Which is your favourite poem and why?

0wlfred

'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).

What's wrong with the last line? Isn't the poem all about growing up and what qualities are needed to be an adult in a difficult world?

I like to bit about walking with kings and not losing the common touch. John Saxbee, Bishop of Lincoln springs to mind.

May7 Sat 09-Jan-21 21:45:43

Ae Fond Kiss
BY ROBERT BURNS

Now you've done it! Gone and made me cry.

Mamardoit

I've just found the Max Boyce poem on YouTube. It was written about the first lock down so worth a listen.

Gosh, Mamardoit. What a lovely poem. I'd forgotten all about Max Boyce. My Welsh friends were always quoting him when I was at university. Haven't heard anything by him for over 40 years.

Currently, a poem I've shared many times, is the Max Boyce poem for our time "when just the tide went out"

Poetry of Thomas Hardy was on the IGCSE Literature syllabus 4 years ago. By the time we had read the 12th poem, the class loathed him.

Absolutely anything by Thomas Hardy, especially: 'The Going'...sad,as you can feel his grief!

A late entry, just read it -

Galway Kinnell

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42680/after-making-love-we-hear-footsteps

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.

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

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.

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.

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).

Anything by Robert Burns he speaks to my Scottish soul

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.

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 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.

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

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.

‘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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.