Your favourite poems that you learned at school

buzsywuzsy · 01-03-2011 06:53PM

Homework! Oh, Homework!

Homework! Oh, Homework!
I hate you! You stink!
I wish I could wash you away in the sink,
if only a bomb
would explode you to bits.

Homework! Oh, homework!
You're giving me fits.

I'd rather take baths
with a man-eating shark,
or wrestle a lion
alone in the dark,
eat spinach and liver,
pet ten porcupines,
than tackle the homework,
my teacher assigns.

Homework! Oh, homework!
you're last on my list,
I simple can't see
why you even exist,
if you just disappeared
it would tickle me pink.
Homework! Oh, homework!
I hate you! You stink!
Jack Prelutsky

Learned that in 4th class

pinkheels88 · 01-03-2011 07:41PM

The Sunne Rising

B[SIZE=-1]USY[/SIZE] old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run ?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices ;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams so reverend, and strong
Why shouldst thou think ?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long.
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and to-morrow late tell me,
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, "All here in one bed lay."

She's all states, and all princes I ;
Nothing else is ;
Princes do but play us ; compared to this,
All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world's contracted thus ;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere ;
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.

John Donne

Getting the snippet in bold tattooed down my side this weekend.

this poem!

Regina Phalange · 01-03-2011 08:26PM

Oh LC 2005

Last Request
Your batman thought you were buried alive,
Left you for dead and stole your pocket watch
And cigarette case, all he could salvage
From the grave you so nearly had to share
With an unexploded shell. But your lungs
Surfaced to take a long remembered drag,
Heart contradicting as an epitaph
The two initials you had scratched on gold.

II

I thought you blew a kiss before you died,
But the bony fingers that waved to and fro
Were asking for a Woodbine, the last request
Of many soldiers in your company,
The brand you chose to smoke for forty years
Thoughtfully, each one like a sacrament.
I who bought peppermints and grapes only
Couldn't reach you through the oxygen tent.

Michael Longley

Also LOVED Midterm Break by Heaney

SpudBr · 22-09-2017 09:17PM

A Poem I always found very hard to memorise was called "Fleas"

Adam,
H'adm!.

SpudBr · 22-09-2017 09:21PM

I think the poem which has the honour of being the most simply written is "the Lake Isle of Innisfree", but yet it is so peaceful and it is really beautiful .

branie2 · 22-09-2017 10:22PM

Paradise Lost - Book 1, by John Milton

nolo1 · 02-10-2017 03:41PM

I recently discovered the following poem by Michael Hartnett. I love it!

ON THOSE WHO STOLE OUR CAT, A CURSE

On those who stole our cat, a curse:
may they always have an empty purse
and need a doctor and a nurse
prematurely;
may their next car be a big black hearse –
oh may it, surely!

May all their kids come down with mange,
their eldest daughter start acting strange,
and the wife start riding the range
(and I don’t mean the Aga);
when she begins to go through the change
may she go gaga.

And may the husband lose his job
and have great trouble with his knob
and the son turn out a yob
and smash the place up;
may he give his da a belt in the gob
and mess his face up!

And may the granny end up in jail
for opening her neighbours’ mail,
may all that clan moan, weep and wail,
turn grey and wizened
on the day she doesn’t get bail
but Mountjoy Prison!

Oh may their daughter get up the pole,
and their drunken uncle lose his dole,
for our poor cat one day they stole –
may they rue it!
and if there is a black hell-hole
may they go through it!

Unfriendly loan-sharks to their door
as they beg for one week more;
may the seven curses of Inchicore
rot and blight ’em!
May all their enemies settle the score
and kick the ****e of ’em!

I wish rabies on all their pets,
I wish them a flock of bastard gets,
I wish ’em a load of unpayable debts,
TV Inspectors –
to show’em a poet never forgets
his malefactors.

May rats and mice them ever hound,
may half of them be of mind unsound,
may their house burn down to the ground
and no insurance;
may drugs and thugs their lives surround
beyond endurance!

May God forgive the heartless thief
who caused our household so much grief;
if you think I’m harsh, sigh with relief –
I haven’t even started.
I can do worse. I am, in brief,
yours truly, Michael Hartnett

7 Seconds... · 02-10-2017 05:17PM

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

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.

W.B.Yeats

I may have the title wrong, but this is my favorite & to be honest the only one I really remember from school, I loved it then and I love it now.

meekamouse · 02-10-2017 05:27PM

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

02-10-2017 05:41PM

Another Yeats one. He was a genius.

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Cee-Jay-Cee · 02-10-2017 05:48PM

Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I'll draw a sketch of thee,
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B?

Spike Milligan.

DaeryssaOne · 03-10-2017 10:54AM

Sylvia Plath has to be one of my favourites, although I always have a soft spot for Heaney & Yeats before anyone else. I don't think her poem Morning Song has been mentioned yet, I just find it so vivid and vulnerable, not a mother myself but feel it captures it perfectly:

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I’m no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

outsourced_ire · 03-10-2017 06:12PM

The Black Lace Fan My Mother Gave Me, by Eavan Boland.

I learned this poem in school for my leaving cert. My English teacher and I didn't quite see eye to eye, and so I couldn't bring myself to like anything she taught. It wasn't really until years later that I admitted to myself that I liked it.

It was the first gift he ever gave her,
buying it for five francs in the Galeries
in pre-war Paris. It was stifling.
A starless drought made the nights stormy.

They stayed in the city for the summer.
They met in cafés. She was always early.
He was late. That evening he was later.
They wrapped the fan. He looked at his watch.

She looked down the Boulevard des Capucines.
She ordered more coffee. She stood up.
The streets were emptying. The heat was killing.
She thought the distance smelled of rain and lightning.

These are wild roses, appliquéd on silk by hand,
darkly picked, stitched boldly, quickly.
The rest is tortoiseshell and has the reticent,
clear patience of its element. It is

a worn-out, underwater bullion and it keeps,
even now, an inference of its violation.
The lace is overcast as if the weather
it opened for and offset had entered it.

The past is an empty café terrace.
An airless dusk before thunder. A man running.
And no way to know what happened then —
none at all — unless, of course, you improvise:

The blackbird on this first sultry morning,
in summer, finding buds, worms, fruit,
feels the heat. Suddenly she puts out her wing —
the whole, full, flirtatious span of it.

Rubberlegs · 03-10-2017 06:37PM

Whales have calves,
Cats have kittens,
Bears have cubs,
Bats have bittens,
Swans have cygnets,
Seals have puppies,
But guppies just have little guppies

By Ogden Nash, it was in some primary school book back in the 80s

gerreilly · 03-06-2024 08:19PM

I learned this poem in National school.

Quantum Erasure · 03-06-2024 09:34PM

I was six when I first saw kittens drown.
Dan Taggart pitched them, 'the scraggy wee §hits',
Into a bucket; a frail metal sound,
Soft paws scraping like mad. But their tiny din
Was soon soused. They were slung on the snout
Of the pump and the water pumped in.
'Sure, isn't it better for them now?' Dan said.
Like wet gloves they bobbed and shone till he sluiced
Them out on the dunghill, glossy and dead.
Suddenly frightened, for days I sadly hung
Round the yard, watching the three sogged remains
Turn mealy and crisp as old summer dung
Until I forgot them. But the fear came back
When Dan trapped big rats, snared rabbits, shot crows
Or, with a sickening tug, pulled old hens' necks.
Still, living displaces false sentiments
And now, when shrill pups are prodded to drown
I just shrug, 'Bloody pups'. It makes sense:
'Prevention of cruelty' talk cuts ice in town
Where they consider death unnatural
But on well-run farms pests have to be kept down.

cj maxx · 03-06-2024 10:14PM

Emily Dickinson

I am Nobody

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

04-06-2024 09:26PM

Like Dolmens Round my Childhood, the Old People

Like dolmens round my childhood, the old people.
Jamie MacCrystal sang to himself
A broken song without tune, without words;
He tipped me a penny every pension day,
Fed kindly crusts to winter birds.
When he died, his cottage was robbed,
Mattress and money box torn and searched.
Only the corpse they didn't disturb.
Maggie Owens was surrounded by animals,
A mongrel bitch and shivering pups,
Even in her bedroom a she-goat cried.
She was a well of gossip defiled,
Fanged chronicler of a whole countryside:
Reputed a witch, all I could find
Was her lonely need to deride.
The Nialls lived along a mountain lane
Where heather bells bloomed, clumps of foxglove.
All were blind, with Blind Pension and Wireless,
Dead eyes serpent flicked as one entered
To shelter from a downpour of mountain rain.
Crickets chirped under the rocking hearthstone
Until the muddy sun shone out again.
Mary Moore live

Mary Moore lived in a crumbling gatehouse,
Famous as Pisa for its leaning gable,
Bag-apron and boots, she tramped the fields
Driving lean cattle from a miry stable.
A by-word for fierceness, she fell asleep
Over love stories, Red Star and Red Circle,
Dreamed of gypsy love rites, by firelight sealed.
Curate and doctor trudged to attend them,
Through knee-deep snow, through summer heat,
From main road to lane to broken path,
Gulping the mountain air with painful breath.
Sometimes they were found by neighbours,
Silent keepers of a smokeless hearth,
Suddenly cast in the mould of death.
Ancient Ireland, indeed! I was reared by her bedside,

I love it for its unsentimental view of rural life.

Your favourite poems that you learned at school

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