Poems you love and want to share

I rather like The Germ, by Ogden Nash, and often quote it....

A mighty creature is the germ,
Though smaller than a pachyderm.
His customary dwelling place
Is deep within the human race.
His childish pride he often pleases
By giving people strange diseases.
Do you, my poppet, feel infirm?
You probably contain a germ.

I love the following, not romantic but so touching

Jenny Kissed Me
Leigh Hunt

Jenny kissed me when me met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in,
Time, you thief , who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in,
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say health and wealth have missed me.
Say I'm growing old, but add
Jenny kissed me

My choices tend to be incredibly sad. Too much Wilfred Owen when doing English Lit at a level .

Anthem For Doomed Youth - Poem by Wilfred Owen

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Wilfred Owen

It is incredibly sad but superbly written. You can feel the emotion in the words and the meter.

There is also Dulce et decorum est. In the link below.
It is grim but a fantastic poem by the best of the Great war poets. It completely debunks the glory of battle.
www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175898

A lovely thread full of evocative poems, some very familiar, some new. I enjoy a weekly hour in a small cafe where allcomers are welcome to share a poem. There is rarely a set theme though one sometimes emerges in response to events. The poems range from our own to classics.

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick 1591-1674

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy but use your time
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime
You may for ever tarry.

Luckygirl - this week I shall share 'Forgetfulness' at the cafe and explain where I encountered it, many thanks!

Percy Bysshe Shelly.

Love's Philosophy

The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle
Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another
No sister flower would be forgiven
If it disdained it's brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?

I'm not much of a poetry person - they seem to take a lot of words to say what they mean. However the one poem, if it can be described as such, that I find evocative is Footprints in the Sand. A bit long to include here but can easy looked at on Google.

As we have a disabled grandson I find these words very moving.

A child is like a butterfly in the wind,
Some can fly higher than others, But each one flies the best it can, Why compare one against the other?
Each one is different, Each one is special, Each one is beautiful

I don't know who wrote this.

This by Clive James, a farewell poem after being diagnosed with leukaemia and emphysema.

Japanese Maple
Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.
So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath growing short
Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain
Of energy, but thought and sight remain:

Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever see
So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls
On that small tree
And saturates your brick back garden walls,
So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls?

Ever more lavish as the dusk descends
This glistening illuminates the air.
It never ends.
Whenever the rain comes it will be there,
Beyond my time, but now I take my share.

My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new.
Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.
What I must do
Is live to see that.That will end the game
For me, though life continues all the same:

Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,
A final flood of colours will live on
As my mind dies,
Burned by my vision of a world that shone
So brightly at the last, and then was gone.

© Clive James, 2014

Another that's too long, but at school I took a Gold Medal Verse Speaking exam and recited two which became firm favourites -
D H Laweence's "Mountain Lion" and William Carlos Williams "Gulls". Keep looking for Gulls on the web, but can only find the one about eating plums from the fridge, which is great fun! Another childhood exam verse started "John was a tyrant, John was a tartar, And John put his name to the great big Charter", and have no idea, but suspect it may be by Eleanor Farjeon (spelling?) Anyone know, please?

Juliette and daffydil. I have put a query online to the Poetry Library on the Southbank about 'Think of me at night...' They have a Poetry Queries section and also a Lost Quotes.

I like this poem by Wendy Cope

Being Boring

If you ask me 'what's new?' I have nothing to say
Except that the garden is growing
I had a slight cold but it's better today
I'm content with the way things are going.
Yes, he is the same as he usually is,
Still eating and sleeping and snoring.
I get on with my work. He gets on with his.
I know this is all very boring.

There was drama enough in my turbulent past:
Tears and passion- Ive used up a tankful.
No news is good news, and lo g may it last.
If nothing much happens, i'm thankful.
A happier cabbage you never did see,
My vegetable spirits are soaring.
If you're after excitement, steer well clear of me.
I want to go on being boring.

I don't go to parties. Well, what are they for
If you don't need to find a new lover?
You drink and you listen and drink a bit more
And take the next day to recover.
Someone to stay home with was all my desire
And, now that I've found a safe mooring,
I've just one ambition in life: I aspire
To go on and on being boring.

The Listeners, Walter de la Mare.

I do like Wendy Cope pp - that one is excellent!

A poem I learned for O level which I love, and still do is 'The Ice Cart' by Wilfred Gibson (?). I love the imagery in the words eg 'shivering seas of blinding blue'.

skweek1 I thought the "John was tyrant" could be AA Milne but it was Hugh Chesterman,unknown to me.
Milne did write one about King John which called him a bad man.'

These lines speak to me in terms of how to live life; they accompanied the flowers on my Father's coffin as he epitomised the sentiment. I think the words were composed by Hilaire Belloc:

'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'.

Loving this thread. Here is a poem that I would like to share.

Fishing Lanterns

As down behind the mountain-rim
The moon begins to sink,
Across these wide dark wastes of water
Fishing lanterns blink
And,when we think ourselves alone
Far out on the midnight sea,
There comes the sound of splashing oars
Yet farther out than we.

Anonymous ( eight century)
Poems from the Manyoshu
Translated from Japanese

I like the Rosseti poem that includes
Better you should forget me and be happy
Than remember and be sad
But I like yours better icy

These are all lovely - thank you for posting them. Here is another by Billy Collins, which always raises a rueful smile:

No Time
By Billy Collins

In a rush this weekday morning,
I tap the horn as I speed past the cemetery
where my parents are buried
side by side beneath a slab of smooth granite.

Then, all day, I think of him rising up
to give me that look
of knowing disapproval
while my mother calmly tells him to lie back down.

I like that one lucky girl. Didn't know of Billy Collins. Will have to look him up.

Some of these are lovely have enjoyed poetry all my life (Welahbackground) and am particularly fond of Dylan Thomas
I wrote these lines on the wreath for my dad
'Lovers may die but love shall not
And death shall have no dominion '
Another favourite is Gerald Manley Hopkins purely for the wonderful(sprung) rhymn of the language-you have to read it aloud.

And CD Lewis on the day his son started school .The poem ends
'Selfhood begins with walking away
And love is proved in the letting go '
I have tried to bear that in mind raising my children
I think what is so wonderful about poetry is that it expresses so succinctly and often so beautifully something one migt have thought but couldnt put into words

Elrel thanks for the website information. Will have a look later and report back.

One of my favourite poems is

What lips my lips have kissed and where and why by Edna St.Vincent Millay

The first time I read it I was going through a painful divorce and it seemed to sum up my feelings at the time.

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.