NationStates Jolt Archive

Inspired by the favorite lyrics thread.

Post your favorite poetry

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Fudge is sweet
Here's some fudge

-That 70s Show

When I first heard it, it really made me laugh. Me and my brother attached it to my grandma's present at Christmas, which was fudge. She even read it out loud, and completely missed the joke, thinking it was a real poem. Ah, good times...

The Waste Land is probably my favorite, but it's a bit long to post here.

I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:

How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.

But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.
London by William Blake

Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti (http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/crossetti/gobmarket.html)which is too long for me to post

TS Eliot's The Hollow Men (http://www.geocities.com/Paris/LeftBank/9824/hollow.html), again too long to post
It might have been the way you yelped
at the paddle-splash of water
on the back of your neck, snowmelt crisp,
an April afternoon just warm enough

for us to steer away from cliff shadows,
from wind-rustled pines. Or the way
you shed shoes and hat to clamber
the sandstone face of Jim's Bluff,

wet footprints diminishing, step over step,
maybe even the romantic sweep of dragonfly
skimming the river surface to light
on flotsam. But in the end I think it was

the way you bent into each stroke, pulled
river behind you, pulled us deeper into it.
Buffalo River by Brian Spears


and plenty of others that I'll probably post later.

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Does Paradise Lost count? If not, can I just say Book I of Paradise Lost?

Otherwise, gonna have to go with The Raven. Yeah, yeah, cliche. But awesome.

The Canterbury Tales.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says,“Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words, Words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; Words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see. Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance. In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp — praise song for walking forward in that light.

*flees*

"Scheherazade" by Richard Siken:

Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake
and dress them in warm clothes again.
How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running
until they forget that they are horses.
It’s not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
it’s more like a song on a policeman’s radio,
how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple
to slice into pieces.
Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it’s noon, that means
we’re inconsolable.
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we’ll never get used to it.

---

"Music in the Morning" by Dorianne Laux:

When I think of the years he drank, the scars
on his chin, his thinning hair, his eye that still weeps
decades after the blow, my knees weaken with gratitude
for whatever kept him safe, whatever stopped
the glass from cracking and shearing something vital,
the fist from lowering, exploding an artery, pressing
the clot of blood toward the back of his brain.
Now, he sits calmly on the couch, reading,
refusing to wear the glasses I bought him,
holding the open book at arm's length from his chest.
Behind him the windows are smoky with mist
and the tile floor is pushing its night chill
up through the bare soles of his feet. I like to think
he survived in order to find me, in order
to arrive here, sober, tired from a long night
of tongues and hands and thighs, music
on the radio, coffee-- so he could look up and see me,
standing in the kitchen in his torn t-shirt,
the hem of it brushing my knees, but I know
it's only luck that brought him here, luck
and a love that had nothing to do with me,
except that this is what we sometimes get if we live
long enough, if we are patient with our lives.

---

"Quarter-View, from Nauset" by Carl Phillips


Love, etc. Have been remembering
the part in Sophocles
where a god advises the two heroes

they should be as
twin lions, feeding—how
even the flesh of late

slaughter does not
distract them from keeping
each over the other

a guarding eye.
What part of this is love, and
what survival

is never said,
though the difference it makes is
at least that between a lily and, say,

a shield. I think of you
often, especially here,
at the edge of the world or a

part of it, anyway,
by which I mean of course
more, you will have guessed, than

the coast, just now, I
stand on. Against it,
the water dashes with

the violence of two men who,
having stripped it, now take for their
own the body of

a third man on the bad
sofa of an even worse
motel room in what eventually

is a movie—one
we've seen... The way
what looks like rape

might not be. You'd like
the light here. At
times, a color you'd call anything but blue.

There are several candidates, including more than this one by A.E. Housman, but this has always stuck with me:

"Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad."

Why, if 'tis dancing you would be
There's brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh, many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world's not.
And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:
The mischief is that 'twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie god knows where,
And carried half-way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul's stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt
- I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.

--A. E. Housman (1859–1936). A Shropshire Lad. 1896

"I am in Chains"- Aleksandr Pushkin (Translated from Russian)
I am in chains, O maiden-rose,
And yet, not shameful of these guards;
A nightingale, thus, - in dense laurels -
A feathered king of the woods' bards,
A proud and charming rose over
In a sweet bondage - lives for long
And softly sings for her a song
Under a sensual night's cover.

Fire and Ice- Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

The Eagle- Alfred Lord Tennyson
HE clasps the crag with crooked hands
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls.
and like a thunderbolt he falls.

Also, William Blake's "A Poison Tree (http://www.online-literature.com/blake/622/)", and "The Tyger (http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~keith/poems/tyger.html)"

And Federico García Lorca's "Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías (http://www.analitica.com/BITBLIO/lorca/ignacio.asp)"

One of my very favorites:

THE OUTLINE I INHABIT
Olena Kalytiak Davis


1. IMAGINE WHAT PAIN SAYS

In the ghost-making fog the phone rings.

Sure, I'm unnerved, but I listen.
I strain for meaning. So when I hang up,
everything's sore. When I hang up,
I have to write down everything
that hurts.

Imagine what Pain says:
I'll keep in touch.

2. THE ENTIRE NONEXISTENT CONVERSATION

In the ghost-making fog I lose the outline
I inhabit so well. I get so stoned
I have to sit with my imaginary head
between my fantastic knees. I get so stoned
I get so stoned I forget the entire
nonexistent conversation.

3. THE ENTIRE NONEXISTENT CONVERSATION

Did I tell you I think I'm in love
with a certain type of cloud? Did I tell you
that now I'm dreaming solely
in Yup'ik? Did I mention which syllables
I'm starting to distort?

4. A DULL HUM

It must have been too much.
I must have blown an eardrum.
Because first there was all that dreadful
music and now there's nothing,
a dull hum.

My brain sounds
like an old refrigerator.
First, all that vibrating.
Now, a lone drone
on the left side.

5. NOT DELINEATING

Walking down Chief Eddie Hoffman Highway.

I'm not thinking about composition.
I'm not delineating anything.

6. DE-COMPOSING

Walking down Chief Eddie Hoffman Highway.

I'm feeling terrifically heavy.
I'm feeling as well grounded as the dead.

Lady Lazarus, Sylvia Plath
Stop All the Clocks, W.H. Auden
humanity i love you, cummings (along with many many many of his other poems).
From a German War Primer, Bertolt Brecht.
A Litany for Survival, Audre Lorde.
The entirety of Anne Carson's The Beauty of the Husband, but especially these lines (taken from throughout the book):

Aristotle who
had no husband,
rarely mentions beauty
and was likely to pass rapidly from wrist to slave when trying to
recollect wife.


Do you know she began.
What.
If I could kill you I would then have to make another exactly like you.
Why.
To tell it to.
Perfection rested on them for a moment like calm on a lake.
Pain rested.
Beauty does not rest.


"With horror I discovered that I belong to the strong part of the world." He said this to
me I think one night talking about the war. But I don't remember, I wrote it down.


I thought changes were holy. I spilled them like grain. How could I know. How could I
know she would lose.


So this is the strong part.

'Not my Best Side' by U.A. Fanthorpe

I
Not my best side, I'm afraid.
The artist didn't give me a chance to
Pose properly, and as you can see,
Poor chap, he had this obsession with
Triangles, so he left off two of my
Feet. I didn't comment at the time
(What, after all, are two feet
To a monster?) but afterwards
I was sorry for the bad publicity.
Why, I said to myself, should my conqueror
Be so ostentatiously beardless, and ride
A horse with a deformed neck and square hoofs?
Why should my victim be so
Unattractive as to be inedible,
And why should she have me literally
On a string? I don't mind dying
Ritually, since I always rise again,
But I should have liked a little more blood
To show they were taking me seriously.

II
It's hard for a girl to be sure if
She wants to be rescued. I mean, I quite
Took to the dragon. It's nice to be
Liked, if you know what I mean. He was
So nicely physical, with his claws
And lovely green skin, and that sexy tail,
And the way he looked at me,
He made me feel he was all ready to
Eat me. And any girl enjoys that.
So when this boy turned up, wearing machinery,
On a really dangerous horse, to be honest
I didn't much fancy him. I mean,
What was he like underneath the hardware?
He might have acne, blackheads or even
Bad breath for all I could tell, but the dragon--
Well, you could see all his equipment
At a glance. Still, what could I do?
The dragon got himself beaten by the boy,
And a girl's got to think of her future.

III
I have diplomas in Dragon
Management and Virgin Reclamation.
My horse is the latest model, with
Automatic transmission and built-in
Obsolescence. My spear is custom-built,
And my prototype armour
Still on the secret list. You can't
Do better than me at the moment.
I'm qualified and equipped to the
Eyebrow. So why be difficult?
Don't you want to be killed and/or rescued
In the most contemporary way? Don't
You want to carry out the roles
That sociology and myth have designed for you?
Don't you realize that, by being choosy,
You are endangering job prospects
In the spear- and horse-building industries?
What, in any case, does it matter what
You want? You're in my way.

This is a lot funnier if it is seen along with the painting the characters are meant to be from which I link here (http://homepage.mac.com/mseffie/assignments/paintings&poems/uccello.html). I'm not a big fan of poetry, but I remember this from my poetry anthology at school. It really appealed to the cynical, over-analytical style of humour I was developing at the time.

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Fudge is sweet
Here's some fudge

-That 70s Show

When I first heard it, it really made me laugh. Me and my brother attached it to my grandma's present at Christmas, which was fudge. She even read it out loud, and completely missed the joke, thinking it was a real poem. Ah, good times...

haha what about hydes haiku about jackie something about when i see you i want to throw up

"I am in Chains"- Aleksandr Pushkin (Translated from Russian)
*snip*

"They'll never survive
On Pushkin alone!" --Marina Tsvetaeva

I have to ask if you speak/read Russian (one can't go on nation name and Pushkin alone), because if so, there is a Yevtushenko poem I adore that I have never been able to find in English, and there are a couple spots I just can't puzzle out and I would love you foreeeeever if you could help me!

Actually, while I'm resisting the urge to post most of my favorite poems - because it's not like you all can't find Milton, Shakespeare, Plath, Eliot, Browning, Dickinson, Yeats, and so forth quite nicely on your own (as many of you obviously already have), I do think I should post this one, because most people don't know Robert Lowell so well, and it is an eerie and beautiful little poem:

Suicide

You only come in the tormenting
hallucinations of the night,
when my sleeping, prophetic mind
experiences things
that have not happened yet.

Sometimes in dreams
my hair came out in tufts
from my scalp,
I saw it lying there
loose on my pillow like flax.

Sometimes in dreams
my teeth got loose in my mouth...
Tinker, Tailor, Sailor, Sailor -
they were cherrystones,
as I spit them out.

I will not come again to you
and risk the help I fled -
the doctors and darkness and dogs,
the hide and seek for me -
"Cuckoo, cuckoo. Here I am..."

If I had lived
and could have forgotten
that eventually it had to happen,
even to children -
it would have been otherwise.

One light, two lights, three -
it's day, no light is needed.
Your car I watch for never comes,
you will not see me peeping for you
behind my furtively ajar front door.

The trees close branches and redden,
their winter skeletons are hard to find;
a friend seldom seen
is not the same -
how quickly even bad cooking eats up a day.

I go to the window,
and even open it wide -
five floors down, the trees are bushes and weeds,
too contemptible and small
to delay a sparrow's fall

Why haven't you followed me here,
as you followed me everywhere else?
You cannot do it
with vague fatality
or muffled but lethal sighs.

Do I deserve credit
for not having tried suicide -
or am I afraid
the exotic act
will make me blunder,

not knowing error
is remedied by practice,
as our first home-photographs,
headless, half-headed, tilting
extinguished by a flashbulb?

"They'll never survive
On Pushkin alone!" --Marina Tsvetaeva

I have to ask if you speak/read Russian (one can't go on nation name and Pushkin alone), because if so, there is a Yevtushenko poem I adore that I have never been able to find in English, and there are a couple spots I just can't puzzle out and I would love you foreeeeever if you could help me!

Sure, I'll try to help out

The Conqueror Worm

Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly-
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!

That motley drama- oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!- it writhes!- with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

Out- out are the lights- out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.




Richard Cory

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich — yes, richer than a king —
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Sure, I'll try to help out

Squee! Thank you! TGing you.

EDIT: Bollocks, too long to TG. Sent you a private message. Had to cut my profuse thanks because of the character limit. Very grateful!

"Howl" by Allen Ginsburg

http://members.tripod.com/~Sprayberry/poems/howl.txt


"Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas

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 they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.


Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.


Scripture of The Golden Eternity by Jack Kerouac. This was actually a collection of 66 short prose poems. My favorite was #16:

The point is we're waiting, not how comfortable we are while waiting. Paleolithic man waited by caves for the realization of why he was there, and hunted; modern men wait in beautified homes and try to forget death and birth. We're waiting for the realization that this is the golden eternity.

http://www.litkicks.com/Texts/GoldenEternity.html

Wings Stir the sunlit dust
of the cathedral in which
the Past is buried to its chin in marble.

Stan Rice, "Poem on Crawling Into Bed: Bitterness"
Body of Work (1983)

Some things lighten nightfall
and make a Rembrandt of a grief.
But mostly the swiftness of time
is a joke; on us. The flame-moth
is unable to laugh. What luck
The myths are dead.

"Poem on Crawling into Bed: Bitterness"
Body of Work (1983)

Some from when I was a wee little child.

My Shadow
by Robert Louis Stevenson
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow--
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes goes so little that there's none of him at all.

He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close behind me, he's a coward you can see;
I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

Shell Silverstien

You Need to have an iron rear to sit upon a cactus
Or otherwise at least a year of very painful practice


I am a parameceum
I cannot do a simple sum
It is a rather well known fact
I'm quite unable to subtract
If I'd an eye
Than I would cry
About the way I multiply
For no matter how I try
I do it backwards
And divide

Behold the duck.
It does not cluck.
A cluck it lacks.
Instead, it quacks.

Last Charge of the Light Brigade
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!" he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not,
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!



Jabberwocky
'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.

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT - Dylan Thomas

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 they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

"Ryme of the ancynte marinere"

I'd post Tam O' Shanter, b Robbie Burns, but it's too long. You can read it here (http://www.robertburns.org/works/308.shtml); though a warning to all ye sassenachs, it's in Scots, not English.

My favourite stanza, however, is:

But here my Muse her wing maun cour,
Sic flights are far beyond her power;
To sing how Nannie lap and flang,
(A souple jade she was and strang),
And how Tam stood, like ane bewithc'd,
And thought his very een enrich'd:
Even Satan glowr'd, and fidg'd fu' fain,
And hotch'd and blew wi' might and main:
Till first ae caper, syne anither,
Tam tint his reason a thegither,
And roars out, "Weel done, Cutty-sark!"
And in an instant all was dark:
And scarcely had he Maggie rallied.
When out the hellish legion sallied.


Instead of the Bard, here's a more modern poem that I read in school, and has haunted me ever since:


The Horses

Barely a twelvemonth after
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.
By then we had made our covenant with silence,
But in the first few days it was so still
We listened to our breathing and were afraid.
On the second day
The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.
On the third day a warship passed us, heading north,
Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day
A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter
Nothing. The radios dumb;
And still they stand in corners of our kitchens,
And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms
All over the world. But now if they should speak,
If on a sudden they should speak again,
If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak,
We would not listen, we would not let it bring
That old bad world that swallowed its children quick
At one great gulp. We would not have it again.
Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep,
Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow,
And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness.
The tractors lie about our fields; at evening
They look like dank sea-monsters couched and waiting.
We leave them where they are and let them rust:
'They'll molder away and be like other loam.'
We make our oxen drag our rusty plows,
Long laid aside. We have gone back
Far past our fathers' land.
And then, that evening
Late in the summer the strange horses came.
We heard a distant tapping on the road,
A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on again
And at the corner changed to hollow thunder.
We saw the heads
Like a wild wave charging and were afraid.
We had sold our horses in our fathers' time
To buy new tractors. Now they were strange to us
As fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield.
Or illustrations in a book of knights.
We did not dare go near them. Yet they waited,
Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent
By an old command to find our whereabouts
And that long-lost archaic companionship.
In the first moment we had never a thought
That they were creatures to be owned and used.
Among them were some half a dozen colts
Dropped in some wilderness of the broken world,
Yet new as if they had come from their own Eden.
Since then they have pulled our plows and borne our loads
But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts.
Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.

Edwin Muir