Favorite Poem Project

[John Cole]

Here's one my favorites, a poem by George Herbert.


THE ANSWER


MY comforts drop and melt away like snow :
I shake my head, and all the thoughts and ends,
Which my fierce youth did bandie, fall and flow
Like leaves about me, or like summer friends,
Flyes of estates and sunne-shine. But to all,
Who think me eager, hot, and undertaking,
But in my prosecutions slack and small ;
As a young exhalation, newly waking,
Scorns his first bed of dirt, and means the sky ;
But cooling by the way, grows pursie and slow,
And settling to a cloud, doth live and die
In that dark state of tears : to all, that so
Show me, and set me, I have one reply,
Which they that know the rest, know more then I.

[Bill Murphy]

Here's two by Stephen Crane, that I figure are about gambling... /images/graemlins/wink.gif Saw the first as an epigraph in a Stephen King book, the second in a Peter Straub book.

In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
who, squatting on the ground,
held his heart in his hands and ate of it.
I said, "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter, bitter," he answered;
"But I like it because it is bitter,
and because it is my heart."

Busted outside of Vegas, but already planning for the next trip. /images/graemlins/cool.gif

There was set before me a mighty hill,
And long days I climbed
Through regions of snow.
When I reached the summit-view,
It seemed that all my labors
Had been to see gardens
Lying at impossible distances.

I won the WSOP this year. Was it worth all I gave up over the years? /images/graemlins/shocked.gif /images/graemlins/frown.gif

[John Feeney]

This is one I like from Wilfred Owen.


THE SEND-OFF

Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way
To the siding-shed,
And lined the train with faces grimly gay.

Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
As men's are, dead.

Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp
Stood staring hard,
Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.

Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp
Winked to the guard.

So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.
They were not ours:
We never heard to which front these were sent;

Nor there if they yet mock what women meant
Who gave them flowers.

Shall they return to beatings of great bells
In wild train-loads?
A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,

May creep back, silent, to village wells,
Up half-known roads.

[Zeno]

The Ballad of Reading Gaol, by Oscar Wilde
(last three stanzas)



In Reading gaol by Reading town
There is a pit of shame,
And in it lies a wretched man
Eaten by teeth of flame,
In a burning winding-sheet he lies,
And his grave has got no name.


And there, till Christ call forth the dead,
In silence let him lie:
No need to waste the foolish tear,
Or heave the windy sigh:
The man had killed the thing he loved,
And so he had to die.


And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

[Ray Zee]

up up and away
there i go to stay
by the way i died today


zee

[Zeno]

Wishes of an Elderly Man, Wished at
a Garden Party, June 1914


I wish I loved the Human Race;
I wish I loved its silly face;
I wish I loved the way it walks;
I wish I loved the way it talks;
And when I'm introduced to one
I wish I thought What Jolly Fun!

Walter Raleigh

[Phat Mack]

Two liked by an old guy:

From Spoon River...

Tom Beatty

I was a lawyer like Harmon Whitney
Or Kinsey Keene, or Garrison Standard,
For I tried the rights of property,
Although by lamp-light, for thirty years,
In that poker room in the opera house.
And I say to you that Life's a gambler,
head and shoulders above us all.
No mayor alive can close the house.
And if you lose, you can squeal as you will;
You'll not get your money back.
He makes the percentage hard to conquer;
He stacks the cards to catch your weakness
and not to meet your strength.
And he gives you seventy years to play:
For if you cannot win in seventy
You cannot win at all.
So, if you lose, get out of the room-
Get out of the room when your time is up.
It's mean to sit and fumble the cards,
And curse your losses, leaden-eyed,
Whinning to try and try.

Or, for Herrick's perspective...

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.

[craig r]

Two actually:

Conor Oberst "The Trees All Get Wheeled Away":

Increments back the blood
wore mask of mud
cucumbers cut to fit their eyes
and so no one would know
how tired they've grown
of talking and telling their lies

while your tvs change stations
scroll messages, victims
and christians both drink in blood
and they pray for the destruction of all hatred
more often, just those with hate for us

cause it hurts when you discover
one's worse and one's better
to suffer or cause others to
and you can live by your conscience
now guilt is a concept
you're no longer subscribing to

there's a virgin in my bed
and she's taking off her dress
and I'm not sure what I am gonna do
there's a song stuck in my head
and I can't help singing it
but how I hope my singing pleases you
cause I am not who I've become
but what you'd made me into

oh got no health insurance
no cellular service
no disease they can cure
but we need more money to burn
so each person must learn
the dollar amount they are worth

and your pills make me dizzy
forgetting my body
I watch as it walks away
and I'll just keep drinking the poison
and smoking the cartons
a pack and a half a day

so when time comes to claim me
my friends and my family
will gather around my grave
and they'll believe that they knew me
and loved me and miss me
and all call me by my name

so imagine what you want
and then hold on to that thought
cause that's as close as it will ever come
and believe you're where you are
keep acting out the part
at the end of the day
the trees all get wheeled away
and you'll be standing alone
in a blank blank space

Conor Oberst "I'm Wide Awake Its Morning":

the sun came up with no conclusion
flowers sleeping in their beds
city cemetery humming
i'm wide awake it's morning
i have my drugs, i have my woman
to keep away my lonliness
my parrents they have their religeon
but sleep in different houses

and i read the body count out of the paper
and now it's written all over my face
see no one ever plans to sleep out in the gutter
sometimes that's just the most comfortable place

so i'm drinking, breathing, writing, singing
everyday i'm on the clock
my mind races with all my longings
but can't keep up with what i got
and so i hope i don't sound to ungrateful
what history gave modern man
a telaphone to talk to strangers
machine guns and a camera lens

so when you're asked to start a war that's over nothing
it's best to join the side that's going to win
no one's sure how all of this got started
but we're going to make them goddamned sure
of how it's going to end

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

I was going to say, "do I have to pick just one?" However, the truth is, I don't have to go beyond Dylan Thomas

A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London

Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.

Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.

[superleeds]

IF

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 all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath 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!

--Rudyard Kipling

[elwoodblues]

A couple for me --- The Flea and The Erl King

The Flea is pretty funny, basically a guy trying to convince a woman to sleep with him. I read the Erl King a long time ago and liked it, I really don't know why.

The Flea
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met
And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that, self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and sayst that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now;
'Tis true, then learn how false fears be;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

-John Donne


The Erl-King

Who rides there so late through the night dark and drear?
The father it is, with his infant so dear;
He holdeth the boy tightly clasp'd in his arm,
He holdeth him safely, he keepeth him warm.

"My son, wherefore seek'st thou thy face thus to hide?"
"Look, father, the Erl-King is close by our side!
Dost see not the Erl-King, with crown and with train?"
"My son, 'tis the mist rising over the plain."

"Oh, come, thou dear infant! oh come thou with me!
Full many a game I will play there with thee;
On my strand, lovely flowers their blossoms unfold,
My mother shall grace thee with garments of gold."

"My father, my father, and dost thou not hear
The words that the Erl-King now breathes in mine ear?"
"Be calm, dearest child, 'tis thy fancy deceives;
'Tis the sad wind that sighs through the withering leaves."

"Wilt go, then, dear infant, wilt go with me there?
My daughters shall tend thee with sisterly care.
My daughters by night their glad festival keep,
They'll dance thee, and rock thee, and sing thee to sleep."

"My father, my father, and dost thou not see,
How the Erl-King his daughters has brought here for me?"
"My darling, my darling, I see it aright,
'Tis the aged grey willows deceiving thy sight."

"I love thee, I'm charm'd by thy beauty, dear boy!
And if thou'rt unwilling, then force I'll employ."
"My father, my father, he seizes me fast,
Full sorely the Erl-King has hurt me at last."

The father now gallops, with terror half wild,
He grasps in his arms the poor shuddering child;
He reaches his courtyard with toil and with dread,
The child in his arms finds he motionless, dead.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

[nicky g]

Aftermath
By Paul Muldoon

I
'Let us now drink,' I imagine patriot cry to patriot
after they've shot
a neighbour in his own aftermath, who hangs still
between two sheaves
like Christ between two tousle-headed thieves,
his body wired up to the moon, as like as not.

II
To the memory of another left to rot
near some remote beauty spot,
the skin of his right arm rolled up like a shirtsleeve,
let us now drink.

III
Only a few nights ago, it seems, they set fire to a big
house and it got
so preternaturally hot
we knew there would be no reprieve
till the swallows' nests under the eaves
had been baked into these exquisitely glazed little pots
from which, my love, let us now drink.


Chinese Water Torture
by Roddy Lumsden

I've been noticing just recently
how nowadays, how foolishly and easily
I fall for anyone who falls for me.

I'm fairly sure that such love isn't real
but after three days tied down on The Wheel,
how glorious that first, cool drop must feel.

[M2d]

two for me:
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, has 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.

in Just-
by: e.e. cummings

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

[MMMMMM]

One favorite amongst many;-)

Longfellow may be an underestimated poet today. How many courses on poetry utilize much, if any, Longfellow, I wonder? Fluent in perhaps a dozen languages, his apparently simple verse seems to spring from the far greater simplicity of true mastery. As you said of Frost, he is no mere cracker-barrel sage.

In this poem, the metaphors and similes seem especially well-chosen, and beautiful.



THE DAY IS DONE


THE DAY is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me
That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

[John Cole]

Nicky,

I love the Muldoon poem. I've never read him before. Thanks.

[PuppetMaster]

I forgot the name, its the one where his "biatch" is "tripping"...

[Bill Murphy]

Friend Of Mine? "You know that ain't riiii..." /images/graemlins/cool.gif