Favourite Poem?

[electricladyland]

Night, Lucy Maude Montgomery

A pale enchanted moon is sinking low
Behind the dunes that fringe the shadowy lea,
And there is haunted starlight on the flow
Of immemorial sea.


I am alone and need no more pretend
Laughter or smile to hide a hungry heart;
I walk with solitude as with a friend
Enfolded and apart.


We tread an eerie road across the moor
Where shadows weave upon their ghostly looms,
And winds sing an old lyric that might lure
Sad queens from ancient tombs.


I am a sister to the loveliness
Of cool far hill and long-remembered shore,
Finding in it a sweet forgetfulness
Of all that hurt before.


The world of day, its bitterness and cark,
No longer have the power to make me weep;
I welcome this communion of the dark
As toilers welcome sleep.

 

[electricladyland]

Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)


Resumé

​

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

 

[electricladyland]

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant poises,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
The shepherds's swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

Christopher Marlowe 1599

 

[Teratel]

You were my only human


The whole world is a swirling ocean; while you were my comforting
shore,

The whole world is the hostile island of sun; while you were my
brilliant
rays,

The whole world is an uncivilized jungle; while you were my
majestically
roaring lion,

The whole world is a treacherous mountain; while you were my towering
peak,

The whole world is a colossal patch of barren sky; while you were my
rain
bearing cloud,

The whole world is a pugnacious battlefield; while you were my
cherished
victory,

The whole world is a garden with wild weeds; while you were my
perennialy
blossoming rose,

The whole world is a rampantly spread beehive; while you were my
delectable
and sweet nectar,

The whole world is gargantuan ship; while you were my valiant captain,

The whole world is a lifeless body on the verge of dying; while you
were my
precious and passionate breath,
The whole world is volumes of books embedded with boring literature;
while
you were the line that evolved my creativity,

The whole world is an enigmatic puzzle; while you were my 100%
solution,

The whole world is a river of gloomy tears; while you were my
everlasting
smile,

The whole world is perpetually blind; while you were my mesmerizing
vision,

The whole world is a violent abuse; while you were my stupendously
enchanting song,

The whole world is an arid desert; while you were my sweet spring of
bubbling water,

The whole world is licentious desire; while you were my sacrosanct
mosque,

The whole world is crisp notes of pretentious currency; while you were
my
checkbook,

The whole world is a cannibalistic vulture; while you were my royal and
princely feather,

The whole world is a stubborn lock; while you were my dainty and
intricate
key,

The whole world is a devastating infection; while you were my immortal
source of potent medication,

And the whole world is a blood sucking leech; while you were my only
human…


Nikhil Parekh

 

[Teratel]

Touched by an Angel


We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.

Maya Angelou

 

[electricladyland]

^^ Can we read that at our wedding??

it is at moments after i have dreamed
of the rare entertainment of your eyes,
when(being fool to fancy)i have deemed

with your peculiar mouth my heart made wise;
at moments when the glassy darkness holds

the genuine apparition of your smile
(it was through tears always)and silence moulds
such strangeness as was mine a little while;

moments when my once more illustrious arms
are filled with fascination,when my breast
wears the intolerant brightness of your charms:

one pierced moment whiter than the rest

-turning from the tremendous lie of sleep
i watch the roses of the day grow deep.

e.e. cummings

 

[electricladyland]

Antiphony

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

‘I love you, sweet: how can you ever learn
How much I love you?’ ‘You I love even so,
And so I learn it.’ ‘Sweet, you cannot know
How fair you are.’ ‘If fair enough to earn
Your love, so much is all my love’s concern.’
‘My love grows hourly, sweet.’ ‘ Mine too doth grow,
Yet love seemed full so many hours ago!’
Thus lovers speak, till kisses claim their turn.

Ah! happy they to whom such words as these
In youth have served for speech the whole day long,
Hour after hour, remote from the world’s throng,
Work, contest, fame, all life’s confederate pleas,—
What while Love breathed in sighs and silences
Through two blent souls one rapturous undersong.

 

[electricladyland]

A Better Resurrection, Sylvia Plath


I have no wit, I have no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numbed too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
A lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is like the falling leaf;
O Jesus, quicken me.

 

[electricladyland]

April 18, Sylvia Plath


the slime of all my yesterdays
rots in the hollow of my skull

and if my stomach would contract
because of some explicable phenomenon
such as pregnancy or constipation

I would not remember you

or that because of sleep
infrequent as a moon of greencheese
that because of food
nourishing as violet leaves
that because of these

and in a few fatal yards of grass
in a few spaces of sky and treetops

a future was lost yesterday
as easily and irretrievably
as a tennis ball at twilight

 

[PrettyPeasant]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Loyalty[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]He may be six kinds of a liar,[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]He may be ten kinds of a fool,[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]He may be a wicked highflyer[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Beyond any reason or rule;[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]There may be a shadow above him[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Of ruin and woes to impend,[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]And I may not respect, but I love him,[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Because-well, because he's my friend.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]I know he has faults by the billion,[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]But his faults are a portion of him;[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]I know that his record's vermilion,[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]And he's far from the sweet Seraphim;[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]But he's always been square with yours truly,[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Ready to give or to lend,[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]And if he is wild and unruly,[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]I like him-because he's my friend.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]I criticize him but I do it[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]In just a frank, comradely key,[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]And back-biting gossips will rue it[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]If ever they knock him to me![/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]I never make diagrams of him,[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]No maps of his soul have I penned;[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]I don't analyze- just love him,[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Because-well, because he's my friend.[/FONT]

 

[astatine]

I Am Not Yours - Sarah Teasdale

I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.


You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.


Oh plunge me deep in love - put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in a rushing wind.

 

[gius]

I like the short ones done by the Imagists...
Here's one I like from my anthology:

This is just to say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

 

[Teratel]

Ode to a Nightingale

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,--
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and *******:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain ---
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music --- Do I wake or sleep?

-- John Keats 1820

 

[Teratel]

If you (catch) trap the moment before its ripe
The tears of repentance youll certainly wipe
But if once you let the ripe moment go
You(ll) can never wipe off the tears of woe

William Blake-The Complete Poems
Notebook Poems And Fragments, c. 1789-93

 

[Teratel]

How To Know Love From Deceit

Love to faults is always blind
Always is the joy inclind
(Always) Lawless wingd & unconfind
And breaks all chains from every mind

Deceid to secresy (inclind) confind
(Modest prudish & confind)
Lawful cautious ((changeful and) & refind
(Never is to) To every thing but interest blind
(And chains & fetters every mind)
And forges fetters for the mind

The Wild Flowers Song

As I wanderd the forest
The green leaves among
I heard a wild (thistle) flower
Singing a song

I (was found) slept in the (dark) Earth
In the silent night
I murmurd my fears
And I felt delight

In the morning I went
As rosy as morn
To seek for new Joy
But I met with scorn

William Blake-The Complete Poems
Notebook Poems And Fragments, c. 1789-93

 

[model_mom]

[SIZE=+2]Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening[/SIZE]
by Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

 

[Teratel]

THE INDIFFERENT


I CAN love both fair and brown ;
Her whom abundance melts, and her whom want betrays ;
Her who loves loneness best, and her who masks and plays ;
Her whom the country form'd, and whom the town ;
Her who believes, and her who tries ;
Her who still weeps with spongy eyes,
And her who is dry cork, and never cries.
I can love her, and her, and you, and you ;
I can love any, so she be not true.
Will no other vice content you ?
Will it not serve your turn to do as did your mothers ?
Or have you all old vices spent, and now would find out others ?
Or doth a fear that men are true torment you ?
O we are not, be not you so ;
Let me—and do you—twenty know ;
Rob me, but bind me not, and let me go.
Must I, who came to travel thorough you,
Grow your fix'd subject, because you are true ?

Venus heard me sigh this song ;
And by love's sweetest part, variety, she swore,
She heard not this till now ; and that it should be so no more.
She went, examined, and return'd ere long,
And said, "Alas ! some two or three
Poor heretics in love there be,
Which think to stablish dangerous constancy.
But I have told them, 'Since you will be true,
You shall be true to them who're false to you.' "

Poems of John Donne

 

[electricladyland]

Before Summer Rain, Rainer Maria Rilke

Suddenly, from all the green around you,
something-you don't know what-has disappeared;
you feel it creeping closer to the window,
in total silence. From the nearby wood

you hear the urgent whistling of a plover,
reminding you of someone's Saint Jerome:
so much solitude and passion come
from that one voice, whose fierce request the downpour

will grant. The walls, with their ancient portraits, glide
away from us, cautiously, as though
they weren't supposed to hear what we are saying.

And reflected on the faded tapestries now;
the chill, uncertain sunlight of those long
childhood hours when you were so afraid.

 

[electricladyland]

In The Summer, Nizar Qabbani

In the summer
I stretch out on the shore
And think of you
Had I told the sea
What I felt for you,
It would have left its shores,
Its shells,
Its fish,
And followed me.

 

[electricladyland]

Liebes-Lied

Wie soll ich meine Seele halten, daß
sie nicht an deine rührt? Wie soll ich sie
hinheben über dich zu andern Dingen?
Ach gerne möchte ich sie bei irgendetwas
Verlorenem im Dunkel unterbringen
an einer fremden stillen Stelle, die
nicht weiterschwingt, wenn diene Tiefen schwingen.
Doch alles, was uns anrührt, dich und mich,
nimmt uns zusammen wie ein Bogenstrich,
die aus zwei Saiten eine Stimme zieht.
Auf welches Instrument sind wir gespannt?
Und welcher Geiger hat uns in der Hand?
O süßes Lied.

Love Song

How shall I hold on to my soul, so that
it does not touch yours? How shall I lift
it gently up over you on to other things?
I would so very much like to tuck it away
among long lost objects in the dark,
in some quiet, unknown place, somewhere
which remains motionless when your depths resound.
And yet everything which touches us, you and me,
takes us together like a single bow,
drawing out from two strings but one voice.
On which instrument are we strung?
And which violinist holds us in his hand?
O sweetest of songs.

rainer maria rilke