Which is your favourite poem and why?

Ae Fond Kiss
BY ROBERT BURNS

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, and then forever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.
Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me;
Dark despair around benights me.

I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy,
Naething could resist my Nancy;
But to see her was to love her;
Love but her, and love forever.
Had we never lov'd sae kindly,
Had we never lov'd sae blindly,
Never met—or never parted—
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest!
Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest!
Thine be ilka joy and treasure,
Peace. enjoyment, love, and pleasure!
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, alas, forever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee!

Breaks my heart every time I hear this

Anything by John Clare, a wonderful naturalist

Good to see a mention of E E Cummings. Here is my favourite of his:

www.oatridge.co.uk/poems/e/ee-cummings-it-may-not-always-be-so.php

So many wonderful poems mentioned. I have several I enjoy but have loved Robert Burns To a Mouse for many years especially the final verse where the ploughman explains how the wee mouse is blessed as it lives in the present whereas, he, the human, can look back on past misfortune and worry about what the future will bring. I often think how true that is when I look at my two hounds and how content they seem.

There’s a one eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,
There’s a little marble cross below the town.....

I remember we read this poem at school and I thought it was so lovely, sad and romantic.

I still love it.

What a wonderful thread this is. I watched Hope Gap two days ago! Jotted down some of the poems mentioned. I love The Lake Isle of Innisfree because it sounds like the sort of peaceful place I'd like to escape to. Also Shakespeare's Sonnet 44 which is about being apart from someone you love and wishing you could be with them by the power of thought. So many others too. Some wonderful suggestions on here.

If, Rudyard Kipling

The Peace of Wild Things by Mary Oliver will make you instantly calm. Also her Summer Day (Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?), Daisies, The Journey, Wild Geese. Beautiful nature poetry with such depth of meaning.

Warning by Jenny Joseph (sums up how I feel) ?

Also, The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W B Yeats is wonderfull.

I love No Man is an Island by John Donne and T S Elliott’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats ?

"Stopping by woods on a snowy evening " by Robert Frost.
A short poem that says quite alot

And of course Albert and the Lion is wonderful, with Albert’s stick with its ‘orses ‘ead ‘andle!

‘Up on the Downs’. John Masefield.

Up on the downs the red-eyed kestrels hover,
Eyeing the grass.
The field-mouse flits like a shadow into cover
As their shadows pass.

Men are burning the gorse on the down's shoulder;
A drift of smoke
Glitters with fire and hangs, and the skies smoulder,
And the lungs choke.

Once the tribe did thus on the downs, on these downs burning
Men in the frame.
Crying to the gods of the downs till their brains were turning
And the gods came.

And to-day on the downs, in the wind, the hawks, the grasses,
In blood and air,
Something passes me and cries as it passes.
On the chalk downland bare.

Thomas Hardy’s “In Time of the Breaking of Nations (1915)
I
ONLY a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.
II
Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.
III
Yonder a maid and her wight
Come whispering by:
War’s annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die.

I have two poems that I can't separate. The first is Dulce Et Decorum Est and the second is When I Am Old.

When I am Old = is that the one about I'm going to wear purple? I like it too.
And your other choice, except it's so sad.

mine is either - An Irish Airman forsees his death, or anything by Yates or Sigfried Sasoon. The use of words to describe the indescribable is genius IMO

When I was very young I loved Hiawatha's Song by Longfellow and read it over and over. I loved the rhythm. Recently I have read some of U.A.Fanthorpe (a female poet more of our time) and in particular one called Atlas which begins "There is a kind love called maintenance, which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it ..." Also her The Absent-Minded Lover's Apology - "I would like you to think I love you warmly, Like a brown cat yawning among sheets in the linen cupboard..." Her thoughts on love in all it's manifestations are beautiful and deep, but never sugary. I envy her the kind of love she must have enjoyed and thank her for letting me glimpse it.

Anything by Robert Burns he speaks to my Scottish soul

Wynken, Blinken, and Nod. It has been my favourite since I was a child. I once found it labelled as "Dutch Lullaby", and I thought it an interesting coincidence as my ancestry is 1/4 Dutch (my maternal grandfather was born in Holland).

Lettice

You may like to listen to Symphony No. 9, "From the New World", by Antonin Dvorak. Dvorak was originally from Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), but he spent several years in New York, running the National Conservatory of Music. He loosely based the second and third movements of this symphony on The Song of Hiawatha.

Gwyneth

Wordsworth ...Daffodils always remember this poem from my schooldays.

Gwyneth and trisha. that's my favourite too.
It's the only poem I remember learning at school.

The Lady of Shallot. It is such a romantic & sad poem. My Mum used to read Tennyson to me a lot.

I took contemporary Poetry in my last year of high school in 1979 and these 2 poems have stayed with me ever since

Fog
BY CARL SANDBURG
The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
BY ROBERT FROST
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.