Do you have a favorite piece of poetry? A rhyme or limerick?

Question

Serious, humorous? Would you like to share it with us?
I like "real" poetry but have the first piece I memorized from first grade stuck in my head.
I never saw a purple cow.
I never hope to see one.
But I can tell you anyhow
I'd rather see one than be one.
Author unknown. I'm pretty sure it wasn't Elizabeth Barret Browning though.

Answer 1

Hi Southern Comfort!
I love poems and like so many that I don't think I could pick a favorite. There are so many great answers hear that I want to read! I do love the one from the movie "Splendor in the Grass". I don't remember the hole thing but it goes like this:
"Nothing can bring back the Splendor in the grass or the glory in the flower but we will go on and find strength in what is left behind."
Also I love Shel Silverstein. Which reminds me Wickwire, the poems your parents taught you are by Shel Silverstein.
So here is one for you Southern Comfort by Shel that I hope you enjoy!
"Hug O' War"
I will not play at tug o"war
I'd rather play at hug o' war
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And everyone wins. SMILE!

Answer 2

It's a short piece of blank verse written by Stephen Crane, the author of "The Red Badge of Courage":
"I stood upon a high place and saw below me many devils
Leaping, dancing and carousing in sin.
One looked up and said 'Comrade! Brother'.".
I'm also a great fan of Rudyard Kipling's "Barrack Room Ballads". It's a group of poems he wrote while serving in the British Army in India. Many are familiar to most people: "Road To Mandalay", "Gunga Din", etc. It's great, gutsy poetry that men can appreciate.

Answer 3

everything is transfigured and is sacred
and each room is now the center of the world,
tonight is the first night, today is the first day,
whenever two people kiss the world is born,
a drop of light with guts of transparency
the room like a fruit splits and begins to open
or burst like a star amonge the silences
and all laws now rat-gnawed and eten away,
barred windows of banks and penitentaries,
the bars of paper, and the barbed wire fences,
the stamps and the seals, the sharp prongs and the spurs,
the one note sermons of the bombs and wars,
the gentle scorpion in his cap and gown,
the tiger who is the president of the Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty and the Red Cross,
the pedagogical ***, and the crocodile
set up as the savior of his country,
the founder, the leader, the shark, the archetech
of the future of us all, the hog in uniform,
and then that one, the favorite of the Church
who can be seen brushing his black teeth
in holy water and taking evening courses
in English and Democracy, the invisible
barriers, the mad and decaying masks
that are used to separate us, man from man,
and man from his own self,
they are thrown down
for an enormous instant and we see darkly
our own lost unity, how vulnerable it is
to be women and men, the glory it is to be a man
and share out bread and share out sun and our death,
the dark forgotten marvel of being alive;
...

Answer 4

For english class (this was like 3 years ago) We had to do 1 type of every poem. I really didnt want to do the Haiku, but here is what I did for that section

I won't be confined
To mere syllable counting
So SCREW...your HAIKU

I have a few poems on poetry.com if u wanna search my name.
Robert Hanbury

Answer 5

Some say the world will end in fire
Some say in ice
From what I have tasted of Desire
I hold with them that favor
Fire

Robert Frost, there is more to the poem, but that's the part I like the best

Answer 6

One by one,as leaves from a tree
All my faiths have forsaken me
But the stars above my head,burn in white and delicate red
And beneath my feet the earth
Brings the sturdy grass to birth
I,who was content to be
But a silken,singing tree
But a rustle of delight in the wistful heart of night
I have lost the leaves that knew
Touch of rain and weight of dew
Blinded by my leafy crown
I looked neither up nor down
But the leaves that fall and die
Have left me room to see the sky
Now,for the first time I know
Stars above and earth below.

-Sara Teasdale

This poem became my mantra when my father died.

Answer 7

There are many poems I like. "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by the same, "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley, "If" by Rudyard Kipling. They are very powerful poems, I think. As far as humorous poems go, though, I like Gelett Burgess's

"I'd rather have fingers than toes,
I'd rather have ears than a nose;
As for my hair,
I'm glad it's still ther,
I'll be awfully sad when it goes."

I also like :

"See the happy moron,
He doesn't give a damn!
I wish I were a moron-
My God! Perhaps I am!"
(anonymous)

Enjoy!

Answer 8

I continuously enjoyed the Limericks There as quickly as became a girl named Irene who lived on distilled kerosene. yet she all started absorbin' a sparkling hydrocarbon and because then has never benzene. there became a youthful plumber named Lee who lay plumbing his lady by utilising the sea. She mentioned, “Oh! stop plumbing! there is somebody coming!” mentioned the plumber, nevertheless plumbing, “that is me.”

Answer 9

“Where the mind is without fear
And head is held high,
Where the knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into
Fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where the words come out
From the depth of truth;
Where the tireless striving stretches
Its’ arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason hasn’t lost its’ way,
In to dreary desert sand of dead habits,”
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my father,
Let my country awake.
by Rabindranath Taigore.

Answer 10

The legend of the raindrop

holds a lesson for us all

as it trembles in the heavens

wondering should it fall.

The glistening little raindrop

argued with the sky -

"I am beautiful and lovely

as I sparkle here on high."


"And hanging here I will become

part of the rainbow's hue;

and I'll shimmer like a diamond

for all the world to view."


But the heavens asked the raindrop,

"Why do you hesitate to go?

For you'll be far more beautiful

if you fall to earth below."


"For you will sink in the soil,

And be lost awhile from sight,

but when you reappear on earth

You'll be greeted with delight."


"For you will be the raindrop

that quenched the thirsty ground

and helped the lovely flowers

to blossom all around."


"And in your resurrection

You'll appear in queenly clothes,

in the beauty of the sky

and the fragrance of the rose."


"For nothing's ever lost,

nothing's ever gone for good,

but renews itself upon the earth

as God thought that it should."


"So trust God's mighty wisdom,

let yourself drop from the sky

and you will fall and rise again,

for nothing ever dies."