What's your favorite poem?

Question

I think mine changes everyday. This is today's:

This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me,-
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.
Her message is commited
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!

-Emily Dickinson

Answer 1

Ever since I first read it in high school mine has been Richard Cory by E.A. Robinson. It shows that you never know what's really going on under the appearances.


Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich--yes, richer than a king--
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Answer 2

Howard Nemerov wrote:

The Dependencies

This morning, between two branches of a tree
Beside the door, epeira once again
Has spun and signed his tapestry and trap.
I test his early-warning system and
It works, he scrambles forth in sable with
The yellow hieroglyph that no one knows
The meaning of. And I remember now
How yesterday at dusk the nighthawks came
Back as they do about this time each year,
Grey squadrons with the slashes white on wings
Cruising for bugs beneath the bellied cloud.
Now soon the monarchs will be drifting south,
And then the geese will go, and then one day
The little garden birds will not be here.
See how many leaves already have
Withered and turned; a few have fallen, too.
Change is continuous on the seamless web,
Yet moments come like this one, when you feel
Upon your heart a signal to attend
The definite announcement of an end
Where one thing ceases and another starts;
When like the spider waiting on the web
You know the intricate dependencies
Spreading in secret through the fabric vast
Of heaven and earth, sending their messages
Ciphered in chemistry to all the kinds,
The whisper down the bloodstream: it is time.

Also by the same poet: "Moment" which is transcendent.

Pax TeCum

Answer 3

I have so many but this one is one of my constant favorites because it always feels like a prediction, yet also seems like the way things are today.

The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in widening gyre
The falcon can not hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre can not 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.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly the words are out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with a lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless s the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel the shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, it’s hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?


*something I've always said my self. Good people seem to have taken a back seat so the stupid and rediculous can tell our story.

Answer 4

Robert Frost wrote...

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.

I just love the simple ethereal quality to it!

Answer 5

As the darkest part of the day begins to make way for the early morning kiss of sunshine, I awaken to the subtleness of the morn. My consciousness is not yet prepared to face the light as it beckons my eyes to close, gingerly, ever so softly, to steal yet a few more moments of slumber. The calling is flirtatious and welcomed as I snuggle in with warmth, yet, at times, I curse the act, for it is often at this state of being that I am forced to acknowledge the inner workings of my subconscious, that part of me, that I try very hard at times, for whatever purpose, to suppress and lock away in a hell fitting. That my subconscious is hard at work is undeniably evident as I lay vulnerable, guard down, doors temporarily unlocked. I sometimes become fearful of the sight before my eyes. My thoughts, desires and dreads, before me, animated with sound, emotion and color, and played by actors that are familiar to me, though sometimes not. What does it all mean. Is it symbolic or does it reek of truth. What now do I do, should I warn, fear, or capture it and force it into the hell hole that I had previously designed just for it's kind. Dreams that aren't and nightmares in the morn, how out of sync. I will be compelled by strong forces to get up immediately and not only face the day, but face the ;what if's; that the horrible scene surmises. Contemplation begins as I awkwardly scramble to get a bearing of reality. A cup of coffee and a walk outside provides this moment of re-familarsation. I am now faced with what to do, what did I see, was it nothing more than a dream. Plagued by my uncertainty, I will begin to rationalize, using my conscious state, and the battle will begin, who knows which will win.
Lisa Willhite11:22 am pdt

Answer 6

If- By Rudyard Kipling, Desiderata- Who wrote it is debatable.
She walks in beauty- Lord Byron. These three poems complete my world. If tells it like it is, no bull, what makes a person rise above all else. Desiderata says there is a place for all of us, no matter who we are, so that even though you feel out of place, you are meant to be there. She walks in beauty describes beauty and romance and we all need to feel that feeling, because it isn't just a look.

Answer 7

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

-Robert Frost

So simple, yet has so many life lessons in it. Ever since I read "The Outsiders" I've loved it.

Answer 8

How about:

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

-- Elizabeth Bishop

Answer 9

How Do I Love Thee?


How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, -- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! -- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer 10

The Jabberwocky
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought--
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arm, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe
By Lewis Carroll



I also like Edgar Allan Poe's poems too.