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Have you got a favourite poem?

(107 Posts)
Yammy Fri 18-Mar-22 20:29:10

The national survey says that "If', by Rudyard Kipling",is the favourite followed by Wordsworths Daffodils. As at the moment we all have daffodils in bloom and an original copy of Wordsworth's has been returned to Dove cottage.What would yours be mine is "St.Agnes Eve" by Coolridge.

Yammy Fri 18-Mar-22 20:31:46

Sorry should read Keats not Coolridge.

Coastpath Fri 18-Mar-22 20:43:09

The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy.

I adore the description of winter and this poem makes me realise that even in the bleakest of times there is always hope.

Blossoming Fri 18-Mar-22 20:43:41

I have several.

The Second Coming by WB Yeats

Blossoming Fri 18-Mar-22 20:46:19

Posted too soon!

The Good Morrow by John Donne

Celia Celia by Adrian Mitchell

Coastpath Fri 18-Mar-22 20:46:39

Can I please add another one. So perfect for spring.

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44411/a-shropshire-lad-2-loveliest-of-trees-the-cherry-now

crazyH Fri 18-Mar-22 20:50:43

All time favourite - Daffodils

fairfraise Fri 18-Mar-22 20:51:10

Inishmore by Yeats. I love the picture conveyed.

Artaylar Fri 18-Mar-22 20:56:13

Derek Walcott - Love After Love

MissAdventure Fri 18-Mar-22 21:01:52

Phenomenal woman.
Maya Angelou.

I used to love poems when I was little, but I don't know that many now I'm grown up.

ginny Fri 18-Mar-22 21:02:30

Leisure by WH Davies

Coastpath Fri 18-Mar-22 21:08:29

MissAdventure I've just listened to Maya Angelou reading that poem. I've not heard it before and it moved me to tears. Thank you so much for posting about it here.

Maywalk Fri 18-Mar-22 21:21:04

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

By William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
...........................................

It was this poem that spurred me on to write many myself and having them published to help both human and animal charities.

lixy Fri 18-Mar-22 21:27:30

Timothy Winters by Charles Causley has stuck with me for decades.

allpoetry.com/Timothy-Winters

Robert Louis Stevenson's From a Railway Carriage is my favourite for reading aloud.

MissAdventure Fri 18-Mar-22 21:29:49

smile
Oh thank you, coastpath.
She certainly is phenomenal, isn't she?

Still I rise is another of hers I love, too.

Greyduster Fri 18-Mar-22 21:32:44

Those Winter Sundays

BY ROBERT HAYDEN

Sundays, too, my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather, made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Grandma70s Fri 18-Mar-22 21:33:56

I have a lot! Anything by AE Housman, or Shakespeare sonnets - ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds’ being a particular favourite.

I have only recently come across ‘Overheard on a Saltmarsh’ by Harold Monro, the poem about green glass beads. I am fascinated by it. I like to memorise poems, but for some reason I find this one difficult to learn.

Delila Fri 18-Mar-22 21:45:31

Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter by John Crowe Ransom.

Luckygirl3 Fri 18-Mar-22 21:48:19

The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry.

Its final line is on my OH's gravestone:
"I rest in the grace of the world and am free."

Abitbarmy Fri 18-Mar-22 22:00:50

The Life That I Have, by Leo Marks. Such beautiful words. It always reminds me of that very brave woman, Violette Szabo. The film of her, Carve her name with Pride made such an impression on me many years ago.

Delila Fri 18-Mar-22 22:00:56

That is a beautiful poem Luckygirl3

MissAdventure Fri 18-Mar-22 22:04:21

There is a poem I read years ago, that I have never been able to find since.
I really, really wish I could come across it somewhere.

Delila Fri 18-Mar-22 22:08:44

Can you give us a clue MissAdventure?

MissAdventure Fri 18-Mar-22 22:36:44

It was about the author visiting his father, who never complained and just got on with life after the death of his wife.
Then the poet noticed his dad still set the table for two.

It really touched me, but that's all I can remember.

I really have a yearning to read it again, for some reason.

Sago Fri 18-Mar-22 23:06:08

As a little girl poetry and books were my sanctuary, home life was awful.

The poem that has always stayed with me was Turner’s Romance.

Chimborazo, Cotopaxi and shining Popacateptl sounded so beautiful and exotic.

poemsdisentangled.wordpress.com/2016/09/02/w-j-turner-1889-1946/