Which is your favourite poem and why?

Fennel
Ooh just remembered Siegfried Sassoon “Everyone suddenly burst out singing and I was filled with such delight”
It ends with “ the singing will never be done” Very poignant

My favourite is The Rose Beyond The Wall frequently used at internment.

Oh, and for a good chuckle I like Benjamin Zephania - particularly Talking Turkeys!

Tiger Tiger burning bright.

Also my mum used to recite

Albert and the Lion.

Sea Fever and Crossing The Bar

I grew up living with my parents and sister and my Dad’s father in a slum in the fifties. My Grandad used to shave using a cut throat razor. I used to stand under the mirror to watch him. He used to recite-very carefully-“The Burial of Sir John Moore”.

What a beautiful post. I’ve been introduced to some new poems which made me thoughtful, nostalgic and cry.

My mum adored and taught me to recite I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

Journey of the Magi by T S Eliot. Love it because he paints such a wonderful picture in words you can just see it. And then the ending, the questioning - were we here for a birth of a death? Gives you a lot to think about.
Was introduced to this at college in an English lecture.

Crossing The Bar

Oh, it's always sad to hear about those who have Crossed the Bar.

I must say when I read The Highwayman now it does seem like very over-the-top melodrama. I think I may have grown out of it. Oh dear.

Albert and the Lion’s been mentioned. Now there’s a poem....

Seriously, any sonnet by Shakespeare is worth learning. “Let me not to the marriage of true minds” says everything you need to know about real, lasting love.

Cupid and my Campaspe played
At cards for kisses;
Cupid paid.
He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows,
His mother's doves and team of sparrows,
Loses them too; then down he throws
The coral of his lip, the rose
Growing on's cheek (but none knows how),
With these the crystal of his brow,
And then the dimple of his chin:
All these did my Campaspe win.
At last he set her both his eyes;
She won, and Cupid blind did rise.
O Love! has she done this to thee?
What shall, alas, become of me?

John Lyly

A poem appropriate to this time of year. A bleak picture of winter, but there might be hope...

The Darkling Thrush
(originally called "The Century's End, 1900")

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

Thomas Hardy

Trisha57 I read it at my brother’s funeral. A beautiful poem.

I have had this short poem as an 'ear worm', ever since I came across it for the first time a few months ago. The original was set down in the 9th century in Germany by an Irish monk, writing in Gaelic about his pet cat Pangur Ban. These four translated verses give you the gist.

I and Pangur Ban my cat
’Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight
Hunting words I sit all night…

’Tis a merry sight to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind…

‘Gainst the wall he sets his eye,
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
‘Gainst the wall of knowledge, I
All my little wisdom try….

So in peace our tasks we ply,
Pangur Ban my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss
I have mine and he has his.

Goodness knows why I love the poem so much: I cannot stand cats!

I love the work of Wilfred Owen ever since high school ,his Anthem for Doomed Youth is my favourite.
,The other love of my life is Burns. John Anderson My Jo can bring me to tears and A Mans Man for A' That which show Burns socialist roots were my party pieces at Burns dos for years .

If you dont know Rabbie a gentle introduction is the Eddi Reader album of Burns songs ,well worth a listen and you might find some lovely lyrics that inspire you

The Tarantula by Hilaire Belloc.

I have loved this since I was around 11 years old when l discovered a love of poetry.
There’s an art to reading this poem out loud to get it’s meaning. It’s how the sting of the Tarantula is similar to being in love. The way that it builds and eventually dies.

Bodach

lemongrove

I like the sound of that Bodach I must look it up.
Btw what is a Bodach??

Bodach (Scots Gaelic): an old man; a spectral figure (often a harbinger of doom); a mountain in Scotland.

Take your pick.

Ah! Thanks ?

‘How do I love thee’. Elizabeth Barrett.

DH wrote it out and gave it to me when I was 17. I still have it.

TIME does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide!

There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,—so with his memory they brim!
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him!

by Edna St Vincent Millay

Beautiful and moving.

"Everyone burst out singing!"
That's what we'll do when this plague is under control (sorry to mention covid}.

Hope is a thing with feathers, I think by Emily Dickinson. I used to know the words but they have completely gone out of my head. Help anyone ?

FATHER, Mother, and Me
Sister and Auntie say
All the people like us are We,
And every one else is They.
And They live over the sea,
While We live over the way,
But - would you believe it? - They look upon We
As only a sort of They !
We eat pork and beef
With cow-horn-handled knives.
They who gobble Their rice off a leaf,
Are horrified out of Their lives;
And They who live up a tree,
And feast on grubs and clay,
(Isn't it scandalous?) look upon We
As a simply disgusting They!

We shoot birds with a gun.
They stick lions with spears.
Their full-dress is un-.
We dress up to Our ears.
They like Their friends for tea.
We like Our friends to stay;
And, after all that, They look upon We
As an utterly ignorant They!

We eat kitcheny food.
We have doors that latch.
They drink milk or blood,
Under an open thatch.
We have Doctors to fee.
They have Wizards to pay.
And (impudent heathen!) They look upon We
As a quite impossible They!

All good people agree,
And all good people say,
All nice people, like Us, are We
And every one else is They:
But if you cross over the sea,
Instead of over the way,
You may end by (think of it!) looking on We
As only a sort of They !

Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll sticks in my mind. Also Meg Merrillies by John Keats. Can still recite huge chunks.

I like Sonnet 29: 'When, in Disgrace with Fortune and Men's eyes'; it is worth watching the film 'All is True' just to listen to Kenneth Branagh and Ian McKellen reciting it to each other.

I have many much loved poems - but four 'favourites'. They are 'Daddy' and 'Lady Lazarus' by Sylvia Plath, which I studied for my English exams at school, and both just spoke to me in a way no poems had before. I also love 'Tam o'Shanter' by Robert Burns, which I can still recite from memory, and 'An Irish Airman Foresees His Death' by WB Yeats, which I also discovered at school and still love all these years later.