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Your favourite poem?

  • 01-12-2011 03:13AM
    #1
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,921 ✭✭✭John Doe1


    Mine is 'acqauinted with the night' by Robert Frost with a close second being 'if' by kipling


«13456710

Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,801 ✭✭✭✭Kojak


    "I hope that one day I can see,
    My cataracts are blinding me"

    by

    Hans Moleman.


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


    Not really big in to poetry but I do like On Raglan Road. That's probably also to with Luke Kelly singing it. Love that man. RIP


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 946 ✭✭✭Hasmunch


    I once knew a man from Nantucket...


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,047 ✭✭✭Da Shins Kelly


    'The Second Coming' by Yeats.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,921 ✭✭✭John Doe1


    Not really big in to poetry but I do like On Raglan Road. That's probably also to with Luke Kelly singing it. Love that man. RIP

    Spine tingling rendition i have to say.:)


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 18,239 ✭✭✭✭WindSock


    The one about the dude who has soil on his shoes because he can't go to the dance and be merry like everyone else coz dey all m8s 4 eva nd he sad. nd pissed off coz d soil is all stoney and unfertile. like his bollix. like HIS FACE.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 617 ✭✭✭franklyon


    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 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: 5,385 ✭✭✭Duffy the Vampire Slayer


    Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art —
    Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
    And watching, with eternal lids apart,
    Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
    The moving waters at their priestlike task
    Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
    Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
    Of snow upon the mountains and the moors —
    No — yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
    Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
    To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,
    Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
    Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
    And so live ever — or else swoon to death.

    -John Keats


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 218 ✭✭ff9999


    Edgar Allan Poe: Annabel Lee.



    It was many and many a year ago,
    In a kingdom by the sea,
    That a maiden there lived whom you may know
    By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
    And this maiden she lived with no other thought
    Than to love and be loved by me.

    I was a child and she was a child,
    In this kingdom by the sea;
    But we loved with a love that was more than love-
    I and my Annabel Lee;
    With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
    Coveted her and me.

    And this was the reason that, long ago,
    In this kingdom by the sea,
    A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
    My beautiful Annabel Lee;
    So that her highborn kinsman came
    And bore her away from me,
    To shut her up in a sepulchre
    In this kingdom by the sea.

    The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
    Went envying her and me-
    Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
    In this kingdom by the sea)
    That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
    Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

    But our love it was stronger by far than the love
    Of those who were older than we-
    Of many far wiser than we-
    And neither the angels in heaven above,
    Nor the demons down under the sea,
    Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
    Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

    For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
    Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
    And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
    Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
    And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
    Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
    In the sepulchre there by the sea,
    In her tomb by the sounding sea.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,425 ✭✭✭guitarzero


    Its not "poetry" but just as heavy.

    You are the reason I don't want to die all the time
    When I am with you life is worth living
    Time away from you in strange and full of pain
    When I look into your eyes
    I can see how life has savaged you
    It's ok if you fall
    I will be there to catch you
    Anyone that would want to hurt you
    Would have to kill me to do it
    I will never be able to pound words into lines
    To match the velocity of your presence


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 150 ✭✭pmurphy00


    dun chaoin, paul durcan.
    love that poem.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,761 ✭✭✭chucken1


    John Doe1 wrote: »
    Mine is 'acqauinted with the night' by Robert Frost with a close second being 'if' by kipling

    Well thats no good?
    Quote the Poems so we can read them :)


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,938 ✭✭✭mackg


    WindSock wrote: »
    The one about the dude who has soil on his shoes because he can't go to the dance and be merry like everyone else coz dey all m8s 4 eva nd he sad. nd pissed off coz d soil is all stoney and unfertile. like his bollix. like HIS FACE.

    That description is quite poetic.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,761 ✭✭✭chucken1


    Mine is The Raven
    ..and Im not going to quote it ;)

    http://www.heise.de/ix/raven/Literature/Lore/TheRaven.html


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 12,622 Mod ✭✭✭✭Amirani


    http://ravendesign.ie/poems/the-tortoise/
    The tortoise goes movey, movey.

    Anonymous

    “This prize-winning poem was written by a schoolboy from the North of Ireland some years back. The competition was judged by poet Paul Muldoon, who is Professor of Creative Writing in Princeton University. It seems so simple and yet it’s fresh and inventive and memorable; it brings language alive. There were hundreds of entries and some people, teachers especially, were annoyed with Muldoon for giving first prize to a one-line poem. They argued that there were far more sophisticated entries and that there was no such word as “movey”. ‘Well, there is now,’ replied Muldoon. Every year Professor Muldoon asks his creative writing class at Princeton to describe something in one line and in a way that makes you see that thing in a new way. That is what this boy did when he wrote about the tortoise going m-o-v-e-y, m-o-v-e-y. The poem is best read aloud and very s-l-o-w-l-y.”


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,176 ✭✭✭Jess16


    This one 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.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 7,751 ✭✭✭Saila


    only things I remember from poetry in school is

    "two roads diverged in a yellow wood"

    so the two roads diverged in a yellow wood poem :p


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,980 ✭✭✭Dotrel


    Advent by Patrick Kavanagh. Pretty much sums up my attitude and state of mind.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 220 ✭✭EKClarke


    Down by the Salley Gardens by W.B. Yeats

    Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
    She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white
    feet.
    She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
    But I, being young and foolish, with her would not
    agree.

    In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
    And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white
    hand.
    She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
    But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,724 ✭✭✭The Scientician




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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 324 ✭✭Wereghost


    I've always liked Tolkien's The Man In The Moon Stayed Up Too Late for its freshness and energy.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,921 ✭✭✭John Doe1


    chucken1 wrote: »
    Well thats no good?
    Quote the Poems so we can read them :)

    Cool:D I found acqauinted with the night so affecting because it deals with depression and when i first read it while i was very depressed.

    I read if when i was like 10 and its always stuck with me




    I have been one acquainted with the night.
    I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
    I have outwalked the furthest city light.

    I have looked down the saddest city lane.
    I have passed by the watchman on his beat
    And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

    I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
    When far away an interrupted cry
    Came over houses from another street,

    But not to call me back or say good-bye;
    And further still at an unearthly height,
    O luminary clock against the sky

    Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
    I have been one acquainted with the night.



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


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,723 ✭✭✭nice_very


    2 posters just brought me wayyy back to my english class in school - I have been one aquainted with the night and : two roads diverged in a yellow wood (I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the diference)

    thanks to those 2 posters


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 843 ✭✭✭PrettyInPunk


    Desiderata:

    Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
    and remember what peace there may be in silence.

    As far as possible, without surrender,
    be on good terms with all persons.
    Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
    and listen to others,
    even to the dull and the ignorant;
    they too have their story.
    Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
    they are vexatious to the spirit.

    If you compare yourself with others,
    you may become vain or bitter,
    for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
    Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
    Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
    it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

    Exercise caution in your business affairs,
    for the world is full of trickery.
    But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
    many persons strive for high ideals,
    and everywhere life is full of heroism.
    Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
    Neither be cynical about love,
    for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
    it is as perennial as the grass.

    Take kindly the counsel of the years,
    gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
    Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
    But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
    Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

    Beyond a wholesome discipline,
    be gentle with yourself.
    You are a child of the universe
    no less than the trees and the stars;
    you have a right to be here.
    And whether or not it is clear to you,
    no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

    Therefore be at peace with God,
    whatever you conceive Him to be.
    And whatever your labors and aspirations,
    in the noisy confusion of life,
    keep peace in your soul.

    With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
    it is still a beautiful world.
    Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 42 LadyGardener


    'This Be The Verse' - Philip Larkin
    'Hope Is The Thing With Feathers' - Emily Oddball
    Anything by Morrissey. :D
    franklyon wrote: »
    Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney

    This poem will always hold a certain poignancy for me. I learned it in sixth class, and something similar had happened to my sixth class teacher in her college days. She was late 50s probably at this time. When she was away at college, her six year old brother was hit by a car and killed. It had been his first time to be allowed to walk the short distance from the house to the post office to post a letter for his mother. So off he went, proud as punch... :( Hard luck, I would imagine there were very few cars on a little country road in those days.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,772 ✭✭✭Lazarus2.0


    Couldn't decide between these two , merry old soul that I am :o


    Oberon
    Spike Milligan

    The flowers in my garden grow down.
    Their colour is pain
    Their fragrance sorrow.
    Into my eyes grow their roots
    feeling for tears
    To nourish the black
    hopeless rose
    within me.



    BALLAD
    Leonard Cohen

    My lady was found mutilated
    in a Mountain Street boarding house.
    My lady was a tall slender love,
    like one of Tennyson’s girls,
    and you always imagined her erect on
    a thoroughbred
    in someone’s private forest.

    But there she was,
    naked on an old bed, knife slashes
    cross her breasts, legs badly cut up:
    Dead two days.
    They promised me an early conviction.

    We will eavesdrop on the adolescents
    examining pocket-book covers in
    drugstores.
    We will note the broadest smiles at
    torture scenes
    in movie houses.
    We will watch the old men in Dominion
    Square
    follow with their eyes
    the secretaries from the Sun Life at
    five-thirty...

    Perhaps the tabloids alarmed him.
    Whoever he was the young man came
    alone
    to see the frightened blonde have
    her blouse
    ripped away by anonymous hands;
    the person guarded his mouth
    who saw the poker blacken the
    eyes
    of the Roman prisoner;
    the old man pretended to wind his
    pocket-watch..

    The man was never discovered.
    There are so many cities!
    So many knew of my lady and her
    beauty.
    Perhaps he came from Toronto, a halfcrazed
    man
    looking for some Sunday love;
    or a vicious poet stranded too long in
    Winnipeg;
    or a Nova Scotian fleeing from the
    rocks and preachers...

    Everyone knew my lady
    from the movies and art-galleries,
    Body from Goldwyn.
    Botticelli had
    drawn her long limbs.
    Rosetti the full mouth.
    Ingres had coloured her skin.
    She should not have walked so
    bravely
    through the streets.
    After all, that was the Marian year, the
    year
    the rabbis emerged from their desert
    exile, the year
    the people were inflamed by
    tooth-paste ads.

    We buried her in Spring-time.
    The sparrows in the air
    wept that we should hide with earth
    the face of one so fair.
    The flowers they were roses
    and such sweet fragrance gave
    that all my friends were lovers
    and we danced upon her grave.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 407 ✭✭CliffHuxtabel


    "There once was a man named Weenis...."


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,036 ✭✭✭cocoshovel


    franklyon wrote: »
    Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney

    I hate that stupid poem. We were taught that every single year by the same thicko teacher in Secondary school. Drove our heads in.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,510 ✭✭✭Ellis Dee


    The more I look around me, the more this one by Clarke Van Ness appeals to me:



    'Twas an evening in October, I'll confess I wasn't sober,
    I was carting home a load with manly pride,
    When my feet began to stutter and I fell into the gutter,
    And a pig came up and lay down by my side.
    Then I lay there in the gutter and my heart was all a-flutter,
    Till a lady, passing by, did chance to say:
    "You can tell a man that boozes by the company he chooses,"
    Then the pig got up and slowly walked away.


    Then I heard a gentle mooing, it was like a pigeon cooing,
    As a home returning cow stopped in her stride,
    And her eyes were big and gentle; her expression sentimental,
    As she curtsied low and sat down by my side.
    Then I saw her eyelids flutter and a tear fell in the gutter,
    As the owner of the cow did loudly say:
    "Leave that brute this moment, Sonja, or your milk will curdle on ya,"
    Then the cow got up and slowly walked away.


    Then the moon began to shine in that old gutter I reclined in,
    Thinking of the weakness of the human race,
    When a dog sat down beside me, and I thought he came to chide me,
    Till he gently licked the stubble on my face.
    In the gutter, still reclining, I began "Sweet Adeline-ing,"
    While the dog raised up his head to loudly bay;
    Then his mistress said, "Come, Fido, that disgusting man may bite you,"
    Then the dog got up and slowly walked away.


    Down the street there came a clatter, and a gentle pitter-patter,
    As a pair of goats along the gutter ran;
    And it seemed that Billy knew me, for he quickly drew up to me,
    While his wife munched on an empty sardine can.
    Then again my pulse did flutter, and my heart was soft as butter;
    Till the Nanny goat, unto her mate, did say:
    "William dear, your social status don't include men such as that is,"
    Then the goat got up and slowly walked away.


    Now lately I've been thinking that I will quit my drinking.
    I'm going to leave off whiskey, beer and grog,
    For there's no consolation, but only aggravation,
    You can't even find friendship with a hog.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,531 ✭✭✭Little Acorn


    I used to love poetry in secondary school. I only have one poetry book now though as an adult. Don't really have a favourite I think, will just post a few that I still like and can remember of the top of my head. One is from this film:

    Funeral Blues: WH Auden


    and..

    A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford: Derek Mahon

    http://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=a%20disused%20shed%20in%20co.%20wexford&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBoQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thepoem.co.uk%2Fpoems%2Fmahon.htm&ei=9SDXTp21BZKwhAfQhJipDg&usg=AFQjCNHUW4rcwLowPNyybnQBFW4VyfMgxg

    Even now there are places where a thought might grow —
    Peruvian mines, worked out and abandoned
    To a slow clock of condensation,
    An echo trapped forever, and a flutter
    Of wildflowers in the lift-shaft,
    Indian compounds where the wind dances
    And a door bangs with diminished confidence,
    Lime crevices behind rippling rainbarrels,
    Dog corners for bone burials;
    And a disused shed in Co. Wexford,

    Deep in the grounds of a burnt-out hotel,
    Among the bathtubs and the washbasins
    A thousand mushrooms crowd to a keyhole.
    This is the one star in their firmament
    Or frames a star within a star.
    What should they do there but desire?
    So many days beyond the rhododendrons
    With the world waltzing in its bowl of cloud,
    They have learnt patience and silence
    Listening to the rooks querulous in the high wood.

    They have been waiting for us in a foetor
    Of vegetable sweat since civil war days,
    Since the gravel-crunching, interminable departure
    of the expropriated mycologist.
    He never came back, and light since then
    Is a keyhole rusting gently after rain.
    Spiders have spun, flies dusted to mildew
    And once a day, perhaps, they have heard something —
    A trickle of masonry, a shout from the blue
    Or a lorry changing gear at the end of the lane.

    There have been deaths, the pale flesh flaking
    Into the earth that nourished it;
    And nightmares, born of these and the grim
    Dominion of stale air and rank moisture.
    Those nearest the door growing strong —
    'Elbow room! Elbow room!'
    The rest, dim in a twilight of crumbling
    Utensils and broken flower-pots, groaning
    For their deliverance, have been so long
    Expectant that there is left only the posture.

    A half century, without visitors, in the dark —
    Poor preparation for the cracking lock
    And creak of hinges. Magi, moonmen,
    Powdery prisoners of the old regime,
    Web-throated, stalked like triffids, racked by drought
    And insomnia, only the ghost of a scream
    At the flashbulb firing squad we wake them with
    Shows there is life yet in their feverish forms.
    Grown beyond nature now, soft food for worms,
    They lift frail heads in gravity and good faith.

    They are begging us, you see, in their wordless way,
    To do something, to speak on their behalf
    Or at least not to close the door again.
    Lost people of Treblinka and Pompeii!
    'Save us, save us,' they seem to say,
    'Let the god not abandon us
    Who have come so far in darkness and in pain.
    We too had our lives to live.
    You with your light meter and relaxed itinerary,
    Let not our naive labours have been in vain!'


    I felt a funeral in my brain: Emily Dickinson
    http://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=i%20felt%20a%20funeral%20in%20my%20brain&source=web&cd=2&sqi=2&ved=0CC0QFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.poets.org%2Fviewmedia.php%2FprmMID%2F15391&ei=oCnXTsCqGYqphAfpqbXIDg&usg=AFQjCNGKG3X-3txA0ghGDxyPALn6-qWDnQ

    Hope is the thing with feathers; Emily Dickinson
    http://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=emily%20dickinson%20hope%20is%20the%20thing%20with%20feathers&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Facademic.brooklyn.cuny.edu%2Fenglish%2Fmelani%2Fcs6%2Fhope.html&ei=qSzXTqb0BcmxhAeTtKmxDg&usg=AFQjCNHpbIYunLK-kPw4zyhobWk3mmsssQ

    Child: Sylvia Plath
    http://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=sylvia%20plath%20child&source=web&cd=2&sqi=2&ved=0CCcQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.breakoutofthebox.com%2Fchild.htm&ei=PirXTp7SOIOphAfWlYDBDg&usg=AFQjCNGQ4XaGwaNRJwxC3zY6LDUs1ZF6sQ


    The Arrival of the Bee Box: Sylvia Plath
    http://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=the%20arrival%20of%20the%20bee%20box&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBkQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.angelfire.com%2Ftn%2Fplath%2Farrival.html&ei=birXTrD1DsWEhQfDt_3RDg&usg=AFQjCNE79ev85rCW3drklbEMu3NicgK3zQ

    Morning Song: Sylvia Plath
    http://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=sylvia%20plath%20morning%20song%20&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.internal.org%2FSylvia_Plath%2FMorning_Song&ei=4y7XTvWcJI6ChQeO8vjUDg&usg=AFQjCNGv2nOR4p75e1uIyQrpzE7-9GRlMg


    A short little poem that I loved as a child:
    The Germ: Ogden Nash :)
    'The Germ'

    A mighty creature is the germ,
    Though smaller than the pachyderm.
    His customary dwelling place
    Is deep within the human race.
    His childish pride he often pleases
    By giving people strange diseases.
    Do you, my popet, feel infirm?
    You probably contain a germ.


    There's loads more I loved, might post some of them later.:)
    I should really start reading more poetry again.


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