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Your favourite poems that you learned at school

  • 29-01-2011 11:09pm
    #1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 141 ✭✭Dr conrad murray


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

    ps im drunk


«1345

Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 43,028 ✭✭✭✭SEPT 23 1989


    Are you drinking liquid LSD?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 63 ✭✭Gaolcon


    "The Wayfarer"

    By P.H.Pearse

    The last poem he wrote before being executed


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,713 ✭✭✭✭Novella


    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.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,272 ✭✭✭EverEvolving


    Fleas

    Adam had 'em


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,019 ✭✭✭Badgermonkey


    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


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 736 ✭✭✭Dilynnio


    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! :)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 195 ✭✭bigtuna


    Funeral Blues by W.H.Auden. True emotion


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 10,367 ✭✭✭✭watna


    An Arundel Tomb by Philip Larkin.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 43,028 ✭✭✭✭SEPT 23 1989


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


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,042 ✭✭✭stevejr


    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.

    What's the reason for being reasonable?

    Is that an unreasonable question?



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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 303 ✭✭Gingersnaps


    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.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,647 ✭✭✭✭El Weirdo


    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


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 766 ✭✭✭ger vallely


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


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 736 ✭✭✭Dilynnio


    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:


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,108 ✭✭✭Lirange


    Desiderata by Max Ehrmann (in prose)


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 470 ✭✭clikityclak


    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.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,572 ✭✭✭✭brummytom


    We never had to learn them in school.


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


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,692 ✭✭✭✭OPENROAD


    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!


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,023 ✭✭✭hairyfairy00


    Ode To A Nightingale by John Keats


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 160 ✭✭.same.


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

    T.S Eliot, I think


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 88,972 ✭✭✭✭mike65


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


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 656 ✭✭✭smokie2008


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


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 587 ✭✭✭some_dose


    September 1913 by Mr. W.B. Yeats


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 17,918 ✭✭✭✭orourkeda


    Poetry me bollix


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,042 ✭✭✭stevejr


    orourkeda wrote: »
    Poetry me bollix


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

    What's the reason for being reasonable?

    Is that an unreasonable question?



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 795 ✭✭✭smegmar


    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.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,784 ✭✭✭Superbus


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

    *piercing beep*


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,649 ✭✭✭Catari Jaguar


    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.... :(


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,838 ✭✭✭Nulty


    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.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,758 ✭✭✭✭TeddyTedson


    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


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,100 ✭✭✭eightyfish


    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


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,128 ✭✭✭✭Oranage2


    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


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 515 ✭✭✭martic


    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:)


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,145 ✭✭✭LETHAL LADY


    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


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 160 ✭✭.same.


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

    CLAP CLAP

    CLAP CALP CLAP

    CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP

    VIRGINS!


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


    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


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,480 ✭✭✭Blondini


    Austin Clarke - The lost Heifer


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,480 ✭✭✭Blondini


    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.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,574 ✭✭✭falan


    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.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,042 ✭✭✭stevejr


    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.

    What's the reason for being reasonable?

    Is that an unreasonable question?



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 566 ✭✭✭bigwormbundoran


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

    Spike Milligan


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 137 ✭✭Kelda09


    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


  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators Posts: 9,722 Mod ✭✭✭✭Twee.


    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.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 760 ✭✭✭seafood dunleavy


    Derek Walcott was a savage poet.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 9,362 ✭✭✭Sergeant


    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!


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,939 ✭✭✭ballsymchugh


    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!


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 988 ✭✭✭wurzlitzer


    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.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 29,509 ✭✭✭✭randylonghorn


    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.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 316 ✭✭cassi


    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.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 9,362 ✭✭✭Sergeant


    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.



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