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#1
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Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
The story of life is over in the wink of an eye The story of love is hello and goodbye until we meet again... Jimi Hendrix also Ode on a Grecian Urn- Keats THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape 5 Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? 10 Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 15 Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! 20 Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; And, happy melodist, unwearièd, For ever piping songs for ever new; More happy love! more happy, happy love! 25 For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd, For ever panting, and for ever young; All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd, A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. 30 Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? What little town by river or sea-shore, 35 Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn? And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. 40 O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! 45 When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.' 50 |
#2
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Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
Themes on Love Grading themes on love at M.I.T., one-man Symposium at 3 a.m., across the court I saw a light; another office-holder working late. While Plato on a silver pillow rode above the waves of pre-sophistic prose, I jotted teacher's notions that were not as brave as our two lamps against the glut of dawn. But when I clicked mine off his too at once was gone, had been my echo in a distant sheen of glass; had been my own, and I was lonely then, and wrote these English words. -Barry Spacks </pre><hr /> |
#3
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Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
circling round, dancing
with my breath: breathing in-- drying dishes--breathing out-- Scott |
#4
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Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
ODE
Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy We are the music makers, And we are the dreamer of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams; World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world for ever, it seems. With wonderful deathless ditties, We build up the world's great cities, And out of a fabulous story We fashion an empire's glory: One man with a dream, at pleasure, Shall go forth and conquer a crown; And three with a new song's measure Can trample an empire down. We, in the ages lying In the buried past of earth, Built Nineveh with our sighing, And Babel itself with our mirth; And o'erthrew them with prophesying To the old of the new world's worth; For each age is a dream that is dying, Or one that is coming to birth. A breath of our inspiration, Is the life of each generation. A wondrous thing of our dreaming, Unearthly, impossible seeming- The soldier, the king, and the peasant Are working together in one, Till our dream shall become their present, And their work in the world be done. They had no vision amazing Of the goodly house they are raising. They had no divine foreshowing Of the land to which they are going: But on one man's soul it hath broke, A light that doth not depart And his look, or a word he hath spoken, Wrought flame in another man's heart. And therefore today is thrilling, With a past day's late fulfilling. And the multitudes are enlisted In the faith that their fathers resisted, And, scorning the dream of tomorrow, Are bringing to pass, as they may, In the world, for it's joy or it's sorrow, The dream that was scorned yesterday. But we, with our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see, Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. For we are afar with the dawning And the suns that are not yet high, And out of the infinite morning Intrepid you hear us cry- How, spite of your human scorning, Once more God's future draws nigh, And already goes forth the warning That ye of the past must die. Great hail! we cry to the corners From the dazzling unknown shore; Bring us hither your sun and your summers, And renew our world as of yore; You shall teach us your song's new numbers, And things that we dreamt not before; Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers, And a singer who sings no more. |
#5
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Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
A poem by me: "The Beauty of Grey"
I was once told to hold hands and pray that all would believe in The Beauty of Grey. Put faith in the compromise, the in-between, and glorify that which cannot be seen but by stepping back and blurring your sight, by blending all that is just black and white. By setting equal the man and equal his soul, but why should the parts be defined by the whole? Why should the great be defined by the meek? Which is more noble, tell me which do you seek? Explain this urge to diminish yourself because you find error in somebody else. The normal, the safe, the in-between life is torn by the poles of darkness and light. One side or the other is good, is defined. The Beauty of Grey leaves everyone blind. |
#6
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Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
Invictus
by William Ernest Henley; 1849-1903 Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find me, unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul. |
#7
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Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
Nice thread.. here's a poem I wrote.
Bored A lack of love or addiction means I am bored. I walk into each room of the house and pause briefly. I pray to old habits but they have withered away. I think of friends in other places. I watch TV until I remember that I hate it. I read the words of some genius until I feel dumb. I set a glass on the kitchen counter, then wander off without pouring a drink. |
#8
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Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
Frost--Two Tramps in Mud Time
Out of the mud two strangers came And caught me splitting wood in the yard, And one of them put me off my aim By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!" I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind And let the other go on a way. I knew pretty well what he had in mind: He wanted to take my job for pay. Good blocks of oak it was I split, As large around as the chopping block; And every piece I squarely hit Fell splinterless as a cloven rock. The blows that a life of self-control Spares to strike for the common good, That day, giving a loose my soul, I spent on the unimportant wood. The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day When the sun is out and the wind is still, You're one month on in the middle of May. But if you so much as dare to speak, A cloud comes over the sunlit arch, A wind comes off a frozen peak, And you're two months back in the middle of March. A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume, His song so pitched as not to excite A single flower as yet to bloom. It is snowing a flake; and he half knew Winter was only playing possum. Except in color he isn't blue, But he wouldn't advise a thing to blossom. The water for which we may have to look In summertime with a witching wand, In every wheelrut's now a brook, In every print of a hoof a pond. Be glad of water, but don't forget The lurking frost in the earth beneath That will steal forth after the sun is set And show on the water its crystal teeth. The time when most I loved my task The two must make me love it more By coming with what they came to ask. You'd think I never had felt before The weight of an ax-head poised aloft, The grip of earth on outspread feet, The life of muscles rocking soft And smooth and moist in vernal heat. Out of the wood two hulking tramps (From sleeping God knows where last night, But not long since in the lumber camps). They thought all chopping was theirs of right. Men of the woods and lumberjacks, The judged me by their appropriate tool. Except as a fellow handled an ax They had no way of knowing a fool. Nothing on either side was said. They knew they had but to stay their stay And all their logic would fill my head: As that I had no right to play With what was another man's work for gain. My right might be love but theirs was need. And where the two exist in twain Theirs was the better right--agreed. But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to unite My avocation and my vocation As my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done For Heaven and the future's sakes. |
#9
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Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
I give the fight up;
let there be an end, A privacy, an obscure nook for me, I want to be forgotten even by God. Robert Browning |
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