Favorite poetry?

Pathend2
Pathend2 Posts: 142
Here's one. I haven't seen anything on this site about poetry. Post your faves!

My favorite is Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Alas and alack, that poem is way too long to post in here, so I'm just going to go with my second favorite: Shelley's Ozymandias.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

Replies

  • avalonms
    avalonms Posts: 2,468 Member
    You ask me about
    My favorite poetry?
    I haven't a clue.
  • Pathend2
    Pathend2 Posts: 142
    Haikus count.
  • MelaniLight
    MelaniLight Posts: 738 Member
    Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is one of my favorites...and here is a little taste...


    In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
    A stately pleasure-dome decree:
    Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
    Through caverns measureless to man
    Down to a sunless sea.
    So twice five miles of fertile ground
    With walls and towers were girdled round;
    And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
    Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
    And here were forests ancient as the hills,
    Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
  • rheannaraye
    rheannaraye Posts: 62 Member
    Oh, do I love poetry! I fell in love with words and how they can be used to influence, to heal, to hurt, to cleanse... I'm now an English Teacher, and often drive my students batty when I get all starry-eyed and excited about reading and studying poetry :)

    It's hard to choose just one poem, though. I think if I had to pick one above all others, I'd pick Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken"

    TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
    And sorry I could not travel both
    And be one traveler, long I stood
    And looked down one as far as I could
    To where it bent in the undergrowth;

    Then took the other, as just as fair,
    And having perhaps the better claim,
    Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
    Though as for that the passing there
    Had worn them really about the same,

    And both that morning equally lay
    In leaves no step had trodden black.
    Oh, I kept the first for another day!
    Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
    I doubted if I should ever come back.

    I shall be telling this with a sigh
    Somewhere ages and ages hence:
    Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
    I took the one less traveled by,
    And that has made all the difference.
  • tigrovi
    tigrovi Posts: 2
    Self Pity

    I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.
    A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
    without ever having felt sorry for itself.

    - D.H. Lawrence
  • Jonesingmucho
    Jonesingmucho Posts: 4,902 Member
    I have studied many times
    The marble which was chiseled for me—
    A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.

    In truth it pictures not my destination
    But my life.

    For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;
    Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;
    Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.
    Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.

    And now I know that we must lift the sail
    And catch the winds of destiny
    Wherever they drive the boat.

    To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,
    But life without meaning is the torture
    Of restlessness and vague desire—
    It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.”

    ― Edgar Lee Masters
  • FrozenSongBird
    FrozenSongBird Posts: 3,892 Member
    This will probably always remain my favorite...

    It was many and many a year ago,
    In a kingdom by the sea,
    That a maiden there lived whom you may know
    By the name of Annabel Lee;
    And this maiden she lived with no other thought
    Than to love and be loved by me.

    I was a child and she was a child,
    In this kingdom by the sea;
    But we loved with a love that was more than love-
    I and my Annabel Lee;
    With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
    Coveted her and me.

    And this was the reason that, long ago,
    In this kingdom by the sea,
    A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
    My beautiful Annabel Lee;
    So that her highborn kinsman came
    And bore her away from me,
    To shut her up in a sepulchre
    In this kingdom by the sea.

    The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
    Went envying her and me-
    Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
    In this kingdom by the sea)
    That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
    Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

    But our love it was stronger by far than the love
    Of those who were older than we-
    Of many far wiser than we-
    And neither the angels in heaven above,
    Nor the demons down under the sea,
    Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
    Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

    For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
    Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
    And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
    Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
    And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
    Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
    In the sepulchre there by the sea,
    In her tomb by the sounding sea.
    Edgar Allan Poe
  • Pathend2
    Pathend2 Posts: 142
    I'm loving the Romantic poetry in here. As for Poe, my favorite is The City in the Sea.

    LO! Death has reared himself a throne
    In a strange city lying alone
    Far down within the dim West,
    Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
    Have gone to their eternal rest.
    There shrines and palaces and towers
    (Time-eaten towers that tremble not)
    Resemble nothing that is ours.
    Around, by lifting winds forgot,
    Resignedly beneath the sky
    The melancholy waters lie.

    No rays from the holy heaven come down
    On the long night-time of that town;
    But light from out the lurid sea
    Streams up the turrets silently,
    Gleams up the pinnacles far and free:
    Up domes, up spires, up kingly halls,
    Up fanes, up Babylon-like walls,
    Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
    Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers,
    Up many and many a marvellous shrine
    Whose wreathëd friezes intertwine
    The viol, the violet, and the vine.

    Resignedly beneath the sky
    The melancholy waters lie.
    So blend the turrets and shadows there
    That all seem pendulous in air,
    While from a proud tower in the town
    Death looks gigantically down.

    There open fanes and gaping graves
    Yawn level with the luminous waves;
    But not the riches there that lie
    In each idol’s diamond eye,—
    Not the gayly-jewelled dead,
    Tempt the waters from their bed;
    For no ripples curl, alas,
    Along that wilderness of glass;
    No swellings tell that winds may be
    Upon some far-off happier sea;
    No heavings hint that winds have been
    On seas less hideously serene!

    But lo, a stir is in the air!
    The wave—there is a movement there!
    As if the towers had thrust aside,
    In slightly sinking, the dull tide;
    As if their tops had feebly given
    A void within the filmy Heaven!
    The waves have now a redder glow,
    The hours are breathing faint and low;
    And when, amid no earthly moans,
    Down, down that town shall settle hence,
    Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
    Shall do it reverence.
  • That's my favorite, too!
  • AllOutof_Bubblegum
    AllOutof_Bubblegum Posts: 3,646 Member
    The Children's Hour by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
  • rheannaraye
    rheannaraye Posts: 62 Member
    This will probably always remain my favorite...

    It was many and many a year ago,
    In a kingdom by the sea,
    That a maiden there lived whom you may know
    By the name of Annabel Lee;

    Love, Love, Love!

    I found a version someone had made into a song once... Thought I'd share, since it's nothing short of amazing <3
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2zI3203b50