favourite poem....

[perkino]

hey, i thought a favourite poem thread would be a good idea.... at the moment i'm loving aubade by philip larkin. sorry its a bit long...

aubade
by philip larkin

I work all day, and get half drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not used, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never:
But at the total emptiness forever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says no rational being
Can fear a thing it cannot feel, not seeing
that this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no-one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

[gabrillowise]

Ae Fond Kiss - Robert Burns

AE fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, alas, for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee

Who shall say that Fortune grieves him
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me,
Dark despair around benights me.

I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy;
Naething could resist my Nancy;
But to see her was to love her,
Love but her, and love for ever.

Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met—or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest!
Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest!
Thine be ilka joy and treasure,
Peace, enjoyment, love, and pleasure!

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever!
Ae fareweel, alas, for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee

[Ferg]

fart fart the beans are calling
must have been the ones i ate thismorning
go to the toilet do ah (fart noise) on the floor
dont use toilet paper
use your finger as a scraper

[kaleidoscope]

an unusuall cat poem- by wendy cope-
My cat is dead, but i have decided not to make a big tragedy out of it.

[Iaino]

Ode to a goldfish.

Oh
Wet
Pet.

[Misanthropy]

"On Going To Meet A Zen Master In The Kyushu Mountains And Not Finding Him", by Don Paterson






-fin

[curlupanddie]

Originally Posted by perkino

hey, i thought a favourite poem thread would be a good idea.... at the moment i'm loving aubade by philip larkin. sorry its a bit long...

aubade
by philip larkin

I work all day, and get half drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not used, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never:
But at the total emptiness forever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says no rational being
Can fear a thing it cannot feel, not seeing
that this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no-one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

im doin my personal study on two of his poems, "toads" and "At Grass". got any idea where i can find a summary on it or anything helpful?

[earmuffin]

They say I should not wait about your street
Nor call upon your friends to hear of you
Or go to places where by chance we'll meet,
Or hold your hand unless you ask me to.

They tell me I should emphasise my waist
And I should never say 'I love you' first
Should I learn to waken lust and yet stay chaste,
And cultivate the arts that make men thirst?

But I would come to you clear-eyed and plain,
My treasures in a kerchief wrapped. To you
I'd give my first primrose, a daisy-chain,
A lucky stone, my heart for your tatoo.

And when, in time, they say we told you so
My truth I'll have, and they their status quo

(Diana Hendry)

i love this poem....yeah, just ignore the line about status quo

[Mean Girl]

my favourite is Funeral Blues by W.H.Auden. a little cliche but it makes me cry! and before yies start i've never seen four weddings and a funeral my favourite as a child was The Big Rock Candy Mountains, by anonymous

Big Rock Candy Mountain
One evening as the sun went down and the jungle fire was burning
Down the track came a hobo hiking and he said boys I'm not turning
I'm headin for a land that's far away beside the crystal fountains
So come with me we'll go and see the Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains there's a land that's fair and bright
Where the handouts grow on bushes and you sleep out every night
Where the boxcars are all empty and the sun shines every day
On the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees
Where the lemonade springs where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains all the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth and the hens lay soft boiled eggs
The farmer's trees are full of fruit and the barns are full of hay
Oh, I'm bound to go where there ain't no snow
Where the rain don't fall and the wind don't blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains you never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol come a-trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats and the railroad bulls are blind
There's a lake of stew and of whiskey too
You can paddle all around 'em in a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains the jails are made of tin
And you can walk right out again as soon as you are in
There ain't no short handled shovels, no axes saws or picks
I'm a goin to stay where you sleep all day
Where they hung the jerk that invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

I'll see you all this coming fall in the Big Rock Candy Mountains

[perkino]

Originally Posted by curlupanddie

im doin my personal study on two of his poems, "toads" and "At Grass". got any idea where i can find a summary on it or anything helpful?

this is a really good book on Larkin, i used it loads in my essay

Swarbrick, Andrew. Out of Reach, The Poetry of Philip Larkin (London: Macmillan, 1995)

[elliott]

"to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting"

e e cummings rocks my world! i don't even know if that counts as a poem, but he was a poet, so...

[Ally G]

one of the poems im writing an essay on today:

ezra pound 'liu ch'e'

the rustling of the silk is discontinued
Dust drifts over the court-yard
There is no sound of foot-fall, and the leaves
Scurry into heaps and lie still,
And she, the rejoicer of the heart is beneath them

a wet leaf that clings to the threshold

[Wally]

One of my all-time favourites has to be "The Lovesong Of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Elliot. It's a bit long to post here in it's entirety, but here's a link to it:

http://www.prufrock.org/poem/fulltext.html

[Ally G]

yeah man, thats a great poem, ragged claws and that