[quote]swissrugby67 wrote:
sen say wrote:
The Kipling, Longfellow and Frost poems are gay. Are you guys in Junior High?
No.
The Kipling poem is in no way gay. Please explain to me why you think so? I am intrigued on what grounds you base your judgement.
[/quote]
So you’re agreeing Longfellow and Frost are gay?
[quote]sen say wrote:
swissrugby67 wrote:
sen say wrote:
The Kipling, Longfellow and Frost poems are gay. Are you guys in Junior High?
No.
The Kipling poem is in no way gay. Please explain to me why you think so? I am intrigued on what grounds you base your judgement.
So you’re agreeing Longfellow and Frost are gay?[/quote]
No, I’m disagreeing that Kipling is.
Here I sit all broken-hearted
Came to shit, but only farted.
What I love about good poetry is how the poet uses an economy of words to express a different point of view, or to evoke a startling image and to make us see and feel in unfamiliar ways.
Although I’m not a religious person, I still take great pleasure in the language of the Bible and the poetry that it has inspired, including this poem by Siegfried Sassoon.
Ancient History
Adam, a brown old vulture in the rain,
Shivered below his wind-whipped olive-trees;
Huddling sharp chin on scarred and scraggy knees,
He moaned and mumbled to his darkening brain;
?He was the grandest of them all was Cain!
?A lion laired in the hills, that none could tire:
?Swift as a stag: a stallion of the plain,
?Hungry and fierce with deeds of huge desire.?
Grimly he thought of Abel, soft and fair
A lover with disaster in his face,
And scarlet blossom twisted in bright hair.
?Afraid to fight; was murder more disgrace??
?God always hated Cain? He bowed his head
The gaunt wild man whose lovely sons were dead.
Siegfried Sassoon
And from Sylvia Plath, that crazy suicidal poet, something a little different:
Mad Girl’s Love Song
"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"
Sylvia Plath
Keats and Blake. Maybe some Wordsworth and Shelley.
William Ernest Henley. 1849?1903
Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Not exactly poetry but …
Reconnaissance Creed
Realizing it is my choice and my choice alone to be a Reconnaissance Marine, I accept all challenges involved with this profession. Forever shall I strive to maintain the tremendous reputation of those who went before me.
Exceeding beyond the limitations set down by others shall be my goal. Sacrificing personal comforts and dedicating myself to the completion of the reconnaissance mission shall be my life. Physical fitness, mental attitude, and high ethics – The title of Recon Marine is my honor.
Conquering all obstacles, both large and small, I shall never quit. To quit, to surrender, to give up is to fail. To be a Recon Marine is to surpass failure; To overcome, to adapt and to do whatever it takes to complete the mission.
On the battlefield, as in all areas of life, I shall stand tall above the competition. Through professional pride, integrity, and teamwork, I shall be the example for all Marines to emulate.
Never shall I forget the principles I accepted to become a Recon Marine. Honor, Perseverance, Spirit and Heart.
A Recon Marine can speak without saying a word and achieve what others can only imagine.
Prof X was a monster of mass
And had testicals made out of brass
He clanged them together
In pretty stormy weather
And lightning shot out of his ass
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
Yeats is a king. My favorite.
[/quote]
I agree that Yeats is a poet unlike almost any other. Here is another Irish poet’s masterpiece:
On Raglan Road
On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;
I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way,
And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.
On Grafton Street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge
Of the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion’s pledge,
The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay -
O I loved too much and by such and such is happiness thrown away.
I gave her gifts of the mind I gave her the secret sign that’s known
To the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone
And word and tint. I did not stint for I gave her poems to say.
With her own name there and her own dark hair like clouds over fields of May
On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking now
Away from me so hurriedly my reason must allow
That I had wooed not as I should a creature made of clay -
When the angel woos the clay he’d lose his wings at the dawn of day.
Patrick Kavanagh
And here is a link to Luke Kelly singing it:
If you’ve seen the movie “In Bruges” you might remember this music, from the scene where Brendan Gleeson drags himself to the top of the bell tower.
The minstrel boy to the war is gone
In the ranks of death you shall find him
His father’s sword he hath girded on
With his wild harp slung behind him.
‘Land of Song!’ sings the warrior-bard
‘Though all the world betray thee!
One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard
One faithful harp shall praise thee’.
The minstrel fell but the foeman’s steel
Could not bring that proud soul under
The harp he loved ne’er spoke again
For he tore it’s chords asunder.
And said ‘No chain shall sully thee,
Thou soul of love and bravery!
Thy songs were meant for the pure and free,
They shall never sound in slavery.’
I think this is Yeats, but I don’t have the title (I think it’s ‘the minstrel boy’, but that’s just a guess). My dad used to sing it to me as a lullaby when I was younger. Fuck yeah for irish lullabys.
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt, he falls.
The Eagle, Alfred Lord Tennyson
The Revenge: A Ballad of The Fleet
At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay,
And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from far away:
‘Spanish ships of war at sea! We have sighted fifty-three!’
Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: '‘Fore God I am no coward;
But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear,
And half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick.
We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fifty-three?’
Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: ‘I know you are no coward;
You fly them for a moment to fight with them again.
But I’ve ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore.
I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard,
To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain.’
So Lord Howard passed away with five ships of war that day,
Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven;
But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land
Very carefully and slow,
Men of Bideford in Devon,
And we laid them on the ballast down below;
For we brought them all aboard,
And they blest him in their pain, that they were not left to Spain,
To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of the Lord.
He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight,
And he sailed away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight,
With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow.
‘Shall we fight or shall we fly?
Good Sir Richard, tell us now,
For to fight is but to die!
There’ll be little of us left by the time this sun be set.’
And Sir Richard said again: ‘We be all good English men.
Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,
For I never turned my back upon Don or devil yet.’
Sir Richard spoke and he laughed, and we roared a hurrah, and so
The little Revenge ran on, sheer into the heart of the foe,
With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below;
For half of their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen,
And the little Revenge ran on through the long sea-lane between.
Thousands of their soldiers looked down from their decks and laughed,
Thousands of their seamen made mock at the mad little craft
Running on and on, till delayed
By their mountain-like San Philip that, of fifteen hundred tons,
And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns,
Took the breath from our sails, and we stayed.
And while now the great San Philip hung above us like a cloud
Whence the thunderbolt will fall Long and loud,
Four galleons drew away
From the Spanish fleet that day,
And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay,
And the battle-thunder broke from them all.
But anon the great San Philip, she bethought herself and went
Having that within her womb that had left her ill content;
And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand,
For a dozen times they came with their pikes and their musketeers,
And a dozen time we shook 'em off as a dog that shakes his ears
When he leaps from the water to the land.
And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea,
But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three.
Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came,
Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and flame;
Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame.
For some were sunk and many were shatter’d, and so could fight us no more -
God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before?
For he said ‘Fight on! fight on!’
Though his vessel was all but a wreck;
And it chanced that, when half of the short summer night was gone,
With a grisly wound to be dressed he had left the deck,
But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead,
And himself he was wounded again in the side and the head,
And he said ‘Fight on! fight on!’
And the night went down, and the sun smiled out from over the summer sea,
And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay around us all in a ring;
But they dared not touch us again, for they feared that we still could sting,
So they watched what the end would be.
And we had not fought them in vain,
But in perilous plight were we,
Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain,
And half of the rest of us maimed for life
In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife;
And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold,
And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was all of it spent;
And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side;
But Sir Richard cried in his English pride:
‘We have fought such a fight for a day and a night
As may never be fought again!
We have won great glory my men!
And a day less or more
At sea or ashore,
We die - does it matter when?
Sink me the ship, Master Gunner - sink her, split her in twain!
Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!’
And the gunner said ‘Ay ay,’ but the seamen made reply:
‘We have children, we have wives,
And the Lord hath spared our lives.
We will make the Spaniard promise, if we yield, to let us go;
We shall live to fight again and to strike another blow.’
And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foe.
And the stately Spanish men to their flagship bore him then,
Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught at last,
And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace.
But he rose upon their decks and he cried:
‘I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true.
I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do.
With a joyful spirit I, Sir Richard Grenville, die!’
And he fell upon their decks and he died.
And they stared at the dead that had been so valiant and true,
And had holden the power and the glory of Spain so cheap
That he dared her with one little ship and his English few;
Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew,
But they sank his body with honour down into the deep,
And they manned the Revenge with a swarthier alien crew,
And away she sailed with her loss and longed for her own;
When a wind from the lands they had ruined awoke from sleep,
And the water began to heave and the weather to moan,
And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew,
And a wave like a wave that is raised by an earthquake grew,
Till it smote on their hulls and their sails and their masts and their flags,
And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shattered navy of Spain,
And the little Revenge herself went down by the island crags
To be lost evermore in the main.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
I hate poetry
Mayakovsky
English translations are garbage, though.
The passion is just not the same in English poetry.
No passion huh?
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
My mast ain’t so sturdy, my head is at half,
I’m searching the clouds for a storm.
My lady reveals herself of marked-down freedom,
Forever cashed out to no more.
She put the plan in the blame. Who is bearing the name
For each digress who’s left you up to
Save the skins for a better and the rest for a better.
We can’t open, no nothing. Can’t open, no nothing.
Young liars
Thank you for taking my hands
Well, it’s cold and it’s quiet, and cobblestone cold in here
Fucking for fear of not wanting to fear again
Lonely is all we are
Lovely so far, but my heart’s still a marble in an empty jelly jar
Someday suppose that my curious nervousness stills into prescience, clairvoyant consciousness
I will be calmer than cream,
Making maps out of your dreams
But will psychic ability kill the nativity or simply diminish the flinch?
Thank you for taking my hands
And burying them deep in the world’s wet womb
Where no one can heed their commands
Except you liars
Le TV on Your Mom
[quote]NycMan wrote:
I hate poetry[/quote]
Sucks to be you.
I’ve always been a fan of Robert Browning.
My Last Duchess, Porphyria’s Lover, and Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister are all good reads. I won’t post them because I find it to be a headache seeing post after post of texty poems (and they are easy enough to find via Google). It would be better if this thread had people linking to the poems, instead (unless I’m the only one who finds lengthy yellow text an annoying read), though I doubt many people have even read all the poems thus far and instead just jumped in to post their favs…oh, well.
Anyhow, I’m not much of a Poe fan (though I enjoy his stories), but I’ve always loved the final stanza of The Haunted Palace:
[quote]And travellers, now, within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms, that move fantastically
To a discordant melody,
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever
And laugh-but smile no more.[/quote]
The Raven is good, as well. The flow of it is fantastic, and it has a few lines that have stuck with me ever since I first read it (“And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming…”)
Rudyard Kipling
Tommy
I went into a public-‘ouse to get a pint o’beer,
The publican ‘e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here.”
The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:
O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, go away”;
But it’s Thank you, Mister Atkins,'' when the band begins to play, The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play, O it's Thank you, Mr. Atkins,‘’ when the band begins to play.
I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn’t none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-‘alls,
But when it comes to fightin’, Lord! they’ll shove me in the stalls!
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, wait outside”;
But it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide,
The troopship’s on the tide, my boys, the troopship’s on the tide,
O it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide.
Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;
An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.
Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy how’s yer soul?”
But it’s “Thin red line of 'eroes” when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it’s “Thin red line of 'eroes” when the drums begin to roll.
We aren’t no thin red ‘eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints:
Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints;
While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be’ind,”
But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the wind,
There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind,
O it’s “Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the wind.
You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires an’ all:
We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of 'is country,” when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
But Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool - you bet that Tommy sees!
In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918) Canadian Army
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.