National Poetry Day

[Barmaid]

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?

[douglas9401]

Although I enjoyed Shaky at school, mainly due to having decent teachers to decipher it, these days I can't read it without picturing scenes from Upstart Crow.

[david small]

jourdain2. Sorry, not that sort of performance. 

[sandyRoe]

Crossing the bar.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45321/crossing-the-bar

[jourdain2]

Thanks for that, Sandy.  Another lovely, beautiful poem - and another examply of the benefits of ageing ...... and why youngsters are ... well... youngsters.  Certain things arrive with age.

[sandyRoe]

And Ulysses by the same man.

[jeanyb]

The Toys

BY COVENTRY PATMORE

 

My little Son, who look'd from thoughtful eyes

And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,

Having my law the seventh time disobey'd,

I struck him, and dismiss'd

With hard words and unkiss'd,

His Mother, who was patient, being dead.

Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,

I visited his bed,

But found him slumbering deep,

With darken'd eyelids, and their lashes yet

From his late sobbing wet.

And I, with moan,

Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;

For, on a table drawn beside his head,

He had put, within his reach,

A box of counters and a red-vein'd stone,

A piece of glass abraded by the beach

And six or seven shells,

A bottle with bluebells

And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art,

To comfort his sad heart.

So when that night I pray'd

To God, I wept, and said:

Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath,

Not vexing Thee in death,

And Thou rememberest of what toys

We made our joys,

How weakly understood

Thy great commanded good,

Then, fatherly not less

Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,

Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say,

"I will be sorry for their childishness."

 

[Tom Braider]

Poems & Poets

Topics & Themes

Features

Events &

Ozymandias - Percy Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

[wolf63]

This poem will have some **** in it.

Philip Larkin

This Be The Verse

They *** you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were *** up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

[Atheist]

A Subaltern's Love-song, by Betjeman.