The Best Poem - What do you Think?

[quddusaliquddus]

"If a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she is blind, she is not invisible.--Essays OF Fortune {Fortune is painted blind, with a muffler afore her eyes, to signify to you that Fortune is blind." --Shakespeare, Henry V, act III, sc.vi,}

 

[honestrosewater]

"If a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she is blind, she is not invisible.--Essays OF Fortune {Fortune is painted blind, with a muffler afore her eyes, to signify to you that Fortune is blind." --Shakespeare, Henry V, act III, sc.vi,}

And? Shakespeare read and was read. Shakespeare inspired and was inspired. It could also be a coincidence.
That sort of thing happened all the time. Why is Samuel Daniel not up for the prize? Read some of Daniel's sonnets and note the similarities.
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/%7Erbear/delia.html

One that leaps out is:
Sonnet 39
When winter snows upon thy sable hairs,
And frost of age hath nipt thy beauties near;
When dark shall seem thy day that never clears,
And all lies withered that was held so dear:
Then take this picture which I here present thee,
Limned with a pencil that's not all unworthy:
Here see the gifts that God and Nature lent thee;
Here read thyself, and what I suffer'd for thee.
This may remain thy lasting monument,
Which happily posterity may cherish;
These colours with thy fading are not spent,
These may remain, when thou and I shall perish.
If they remain, then thou shalt live thereby:
They will remain, and so thou canst not die.

Compare with Shakespeare's
Sonnet 2
When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

And Sonnet 17
Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?
Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say 'This poet lies:
Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'
So should my papers yellow'd with their age
Be scorn'd like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage
And stretched metre of an antique song:
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice; in it and in my rhyme.

And several more. Of course, I don't really think there is much comparison to make- they are slightly similar in that they use some of the same words and ideas. Anyway, this is the best I can do on short notice, perhaps you should start another thread ;)
Happy thoughts
Rachel

 

[Trogdor]

"Let's see. I guess it would have to start with the scissors. A man? Hands, scissors? No, scissor hands..." Eward Scissorhands

 

[Chrono]

What's the one that starts off with "There once was a girl from Nantucket."

Well, here's one I thought was pretty cool.

Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?
by Thomas Hardy

"Ah, are you digging on my grave,
My loved one? -- planting rue?"
-- "No: yesterday he went to wed
One of the brightest wealth has bred.
'It cannot hurt her now,' he said,
'That I should not be true.'"

"Then who is digging on my grave,
My nearest dearest kin?"
-- "Ah, no: they sit and think, 'What use!
What good will planting flowers produce?
No tendance of her mound can loose
Her spirit from Death's gin.'"

"But someone digs upon my grave?
My enemy? -- prodding sly?"
-- "Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate
That shuts on all flesh soon or late,
She thought you no more worth her hate,
And cares not where you lie.

"Then, who is digging on my grave?
Say -- since I have not guessed!"
-- "O it is I, my mistress dear,
Your little dog , who still lives near,
And much I hope my movements here
Have not disturbed your rest?"

"Ah yes! You dig upon my grave...
Why flashed it not to me
That one true heart was left behind!
What feeling do we ever find
To equal among human kind
A dog's fidelity!"

"Mistress, I dug upon your grave
To bury a bone, in case
I should be hungry near this spot
When passing on my daily trot.
I am sorry, but I quite forgot
It was your resting place."

 

[quddusaliquddus]

Lol...cool rhyimng...keeps u on ur toes :D

 

[sandinmyears]

Here's another one of my favorites:

Ballad of Birmingham
(1969)
(On the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963)

"Mother dear, may I go downtown
Instead of out to play,
And march the streets of Birmingham
In a Freedom March today?"

"No, baby, no, you may not go,
For the dogs are fierce and wild,
And clubs and hoses, guns and jails
Aren't good for a little child."

"But, mother, I won't be alone.
Other children will go with me,
And march the streets of Birmingham
To make our country free."

"No, baby, no, you may not go,
For I fear those guns will fire.
But you may go to church instead
And sing in the children's choir."

She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair,
And bathed rose petal sweet,
And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands,
And white shoes on her feet.

The mother smiled to know that her child
Was in the sacred place,
But that smile was the last smile
To come upon her face.

For when she heard the explosion,
Her eyes grew wet and wild.
She raced through the streets of Birmingham
Calling for her child.

She clawed through bits of glass and brick,
Then lifted out a shoe.
"O, here's the shoe my baby wore,
But, baby, where are you?"

 

[honestrosewater]

And the KKK is still alive and well?

 

[Shahil]

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
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.

http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?prmID=1369

WB Yeats "The Second Coming"

Brilliant poem! It's at the front of Chinua Achebe's book "Things Fall Apart."
Good book as well!

I also love the The Love Song of J Alfred Prufock by TS Eliot. It's long but amazing.

quddusaliquddus, I will be back here! Can't think right now.

Oh e e cummings is also quite amazing!

 

[quddusaliquddus]

Shahil, that sounds anarchic! Ok, think later then - come back n post... :D

 

[quddusaliquddus]

And? Shakespeare read and was read. Shakespeare inspired and was inspired. It could also be a coincidence.
That sort of thing happened all the time. Why is Samuel Daniel not up for the prize? Read some of Daniel's sonnets and note the similarities.
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/%7Erbear/delia.html

One that leaps out is:
Sonnet 39
When winter snows upon thy sable hairs,
And frost of age hath nipt thy beauties near;
When dark shall seem thy day that never clears,
And all lies withered that was held so dear:
Then take this picture which I here present thee,
Limned with a pencil that's not all unworthy:
Here see the gifts that God and Nature lent thee;
Here read thyself, and what I suffer'd for thee.
This may remain thy lasting monument,
Which happily posterity may cherish;
These colours with thy fading are not spent,
These may remain, when thou and I shall perish.
If they remain, then thou shalt live thereby:
They will remain, and so thou canst not die.

Compare with Shakespeare's
Sonnet 2
When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

And Sonnet 17
Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?
Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say 'This poet lies:
Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'
So should my papers yellow'd with their age
Be scorn'd like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage
And stretched metre of an antique song:
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice; in it and in my rhyme.

And several more. Of course, I don't really think there is much comparison to make- they are slightly similar in that they use some of the same words and ideas. Anyway, this is the best I can do on short notice, perhaps you should start another thread ;)
Happy thoughts
Rachel

I agree, it's a rather contentious issue and not within the scope or topic of this thread. Consider yourself invited to it

 

[quddusaliquddus]

'Come, fellow, follow us for thy reward'

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=27541

[Discussion on authroship of Shakespeare's works]

This'll be the last mention of the issue of authorship on this thread (I hope). Let's get with the poems :D

 

[Shahil]

Here's TWO links to the same poem.

http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?prmID=1184
http://plagiarist.com/poetry/270/

Wasn't sure about how it would look when I quoted it!
It's Grass hopper by e.e. cummings

r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r
who
a)s w(e loo)k
upnowgath
PPEGORHRASS
eringint(o-
aThe):l
eA
!p:
S a
(r
rIvInG .gRrEaPsPhOs)
to
rea(be)rran(com)gi(e)ngly
,grasshopper;

It's quite good innit?

 

[0TheSwerve0]

Becoming a Nun

For Jennifer Josephy

On cold days
it is easy to be reasonable,
to button the mouth against kisses,
dust the breasts
with talcum powder
& forget
the red pulp meat
of the heart.

On those days
it beats
like a digital clock--
not a beat at all
but a steady whirring
chilly as green neon,
luminous as numerals in the dark,
cool as electricity.

& I think:
I can live without it all--
love with its blood pump,
sex with its messy hungers,
men with their peacock strutting,
their silly sexual baggage,
their wet tongues in my ear
& their words like little sugar suckers
with sour centers.

On such days
I am zipped in my body suit,
I am wearing seven league red suede boots,
I am marching over the cobblestones
as if they were the heads of men,

& I am happy
as a seven-year-old virgin
holding Daddy's hand.

Don't touch.
Don't try to tempt me with your ripe persimmons.
Don't threaten me with your volcano.
The sky is clearer when I'm not in heat,
& the poems
are colder.

 

[Hypercase]

Dulce et Decorum Est

Dulce et Decorum Est
by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest 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 hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! -An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime. -
Dim through the misty panes 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, 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,
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.


*the last two lines mean "it is sweet and right to die for ones country".
the poet was a soldier who fought in ww1, who showed much bravery in battle and died a few days before the end of the war.

 

[Brennen]

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. Written 1306-1321, I am sure someone would have heard of it. There are many different translations as it was originally written in Tuscan. A true epic. Auguste Rodin's sculpture "The Thinker" was Dante in front of the Gates of Hell, pondering his great poem. I would also suggest not giving up on it entirely, there are several translations and if you read one and do not enjoy it, chances are it's not your ideal translation. To get the best perspective on Dante (short of reading the work in Italian) it's helpful to read both a prose and a poetic translation.

http://www.italianstudies.org/hui235/altieri1.htm

that site contains much infortmation on the many translations, as well as many different translations of the same verse.

The Commedia's first tercet, perhaps the most recited in western literature, sets the tone for Dante's entire poem. It is an end-stopped tercet with two extremely important rhyme words, vita 'life' and smarrita 'lost', which De Sua calls "opposing semantic spheres" (De Sua).

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
ché la via diritta era smarrita.

[In the middle of our life's walk
I found myself in a dark wood
for the straight road was lost]

Dante's Inferno: Canto V: Line 121: “No Greater Grief Than To Remember Days Of Joy When Misery Is At Hand"

Closing words of Paradiso Canto xxxiii, and The Divine Comedy:
"My desire and will were moved already—like a wheel revolving uniformly—by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars"

 

[Gokul43201]

Some of my favorites :

Ulysses - Tennison (especially the ending)
Where the Mind is Without Fear - Tagore
She Walks in Beauty - Byron
If - Kipling

On the lighter side :

Inchcape Rock - Southey
The Walrus and the Carpenter - Lewis Caroll
Macavity, the Mystery Cat - Elliott

 

[Brennen]

Has anybody here read The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri?

 

[Gokul43201]

Has anybody here read The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri?

Some of it. And several times over. But never did get very far...

 

[Brennen]

yeh, i find the longfellow translation specifically can get rather tedious. I am very tempted to learn the original Tuscan it was written in, so i can read it the way it was meant to be read. i guess i'll have to settl for reading lots of translations of it.

p.s. I am specifically interested because apparently it's possible my family are descendant. its hard to be sure because, you know, 700 years ago, but from what my family knows its possible. i guess i'll never know. besides, i think the work is amazing.

 

[Tigers2B1]

I’ve already posted this one in another thread but I’ll post it here since it’s now actually on topic. This is my favorite -

Death of a Son (who died in a mental hospital aged one), By Jon Silkin

Something has ceased to come along with me.
Something like a person: something very like one.
And there was no nobility in it
Or anything like that.

Something was there like a one year
Old house, dumb as stone. While the near buildings
Sang like birds and laughed
Understanding the pact

They were to have with silence. But he
Neither sang nor laughed. He did not bless silence
Like bread, with words.
He did not forsake silence.

But rather, like a house in mourning
Kept the eye turned into watch the silence while
The other houses like birds
Sang around him.

And the breathing silence neither
Moved nor was still.

I have seen stones: I have seen brick
But this house was made up of neither bricks nor stone
But a house of flesh and blood
With flesh of stone

And bricks for blood. A house
Of stones and blood in breathing silence with the other
Birds singing crazy on its chimneys.
But this was silence,

This was something else, this was
Hearing and speaking though he was a house drawn
Into silence, this was
Something religious in his silence,

Something shining in his quiet,
This was different this was altogether something else:
Though he never spoke, this
Was something to do with death.

And then slowly the eye stopped looking
Inward. The silence rose and became still.
The look turned to the outer place and stopped,
With the birds still shrilling around him.
And as if he could speak

He turned over on his side with his one year
Red as a wound
He turned over as if he could be sorry for this
And out of his eyes two great tears rolled, like stones,
and he died.

 

[Tigers2B1]

"Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

 

[Tigers2B1]

Note the last few lines of this poem :)

"Lobsters," by Howard Nemerov

Here at the Super Duper, in a glass tank
Supplied by a rill of cold fresh water
Running down a glass washboard at one end
And siphoned off at the other, and so
Perpetually renewed, a herd of lobster
Is made available to the customer
Who may choose whichever one he wants
to carry home and drop into boiling water
And serve with a sauce of melted butter.
Meanwhile, the beauty of strangeness marks
These creatures, who move (when they do)
With a slow, vague wavering of claws,
The somnambulist's effortless clambering
As he crawls over the shell of a dream
Resembling himself. Their velvet colors,
Mud red, bruise purple, cadaver green
Speckled with black, their camouflage at home,
Make them conspicuous here in the strong
Day-imitating light, the incommensurable
Philosophers and at the same time victims
Herded together in the marketplace, asleep
Except for certain tentative gestures
Of their antennae, or their imperial claws
Pegged shut with a whittled stick at the wrist.
We inlanders, buying our needful food,
Pause over these slow, gigantic spiders
That spin not. We pause and are bemused,
And sometimes it happens that a mind sinks down
to the blind abyss in a swirl of sand, goes cold
And archaic in a carapace of horn,
Thinking: There's something underneath the world.
The flame beneath the pot that boils the water.

 

[Tigers2B1]

The Buried Life by Matthew Arnold

Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,
Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!
I feel a nameless sadness o'er me roll.
Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,
We know, we know that we can smile!
But there's a something in this breast,
To which thy light words bring no rest,
And thy gay smiles no anodyne.
Give me thy hand, and hush awhile,
And turn those limpid eyes on mine,
And let me read there, love! thy inmost soul.

Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Are even lovers powerless to reveal
To one another what indeed they feel?
I knew the mass of men conceal'd
Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal'd
They would by other men be met
With blank indifference, or with blame reproved;
I knew they lived and moved
Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest
Of men, and alien to themselves--and yet
The same heart beats in every human breast!

But we, my love!--doth a like spell benumb
Our hearts, our voices?--must we too be dumb?

Ah! well for us, even we,
Even for a moment, can get free
Our heart, and have our lips unchain'd;
For that which seals them hath been deep-ordain'd!

Fate, which forsaw
How frivolous a baby man would be--
By what distractions he would be possess'd,
How he would pour himself in every strife,
And well-nigh change his own identity--
That it might keep from his capricious play
His genuine self, and force him to obey
Even in his own despite his being's law,
Bade through the deep recesses of our breast
The unregarded river of our life
Pursue with indiscernible flow its way;
And that we should not see
The buried stream, and seem to be
Eddying at large in blind uncertainty,
Though driving on with it eternally.

But often, in the world's most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us--to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.
And many a man in his own breast then delves,
But deep enough, alas! none ever mines.
And wehave been on many thousand lines,
And we have shown, on each, spirit and power;
But hardly have we, for one little hour,
Been on our own line, have we been ourselves--
Hardly had skill to utter one at all
The nameless feelings that course through our breast,
But they course of for ever unexpress'd.
And long we try in vain to speak and act
Our hidden self, and what we say and do
Is eloquent, is well--but t'is not true!
And then we will no more be rack'd
With inward striving, and demand
Of all the thousand nothings of the hour
Their stupefying power,
Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call!
Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn,
From the soul's subterranean depth upborne
As from an infinitely distant land,
Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey
A melancholy into all our day.
Only--but this is rare--
When a beloved hand is laid in ours,
When, jaded with the rush and glare
Of the interminable hours,
Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear,
When our world-deafen'd ear
Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd--
A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.
The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,
And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.
A man becomes aware of his life's flow,
And hears its winding murmur, and he sees
The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.

And there arrives a lull in the hot race
Wherein he doth for ever chase
That flying and elusive shadow, rest.
An air of coolness plays upon his face,
And an unwonted calm prevades his breast.
And then he thinks he knows
The hills where his life rose,
And the sea where it goes.

 

[Tigers2B1]

Two poems by Dorothy Parker

Interior

Her mind lives in a quiet room,
A narrow room, and tall,
With pretty lamps to quench the gloom
And mottoes on the wall.

There all the things are waxen neat
And set in decorous lines;
And there are posies, round and sweet,
And little, straightened vines.

Her mind lives tidily, apart
From cold and noise and pain,
And bolts the door against her heart,
Out wailing in the rain.
-----

Godmother

The day that I was christened-
It's a hundred years, and more!-
A hag came and listened
At the white church door,
A-hearing her that bore me
And all my kith and kin
Considerately, for me,
Renouncing sin.
While some gave me corals,
And some gave me gold,
And porringers, with morals
Agreeably scrolled,
The hag stood, buckled
In a dim gray cloak;
Stood there and chuckled,
Spat, and spoke:
"There's few enough in life'll
Be needing my help,
But I've got a trifle
For your fine young whelp.
I give her sadness,
And the gift of pain,
The new-moon madness,
And the love of rain."
And little good to lave me
In their holy silver bowl
After what she gave me-
Rest her soul!

 

[Tigers2B1]

This one is nice in some quite causal way -

"If I should learn, in some quite casual way" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

If I should learn, in some quite casual way,
That you were gone, not to return again--
Read from the back-page of a paper, say,
Held by a neighbor in a subway train,
How at the corner of this avenue
And such a street (so are the papers filled)
A hurrying man--who happened to be you--
At noon to-day had happened to be killed,
I should not cry aloud--I could not cry
Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place--
I should but watch the station lights rush by
With a more careful interest on my face,
Or raise my eyes and read with greater care
Where to store furs and how to treat the hair.

 

[Entropy]

Not into much poety, but I'd have to go with The Raven.

 

[marcus]

"Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

this of mary oliver is so nice I have to go find another of hers to put with it.
I am thinking of "hummingbird stops by a trumpet vine" or some such title. You probably know it. Having two will show to what extent you chose best.

Mary Oliver
Hummingbird Pauses at the Trumpet Vine


Who doesn't love
roses, and who
doesn't love the lilies
of the black ponds

floating like flocks
of tiny swans,
and of course the flaming
trumpet vine

where the hummingbird comes
like a small green angel, to soak
his dark tongue
in happiness---

and who doesn't want
to live with the brisk
motor of his heart
singing

like a Schubert,
and his eyes
working and working like those days of rapture,
by Van Gogh, in Arles?

Look! for most of the world
is waiting
or remembering---
most of the world is time

when we're not here,
not born yet, or died---
a slow fire
under the Earth with all

our dumb wild blind cousins
who also
can't even remember anymore
their own happiness---

Look! and then we will be
like the pale cool
stones, that last almost
forever.

 

[marcus]

This one is nice in some quite causal way -

"If I should learn, in some quite casual way" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

If I should learn, in some quite casual way,
That you were gone, not to return again--
Read from the back-page of a paper, say,
Held by a neighbor in a subway train,
How at the corner of this avenue
And such a street (so are the papers filled)
A hurrying man--who happened to be you--
At noon to-day had happened to be killed,
I should not cry aloud--I could not cry
Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place--
I should but watch the station lights rush by
With a more careful interest on my face,
Or raise my eyes and read with greater care
Where to store furs and how to treat the hair.

this is extremely fine
and makes me want to put another one of hers with it
you know the one I will chose and probably would not have
included it in you sample---it is so well-known. another sonnet
but the form is Petrarchian rather than, as with the one you chose, Shakespearian


What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

 

[reilly]

This thread is turning into a wonderful anthology indeed.

I'm very partial to Louis MacNeice, in no small measure for the four lines:

Good-bye now Plato and Hegel,
The shop is closing down;
They don't want any philosopher-kings in England.
There ain't no universals in this man's town.

From Autumn Journal(1939), his long, long journal during the time of the ascent of Hitler, Stalin, the brutality of the Spanish Civil War, British appeasement and the tango of the English and American intellectuals with the left.

Regards,
Reilly Atkinson

 

[kcballer21]

Stevie Smith - Our Bog is Dood

Our Bog is dood, our Bog is dood,
They lisped in accents mild,
But when I asked them to explain
They grew a little wild.
How do you know your Bog is dood
My darling little child?

We know because we wish it so
That is enough, they cried,
And straight within each infant eye
Stood up the flame of pride,
And if you do not think it so
You shall be crucified.

Then tell me, darling little ones,
What's dood, suppose Bog is?
Just what we think, the answer came,
Just what we think it is.
They bowed their heads. Our Bog is ours
And we are wholly his.

But when they raised them up again
They had forgotten me
Each one upon each other glared
In pride and misery
For what was dood, and what their Bog
They never could agree.

Oh sweet it was to leave them then,
And sweeter not to see,
And sweetest of all to walk alone
Beside the encroaching sea,
The sea that soon should drown them all,
That never yet drowned me.