Favourite Poems & Poems that moved you

[Eldanen]

Speak not: whisper not:
I know all that ye would tell,
But to speak might break the spell
Which must bend the invincible,
The stern of thought;
He yet defies the deepest power of Hell

- PB Shelley, Prometheus Unbound

 

[Night]

Last night I heard nature weep,
For fear she'd been undone.
A creature awoke from her sleep,
That was compared to none.

She smelled of flower's lovely scent,
A million flowing free.
Take one breath, a moment spent,
Would last eternity.

I would not ask the Earth her fears,
For I know what they be.
Poor nature, after all her splendor,
Could not equate to thee.

 

[Valiant]

Sick shit...
This is the original stuff in swedish... There's a translation down below.


Kitteldags

Människofolk ej festa
Gammerfar lemlästa
Uråldrig ilska och trolldom
Häxeri blev festens slut

Så ska de ne genast stekas
som de en gång stekte oss
De ska saltas de ska kokas
Köttet skall flanga från benen loss

Måltiden nu nått sitt slut
Mätt och nöjd mången trollrut
Småtroll kött nu river
Rivfader fram kliver

Full med hat
Präst blir mat
Han läggs på fat








Kettletime

Humans don't celebrate
Oldfather maims
Ancient rage and magic
Sorcery ended the party

So they shall now be fried
The way they once fried us
they'll be salted they'll be cooked
Meat shall fall off the bone

The meal has now ended
Full and content is many a trollmouth
Smalltrolls now tear meat
Rivfader steps forth

Full of hate
Priest becomes food
He is put on plate



...


Some guys just don't like priests...

 

[The Ü™]

Poetry, such a waste of trees.

Poetry books should be burned.

 

[Synarch]

Poetry, such a waste of trees.

Poetry books should be burned.

So shocking! So provocative!

 

[miss fortune]

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

-- William Carlos Williams

I love the every day nature and simplicity of it... and the mention of delicious food

 

[Misty_Mountain_Rose]

"TO A POET A THOUSAND YEARS HENCE"

I who am dead a thousand years,
And wrote this sweet archaic song,
Send you my words for messengers
The way I shall not pass along.

I care not if you bridge the seas,
Or ride secure the cruel sky,
Or build consummate palaces
Of metal or of masonry.

But have you wine and music still,
And statues and a bright-eyed love,
And foolish thoughts of good and ill,
And prayers to them who sit above?

How shall we conquer? Like a wind
That falls at eve our fancies blow,
And old Maeonides the blind
Said it three thousand years ago.

O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,
Student of our sweet English tongue,
Read out my words at night, alone:
I was a poet, I was young.

Since I can never see your face,
And never shake you by the hand,
I send my soul through time and space
To greet you. You will understand.

By James Elroy Flecker (1884-1915).​

 

[Valiant]

Last night as I lay dreaming
My way across the sea
James Mangan brought me comfort
With laudnum and poitin
He flew me back to Dublin
In 1819
To a public execution
Being held on Stephen's Green
The young man on the platform
Held his head up and he did sing
Then he whispered hard into my ear
As he handed me this ring

"If you miss me on the harbour
For the boat, it leaves at three
Take this snake with eyes of garnet
My mother gave to me!

This snake cannot be captured
This snake cannot be tied
This snake cannot be tortured, or
Hung or crucified

It came down through the ages
It belongs to you and me
So pass it on and pass it on
'Till all mankind is free

He swung, his face went purple
A roar came from the crowd
But Mangan laughed and pushed me
And we got back on the cloud
He dropped me off in London
Back in this dying land
But my eyes were filled with wonder
At the ring still in my hand

- Shane MacGowan D) 1994

 

[bronte]

Last night as I lay dreaming
My way across the sea
James Mangan brought me comfort
With laudnum and poitin
He flew me back to Dublin
In 1819
To a public execution
Being held on Stephen's Green
The young man on the platform
Held his head up and he did sing
Then he whispered hard into my ear
As he handed me this ring

"If you miss me on the harbour
For the boat, it leaves at three
Take this snake with eyes of garnet
My mother gave to me!

This snake cannot be captured
This snake cannot be tied
This snake cannot be tortured, or
Hung or crucified

It came down through the ages
It belongs to you and me
So pass it on and pass it on
'Till all mankind is free

He swung, his face went purple
A roar came from the crowd
But Mangan laughed and pushed me
And we got back on the cloud
He dropped me off in London
Back in this dying land
But my eyes were filled with wonder
At the ring still in my hand



- Shane MacGowan D) 1994

This is brilliant and very McGowan! I Love him! this i think is my favourite

I've been loving you a long time
Down all the years, down all the days
And I've cried for all your troubles
Smiled at your funny little ways
We watched our friends grow up together
And we saw them as they fell
Some of them fell into Heaven
Some of them fell into Hell

I took shelter from a shower
And I stepped into your arms
On a rainy night in Soho
The wind was whistling all its charms
I sang you all my sorrows
You told me all your joys
Whatever happened to that old song
To all those little girls and boys

Now the song is nearly over
We may never find out what it means
But there's a light I hold before me
And you're the measure of my dreams
The measure of my dreams

Sometimes I wake up in the morning
The gingerlady by my bed
Covered in a cloak of silence
I hear you in my head
I'm not singing for the future
I'm not dreaming of the past
I'm not talking of the fist time
I never think about the last

Now the song is nearly over
We may never find out what it means
Still there's a light I hold before me
You're the measure of my dreams
The measure of my dreams

 

[Salomé]

Lament - Barbara Jagger

This is where his body fell.
I pick blackthorn from the hedge,
lay its white blossom on the spot,
fingers spindly in the hilly air.

I don't know what to see. Young children
close their eyes to hide. Still thirteen,
out of time, I shiver limbs thinly into pockets
and boots, greeting my father's ghost.

On any other day he would have liked
the place a grand view,
and the breeze, fresh. Here,
you could feel free.

So much unshown between us,
feelings unborn.
Green ripple of grass in the waiting space,
white blackthorn.

---

First Kiss - Blair Gibb

It began the day before, the way dawn wakes you
when the sky's still dark, the drift toward it
just as imperceptible and inevitable,
the possibility unheard and clear as early birdsong.

Later, when we'd become only voices
on a telephone, you sent a tape - I heard a physicist say
that the nature of an energy field we live within
means that a connection, once made, never breaks,
but only dissipates. That must be why,
when the sun finally rose, the touch of your mouth
felt like placing my palms on a smooth stone
that had lain in the light for hours,
its deep heat beginning long before,
passing through my arms, remaining both
inside itself and inside my mouth
late into the long and cooling night.

 

[Spartacuss]

Denise Levertov - To the Snake

Green Snake, when I hung you round my neck
and stroked your cold, pulsing throat
as you hissed to me, glinting
arrowy gold scales, and I felt
the weight of you on my shoulders,
and the whispering silver of your dryness
sounded close at my ears --


Green Snake--I swore to my companions that certainly
you were harmless! But truly
I had no certainty, and no hope, only desiring
to hold you, for that joy,
which left
a long wake of pleasure, as the leaves moved
and you faded into the pattern
of grass and shadows, and I returned
smiling and haunted, to a dark morning.

 

[miss fortune]

Drinking Alone by Moonlight

A cup of wine, under the flowering trees;
I drink alone, for no friend is near.
Raising my cup I beckon the bright moon,
For he, with my shadow, will make three men.
The moon, alas, is no drinker of wine;
Listless, my shadow creeps about at my side.
Yet with the moon as friend and the shadow as slave
I must make merry before the Spring is spent.
To the songs I sing the moon flickers her beams;
In the dance I weave my shadow tangles and breaks.
While we were sober, three shared the fun;
Now we are drunk, each goes his way.
May we long share our odd, inanimate feast,
And meet at last on the Cloudy River of the sky.

Li Bai

Yes- SHOCKING that I would pick this, I know On an interesting note though, I was reminded of this poem again after seeing an ink on silk painting based on it in the Art Museum yesterday.

 

[Lady_X]

Bob Dylan: Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie

Thats word for word how I feel right now...

LOVE THIS!!!!!

 

[Sniffles]

Loneliness - Mikhail Lermontov 1830

It's Hell for us to draw the fetters
Of life in alienation, stiff.
All people prefer to share gladness,
And nobody - to share grief.

As a king of air, I'm lone here,
The pain lives in my heart, so grim,
And I can see that, to the fear
Of fate, years pass me by like dreams;

And comes again with, touched by gold,
The same dream, gloomy one and old.
I see a coffin, black and sole,
It waits: why to detain the world?

There will be not a sad reflection,
There will be (I am betting on)
Much more gaily celebration
When I am dead, than - born.

 

[Sniffles]

This poem certainly helps sum up my feelings towards the numerous failed attmepts at love in my life.

I loved you - Alexander Pushkin

I loved you; and perhaps I love you still,
The flame, perhaps, is not extinguished; yet
It burns so quietly within my soul,
No longer should you feel distressed by it.
Silently and hopelessly I loved you,
At times too jealous and at times too shy.
God grant you find another who will love you
As tenderly and truthfully as I.

 

[Rangler]

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun (Sonnet 130)
by William Shakespeare

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 damasked, 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.

 

[hokie912]

One of my favorites has always been Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress":

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Carpe diem, indeed. Definitely the most eloquent way I've ever seen "please sleep with me" written.

 

[swordpath]

My signature.

 

[matmos]

Thrushes by Ted Hughes

Terrifying are the attent sleek thrushes on the lawn,
More coiled steel than living - a poised
Dark deadly eye, those delicate legs
Triggered to stirrings beyond sense - with a start, a bounce,
a stab
Overtake the instant and drag out some writhing thing.
No indolent procrastinations and no yawning states,
No sighs or head-scratchings. Nothing but bounce and stab
And a ravening second.

Is it their single-mind-sized skulls, or a trained
Body, or genius, or a nestful of brats
Gives their days this bullet and automatic
Purpose? Mozart's brain had it, and the shark's mouth
That hungers down the blood-smell even to a leak of its own
Side and devouring of itself: efficiency which
Strikes too streamlined for any doubt to pluck at it
Or obstruction deflect.

With a man it is otherwise. Heroisms on horseback,
Outstripping his desk-diary at a broad desk,
Carving at a tiny ivory ornament
For years: his act worships itself - while for him,
Though he bends to be blent in the prayer, how loud and
above what
Furious spaces of fire do the distracting devils
Orgy and hosannah, under what wilderness
Of black silent waters weep.

 

[Qre:us]

My signature.

Stay gold, Ponyboy, stay gold!

I'm a huge fan of Pablo Neruda. Two of his poems (the first, a short sonnet, the second, a personal fave of mine).

Sonnet XVII

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks


All those men were there inside,
when she came in totally naked.
They had been drinking: they began to spit.
Newly come from the river, she knew nothing.
She was a mermaid who had lost her way.
The insults flowed down her gleaming flesh.
Obscenities drowned her golden breasts.
Not knowing tears, she did not weep tears.
Not knowing clothes, she did not have clothes.
They blackened her with burnt corks and cigarette stubs,
and rolled around laughing on the tavern floor.
She did not speak because she had no speech.
Her eyes were the colour of distant love,
her twin arms were made of white topaz.
Her lips moved, silent, in a coral light,
and suddenly she went out by that door.
Entering the river she was cleaned,
shining like a white stone in the rain,
and without looking back she swam again
swam towards emptiness, swam towards death.