What's your favorite poem?

Question

Mine is this:

Petrarch Sonnet No. 104
I find no peace, yet make no war;
I fear yet hope, I burn yet am ice;
I fly in the heavens, but lie on the earth;
I hold nothing, but embrace the whole world.

One imprisons me, who neither frees nor holds me;
nor keeps me for herself, nor loosens the noose;
Love does not slay me, nor unshackle me;
Love wishes me not to live, but leaves me in torment.

I see without eyes, and have no tongue but cry,
I long to perish, yet I beg for aid;
I hate myself, but love another.

I feed on sadness, yet I weeping I laugh;
death and life repel me equally.
I am in this state, Woman, because of You.

Answer 1

Anything from Shakespeare

Answer 2

From Wordsworth:

Intimations of Immortality,,


There was a time when meadow, grove, and streams,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day.
The things which I have seen I now can see no more..
The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare,
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind..

Answer 3

I believe I can see the future
Cause I repeat the same routine
I think I used to have a purpose
But then again, that might have been a dream

I think I used to have a voice
Now I never make a sound
I just do what I’ve been told
I really don’t want them to come around, oh no

Every day is exactly the same
Every day is exactly the same
There is no love here and there is no pain
Every day is exactly the same

I can feel their eyes are watching
In case I lose myself again
Sometimes I think I’m happy here
(Sometimes)
Sometimes, yet I still pretend

I can’t remember how this got started
Oh, but I can tell you exactly how it will end

Every day is exactly the same
Every day is exactly the same
There is no love here and there is no pain
Every day is exactly the same

I’ll write it on a little piece of paper
I’m hoping, someday, you might find
Well I’ll hide it behind something
They won’t look behind

I am still inside her
A little bit comes bleeding through
I wish this could’ve been any other way
But I just don’t know, I don’t know what else I can do

Every day is exactly the same
Every day is exactly the same
There is no love here and there is no pain
Every day is exactly the same

Answer 4

One of my favorite poems is "Vagabond's House." I think it's beautiful.

Vagabond's House

"When I have a house . . . as I sometimes may . . .
I'll suit my fancy in every way.
I'll fill it with things that have caught my eye
In drifting from Iceland to Molokai.
It won't be correct or in period style,
But . . . oh, I've thought for a long, long while
Of all the corners and all the nooks,
Of all the bookshelves and all the books,
The great big table, the deep soft chairs,
And the Chinese rug at the foot of the stairs
(It's an old, old rug from far Chow Wan
That a Chinese princess once walked on)."

And that's just the first verse.

Answer 5

It's going to vary a lot with mood.

If it was one poet it would be Rudyard Kipling.
Honest, often raw, and just occasionally romantic.
("When Earth's Last Picture is Painted." for example)

But if you want one telling piece, perhaps Ogden Nash's "Listen":
------------------------
Listen...

There is a knocking in the skull,
An endless silent shout
Of something beating on a wall,
And crying, “Let me out!”

That solitary prisoner
Will never hear reply.
No comrade in eternity
Can hear the frantic cry.

No heart can share the terror
That haunts his monstrous dark.
The light that filters through the chinks
No other eye can mark.

When flesh is linked with eager flesh,
And words run warm and full,
I think that he is loneliest then,
The captive in the skull.

Caught in a mesh of living veins,
In cell of padded bone,
He loneliest is when he pretends
That he is not alone.

We’d free the incarcerate race of man
That such a doom endures
Could only you unlock my skull,
Or I creep into yours.
------------------------------


(but perhaps it only works if you've been there.)

Answer 6

The Road Goes Ever On
By: JRR Tolkien

Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains of the moon.

Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.

Answer 7

I think my favourite poem is by Margaret Atwood: "Variation on the Word Sleep." I don't know all of it by heart but the poet is describing her beloved as they sleep..."I would like to watch you sleeping..." The last lines are beautiful to me:

"I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only.
I would like to be that invisible and that necessary." It's a profound statement. To want to be like breath: needed yet taken for granted. To want to sustain someone even if they don't appreciate you for it. To be so much a part of them that they scarcely akcnowledge you. Breath keeps us alive yet we don't cherish it. It just is. Perhaps this is true love. The love you give a spouse or a child. Caring more about them than about yourself.

Answer 8

Extasias, Carmen Willcox (excerpt)

And behold
I hear the breath
of his soul's rustling wings

The doors of his heaven
opening a glimpse

And brighter and brighter
his radiance comes

Higher and higher
We fly
to such realms

...

...

...


How endless this bliss
So enraptured our sleep,

Betrothed in Extasias
expiring in dreams,

...

Answer 9

my own -
Days flew by on the wings of time
no-one knows from whence they came
or where they go
so think not of following after
chasing things that are not so
instead catch the ones
that have not passed
and learn to let them go.

Answer 10

The next one, and the one after that, and so on until i have none more.