What's your favourite poem?

BuboBubo

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Some poems rhyme
This one doesn't

Hey diddle diddle
The Cat did a piddle
All over the kitchen mat
The little dog laughed to see such fun
Then piddled all over the cat

Little spider on the wall
Have you got no home at all?
Have you got no mam or dad?
Squishy squashy
That's too bad

Conservatory

degsie wrote: »

Roses are red
Violets are blue
This thread is shyte
And it's all down to you (OP)

I’d put in this to maintain the rhythm

Roses are red
Violets are blue
This thread is shyte (you see)
And it’s all down to you (op)

The reason for this is it keeps whether you use the brackets or not.
I did however enjoy the thread.

Tell me how

You don't have to get involved you know. You don't get it, you don't get it. No big deal. It's not like homework where you have to make an effort.

Cleopatra_

Tell me how wrote: »

You don't have to get involved you know. You don't get it, you don't get it. No big deal. It's not like homework where you have to make an effort.

That's an A+ and a gold star for Tell me how

RhubarbCrumble

Ever since I did my leaving over 20 years ago, this has always been my favourite :

No Second Troy - WB Yeats

"Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?"

BuboBubo

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high oer vales and hills
When all at once I saw a crowd
Get off my fcukin daffodils.

banie01

RhubarbCrumble wrote: »

Ever since I did my leaving over 20 years ago, this has always been my favourite :

No Second Troy - WB Yeats

"Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?"

I was torn between this, or Childe Rolande to the Dark Tower came...
But no 2nd Troy is a masterpiece, it always strikes me as an ode to the havoc love can wreak, and yet leave you wanting more.

Cleopatra_

W.B. Yeats - When you are old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

indioblack

"The rain it raineth on the just,
and also on the unjust fella.
But mostly on the just because,
the unjust steals the just's umbrella."

bodice ripper

Another September
by Thomas Kinsella

Dreams fled away, this country bedroom, raw
With the touch of dawn, wrapped in a minor peace,
Hears through an open window the garden draw
Long pitch black breaths , lay bear its apple trees,
Ripe pear trees, brambles, windfall-sweethened soil,
Exhale rough sweetness against the starry slates.
Nearer the river sleeps St.Johns, 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 unyielding 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 the 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.

Pinch Flat

Her name was Honour,
She made me an offer,
And all night long,
I was on her an off her

The Princess Bride

My favourite.

DickSwiveller

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

My favourite Yeats poem is An Irish Airman foresees his Death. These lines I find particularly haunting:

"Nor law nor duty bade me fight,
nor public officials, nor cheering crowds,
a lonely impulse of delight drove to this tumult in the clouds"

Also love WH Auden's poem In Memory of Sigmund Freud

"to us he is no more a person
now but a whole climate of opinion
under whom we conduct our different lives".

Mrsmum

It Couldn't Be Done
By Edgar Guest

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done
But he with a chuckle replied
That "maybe it couldn't," but he would be one
Who wouldn't say so till he'd tried.
So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
On his face. If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it!

Somebody scoffed: "Oh, you’ll never do that;
At least no one ever has done it;"
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat
And the first thing we knew he'd begun it.
With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
Without any doubting or quiddit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn't be done, and he did it.

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure,
There are thousands to point out to you one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.
But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing
That "cannot be done," and you'll do it.

take everything

RhubarbCrumble wrote: »

Ever since I did my leaving over 20 years ago, this has always been my favourite :

No Second Troy - WB Yeats

"Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?"

I like Yeats as well.
He was a very interesting guy. Thought to possibly have Asperger's and got into mysticism later in life.
Always searching for some kind of meaning.

Purple Mountain

During my convent elocution days, they made us recite The Owl and the PussyCat.
I couldn't hide my giggles...'Oh lovely Pussy, oh Pussy my love, what a beautiful Pussy you are'..
All recited in dramatic effect style.

endacl

Pointy Birds

Pointy birds,
pointy, pointy.

Anoint my head,
anointy, nointy.

-John Lillison
(England's greatest one-armed poet)

Mrsmum

When all the others were away at Mass
Seamus Heaney

When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives –
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

DickSwiveller

Yeats 'Second Coming'

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

MonkieSocks

Robert Herrick – Fair Daffodils


Fair daffodils, we weep to see, you haste away so soon
As yet the early-rising sun, has not attained his noon

Stay, stay, until the hasting day has run but to the evensong;
And, having prayed together, we will go with you along.

We have short time to stay as you; we have as short as spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay, as you or anything.

We die as your hours do, and dry Away, Like to the summer’s rain;
Or as the pearls of morning’s dew, Ne’er to be found again

HappyAsLarE

Iniskeen Road by Paddy Kavanagh

The bicycles go by in twos and threes -
There's a dance in Billy Brennan's barn tonight,
And there's the half-talk code of mysteries
And the wink-and-elbow language of delight.
Half-past eight and there is not a spot
Upon a mile of road, no shadow thrown
That might turn out a man or woman, not
A footfall tapping secrecies of stone.

I have what every poet hates in spite
Of all the solemn talk of contemplation.
Oh, Alexander Selkirk knew the plight
Of being king and government and nation.
A road, a mile of kingdom. I am king
Of banks and stones and every blooming thing.

Spanish Eyes

For my mam. She lost her house, her health and her husband.

We look after her well though!

This is for her.

O, to have a little house!
To own the hearth and stool and all!
The heaped up sods against the fire,
The pile of turf against the wall!
To have a clock with weights and chains
And pendulum swinging up and down!
A dresser filled with shining delph,
Speckled and white and blue and brown!
I could be busy all the day
Clearing and sweeping hearth and floor,
And fixing on their shelf again
My white and blue and speckled store!
I could be quiet there at night
Beside the fire and by myself,
Sure of a bed and loth to leave
The ticking clock and the shining delph!
Och! but I'm weary of mist and dark,
And roads where there's never a house nor bush,
And tired I am of bog and road,
And the crying wind and the lonesome hush!
And I am praying to God on high,
And I am praying Him night and day,
For a little house - a house of my own
Out of the wind's and the rain's way.

Padraig Colum

Funkfield

Always thought this was pretty special

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

byronbay2

Pinch Flat wrote: »

Her name was Honour,
She made me an offer,
And all night long,
I was on her an off her

Not the way I was taught it for the LC:

She offered her honour
And I honoured her offer
All night long
I was on her and off her!

DickSwiveller

Lament for Brendan Behan by Joe O Broin

"Sad solemn notes and crates of newly drawn stout,
the usual symptoms when a life goes out.
But the extinction this time being seven times the most.
The music held no echo and the tears drowned our toast.
Sorrow and bereavement, life has no meaning now: silence is master.
Laughter and song bowed for gone went our great captain to some more hospitable inn
where cant and hypocrisy can no longer embarrass him."

For those interested, here's a clip of Ciarán Bourke reciting the poem on the Late Late.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3YPx1nZzCo

DickSwiveller

Funkfield wrote: »

Always thought this was pretty special

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

Fantastic

Mrsmum

Spanish Eyes wrote: »

For my mam. She lost her house, her health and her husband.

We look after her well though!

This is for her.

O, to have a little house!
To own the hearth and stool and all!
The heaped up sods against the fire,
The pile of turf against the wall!
To have a clock with weights and chains
And pendulum swinging up and down!
A dresser filled with shining delph,
Speckled and white and blue and brown!
I could be busy all the day
Clearing and sweeping hearth and floor,
And fixing on their shelf again
My white and blue and speckled store!
I could be quiet there at night
Beside the fire and by myself,
Sure of a bed and loth to leave
The ticking clock and the shining delph!
Och! but I'm weary of mist and dark,
And roads where there's never a house nor bush,
And tired I am of bog and road,
And the crying wind and the lonesome hush!
And I am praying to God on high,
And I am praying Him night and day,
For a little house - a house of my own
Out of the wind's and the rain's way.

Padraig Colum

That was a poem my granny loved. Thanks for reminding me of it.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

We should put you in jail
Where you can't kill or maim us
But this is L.A.
And you're rich and faaaay-mous....

Mam of 4

This is a brilliant thread , quite deep for AH if I'm honest , some fantastic , thought provoking poems .