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National Poetry Day

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Barmaid | 12:30 Thu 03rd Oct 2024 | Arts & Literature
49 Answers

Apparently today is National Poetry Day.  

I'm not massively into poetry but have loved "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noye since I was a child.  I won't post it here because it does go one quite a bit, but was the inspiration for Fleetwood Mac's video to "Everywhere".

Do you have a favourite poem?

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I remember loving this one as well.  Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by DylanThomas.Do not go gentle into that good night,Old age should burn and rave at close of day;Rage, rage against the dying of the light.Though wise men at their end know dark is right,Because their words had forked no lightning theyDo not go gentle into that good night.Good men, the...
15:49 Thu 03rd Oct 2024

The Tyger by William Blake. I did try to memorise it a few years ago. Never quite made it stick.

dulce et decorum est

or, alternatively goodnight moon, or room on the broom

I still remember The Pied Piper of Hamlin by Robert Browning from junior school - I loved it - but my real favourite is 'If' by Rudyard Kipling.  That's one to live by.

 

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

 

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

 

So many, but off the top of my head, I've always liked & can recite "Jabberwocky".

 

The Listeners

By Walter de La Mare

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,   

   Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses   

   Of the forest’s ferny floor:

And a bird flew up out of the turret,   

   Above the Traveller’s head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;   

   ‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;   

   No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,   

   Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners   

   That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight   

   To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,   

   That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken   

   By the lonely Traveller’s call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,   

   Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,   

   ’Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even   

   Louder, and lifted his head:—

‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,   

   That I kept my word,’ he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,   

   Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house   

   From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,   

   And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,   

   When the plunging hoofs were gone.

 

My favourite is Shakespeare's Sonnet 29.  When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes ...

https://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/29.html

 

 

Twas brillante and the slithy toad did gyre...

That first line from memory so probably not word perfect .

^. Brillage

 

slithy toves ...

And brillig.  Love Jabberwocky.

Oh let's have the whole kit and kaboodle.  Why not. 

 

Jabberwocky

BY LEWIS CARROLL

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

      And the mome raths outgrabe.

 

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

      The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

      The frumious Bandersnatch!”

 

He took his vorpal sword in hand;

      Long time the manxome foe he sought—

So rested he by the Tumtum tree

      And stood awhile in thought.

 

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

      The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

      And burbled as it came!

 

One, two! One, two! And through and through

      The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

      He went galumphing back.

 

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

      Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

      He chortled in his joy.

 

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

      And the mome raths outgrabe.

 

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe...

ladybirder - thank you for reminding me of Sonnet 29 😘

Auto correct has a mind of its own.

On Raglan Road of an Autumn day

I saw her first and knew,

That her dark hair would weave a snare

That I might someday rue.

I saw the danger and I passed

Along the enchanted way.

And I said, "Let grief be a fallen leaf

At the dawning of the day."

On Grafton Street in November, we

Tripped lightly along the ledge

Of a deep ravine where can be seen

The worth of passion play.

The Queen of Hearts still making tarts

And I not making hay;

Oh, I loved too much and by such and such

Is happiness thrown away.

I gave her gifts of the mind,

I gave her the secret signs,

That's known to the artists who have known

The true gods of sound and stone.

And her words and tint without stint

I gave her poems to say

With her own name there and her own dark hair

Like clouds over fields of May.

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet

I see her walking now,

And away from me so hurriedly

My reason must allow.

That I had loved, not as I should

A creature made of clay,

When the angel woos the clay, he'll lose

His wings at the dawn of day.

My wife has not been very well

Her legs are not too steady.

I have to carry her down the stairs,

To get me breakfast ready.

Courtesy of John Howarth from The Oldham Tinkers.

But I like this classic from Longfellow.

https://allpoetry.com/O-Ship-of-State

This, to me, conjurs up so many wonderful images

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44299/elegy-written-in-a-country-churchyard

i wanna be yours by john cooper clarke too.

I had "the life that i have" by leo marks at my wedding (and the children's funerals)

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What a very pleasant distraction this is proving to be.  I keep dipping in and googling the poems.  Some great stuff being posted.

eskimo nell, i can recite all 52 verses , my party piece

The Cloths of Heaven.

WB Yeats.

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