which poems made you think?

Question

I remember reading Wilfred Owens - Dulce Et Decorum Est and better understanding the horrors of war.

Answer 1

Many, many, many. I am especially drawn to those that raise questions rather than answer them. Here's the one that has puzzled and inspired me most recently. It's by Emily Dickinson, who does not give her poems titles.

The world is not conclusion;
A sequel stands beyond,
Invisible as music,
But positive, as sound.
It beckons and it baffles;
Philosophies don't know,
And through a riddle, at the last,
Sagacity must go.
To guess it puzzles scholars;
To gain it, men have shown
Contempt of generations,
And crucifixion known.

Answer 2

Innisfree-W.B.Yeats..solitude and death..but in a good way.

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 gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Answer 3

Wilfred Owens poems had a powerful impression on me also,I studied them for my "o" level exam.I would say his anti-war sentiment is as valid today as it was after the first world war !
The send off is another which particularly struck me,how men are sent off with great cheer but return broken shells if they return at all !

The Send-off
Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way
To the siding-shed,
And lined the train with faces grimly gay.
Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
As men's are, dead.
Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp
Stood staring hard,
Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.
Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp
Winked to the guard.
So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.
They were not ours:
We never heard to which front these were sent.
Nor there if they yet mock what women meant
Who gave them flowers.
Shall they return to beatings of great bells
In wild trainloads?
A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
May creep back, silent, to still village wells
Up half-known roads.

Answer 4

THE ROAD
The road I have Traveled.
Bridges I have crossed.
I've gone the extra mile,
I've come to many stops.
I had a few road blocks,
toward what I thought,
could be the end.
But had to be brought back
a mile or two again.
So when closure comes,
I do know what it will mean.
I'll finally have peace of mind,
I'll be able to feel,think, and breathe
I probably won't believe it.
I'll think it is all a dream.
And although the journey will have ended.
I'll never forget What I've learned along the way,
or how I learned to take it day by day.

Answer 5

I read this poem at a funeral many years ago.

Death is nothing at all,
I have only slipped way into the next room,
I am I, You are you,
Whatever we are to each other, that we still are,
Call me by my old familiar name,
Speak to me in the easy way which you used,
Put no difference in your tone,
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow,
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Pray, smile, think of me, Pray for me.
Let my name be always the household name it was,
Let it be spoken without effect,without the trace of a shadow on it.
It is the same as it ever was,
here is unbroken continuity.
Why should i be out of mind because i am out of sight?
I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near,
just around the corner.......All is well

Henry Scott Holland
1847-1918

I was very young when i read this publicly and i still have the pamphlet from which i read, it is very different way to look at death and to me is a very comforting way

Answer 6

Not Waving, but Drowing by Stevie Smith, any by William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost and particularly some of Shakespeare's sonnets.

Answer 7

poems are made, however the main suitable has been created < creativity

Answer 8

Ezra Pound....."Plunge"

The Plunge


I would bathe myself in strangeness:
These comforts heaped upon me, smother me!
I burn, I scald so for the new,
New friends, new faces,
Places!
Oh to be out of this,
This that is all I wanted
- save the new.

And you,
Love, you the much, the more desired!
Do I not loathe all walls, streets, stones,
All mire, mist, all fog,
All ways of traffic?
You, I wold have flow over me like water,
Oh, but far out of this!
Grass, and low fields, and hills,
And sun,
Oh, sun enough!
Out, and alone, among some
Alien people!

Ezra Pound

Answer 9

The Rainy Day by H.W. Longfellow

Answer 10

limericks

There was a young lady from Tottenham
Her manners she'd totally forgoten them
Whilst at tea at the vicars
She took off her knickers
Explaining, she felt much too hot in them

Has stayed with me since I first heard it - because it's rudeness - it had a certain qudos when I was 7.