Favorite lines of poetry

[WRob]

A few lines that are stuck in my head now from Byron;

 

She walks in beauty like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes ...

 

I should probably try to memorize the whole poem ...

[tknechtel]

No matter where I serve my guests, it seems they like my kitchen best.

[Renzhe]

A little bit of something I like significantly because of the music it was set to...

 

O glaube, mein Herz, o glaube

Es geht dir nichts verloren!

Dein ist, ja dein, was du gesehnt,

Dein, was du geliebt, was du gestritten!

O glaube: Du wardst nicht umsonst geboren!

Hast nicht umsonst gelebt, gelitten!

 

Was entstanden ist, das muß vergehen!

Was vergangen, auferstehen!

Hör auf zu beben!

Bereite dich zu leben!

[Scrawler]

In Memory of Sergeant Micheal Willets 1943-1971

 

During military training in the early 1970's we all had to memorize and then perform this, while standing on a table in the NAAFI, as a part of our initiation ritual into the force. We were banned by the ministry of defence from performing it in public. It could be that the ban is still in force. I have never forgotten it, and never will. It plays over and over in my mind constantly.

 

 

 

 

 

In a station in the city, a British soldier stood

Talking to the people there, if the people would

Some just stared in hatred and others turned in pain

And the lonely British soldier, wished he was back home again

 

'Come join the British Army' said the posters in his town

'See the world and have your fun, come serve before the Crown'

The jobs were hard to come by and he could not face the dole

So he took his country's shilling and enlisted on the roll

 

For there was no fear of fighting, the Empire long was lost

Just ten years in the army, getting paid for being bossed

Then leave a man experienced, a man who's made the grade

A medal and a pension, some memories and a trade

 

Then came the call to Ireland as the call has come before

Another bloody chapter in an endless Civil War

The priests they stood on both sides, the priests they stood behind

Another fight in Jesus' name, the blind against the blind

 

The soldier stood between them, between the whistling stones

And then the broken bottles, that led to broken bones

The petrol bombs that burned his hand, the nails that pierced his skin

And wished that he had stayed at home surrounded by his kin

 

The station filled with people, the soldier soon was bored

But better in the station than where the people warred

The room filled up with mothers, with daughters and with sons

Who stared with itchy fingers at the soldier and his guns

 

A yell of fear, a screech of brakes, a shattering of glass

The window of the station broke to let the package pass

The scream came from the mothers as they ran toward the door

Dragging children crying from the bomb upon the floor

 

The soldier stood and could not move, his gun he could not use

He knew the bomb had seconds left, not minutes on the fuse

He could not run to pick it up and throw it on the street

There were far too many people there, too many running feet.

'Take cover' yelled the soldier, 'take cover for your lives'

And the Irishmen threw down their young and stood before their wives

They turned toward the soldier, their eyes alive with fear

'For God's sake, save our children or they'll end their short lives here'

 

The soldier moved towards the bomb, his stomach like a stone

'Why was this his battle, God, why was he alone?'

He lay down on the package and he murmured one farewell

To those at home in England, to those he loved so well

 

He saw the sights of summer, felt the wind upon his brow

The young girls in the city park, how precious were they now

The soaring of the swallow, the beauty of the swan

The music of the turning earth, so soon it would be gone

The muffled soft explosion and the room began to quake

The soldier blown across the floor, his blood a crimson lake

They never heard him cry or shout, they never heard him moan

And they turned their children's' faces from the blood and from the bone

 

The crowds outside soon gathered, and the ambulances came

To carry off the body of a pawn lost to the game

And the crowd they clapped and jeered, and they sang their rebel songs

One soldier less to interfere where he did not belong

 

And will the children growing up, learn at their mothers knee

The story of the soldier who bought their liberty

Who used his youthful body as the means towards the end

Who gave his life to those, who called him 'murderer' not 'friend'

[cchan]

A mosquito cried out in pain,

"A chemist has poisoned my brain!"

The cause of his sorrow

was para-dichloro-

diphenyltrichloroethane.

[Doulton]

It's time to revive this thread! Here's something seasonal:

 

Slowed Down Blackbird

Alice Oswald

Blackbird fretting in the frozen hedge
In the first Slow-fall of the year when wind
Stuck in a Slow-drift lags behind
The twilight's trailing edge

Three inches underfoot
The Slow is settling Stillness is afloat
Last chorister holding the longest note
Lost in a Storm of Falling Slow he sings

As if engrossed by inward awkward things
The tick tick tick of leaves
Keeps losing time the Bleak Sky barely breathes
All evening long a Slow-cloud drips and grieves

Three inches underfoot
The Slow is settling Stillness is afloat
Last chorister holding the longest note
Lost in a Storm of Falling Slow he sings:

In the New Year the wind will blow
The world be shaken the shadows grow
But on this Slowy night nothing but Slow
Which if it lasts nothing will be but Now

[pararis]

[Orpilorp]

Pride will vanish

and glory will rot,

But virtue lives

and cannot be forgot.

[TSherbs]

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start

[Fit_to_Print]

"The earth turns over, our side feels the cold"

 

W.H. Auden, "On This Island: IX"

[BastardSecretary]

John Updike

Dog's Death

She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car.
Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn
To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor
And to win, wetting there, the words, "Good dog! Good dog!"

 

We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction.
The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver.
As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin
And her heart was learning to lie down forever.

 

Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed
And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest's bed.
We found her twisted and limp but still alive.
In the car to the vet's, on my lap, she tried

 

To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur
And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.
Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,
Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared.

 

Back home, we found that in the night her frame,
Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame
Of diarrhoea and had dragged across the floor
To a newspaper carelessly left there. Good dog.

makes me tear up, every time

[darkizz_89]

Emperor Hadrian

 

Animula vagula, blandula,

Hospes comesque corporis

Quae nunc abibis in loca

pallidula, rigidula, nudula,

Nec. ut soles, dabis iocos...

 

Translation:

 

Little soul, you charming little wanderer,

my body’s guest and partner,

Where are you off to now?
Somewhere without colour, savage and bare;
Never again to share a joke.

[inkstainedruth]

This one always spoke to me (although I'm not entirely sure why).

The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter (after Li Po) -- Ezra Pound

 

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead

I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.

You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,

You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.

And we went on living in the village of Chōkan:

Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.

I never laughed, being bashful.

Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.

Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,

I desired my dust to be mingled with yours

Forever and forever, and forever.

Why should I climb the look out?

At sixteen you departed

You went into far Ku-tō-en, by the river of swirling eddies,

And you have been gone five months.

The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.

By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,

Too deep to clear them away!

The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.

The paired butterflies are already yellow with August

Over the grass in the West garden;

They hurt me.

I grow older.

If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,

Please let me know beforehand,

And I will come out to meet you

As far as Chō-fū-Sa.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[YNY]

One of the great American poems.

 

To Helen - Edgar Allan Poe

 

Helen, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicéan barks of yore,

That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,

The weary, way-worn wanderer bore

To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,

Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

Thy Naiad airs have brought me home

To the glory that was Greece,

And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche

How statue-like I see thee stand,

The agate lamp within thy hand!

Ah, Psyche, from the regions which

Are Holy-Land!

[YNY]

Another poem to help move this thread along.

So we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart still be as loving,
And the moon still be as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul outwears the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.

George Gordon, Lord Byron.

[Bookman]

 

 

[ekz3]

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.”
― Thomas Paine, The American Crisis

[Mercian]

Oh wow - how can anyone think that just one is enough?

I am going to *cheat* :-P

 

I mean, I love Blake's 'The Tiger' (I *likes* me a furry cat), and I also love Kipling's 'Just So' stories.

My favourite by Blake is probably 'London':

 

I wander thro' each charter'd street,

Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

 

In every cry of every Man,

In every Infants cry of fear,

In every voice: in every ban,

The mind-forg'd manacles I hear

 

How the Chimney-sweepers cry

Every blackning Church appalls,

And the hapless Soldiers sigh

Runs in blood down Palace walls

 

But most thro' midnight streets I hear

How the youthful Harlot's curse

Blasts the new-born Infants tear

And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

 

 

And (particularly over the last year or so) I find a lot to recommend in Yeats' 'The Second Coming'.even though it puts me in mind of Hamlet's speech about 'mirth' in. Act 2 Scene ii (the best recital of which on film that I know is by Richard E. Grant as Withnail, in front of the wolves at Regents Park) :-(

 

But when I'm not in the mood for Serious, I adore Wendy Cope's 'Loss':

 

The day he moved out was terrible —

That evening she went through hell.

His absence wasn’t a problem

But the corkscrew had gone as well.

 

And I also like Carroll's more-playful offerings, and those of the much-missed Spike Milligan.

 

E.g.s:

There are holes in the sky

Where the rain gets in

But they're ever so small

That's why the rain is thin.

 

And:

String is a

Very important thing

Rope is thicker

But string is quicker.

 

:-)

[Bookman]

[samuraicat]

...In each ship there is one man who, in the hour of emergency or peril at sea, can turn to no other man. There is one who alone is ultimately responsible for the safe navigation, engineering performance, accurate gunfire and morale of the ship. He is the Commanding Officer. He is the ship!

...

 

From "Command at Sea", Joseph Conrad

Edited February 21, 2017 by samuraicat