Favorite poem?

Poe's The Raven. The longing and desperation always gets me, plus the description is just beautiful.

Out In The fields by Anon.

The little cares that fretted me,
I lost them yesterday,
Among the fields above the sea,
Among the winds that play,
Among the lowing of the herds,
The rustling of the trees,
Among the singing of the birds,
The humming of the bees.
The foolish fears of what might pass
I cast them all away,
Among the clover-scented grass
Among the new mown hay,
Among the hushing of the corn
Where drowsy poppies nod,
Where ill thoughts die and good are born -
Out in the fields with God.

My most favourite poem

Jenny Kiss’d Me
BY LEIGH HUNT
Jenny kiss’d me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss’d me.

Fitting since we're on the net
Friends Without Faces
by Thomas Teague

We sit and we type, and we stare at our screens,
We all have to wonder, what this possibly means.
With our mouse we roam, through the rooms in a maze,
Looking for something or someone, as we sit in a daze.

We chat with each other, we type all our woes,
Small groups we do form, and gang up on our foes.
We wait for somebody, to type out our name,
We want recognition, but it is always the same.

We give kisses and hugs, and sometimes flirt,
In IMs we chat deeply, and reveal why we hurt.
We do form friendships - but - why we don't know,
But some of these friendships, will flourish and grow.

Why is it on screen, we can be so bold,
Telling our secrets, that have never been told.
Why is it we share, the thoughts in our mind,
With those we can't see, as though we were blind.

The answer is simple, it is as clear as a bell.
We all have our problems, and need someone to tell.
We can't tell "real" people, but tell someone we must,
So we turn to the 'puter, and to those we can trust.

Even though it is crazy, the truth still remains,
They are Friends Without Faces, and odd little names.

The Haw Lantern
Seamus Heaney

The wintry haw is burning out of season,
crab of the thorn, a small light for small people,
wanting no more from them but that they keep
the wick of self-respect from dying out,
not having to blind them with illumination.

But sometimes when your breath plumes in the frost
it takes the roaming shape of Diogenes
with his lantern, seeking one just man;
so you end up scrutinized from behind the haw
he holds up at eye-level on its twig,
and you flinch before its bonded pith and stone,
its blood-prick that you wish would test and clear you,
its pecked-at ripeness that scans you, then moves on.

Eh. I tend to like the darker stuff . . .


The Second Coming
By William Butler Yeats

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. <---- US Politics, anyone?

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 Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in 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?

I don't consider myself a serious person and have always had a love of maths so...

I’m sure that I will always be
A lonely number like root three

The three is all that’s good and right,
Why must my three keep out of sight
Beneath the vicious square root sign,
I wish instead I were a nine

For nine could thwart this evil trick,
with just some quick arithmetic

I know I’ll never see the sun, as 1.7321
Such is my reality, a sad irrationality

When hark! What is this I see,
Another square root of a three

As quietly co-waltzing by,
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer,
Rejoicing as an integer

We break free from our mortal bonds
With the wave of magic wands

Our square root signs become unglued
Your love for me has been renewed

-Harold & Kumar

Just wanted to say there's some good company here: Yeats, Heaney, Dickinson, Frost, Rumi, Oliver. And you can never have too many silly limericks! I'm partial to Elizabeth Bishop myself. (MFA Poetry, 1982)