Jump to content
Mental Health Forums

Poetry Thread


Benway

Recommended Posts

The Clod and the Pebble

Love seeketh not Itself to please,

Nor for itself hath any care;

But for another gives its ease,

And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.

So sang a little Clod of Clay,

Trodden with the cattle's feet:

But a pebble of the brook,

Warbled out these metres meet.

Love seeketh only Self to please,

To bind another to Its delight:

Joys in another's loss of ease,

And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite.

by William Blake

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 117
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

by Robert Frost

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ave Caesar

No bitterness: our ancestors did it.

They were only ignorant and hopeful, they wanted freedom but wealth too.

Their children will learn to hope for a Caesar.

Or rather--for we are not aquiline Romans but soft mixed colonists--

Some kindly Sicilian tyrant who'll keep

Poverty and Carthage off until the Romans arrive,

We are easy to manage, a gregarious people,

Full of sentiment, clever at mechanics, and we love our luxuries.

Robinson Jeffers

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Untitled

Dark night, and silent, calm, and lovely,

That stills the efforts of our lives,

Rare, excellent-kind, and behovely

No matter how the poet strives

To weave with epithets and clauses

Your soundless web, he falters, pauses,

And your enchantment slips between

His hands, as if it's never been.

Of all times most inbued with beauty,

You lend us by your spell relief

From ineradicable grief

(If for a spell), and pain, and duty.

We sleep, and nightly are made whole

In all our fretted mind and soul.

by Vikram Seth

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Three Songs of Shattering

I

The first rose on my rose-tree

Budded, bloomed, and shattered,

During sad days when to me

Nothing mattered.

Grief of grief has drained me clean;

Still it seems a pity

No one saw, -- it must have been

Very pretty.

by Edna St Vincent Millay

Link to comment
Share on other sites

An absolutely brilliant modernist poet ....Wallace Stevens

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,

The muscular one, and bid him whip

In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

Let the wenches dawdle in such dress

As they are used to wear, and let the boys

Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.

Let be be finale of seem.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal.

Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet

On which she embroidered fantails once

And spread it so as to cover her face.

If her horny feet protrude, they come

To show how cold she is, and dumb.

Let the lamp affix its beam.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Wallace Stevens

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Footprints in The Sand

One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord.

Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.

In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand.

Sometimes there were two sets of footprints,

other times there were one set of footprints.

This bothered me because I noticed

that during the low periods of my life,

when I was suffering from

anguish, sorrow or defeat,

I could see only one set of footprints.

So I said to the Lord,

‘You promised me Lord,

that if I followed you,

you would walk with me always.

But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life

there have only been one set of footprints in the sand.

Why, when I needed you most, you have not been there for me?’

The Lord replied,

‘The times when you have seen only one set of footprints in the sand,

is when I carried you.’

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Coffee In Heaven

You'll be greeted

by a nice cup of coffee

when you get to heaven

and strains of angelic harmony.

But wouldn't you be devastated

if they only serve decaffeinated

while from the percolators of hell

your soul was assaulted

by Satan's fresh espresso smell?

by John Agard

*this one made me smile :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Something i once read on the inside of a toilet cubicle.......

HERE I SIT BROKEN HEARTED....

PAID 20p........AND ONLY FARTED! :confused::blink::lol: :bum:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

*I think that would belong in the dirty limerick thread your welcome to create a following for. Poetry Thread and toilet humour not one in the same.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Valentine

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.

It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.

It promises light

like the careful undressing of love.

Here.

It will blind you with tears

like a lover.

It will make your reflection

a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or kissogram.

I give you an onion.

Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,

possessive and faithful

as we are,

for as long as we are.

Take it.

Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring,

if you like.

Lethal.

Its scent will cling to your fingers,

cling to your knife.

by Carol Ann Duffy

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading--treading--till it seemed

That Sense was breaking through--

And when they all were seated,

A Service, like a Drum--

Kept beating--beating--till I thought

My Mind was going numb--

And then I heard them lift a Box

And creak across my Soul

With those same Boots of Lead, again,

Then Space--began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,

And Being, but an Ear,

And I, and Silence, some strange Race

Wrecked, solitary, here--

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down--

And hit a World, at every plunge,

And Finished knowing--then--

by Emily Dickinson

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;

And further still at an unearthly height,

O luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

by Robert Frost

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Robert Frost really was a genius, he could summarize life and human experience so accurately and eloquently. What surprises me is how a few lines from Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening used to appear on postcards when that poem is very modernist in its tone and message and it's very different from what postcard manufacturers envisaged. I especially like these lines from yet another poem:

We dance round in a ring and suppose,

But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Somebody whose poems Emily Dickinson read even though she couldn't agree with him on so many issues..

Days

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,

Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,

And marching single in an endless file,

Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.

To each they offer gifts after his will,

Bread, kingdom, stars, and sky that holds them all.

I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,

Forgot my morning wishes, hastily

Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day

Turned and departed silent. I, too late,

Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Robert Frost really was a genius, he could summarize life and human experience so accurately and eloquently. What surprises me is how a few lines from Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening used to appear on postcards when that poem is very modernist in its tone and message and it's very different from what postcard manufacturers envisaged. I especially like these lines from yet another poem:

We dance round in a ring and suppose,

But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

I just put the complete works in my Amazon basket, his work has been resonating with me these days

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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 tonight 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 a power to quiet

The restless pulse of care,

And comes 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.

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A Code Poem For The French Resistance

The life that I have is all that I have

And the life that I have is yours.

The love that I have of the life that I have

Is yours and yours and yours.

A sleep I shall have

A rest I shall have,

Yet death will be but a pause,

For the peace of my years in the long green grass

Will be yours and yours and yours.

by Leo Marks

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The first part of Marriage of Heaven and Hell.... powerful, deep, truthful, wise...one of the best lines ever written about French revolution

The Argument.

Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burden'd air;

Hungry clouds swag on the deep

Once meek, and in a perilous path,

The just man kept his course along

The vale of death.

Roses are planted where thorns grow.

And on the barren heath

Sing the honey bees.

Then the perilous path was planted:

And a river, and a spring

On every cliff and tomb;

And on the bleached bones

Red clay brought forth.

Till the villain left the paths of ease,

To walk in perilous paths, and drive

The just man into barren climes.

Now the sneaking serpent walks

In mild humility.

And the just man rages in the wilds

Where lions roam.

Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burden'd air;

Hungry clouds swag on the deep.

Blake

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One Sung of Thee who Left the Tale Untold

One sung of thee who left the tale untold,

Like the false dawns which perish in the bursting;

Like empty cups of wrought and daedal gold,

Which mock the lips with air, when they are thirsting.

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Note:

daedal:

1. Ingenious and complex in design or function; intricate.

2. Finely or skillfully made or employed; artistic.

(after Daedalus, who "gave his name eponymously to any Greek artificer and to many Greek contraptions that represented dextrous skill."

(Wikipedia)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

I know I posted Keats,but I am not totally sure which poem it was. I think it was Bright Star

Bright Star

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--

No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.


×
×
  • Create New...