Which is your favourite poem and why?

Every poem of Gerald Manley Hopkins S.J.

Lovely thread.
This is a poem by Chinese Poet Li Po or Li Bai - 701 AD to 762. There is more than one translation, but I love this one.

The River Captains Wife
I with my hair in its first fringe
Romped outside breaking flower-heads.
You galloped by on bamboo horses.
We juggled green plums round the well.
Living in Chang-kan village,
Two small people without guile.

At fourteen I married you sir,
So bashful I could only hide,
My frowning face turned to the wall.
Called after - never looking back.

Fifteen before I learnt to smile.
Yearned to be one with you forever.
You to be the Ever-Faithful.
I to not sit lonely, waiting.

At sixteen you sir went away,
Through White King’s Gorge, by Yen Rock’s rapids,
When the Yangtze’s at its highest,
Where the gibbons cried above you.

Here by the door your last footprints,
Slowly growing green mosses,
So deep I cannot sweep them,
Leaves so thick from winds of autumn.

September’s yellow butterflies
Twine together in our west garden.
What I feel – it hurts the heart.
Sadness makes my beauty vanish.

When you come down from far places,
Please will you write me a letter?
As far as the farthest reaches,
I’ll come out to welcome you.
Li Po

Emily Dickins
Hope Is The Thing With Feathers

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickinson

May I also add how much I have enjoyed this thread!

I’m with Greenfinch (Kubla Khan & Abou Ben Adam) but would add ‘When all the world is young, lad’ &To His Coy Mistress Latter is by Andrew Marvell & I’ve no idea about the former but that poem was the last thing/words I spoke to my mother as she lay dying. It was a form of valediction in my mind.

What a wonderful thread. I shall print it out, keep it and refer to it. It will add to my quality of life no end (especially under lockdown)
I is hard to choose just one - as so many of you have said. But may I suggest Dylan Thomas's 'Poem in October'. It is a celebration , not only of his birthday, but of the natural world that has helped so many of us to cope better this year

Bodach I am so pleased to see Pangur Ban mentioned here! I love it.

There are so many poems that mean so much, it's hard to single out a few. From my childhood, Cargoes by Masefield, The Charge Of The Light Brigade by Tennyson and Triumphal March by Eliot. Then Donne's love poetry, the war poems of Owen and Sassoon, and anything by Dylan Thomas or another great Welsh poet R. S. Thomas. I think that George Herbert's poem Love Bade Me Welcome is very moving even if you're not religious.

But, above all, Keats. I read one critic's opinion that To Autumn is the most perfect poem in the English language and the Ode To A Nightingale is the most beautiful. I can't argue with that.

So many of the poems quoted on here have propelled me to dig out my poetry books and revisit them again, so thanks for the reminders. I especially enjoyed renewing my acquaintance with Cargoes by John Masefield.

I like The Donkey by G K Chesterton. I find it very moving,and love the tale of something reviled becoming something heroic.

Desederata...words to live by

From A Railway Carriage by Robert Louis Stevenson. We had a particular minister in the sixties who often based her sermons on lines from the poem. Lovely woman.

Love all of Maya Angelou’s poetry especially ‘Phenomenal Woman’ which is both sassy and inspirational. Reminds me of all the strong, supportive and funny women in my family.

Love this thread ‘Bakingmad’.

William Butler Yeats - When You Are Old.
Why? Because it's beautiful.

Inversnaid by Gerard Manley Hopkins - especially the last verse

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

So many, difficult to choose, but among others:
The Way Through the Woods/The Listeners/Anything else by Walter De La Mare
Gulls/This is just to Say - William Carlos Williams
Anthem for Doomed Youth - Wilfred Owen
November - Thomas Hood
Warning - Jenny Joseph

Chocolate cake by Michael Rosen . Watch a video of him reciting it. It always makes me laugh!

Also 'To his mistress going to bed" by John Donne" is worth a read, although not if easily shocked

The Highwayman.

Some lovely poems have been mentioned stirring wonderful memories and reminding me of how much I used to love reciting poetry. I was brought up on "Palgrave's Golden Treasury", a great favourite of my father. I particularly love "Lord Ullin's Daughter" by Thomas Campbell, very atmospheric when recited out loud, and "I Remember I Remember" by Thomas Hood. Pam Ayres was also a great favourite in our family.

hold fast to dreams
for if dreams die
life,s like a broken winged bird
that cannot fly

See the happy moron
He doesn't give a damn.
I wish I were a moron.
My God! Perhaps I am.

Anon

Yonder a maid and her wight
Come whispering by:
War’s annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die

(Remembered from school where I then strangely thought 'wight' meant an island in the Solent)

W. H. DAVIES
Leisure

WHAT is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?

No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

The Listeners, by Walter de la Mare.

Favourites change. At high school I loved Keats’ Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom friend of the maturing sun-because every time we read it, the boys would splutter at the word bosom! John Betjeman’s Group Life: Letchworth saw us through the endless weeks of chicken-pox. Then “I’m Nobody by Emily Dickinson.
Now this one sticks in my mind. Enjoy!
CAITHNESS SELF-LIFT CHAIR
The Bower in Bexhill-on-Sea provides a quiet life
For people who are shattered after years of mortal strife.
A care home for the elderly, where no-one seems to care
And recently a test-bed for the Caithness Self-Lift Chair.
The patron and the matron, one a major, one a nurse
Think old ladies are appalling, and old men even worse.
They need helping, they need lifting and there isn't cash to spare.
So they've swopped a girl called Tricia for the Caithness Self-Lift Chair.
The old folks at the Bower all liked Tricia - she was nice
And she listened to their stories, though she'd heard them once or twice
- And now she's gone, the lounge is quiet. The inmates sit and stare
Until suddenly a noise comes from the Caithness Self-Lift Chair.
Mrs. Mould's forgetful, sad and paranoid and moody -
She hates that Richard Madeley and she can't abide that Judy.
But suddenly she's flying in a shower of underwear
Propelled across the ceiling by the Caithness Self-Lift Chair.
The others watch her progress - as her mighty knickers snag
On the sharp undusted antlers of a taxidermied stag.
They exchange conspiring glances
- can they do it, do they dare?
For the Bower bought a dozen of the Caithness Self-Lift Chair.
They open all the windows,
move the chairs across the floor,
Apart from one that Mrs. Thomas jams against the door.
Each one sits and faces freedom, and says a silent prayer -
"Lord, carry me away now on my Caithness Self-Lift Chair".
One by one the chairs spring into life, and pensioners are hurled
Across the cliffs of Bexhill to return to the real world.
Mrs. Roberts' chute has opened, she has landed on the beach
She is joined by all the others, they enjoy a wine gum each -
They unfold their pack-up Zimmers, and they turn to face the Bower
And they shout out "Sod off, matron!" in a voice of awesome power.
The inmates of the Bower, free from care and free as air
Unchained from sheltered living by the Caithness Self-Lift Chair. © RICHARD STILGOE