What's your favorite poem?

Question

Mine is:
We Are Seven

Poem lyrics of We Are Seven by William Wordsworth.

--A Simple Child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?

I met a little cottage Girl:
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.

She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad:
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
--Her beauty made me glad.

"Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
How many may you be?"
"How many? Seven in all," she said
And wondering looked at me.

"And where are they? I pray you tell."
She answered, "Seven are we;
And two of us at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea.

"Two of us in the church-yard lie,
My sister and my brother;
And, in the church-yard cottage, I
Dwell near them with my mother."

Continued at: http://quotations.about.com/cs/poemlyrics/a/We_Are_Seven.htm

Answer 1

Die Slowly, by Pablo Neruda
Die Slowly
by Pablo Neruda


He who becomes the slave of habit,
who follows the same routes every day,
who never changes pace,
who does not risk and change the color of his clothes,
who does not speak and does not experience, dies slowly.

He or she who shuns passion,
who prefers black on white,
dotting ones “is” rather than a bundle of emotions,
the kind that make your eyes glimmer,
that turn a yawn into a smile,
that make the heart pound in the face of mistakes and feelings, dies slowly.

He or she who does not turn things topsy-turvy,
who is unhappy at work,
who does not risk certainty for uncertainty,
to thus follow a dream,
those who do not forego sound advice at least once in their lives, die slowly.

He who does not travel,
who does not read,
who does not listen to music,
who does not find grace in himself, dies slowly.

He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem,
who does not allow himself to be helped,
who spends days on end complaining about his own bad luck,
about the rain that never stops, dies slowly.

He or she who abandon a project before starting it,
who fail to ask questions on subjects he doesn’t know,
he or she who don’t reply when they are asked something they do know, die slowly.

Let’s try and avoid death in small doses,
always reminding oneself that being alive requires an effort by far
greater than the simple fact of breathing.
Only a burning patience will lead to the attainment of a splendid happiness.

Answer 2

Wiliam Wordsworth 'There was a boy'

There was a boy, ye knew him well, ye cliffs
And Islands of Winander! many a time,
At evening, when the stars had just begun
To move along the edge of the hills,
Rising or setting, would he stand alone,
beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake,
And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands
Press'd closely palm to palm and to his mouth
Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,
Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls
That they might answer him. And they would shout
Across the wat'ry vale and shout again
Responsive to his call, with quivering peals,
And long halloos, and screams, and echos loud
Redoubled and redoubled, a wild scene
Of mirth and jocund din. And when it chanced
THat pauses of deep silence mock'd his skill,
Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung
Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprize
Has carried far into his heart the voice
Of mountain torrents, or the visable scene
Would enter unawares into his mind
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven receiv'd
Into the bosom of the ateady lake.

Fair are the woods, and beauteous is the spot,
The vale where he was born: the church-yard hangs
Upon a slope above the village school,
And there along the bank when I have pass'd
At evening, I believe, that near his grave
A full half-hour together I have stood,
Mute - for he died when he was ten years old.




Another one I like is this by Seanus Heaney 'When all the others were away at mass'

When all the others were away at mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping of the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little plesant splashes
From each others work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish preist at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives -
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

Answer 3

Out of the night that covers me
Black as the pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

It's longer than that. It's named "Invictus," and when I had to memorize a poem when I was in school, I chose that one. I can probably remember the rest of it, but I cannot remember the author's name.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed

It matters not how straight the gate
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul.

(See, I told you I could remember it. Goes back some 50 years!)

Answer 4

Dante's Inferno
Milton's Paradise Lost
A poem called While The God's Laugh by Mervyn Peake:

I, while the gods laugh, the world's vortex am
Maelstrom of passions in the hidden sea
Whose waves of all-time lap the coasts of me
And in small compass the dark waters cram.

And of course Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven and Annabel Lee

Answer 5

Life's Brief Candle by William Shakespeare

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Answer 6

Coleridgre The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner

Answer 7

.The Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare.
Let the bird of Lone sly on the sole Arabian tree, Harald fast....

It a very long Poem and in Old English.

Answer 8

Always keep your knees in front
don't let them drop behind
'cos when knees get behind you
they're difficult to find.

Little Jim let his knees go
they got behind the lad
In church he knelt down back to front
and made the vicar sad.

So they bound his knees up with a strap
and faced them to the front
and to this day they face that way
et gloria ducunt (I don't know what that means but it rhymes)
Spike milligan

Incidentally I DO know What it means, They lead in Glory.

Answer 9

"A Valediction Forbbidding Mourning"
by John Donne

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun

Answer 10

"Wait for Me"

Konstantin Simonov



Wait for me and I'll come back,
But wait with might and main,
Wait throughout the gloom and rack
Of autumn's yellow rain.
Wait when snowstorms fill the way,
Wait in summer's heat,
Wait when, false to yesterday,
Others do not wait.

Wait though from that far off place
No letters come to you.
Wait when all the others cease
To wait, who waited too.
Wait for me and I'll come back.
Do not lightly let
Those who know so well the knack
Teach you to forget.

Let my mother and my son
Believe that I have died;
Let my friends, their waiting done,
At the fireside,
Lift the wine of grief and clink
To my departed soul.
Wait, and make no haste to drink
Alone amongst them all.

Wait for me and I'll come back,
Defying death. When he
Who could not wait shall call it luck
Only, let it be.
They cannot know, who did not wait,
How in the midst of fire
Your waiting saved me from my fate.
Your waiting and desire.
Why I still am living, we
Shall know, just I and you:
You knew how to wait for me
As no other knew.