Poetry

[Insula Dei]

Why not have a thread to post poems we really like? Surely won't hurt anyone if we do.

I'll start with a quite recent find of mine: an unfinished sonnet (?) by G.M. Hopkins. Hopkins is a poet I usually struggle a bit with because he can be hard to follow and so much hinges on the innovativity of his metre (, or I'm told it does, being sadly rather poorly equiped to enjoy anything requiring an 'ear'), so it was great fun to come across a poem that did immediately work for me.


THE TIMES are nightfall, look, their light grows less;
The times are winter, watch, a world undone:
They waste, they wither worse; they as they run
Or bring more or more blazon man’s distress.
And I not help. Nor word now of success:
All is from wreck, here, there, to rescue one—
Work which to see scarce so much as begun
Makes welcome death, does dear forgetfulness.

Or what is else? There is your world within
There rid the dragons, root out there the sin.
Your will is law in that small commonweal…

[homelycooking]

My favorite poem, from the inimitable Elizabeth Bishop:

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like a disaster.

[Gustaf]

Most poetry I know is in Swedish.

[For Oklahoma]

Most poetry I know is in Swedish.

Scandinavian poetry...that sounds brutal.

[Rooney]

      My favorite poem by my favorite poet.

  OH! WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT OF MORTAL BE PROUD or MORTALITY

        by: William Knox (1789-1825)

        H! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
        Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
        A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
        Man passeth from life to his rest in the grave.
        
        The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
        Be scattered around, and together be laid;
        And the young and the old, and the low and the high
        Shall molder to dust and together shall lie.
        
        The infant a mother attended and loved;
        The mother that infant's affection who proved;
        The husband that mother and infant who blessed,--
        Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest.
        
        The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye,
        Shone beauty and pleasure,--her triumphs are by;
        And the memory of those who loved her and praised
        Are alike from the minds of the living erased.
        
        The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne;
        The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn;
        The eye of the sage, and the heart of the brave,
        Are hidden and lost in the depth of the grave.
        
        The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap;
        The herdsman who climbed with his goats up the steep;
        The beggar who wandered in search of his bread,
        Have faded away like the grass that we tread.
        
        The saint who enjoyed the communion of heaven;
        The sinner who dared to remain unforgiven;
        The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just,
        Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.
        
        So the multitude goes, like the flowers or the weed
        That withers away to let others succeed;
        So the multitude comes, even those we behold,
        To repeat every tale that has often been told.
        
        For we are the same our fathers have been;
        We see the same sights our fathers have seen;
        We drink the same stream, and view the same sun,
        And run the same course our fathers have run.
        
        The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think;
        From the death we are shrinking our fathers would shrink;
        To the life we are clinging they also would cling;
        But it speeds for us all, like a bird on the wing.
        
        They loved, but the story we cannot unfold;
        The scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold;
        They grieved, but no wail from their slumbers will come;
        They joyed, but the tongue of their gladness is dumb.
        
        They died, aye! they died; and we things that are now,
        Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow,
        Who make in their dwelling a transient abode,
        Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road.
        
        Yea! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,
        We mingle together in sunshine and rain;
        And the smiles and the tears, the song and the dirge,
        Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.
        
        'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath,
        From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
        From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud,--
        Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?