Hard to pick one... I like some of Dylan Thomas, and Yeats, and some Plath... here's one I like:
<blockquote>
The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.
Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep
And break the by-laws any fool can keep;
It is not the convention but the fear
That has a tendency to disappear.
The worried efforts of the busy heap,
The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer
Produce a few smart wisecracks every year;
Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap.
The clothes that are considered right to wear
Will not be either sensible or cheap,
So long as we consent to live like sheep
And never mention those who disappear.
Much can be said for social savoir-faire,
But to rejoice when no one else is there
Is even harder than it is to weep;
No one is watching, but you have to leap.
A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream of safety has to disappear.
</blockquote>
The poem is in form similar to a vilanelle, but uses quatrains, rather than tercets. Proof that it helps to know the rules when breaking them. oh, it's Auden, btw. I should add that I probly disagree with Auden's interpretation of what he meant 🙂. Still a great poem.
I'm not sure it counts as great poetry, but I like it:
'You are old, Father William', the young man said,
'And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head --
Do you think, at your age, it is right?'
'In my youth', Father William replied to his son,
'I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again.'
'You are old', said the youth, 'as I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door --
Pray, what is the reason of that?'
'In my youth', said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
'I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment - one shilling the box -
Allow me to sell you a couple?'
'You are old', said the youth, 'and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak -
Pray, how did you manage to do it?'
'In my youth', said his father, 'I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life.'
'You are old', said the youth, 'one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose -
What made you so awfully clever?'
'I have answered three questions, and that is enough,'
Said his father, 'don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs!'
Originally posted by Alpha10lovely, this one really is the soul of poetry.😛
The following is a poem by one of my favorites, Marshall Mathers
I'll burn ya f***in house down/
circle around/
hit the hydrant so you can't put ya burnin furniture out/
i'm sorry there must be a mix up/
you want me to fix up lyrics while the president gets his d*** sucked/
This is by Randall Jarell. It was written in WWII. The ball turret gunner was the man on the bomber who was in a plexical dome under the plane. He was totally exposed to the gunfire of the enemy planes. He was most likely to die on the mission.
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
another one of my favorites...mixed a chopped so dont get mad
Kurt Cobain
what else should i be?/
all apologies/
what else should i say/
everyone is gay/
she has(?) like a pisces when i am weak/
ive been locked inside your heart shaped box for weeks(?)
i think im dumb/
maybe just happy/
This is my favorite childhood poem by Robert Lopuis Stevenson:
34. The Swing
HOW do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
Up in the air and over the wall, 5
Till I can see so wide,
Rivers and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside—
Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown— 10
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!
''Emma tried to run away,
I followed her across the city,
She went out to the Easterhouse,
Because she liked the sound of it.
She didn't have a single penny,
She stuck a finger in the air,
She tried to flag down an aeroplane,
I suppose she needs a holiday.
I put my arm around her waist,
She put me on the ground with Judo,
She didn't recognise my face,
She wasn't even looking.
Laura's feeling just ideal,
Her horoscope was nearly perfect,
She's thinking of something to do,
Because she is The Birthday Girl.
She walked out to the edge of town,
She saw me lying in the park,
She took Emma by the hand,
They've got a lot in common.
I'll leave them to do what they want,
I'll leave them to do what they need to,
I'll go and play with words and pictures,
I'll admit I'm feeling strange.
I'm not as sad as Doestoevsky,
I'm not as clever as Mark Twain,
I'll only buy a book for the way it looks,
And then I stick it on the shelf again.
Now I could tell you what I'm thinking,
But it never seems to do you good,
It's beyond me what a girl can see,
I'm only lucid when I'm writing songs.
This is just a modern rock song,
This is just a sorry lament,
We're four boys in corduroys,
We're not terrific but we're competent.
Stevie's full of good intentions,
Richards into rock 'n' roll,
Stuart's staying in and he thinks it's a sin,
That he has to leave the house at all.
This is just a modern rock song,
This is just a tender affair,
I count "three, four" and then we start to slow,
Because a song has got to stop somewhere.''
That's ''This Is Just a Modern Rock Song'' by Belle and Sebastian, and it's my favorite poem of the day. Any other fan of this truly terrific group?
Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey is great. Too long to post here, I think.
I also like Arnold's Dover Beach:
--
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
--
Ah, heck, here are my favorite lines from Tintern Abbey. He's writing about the beauty of the country landscape:
__
These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:--feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:--that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,--
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
___