Share your favorite poem with me.

The Cremation of Sam McGee. It's fun and it rhymes. I like rhymes.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Robert Frost

The road not taken by Robert Frost.

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 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 steps 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 travelled by and that has made all the difference.

If by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!

Tears that fall on the outside
are soon washed away.
Tears that fall on the inside
stay and stay and stay....

I have bunches. I love T.S. Eliot's "Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock" and "Preludes." I also like e.e. cummings, Pablo Neruda, and some of the modern poetry slammers (Shane Hawley is really good). Oh and I recently found this poem that I had to memorize in high school:

The Night Will Never Stay by Eleanor Farjean

The night will never stay
The night will still go by
Though with a million stars
You pin it to the sky
Though you bind it with the blowing wind
And buckle it with the moon
The night will slip away
Like sorrow or a tune

Roses are Red,
Violets are Blue,
I'm schizophrenic,
and so am I

I particularly like the first and last verses:


The Cloud

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noon-day dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, As she dances about the Sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below, And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white, While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers, Lightning my pilot sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, It struggles and howls at fits;
Over Earth and Ocean, with gentle motion, This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in Heaven's blue smile, Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes, And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, When the morning star shines dead;
As on the jag of a mountain crag, Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit In the light of its golden wings.
And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit Sea beneath, Its ardours of rest and of love,
And the crimson pall of eve may fall From the depth of Heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine äery nest, As still as a brooding dove.

That orbed maiden with white fire laden Whom mortals call the Moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof, of my tent's thin roof, The stars peep behind her, and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanos are dim and the stars reel and swim When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof --The mountains its columns be!
The triumphal arch, through which I march With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the Powers of the Air, are chained to my chair, Is the million-coloured Bow;
The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove While the moist Earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores, of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die
--For after the rain, when with never a stain The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams, Build up the blue dome of Air
,-- I silently laugh at my own cenotaph And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise, and unbuild it again. --

I don't read alot of poetry but I really like

Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

And Shakespeare Sonnet 130

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

I really liked this.

THANKS, Little Miss Bossy

Old mother hubbard
went to the cupboard
to get old rover a bone

but when she bent over
rover took over
and gave her a bone of his own!!!

Andrew Dice Clay

Fitting for this time of year. One of my favourites:

Tam O' Shanter by Robert Burns

For its full glory and beauty, in Scots: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGgZjyZrdzg

My favourite poem has always been

As I was walking down the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish that man would go away

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.

289. The Untold Want


THE untold want, by life and land ne’er granted,
Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.