Please give us a few lines of your favorite poem?

Question

Inspired by Owlish Fox

Each of you is AMAZING.

You have actually reduced me to tears. Thank you.

Here's mine:

"Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost."

From W H Auden's Lullaby

http://www.thebeckoning.com/poetry/auden/auden3.html

Answer 1

Look at you so strong and so bold,
But the night is dark and oh so cold.
Do you pray in the day for the night to stay away, or do you welcome it with open arms,
and accept it's charms.
Are you young with your whole life ahead,
Or old and tired soon to be dead.
Wrote by me, lot longer but ya just asked for a few lines.

Answer 2

Oh, I can do better than that, it's short...Suicide, by Dorothy Parker!

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!

(not sure if that's the correct title, and I'm too lazy to go dig out the book) This has been my favorite since I first heard it in the 60s! Dorothy Parker was one of the greatest wits of her century; she could be funny while she was dying inside. Fantastic woman.

Answer 3

The homework machine the homework machine the most wonderful contraption that's ever been seen just put in in your homework snap in a dime flip the switch and in ten seconds time your homework comes out quick and clean as can be oh but hears the problem 9+7 and the answer is 3 ,3 oh me i guess it's not as wonderful as i thought it would be! -A light in the attic

Answer 4

The wintry solar beams reflect
The sunshine’s radiation
As narrowing pupils retract blindly.
Impish rodent footprints left in unadulterated meadows
Lay silently, blanketing the surrounding pastures,
Masking the hues of drab nude bark.
Muffled hooves of winter coated mares’ tomfoolery
Can be heard faintly to the discernible ear.
Distant Christmas lights of a farm home twinkle, fracturing darkness,
A sliver of moon floats strident in the twilight sky,
And diminutive stars scintillate in unison.
Eerie silence waits cautiously for the unseen event of the Bethlehem star,
With humans believing as in centuries before,
The fable of Jesus’ birth.

Answer 5

There she weaves by night and day,
A magic web with colors gay,
She has heard a whisper say,
The curse is on her if she stay,
To look down on Camelot.

Lady of Shallot By Lord Alfred Tennyson

Answer 6

To be or not to be, that is the question —
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep —
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to — 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep —
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life,
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
tc

Answer 7

Had we but world enough and time
This coyness lady would be no crime
We would sit down and think which way
How to pass our long love's day...

Andrew Marvell
To His Coy Mistress

I recited it from memory (it's a fairly long poem) to a girlfriend in college. She wasn't coy, but it was romantic anyway.

Answer 8

Life is a journey, a process of overcoming and becoming. More today than yesterday, when you rise, realize, its a brand new day, for a brand new way, keeping it true to the brand new game in you.

Answer 9

My first thought was,he lied in every word ,That hoary cripple ,with malicious eye Askance to watch the workingof his lie ON mine,and mouth scarce able to afford to afford suppression of that pursed and score
Its edge ,at one more victim gained therby.

Answer 10

we come into the world alone,
we go away the same.
we're meant to spend the interlude between
in closeness
or so we tell ourselves.
but its a long way from the morning to the evening.