Favorite Stanzas of Poetry

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Kurben

The Fool on the Hill
Apr 12, 2014
9,682
65,192
59
sweden
Shall I compare thee to a summer day?
Thou are more lovely and more temporate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
and Summers lease has all to short a date.

The opening to a fantastic sonnet by Shakespeare.
 

skimom2

Just moseyin' through...
Oct 9, 2013
15,683
92,168
USA
Don't get me started! I love poetry. Neruda is one of my favorites, and Sonnet 17 is probably my favorite of his. The whole poem is lovely, but I admire the imagery in the first stanza:

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
 

Kurben

The Fool on the Hill
Apr 12, 2014
9,682
65,192
59
sweden
OK a little more close to our time

What matters it, that all around,
Danger, and guilt, and darkness lie
if but within our bosoms bound
we hold a bright untroubled sky
warm with tenthousand mingled rays
of suns that know no winter days?

Emily Bronte. Part of "To Imagination" I have always loved her poetry.
 

GNTLGNT

The idiot is IN
Jun 15, 2007
87,651
358,754
62
Cambridge, Ohio
O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman
1
O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

2
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up-for you the flag is flung-for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths-for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.

3
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
 

Houdini

Well-Known Member
Aug 15, 2014
295
1,418
USA
"And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain thrilled me, filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before!" The Raven by EAP

Houdini in Omaha

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner by STC

Houdini in Omaha
 

booklover72

very strange person
Jan 12, 2014
731
2,995
51
Dublin
I haven't read poetry since school. the few I remember

Romantic IReland dead and Gone
IT's with O'Leary in the grave.

In Xandu did Kubla Khan
a stately pleasure dome decree.

I am hoping at some stage in the game to read inferno. and paradise lost
 

booklover72

very strange person
Jan 12, 2014
731
2,995
51
Dublin
on Wednesday's I get paid so I am purchasing 4 yes 4 books, game of thrones, the devil's alternaive and finally I am going to buy Dante the divine comedy and Milton's Paradise lost. so if you don't see me on the board for about 10 years and you see a new picture with me er confused, puzzled and smoke coming out my ears you will know why. This will bring the number of books to be read 12.
 

Walter Oobleck

keeps coming back...or going, and going, and going
Mar 6, 2013
11,749
34,805
By William Carlos Williams I
TO A POOR OLD WOMAN

munching a plum on
the street a paper bag
of them in her hand

They taste good to her
They taste good
to her. They taste
good to her

You can see it by
the way she gives herself
to the one half
sucked out in her hand

Comforted
a solace of ripe plums
seeming to fill the air
They taste good to her

'm considering using that line...a solace of ripe plums...as a title.

Ode to a Dressmaker's Dummy By Donald Justice
O my coy darling, still
You wear for me the scent
Of those long afternoons we spent,
The two of us together,
Safe in the attic from the jealous eyes
Of household spies
And the remote buffooneries of the weather;
So high,
Our sole remaining neighbor was the sky,
Which, often enough, at dusk,
Leaning its cloudy shoulders on the sill,
Used to regard us with a bored and cynical eye.

How like the terrified,
Shy figure of a bride
You stood there then, without your clothes,
Drawn up into
So classic and so strict a pose
Almost, it seemed, our little attic grew
Dark with the first charmed night of the honeymoon.
Or was it only some obscure
Shape of my mother’s youth I saw in you,
There where the rude shadows of the afternoon
Crept up your ankles and you stood
Hiding your sex as best you could?--
Prim ghost the evening light shone through.
 

Blake

Deleted User
Feb 18, 2013
4,191
17,479
Sweet Hernia by Edward Blishen.
Sweet Hernia on the heights of Plasticine
Sings to the nylon songs of Brassiere;
The very aspirins listen, as they lean
Against the vitreous wind, to her sad air.
I see the bloom of mayonnaise she holds
Coloured like roofs of far away Shampoo.
Its asthma sweetens Earth! Oh, it enfolds
The alum land from Urine to Cachou!
One last wild gusset, then she's lost in night...
And dusk the dandruff dims, and anthracite.
 

Houdini

Well-Known Member
Aug 15, 2014
295
1,418
USA
I haven't read poetry since school. the few I remember

Romantic IReland dead and Gone
IT's with O'Leary in the grave.

In Xandu did Kubla Khan
a stately pleasure dome decree.

I am hoping at some stage in the game to read inferno. and paradise lost

Where alph the sacred river ran down thru caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea :)

Houdini in Omaha
 

Walter Oobleck

keeps coming back...or going, and going, and going
Mar 6, 2013
11,749
34,805
from "The Man With the Blue Guitar" by Wallace Stevens

...They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."


...We shall forget by day, except

The moments when we choose to play
The imagined pine, the imagined jay.
 

ClaireB76

Life is a state of mind
Mar 1, 2013
204
967
47
Perth, Australia
Just love poetry! But Poe is my favourite, especially this one, A Dream Within A Dream


Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
 

Demeter

Well-Known Member
Apr 23, 2008
538
1,424
I love these - they're part of a larger poem called "Auguries of Innocence" by William Blake

"TO see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour."


"Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night."