(no subject)

[nny]

Hey kids, I have a favour to ask.

My ex-flatmate feels she doesn't have enough of an appreciation for poetry, so I bought her a lovely notebook for christmas, which I'm going to fill with poems I think she'd like. Thing is, it's a pretty big notebook. So. If anyone could provide links to any of their favourite poetry, I'd really appreciate it, just to give me a wider range of poems to choose from. I tend to go back to the same old favourites a lot.

Cheers!

(Update about Victorian magic, birthdays and suchlike to come, honest.)

Comments

[ms-ntropy.livejournal.com]

There Will Come Soft Rains - Sara Teasdale click

[tammaiya.livejournal.com]

Can't be buggered finding a link, but here's MY favourite poem (which I have framed, it's lovely):

Desiderata (don't know who it's by, sorry)

Go placidly amid the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexation to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautifull world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.

[stella-polaris.livejournal.com]

Something as cliched as
The Rave by Edgar Allan Poe (http://www.poedecoder.com/Qrisse/works/raven.html)
Auguries of Innocence by William Blake (http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/368.html).

[stella-polaris.livejournal.com]

That would be The Raven, in fact. Although I'm sure "The Rave" by E.A Poe would've been an extremely interesting poem.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

So many poems...!

How about Marianne Moore, Sojourn in the Whale (http://www.livejournal.com/users/rymenhild/36496.html)?

[araneae.livejournal.com]

The Female of the Species by Kipling =)

http://www.potw.org/archive/potw96.html

[venivincere]

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by TS Elliot.

[venivincere]

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

[venivincere]

"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost

[moongirli.livejournal.com]

I love to pieces T.S Eliot. Period. Though, had I to pick one, it would be "Preludes (http://www.bartleby.com/198/3.html)". Second to "The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock (http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html)".

I also quite enjoy Amy Lowell, Wallace Stevens (See icon), and, of course, good old Walt Whitman (quite especially the one that repeats "it shall be you", which I can't think of the name just yet, but I think may well be part of Leaves of Grass somewhere).

[venivincere]

"A Valediction: forbidding mourning" by John Donne

[venivincere]

"Ozymandias of Egypt" by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

[sophistry]

"I have been one acquainted with the night," Robert Frost.

[randomblade.livejournal.com]

Michael Drayton- Idea.

Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part,
Nay, I have done: you get no more of me,
And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.

[mary-re.livejournal.com]

I have an entire folder in my bookmarks of poetry.

Two Songs for Hedli Anderson, by W. H. Auden (http://www.npr.org/programs/death/readings/poetry/aude.html)
Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carroll (http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/jabber/jabberwocky.html)
Maggies and Millie and Molly and May, by e.e. cummings (http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/eecummings/11939) (a link to more of his poems (http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/eecummings/))
Blame Aphrodite, by Sappho (http://oldpoetry.com/poetry/2909)
from A Shropshire Lad, by A.E. Housman (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~martinh/poems/housman.html#ASLxiv)
George Gray, by Edgar Lee Masters (http://smiley00.tripod.com/poem225.html)
The Ballad of Reading Gaol, by Oscar Wilde (http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext95/rgaol10.txt) (though I know you can't use it all, in the first stanza there's the bit that starts out: 'Yet each man kills the thing he loves,' that is just gorgeous)
Hamlet as told on the Streets, by Shel Silverstein (http://www.banned-width.com/shel/works/hamlet.html) (I personally adore this poem, and link to it any time I can)
I Sing the Body Electric, Walt Whitman (http://www.daypoems.net/poems/1903.html)
Variation on the Word Sleep, Margaret Atwood (http://www.livejournal.com/community/greatpoets/1171234.html)
Last Answers, by Carl Sandburg (http://www.livejournal.com/community/greatpoets/1217647.html)
Morning in the Burned House, Margaret Atwood (http://www.livejournal.com/community/greatpoets/1252742.html) (I could link to so many of hers, but I'll refrain)
Epitaph on a Tyrant, by W.H. Auden (http://www.livejournal.com/community/greatpoets/1291907.html)
I Knew a Woman, by Theodore Roethke (http://www.livejournal.com/community/greatpoets/1218213.html)
Failing and Flying, by Jack Gilbert (http://www.livejournal.com/community/greatpoets/1291609.html)
Song, by Seamus Heaney (http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/heaney/song.html)

I could link so many more, but I'll leave it at that. *uses appropriate icon*

[medalline]

Some good poems I like are:

He wishes for clothes of heaven by Yeats
Poem for people understandably to busy to read poetry by Stephen Dunn
And any by Ernest Cline

[chasing-laura.livejournal.com]

One of my favourite ever poems is by WH Auden:
Funeral Blues
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

- http://www.brindin.com/pfrimboh.htm - Arthur Rimbaud's 'Ma Boheme' & translation
- http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1914warpoets.html - 'Anthem For A Doomed Youth' & 'Dulce Et Decorum Est' (Wilfred Owen)
http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/linessh.htm - You could try some nice cliched sonnets
- http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/130comm.htm - but this is one of my favourites
- http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Carroll/Jabberwocky.htm - Carroll's 'Jabberwocky'
- http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Dickinson/Iheard.htm - Emily Dickinson 'I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died'
Or you could just trawl through here... http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/contents.htm

I used to love a poem called 'Liquorice Allsorts'; it's about atomic war. Can't remember who it's by, don't know where it would be online, and obviously I'm not at home to look in my War Poetry book that it was in... But good luck finding it if you look.

[halfwest.livejournal.com]

butterflybabble

My own personal poetry stash. I think there are only two posts in there that aren't me.

[innerbrat]

The Highwayman

The Lion and Albert

Which Shall it Be? - Ethyl Lynn Beers

WHICH shall it be? Which shall it be?
I look'd at John--John look'd at me
(Dear, patient John, who loves me yet
As well as though my locks were jet);
And when I found that I must speak,
My voice seem'd strangely low and weak:
``Tell me again what Robert said?''
And then I, listening, bent my head.
``This is his letter:

``'I will give
A house and land while you shall live,
If, in return, from out your seven,
One child to me for aye is given.'''
I look'd at John's old garments worn,
I thought of all that John had borne
Of poverty, and work, and care,
Which I, though willing, could not share;
I thought of seven mouths to feed,
Of seven little children's need,
And then of this.

``Come, John,'' said I,
``We'll choose among them as they lie
Asleep''; so, walking hand in hand,
Dear John and I survey'd our band.
First to the cradle lightly stepp'd,
Where Lilian the baby slept,
A glory 'gainst the pillow white.
Softly the father stooped to lay
His rough hand down in loving way,
When dream or whisper made her stir,
And huskily he said: ``Not her!''

We stopped beside the trundle-bed
And one long ray of lamp-light shed
Athwart the boyish faces there,
In sleep so pitiful and fair;
I saw on Jamie's rough, red cheek,
A tear undried. Ere John could speak,
``He's but a baby, too,'' said I,
And kissed him as we hurried by.

Pale, patient Robbie's angel face
Still in his sleep bore suffering's trace;
``No, for a thousand crowns, not him,''
He whispered, while our eyes were dim.

Poor Dick! bad Dick! our wayward son,
Turbulent, reckless, idle one--
Could he be spared? ``Nay, He who gave,
Bade us befriend him to the grave;
Only a mother's heart can be
Patient enough for such as he;
And so,'' said John, ``I would not dare
To send him from her bedside prayer.''

Then stole we softly up above
And knelt by Mary, child of love.
``Perhaps for her 'twould better be,''
I said to John, Quite silently
He lifted up a curl that lay
Acorss her cheek in willful way,
And shook his head, ``Nay, love, not thee,''
The while my heart beat audibly.

Only one more, our eldest lad,
Trusty and truthful, good and glad--
So like his father. ``No, John, no--
I can not, will not let him go.''

And so we wrote in courteous way,
We could not drive one child away,
And afterward, toil lighter seemed,
Thinking of that of which we dreamed;
Happy, in truth, that not one face
We missed from its accustomed place;
Thankful to work for all the seven,
Trusting the rest to One in heaven!

[danceswchopstck.livejournal.com]

An Observation
by May Sarton

True gardeners cannot bear a glove
Between the sure touch and the tender root,
Must let their hands grow knotted as they move
With a rough sensitivity about
Under the earth, between the rock and shoot,
Never to bruise or wound the hidden fruit.
And so I watched my mother's hands grow scarred,
She who could heal the wounded plant or friend
With the same vulnerable yet rigorous love;
I minded once to see her beauty gnarled,
But now her truth is given me to live,
As I learn for myself we must be hard
To move among the tender with an open hand,
And to stay sensitive up to the end
Pay with some toughness for a gentle world.

(from A Private Mythology, 1966)

[chocolate-limes.livejournal.com]

I'm collecting my favourite poems on an LJ, as it happens... have a look at vaulted_sky if you like :D Clare's "I Am" is my all time favourite, mind you.

Good luck!