Which is your favourite poem and why?

Desiderata

Currently: Beautiful Isle of Somewhere by Jessie Pounds (1897). Just heard a lovely musical arrangement of it at a funeral. Very touching.

Mine is "Stop All The Clocks" as it reminds me of my dad's passing.

Unlike many of you I've never been a great fan of poetry. I remember when my daughter was at school her homework was to learn a poem by heart. She rejected everything I suggested as too long but found this one:

'Thanks for laying the carpet, Dad,
Thanks for showing us how,
But what's that bump in the middle, Dad?
And why is it saying Meow?'

I don't know the title or author but it still makes me chuckle.

I find poetry such a pleasure, and enjoy so many poems, but a few lines by Hilaire Belloc, beloved of my Father, come to me often - and are so meaningful.

'From quiet homes and first beginning,
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There's nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter, and the love of friends'.

Remember
Christina Rossetti - 1830-1894

This poem helped me a lot after my husband died.

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

As a child, my parents gave me a wonderful book which I still have, "Arthur Mee's Book of One Thousand Beautiful Things" full of beautiful literature and poems, many of which have been mentioned here. It's rather battered now but it's so good to leaf through it now and again. Before Victoria Wood's time - how I love her uplifting work.

I have always loved poetry so it is hard to choose. Daffodils by Wordsworth might be the one "fluttering and dancing in the breeze." I also love Adlestrop. I still have a very soft spot for The Owl and the Pussycat and The King's Breakfast by A A Milne.

I remember one we had at school when I was about twelve about a school bus with the refrain:"Yes, but it's Thursday, the day of fear, two hateful lessons and school draws near." With every verse the number of hateful lessons increased. One verse mentioned "girls with their violins," which stood out as l was one of them. If any helpful gransnetter recognises this and who wrote it l would be very grateful,

I’m with 3dognight. The Highwayman “the road was a ribbon of moonlight across the purple and the highwayman came riding, riding, riding, the highwayman came riding up to the old inn door”. So dramatic, you can just picture it in your mind. He loved the landlords daughter but it ended in tragedy.

'Death be not proud' by John Donne; helps me keep a sense of perspective. I am also very fond of Kipling's 'If' except for the last line (You'll be a man, my son).

This is the place by Tony Walsh after the tragic bombing in Manchester struck the right note

From a Railway Carriage by Robert Louis Stevenson. Brings back memories of trips to the seaside on a steam train.

This is a wonderful thread, and I know what I'll be doing for the next few days. I can't choose a favourite poem, but some of my favourite poets are Hugh MacDiarmid (as much for his influence in/on Scottish literary and cultural life in general as for his own works), Rabbie Burns, Jackie Kay (the current Scots Makar), William Blake, Wendy Cope, Jenny Joseph, E.E.Cummings, Walt Whitman, Robert Lowell. All very different from each other, but all equally pleasurable to read (imo).

Any poem by Rupert Brooke or by Dorothy Parker,

I am Standing on the Seashore by Henry van Dyke.

Comforting for those bereaved and I find it more uplifting than sad.

I actually have 2 I love. The one is from Ogden Nash.
I eat my peas with honey;
I’ve done it all my life.
They do taste kinda funny,
But it keeps ’emon the knife.

And the other one is "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix" is a poem by Robert Browning. Love the galloping metre.

Journey of the Magi by T S Eliot.
Was my chosen poem to recite at school.
I can still do it!

Fernhill by Dylan Thomas

So many lovely poems mentioned in these posts and so hard to pick a favourite myself.
If I have to choose it would be ‘The Daffodils’by Wordsworth, it reminds of childhood holidays in the Lake District and my dear Father who loved walking the hills there. Also it conjures up a cheery picture in my mind to brighten these dark and difficult days.
‘High Flight’ comes a close second,DH is a retired RAF pilot and this poem is his favourite though sadly it’s quite often recited at military funerals.

I think you mean the Lady of Shallot

the peace of wild things by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows inmate
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water,and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief.I come into the presence of still water
and I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world and am free.

grows in me
not inmate!

This is such a lovely thread .

I like your choice, Gagajo. I love The World's Wife, and that is one of my favourites in it.

What a great thread. Impossible to pick just one! I love ‘Home Thoughts from Abroad’ and so many others already mentioned, especially those by Shakespeare, Donne, GM Hopkins and Yeats.

Recently I have appreciated ‘In No Strange Land’ by Francis Thompson. I like the poem and the story behind it – that he was living on the streets of London for three years, homeless and addicted to opium, sent in some poems to a periodical and was rescued from the streets by the couple who ran it.

In No Strange Land

O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air—
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumour of thee there?

Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!—
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

The angels keep their ancient places;—
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
’Tis ye, ’tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry;—and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry,—clinging to Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!
- Francis Thompson (1859-1907)

I especially like the two lines about Jacob’s ladder.