What is your favorite poem or excerpt from a poem?

Question

I'll even start with..

My favorite is from Kahlil Gilbran's 'The Prophet' titled 'On Children'.

"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love, but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite and bends you to his might that his arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; for even as he loves the arrow that flies, so he loves also the bow that is stable."

Answer 1

It's hard to pick a favorite, I like so many poems

like this frienship poem by - Kahlil Gibran -



If I could catch a rainbow
I would do it just for you,
And share with you its beauty
On the days you're feeling blue

If I could build a mountain
You could call your very own,
A place to find serenity,
A place to be alone

If I could take your troubles
I would toss them in the sea,
But all these things I'm finding
Are impossible for me

I cannot build a mountain,
Or catch a rainbow fair,
But let me be what I know best,
A friend who's always there

Answer 2

My favorite couplet is from A. E. Housman's "Terence This Is Stupid Stuff":

"Malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man."

Answer 3

Killed my landlord
C - I - L - L
my LAND - lord

From Eddie Murphy SNL performance

Answer 4

Wow, that's a pretty big question! There are so many excellent poems to choose from, but I will try to pick.

SONNET 116 by William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Unfortunately, this poem is less special to be than it used to be, due to how many times I've read it or recited it in my head, and it's popularity, etc. Anyway, it is one of the most beautiful I know.

A few of my other favorites are:

The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes
High Flight by John Gillespie McGee
Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost
Song by Christina Rossetti

Answer 5

There is a mystic borderland that lies
Just past the limits of our workday world
And it is peopled with the friends we met
And loved a year, a month, a week, or day
And parted from with aching hearts yet knew
That through the distance we must lose the touch
Of hand with hand and only clasp the thread
Of memory. But still so close we feel this land;
So sure we are that these same hearts are true;
That when in waking dreams there comes a call
That sets the thread of memory aglow
We know that just by stretching out the hand
With written word of love, or book, or flower,
The waiting hand will clasp our own once more
Across the distance in the same old way.

It's called "The Mystic Borderland" and I've forgotten the author

Answer 6

I depart as air, I shake my white locks in the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

Answer 7

This one by ee cummings:


i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

ee cummings

Answer 8

"The Road Not Taken" by Frost

Answer 9

all the poems my man writes me