of Two Cities'


my favourite poem is Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" - 1st verse below

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 some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Hermy

The closing scene from Withnail And I, a slightly edited version of an extract from Hamlet Act II Scene II.

I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth
and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition
that this goodly frame, the earth,
seems to me a sterile promontory;
this most excellent canopy, the air, look you,
this brave ov’rhanging firmament,
this majestical roof fretted with golden fire;
why, it appeareth nothing to me
but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason,
how infinite in faculties, how like an angel in apprehension,
how like a God!
The beauty of the world, paragon of animals;
and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
Man delights not me, no, nor women neither, nor women neither.

YogiBear

Nice to read Wordsworth there!
I bought Hamlet on dvd a few weeks ago as I did Othello in school and hadn't seen it. Loved it.


One of my favourite poems is:

La Belle Dame sans Merci - John Keats O what can ail thee, Knight at arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the Lake
And no birds sing!
O what can ail thee, Knight at arms,
So haggard, and so woebegone?
The squirrel’s granary is full
And the harvest’s done.
I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
“I met a Lady in the Meads,
Full beautiful, a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light
And her eyes were wild.
“I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant Zone;
She looked at me as she did love
And made sweet moan.
“I set her on my pacing steed
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend and sing
A faery’s song.
“She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said
‘I love thee true.’
“She took me to her elfin grot
And there she wept, and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
“And there she lulléd me asleep,
And there I dreamed, Ah woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.
“I saw pale Kings and Princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried, ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!’
“I saw their starved lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gapéd wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.
“And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.”

Sconsey

Read this the other day.....

'Life - the way it really is - is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse'
Joseph Brodsky

My favourite is not a poem, it's the lyrics from Green Fields of France, always puts a lump in my throat:

Well, how do you do, Private William McBride,
Do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside?
And rest for awhile in the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done.
And I see by your gravestone you were only 19
When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916,
Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

Did they Beat the drum slowly, did the play the pipes lowly?
Did the rifles fir o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sound The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined?
And, though you died back in 1916,
To that loyal heart are you forever 19?
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Forever enshrined behind some glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?

The sun's shining down on these green fields of France;
The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plow;
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard that's still No Man's Land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man.
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

And I can't help but wonder, no Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you "The Cause?"
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.

Hermy

The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins is another favourite of mine.

I caught this morning morning’s minion,
kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on a swing,
As a skate’s wheel sweeps smooth on a bow bend—the hurl and gliding
rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird—the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! And the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it—shéer plód makes plough down sillion
shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

BossArky

The Listeners - Walter de la Mare. It was on the Junior Cert course back in 1996. One of my all time favourites.

"The Listeners" is Walter de la Mare's most famous poem. It narrates (in third person) the story of a mysterious man coming to a house in the night on horseback, and subsequently failing, to deliver a message and fulfill a promise. Nobody is there but the "Listeners" (named in the title), who seem to be merely spectral. It is apparent that "The Listeners" hear his knocking and request for assistance, however they choose to ignore it. Some people think that the poem represents missed opportunity on the part of the traveler. The house meant something to him, so he returned to it, but he came back too late and there was nothing left but shadows and memories. Alternatively he may have promised to deliver a message from an acquaintance : "'Tell them I came, and no one answered,/ That I kept my word,' he said"

‘IS there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champ’d 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
Lean’d over and look’d into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplex’d 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 stirr’d 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 starr’d and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:—
’Tell them I came, and no one answer’d,
’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.

---

I also really like On Raglan Road - Patrick Kavanagh, especially the last verse.


"On Raglan Road" is a well-known Irish song from a poem written by Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh named for Raglan Road in Ballsbridge, Dublin.

It was first published as a poem in the Irish Press on 3 October 1946 under the title "Dark Haired Miriam Ran Away." Peter Kavanagh, Kavanagh's brother said that "it was written about Patrick's girlfriend Hilda [Moriaty] but to avoid embarrassment he used the name of my girlfriend in the title."

The poem was put to music when the poet met Luke Kelly of the well-known Irish band The Dubliners in a pub in Dublin called The Bailey. It was set to the traditional air "The Dawning of the Day" (Fáinne Geal an Lae) composed by Thomas Connellan in the 17th Century.

The song, often known simply as "Raglan Road," has since been sung by the Dubliners, Van Morrison, Sinéad O'Connor, Dire Straits, Billy Bragg, Roger Daltrey and Loreena McKennitt among others.


On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;
I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way,
And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.

On Grafton Street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge
Of the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion's pledge,
The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay -
O I loved too much and by such and such is happiness thrown away.

I gave her gifts of the mind I gave her the secret sign that's known
To the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone
And word and tint. I did not stint for I gave her poems to say.
With her own name there and her own dark hair like clouds over fields of May

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking now
Away from me so hurriedly my reason must allow
That I had wooed not as I should a creature made of clay -
When the angel woos the clay he'd lose his wings at the dawn of day.

doctor evil

"crocodiles grows up in more than one pond"

Have it in my sig, can't remember how I came across it. I just love it as it states that there are transitions in life that everyone does differently. Very helpful when stuck in a rut thinking life must be done in A, B, C fashion.

I remember a great poem for JC years ago about a fire, great ryme and rythm to it.

I love Seamus Heaverys work particulary Sunlight. Can't remember the others unfortunatley

here was a sunlit absence.
The helmeted pump in the yard
heated its iron,
water honeyed

in the slung bucket
and the sun stood
like a griddle cooling
against the wall

of each long afternoon.
So, her hands scuffled
over the bakeboard,
the reddening stove

sent its plaque of heat
against her where she stood
in a floury apron
by the window.

Now she dusts the board
with a goose's wing,
now sits, broad-lapped,
with whitened nails

and measling shins:
here is a space
again, the scone rising
to the tick of two clocks.

And here is love
like a tinsmith's scoop
sunk past its gleam
in the meal-bin.

Very tempting to dig out old schools books for a nostalgic nosey around.

What I keep meaning to do is put the best saying on a card and have it laminated and it as a bookmark. Would be much more pleasing than using any ole' scrap of paper!

theCzar

Dades wrote: »

There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
Herman Melville

I like that an awful lot, hadn't seen if before. Though I have seen the same philosophy expressed in many works (Count of Monte Cristo for one) I've not heard it put that succinctly.

Dades wrote: »

Poetry wrecks my head.

Bad poetry is probably the single worst form of expression ever devised by mankind. I would rather read a txt spk version of the collected works of Dan Brown.

The quote I had in mind when I came in here:

Oscar Wilde wrote:

We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

EDIT: Just looking at this page of Wilde quotes, very enjoyable.
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Oscar_Wilde/

Dades

theCzar wrote: »

I like that an awful lot, hadn't seen if before. Though I have seen the same philosophy expressed in many works (Count of Monte Cristo for one) I've not heard it put that succinctly.

I still remember reading that line in Moby Dick - it struck a chord with me. Now, years later it seems to be a popular one of Melville's quotes found online.

doctor evil

Never to forget

Homer: Are you saying you're never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Ham?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Pork chops?
Lisa: Dad, those all come from the same animal.
Homer: Heh heh heh. Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.

Karlusss

I don't know if I can a favourite all-time poem, but Death of a Naturalist had an impression on me recently:

All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.

Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.



(not that anybody reads blocks of text like that on the internet)

My favourite quote right now is:

"It's all smokes and daggers"
Bertie Ahern.

gaf1983

Well one quote I like is the verse that's in my signature. It was penned by the fictional poet Jem Casey who is mentioned in Flann O'Brien's "At Swim Two Birds."

I also liked these lines from Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting:

The small flat was heaving. Stevie had never seen Franco, the Beggar, so at ease with himself Rab McLaughlin, or Second Prize, as they called him, hadn't even been assaulted when he'd pished up the back of Begbie's curtains.

And of course as poems go, I think it's hard to beat some of the anti-war poetry, either from the First World War, such as this Wilfred Owen classic:

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares2 we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest3 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 hoots4
Of tired, outstripped5 Five-Nines6 that dropped behind.

Gas!7 Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets8 just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime9 . . .
Dim, through the misty panes10 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,11 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 cud12
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest13
To children ardent14 for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.15

8 October 1917 - March, 1918

... or more recently, this one about Vietnam, by Merill Glass:

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.

One of my favourite aphorisms is this one from Soren Kierkegaard:

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

gaf1983

BossArky wrote: »

The song, often known simply as "Raglan Road," has since been sung by the Dubliners, Van Morrison, Sinéad O'Connor, Dire Straits, Billy Bragg, Roger Daltrey and Loreena McKennitt among others.

It's also used in one of the closing sequences of the film In Bruges as I discovered this evening.

The Agogo

mine for poetry would have to be: "when you find a friend good and true, **** over him before he ****s over you" - Anon.

Or for more notables:

"i only drink on two occassions: when i'm thirsty and when i'm not" - B Behan

"Quick! hand me a beaker of wine so that i may wet my mind and say something clever"- Aristophanes

Crucifix

doctor evil wrote: »

At the moment it would have to be William Wordsworth 'Daffodils' due to it being Spring;

There once was a poet named Will
Who tramped his way over a hill
And was speechless for hours
Over some stupid flowers
This was years before TV, but still.

Psychedelic wrote: »

my favourite poem is Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" - 1st verse below

There once was a girl named Lenore
And a bird and a bust and a door
And a guy with depression
And a whole lot of questions
And the bird always says "Nevermore."

K4t

Father
Its not time to make a change,
Just relax, take it easy.
Youre still young, thats your fault,
Theres so much you have to know.
Find a girl, settle down,
If you want you can marry.
Look at me, I am old, but Im happy.

I was once like you are now, and I know that its not easy,
To be calm when youve found something going on.
But take your time, think a lot,
Why, think of everything youve got.
For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not.

Son
How can I try to explain, when I do he turns away again.
Its always been the same, same old story.
From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen.
Now theres a way and I know that I have to go away.
I know I have to go.

Father
Its not time to make a change,
Just sit down, take it slowly.
Youre still young, thats your fault,
Theres so much you have to go through.
Find a girl, settle down,
If you want you can marry.
Look at me, I am old, but Im happy.
(son-- away away away, I know I have to
Make this decision alone - no)
Son
All the times that I cried, keeping all the things I knew inside,
Its hard, but its harder to ignore it.
If they were right, Id agree, but its them you know not me.
Now theres a way and I know that I have to go away.
I know I have to go.
(father-- stay stay stay, why must you go and
Make this decision alone? )

K4t

Crucifix wrote: »

There once was a poet named Will
Who tramped his way over a hill
And was speechless for hours
Over some stupid flowers
This was years before TV, but still.



There once was a girl named Lenore
And a bird and a bust and a door
And a guy with depression
And a whole lot of questions
And the bird always says "Nevermore."

haha that's quality.....

Louth Man

Invictus
by William Ernest Henley; 1849-1903

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.

and/or

Epic, by Patrick Kavanagh

I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided, who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul"
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel —
"Here is the march along these iron stones".
That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was more important? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance

stovelid

Current fav:

Lie still, sleep becalmed, sufferer with the wound
In the throat, burning and turning. All night afloat
On the silent sea we have heard the sound
That came from the wound wrapped in the salt sheet.

Under the mile off moon we trembled listening
To the sea sound flowing like blood from the loud wound
And when the salt sheet broke in a storm of singing
The voices of all the drowned swam on the wind.

Open a pathway through the slow sad sail,
Throw wide to the wind the gates of the wandering boat
For my voyage to begin to the end of my wound,
We heard the sea sound sing, we saw the salt sheet tell.
Lie still, sleep becalmed, hide the mouth in the throat,
Or we shall obey, and ride with you through the drowned.

- Dylan Thomas

doctor evil

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, 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.

Robert Frost

BossArky

doctor evil 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, 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.

Robert Frost

Nice one Dr.E.

Coileach dearg

People with one foot in the past and one foot in the future, often end up pissing in the present - Brendan Behan

co_co

doctor evil wrote: »

At the moment it would have to be William Wordsworth 'Daffodils' due to it being Spring;

I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
.

'Daffodils' is also my favorit!:)

Shutuplaura

I really like the below, called The Kiss by Siegfried Sassoon. Its an ode to the tools of the trade from a poet who was both a pacifist and an effective, brave soldier.

TO these I turn, in these I trust—
Brother Lead and Sister Steel.
To his blind power I make appeal,
I guard her beauty clean from rust.

He spins and burns and loves the air, 5
And splits a skull to win my praise;
But up the nobly marching days
She glitters naked, cold and fair.

Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this:
That in good fury he may feel 10
The body where he sets his heel
Quail from your downward darting kiss.

I also really like Howl by Allen Ginsberg. I can't find the text online and its probably too long to quote in full anyway. Its has a real us against the world theme.

AceofSpades001

I love this saying, just for the sheer irony of it.

"A witty saying proves nothing" - Voltaire.

Lizzykins

Patrick kavanagh's In memory of my father.
Every old man I see reminds me of my father
When he had fallen in love with death
One time when sheaves were gathered.

Anything by Kavanagh or Hopkins really or
WH Auden
"Song" I think it's called.
"Stop all the clocks etc etc....
It was in Four Weddings and a Funeral

Fast_Mover

doctor evil 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, 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.

Robert Frost

God, remember doing that for my J.C 5yrs ago..loved it.

kerash

I'm picking this cos my dad used to recite it all the time when I was younger and it stuck! Heres a few select verses.

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way that he'd "sooner live in hell".

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;
It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
"It's the cursed cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet 'tain't being dead -- it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains."

There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say:
"You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains."

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared -- such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside.
I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; . . . then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm --
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

its quite long so i took some of the best parts, anyone interested in the whole poem can check out http://www.robertwservice.com/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=95&keywords=Cremation Service has plenty of other good ones too!

co_co

To Helen
by Edgar Allan Poe

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfum'd sea,
The weary way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the beauty of fair Greece,
And the grandeur of old Rome.

Lo ! in that little window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand!
The folded scroll within thy hand —
A Psyche from the regions which
Are Holy land !

doctor evil

Some more quotes for you:

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. Oscar Wilde
He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,
And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere. Ali ibn-Abi-Talib (602 AD - 661 AD),
Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. G. M. Trevelyan (1876 - 1962),
What a pity, when Christopher Colombus discovered America, that he ever mentioned it. Margot Asquith
It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it. Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

"it's better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt"
Mark Twain

"War doesn't determine who is right, only who is left"

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost ~ Charles
Caleb Colton

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget. - Thomas Szasz

"I told you I was ill!" - Spike Milligan epitaph

Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck. George Carlin (1937 - )

Never drop to the level of idiots, they will beat you with experience

JangoFett

"Don't you know there's no devil, just god when he's drunk"

Tom Waits

I love it. I've always had a similar view of the devil and god since I was a kid...pretty cool!

Esmereldina

doctor evil wrote: »

At the moment it would have to be William Wordsworth 'Daffodils' due to it being Spring;

I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the Milky Way,

They stretch'd in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

May I say first of all that for someone with a name like Doctor Evil, you have surprisingly wholesome literary tastes

I have about a zillion favourite poems/passages from books/quotations, so I don't think I could begin to make a choice.

Keeping on the theme of spring-y, happy poetry, I like Walt Whitman's Leaves of grass and e. e. cummings a lot.
Too lazy to find and past from internet now but : thank you god for most this amazing day...

is good summer poetry!

Sea Monkey

Every rose has its thorn
Just like every night has its dawn
Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song

angelfire9

Esmereldina wrote: »

I have about a zillion favourite poems/passages from books/quotations, so I don't think I could begin to make a choice.

Same here but 2 of my favourite poets are both Irish - Yeats and Heaney picked one of each here as they are probably my favourite poems and 2 of the few that i can still recite from memory:

The Ballad of Father Gilligan by W.B. 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 in a chair
At the moth-hour of the 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 in 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 this 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.'


Mid-term Break by Seamus Heaney


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

A four foot box, a foot for every year.


Both have similar themes but i think they are beautifully written pieces of poetry

doctor evil

Esmereldina wrote: »

May I say first of all that for someone with a name like Doctor Evil, you have surprisingly wholesome literary tastes

I have about a zillion favourite poems/passages from books/quotations, so I don't think I could begin to make a choice.

Keeping on the theme of spring-y, happy poetry, I like Walt Whitman's Leaves of grass and e. e. cummings a lot.
Too lazy to find and past from internet now but : thank you god for most this amazing day...

is good summer poetry!

Why thank you.

I'm not very familiar with Whitman. What would be the 'best' of his poetry?

http://www.bartleby.com/142/index1.html

I came across him reading the trilogy of short stories called Specimen Days by 'Michael Cunningham.

Its a very good book and kept me indulged. Whitman is a common thread throughout the tales.

Esmereldina

doctor evil wrote: »

Why thank you.

I'm not very familiar with Whitman. What would be the 'best' of his poetry?

http://www.bartleby.com/142/index1.html

I came across him reading the trilogy of short stories called Specimen Days by 'Michael Cunningham.

Its a very good book and kept me indulged. Whitman is a common thread throughout the tales.

Well, Leaves of Grass is a collection of long prose poems. Probably the most famous of these is Song of Myself. Even that one is about 60 pages long though... it's great for dipping into but I haven't read it the whole way through myself. This is one of the passages that I like... reminds me of summer anyway, as do most of Whitman's poems.

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is, any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer, designedly dropt, 95
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say, Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic;
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white; 100
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you, curling grass;
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men;
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them; 105
It may be you are from old people, and from women, and from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps;
And here you are the mothers’ laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers;
Darker than the colorless beards of old men;
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths. 110

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men? 115
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death;
And if ever there was, it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d. 120

All goes onward and outward—nothing collapses;
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

beautiation

I'm a bit obsessive about great quotes, I usually spend about an hour a day trawling the net for them, here's my top 10:

If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

To make yourself something less than you can be - that too is a form of suicide.
Benjamin Lichtenberg

Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven.
Henry Ward Beecher

No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.
Michel De Montaigne

A smile is the light in the window of your face that tells people you're at home.

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive.
Anäis Nin

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.
Ray Bradbury

He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
Winston Churchill

We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it.
George Eliot

Bore: A man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.
Gian Vincenzo Gravina

phaze

A lot of my favourites have already been posted by others but here's another one I love by Dylan Thomas.


And Death Shall Have No Dominion

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead mean naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

fenris

[IF]

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 all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath 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!

--Rudyard Kipling

Tar.Aldarion

BossArky wrote: »

The Listeners - Walter de la Mare. It was on the Junior Cert course back in 1996. One of my all time favourites.

"The Listeners" is Walter de la Mare's most famous poem. It narrates (in third person) the story of a mysterious man coming to a house in the night on horseback, and subsequently failing, to deliver a message and fulfill a promise. Nobody is there but the "Listeners" (named in the title), who seem to be merely spectral. It is apparent that "The Listeners" hear his knocking and request for assistance, however they choose to ignore it. Some people think that the poem represents missed opportunity on the part of the traveler. The house meant something to him, so he returned to it, but he came back too late and there was nothing left but shadows and memories. Alternatively he may have promised to deliver a message from an acquaintance : "'Tell them I came, and no one answered,/ That I kept my word,' he said"

‘IS there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champ’d 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
Lean’d over and look’d into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplex’d 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 stirr’d 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 starr’d and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:—
’Tell them I came, and no one answer’d,
’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.

My favourite poem.


True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost. - CharlesCaleb Colton

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive. - Anäis Nin

Esmereldina

phaze wrote: »

A lot of my favourites have already been posted by others but here's another one I love by Dylan Thomas.


And Death Shall Have No Dominion

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead mean naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

Wow. This is good poetry.

studiorat

+1 for Leaves of Grass especially "I sing the body Electric"

How about this...

Roundelay
on all that strand
at end of day
steps sole sound
long sole sound
until unbidden stay
then no sound
on all that strand
long no sound
until unbidden go
steps sole sound
long sole sound
on all that strand
at end of day

— Samuel Beckett

I think it sounds like a walk on the beach...

genericgoon

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe. - Albert Einstein

there are 3 kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics- Benjamin Disraeli

As for poetry Mending Wall by Frost, Epic by Kavanagh and September 1913 by Yeats.