I love this poem because it uses symbolism and imagery wonderfully.
It compares two roads to the choices that you make in life. Do you follow in the footsteps of everyone else? Or do you take the less traveled path and make your footsteps?
A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London
by Dylan Thomas
Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness
And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn
The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.
Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.
I absolutely adore his work. Wonderfully descriptive, evocative, subtle without being obtuse, and his poems are musical in sound and quality. And he has a knack for stating his ideas in beautiful, clear, and haunting sentences.
"After the first death, there is no other."
"Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea." (Fern Hill)
"And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm." (The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower)
This peice has always spoken to me, to me it says that you must take responsibility of your destiny and fate, and that no matter what life throws at you push through it and beyond because "I am the Captian of my soul" and only i can change my fate.
T.S. Eliot's modernist classic "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" captures with precision the neuroses of modern life and the struggles of a fissured consciousness attempting to come to grips with the irreconcilable paradox of baring one's soul to the world and accepting the possibility of rejection. The language is exacting, the literary allusions and rhetorical devices stunning -- a true tour de force.
Comments
Here is my favorite. These are words I have lived by all my life. They have helped me many times and often bring me peace.
Desiderata
Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.
Max Ehrmann, Desiderata, Copyright 1952.
The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20
I love this poem because it uses symbolism and imagery wonderfully.
It compares two roads to the choices that you make in life. Do you follow in the footsteps of everyone else? Or do you take the less traveled path and make your footsteps?
A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London
by Dylan Thomas
Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness
And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn
The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.
Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.
I absolutely adore his work. Wonderfully descriptive, evocative, subtle without being obtuse, and his poems are musical in sound and quality. And he has a knack for stating his ideas in beautiful, clear, and haunting sentences.
"After the first death, there is no other."
"Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea." (Fern Hill)
"And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm." (The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower)
Invictus
by William Ernest Henley; 1849-1903
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.
This peice has always spoken to me, to me it says that you must take responsibility of your destiny and fate, and that no matter what life throws at you push through it and beyond because "I am the Captian of my soul" and only i can change my fate.
T.S. Eliot's modernist classic "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" captures with precision the neuroses of modern life and the struggles of a fissured consciousness attempting to come to grips with the irreconcilable paradox of baring one's soul to the world and accepting the possibility of rejection. The language is exacting, the literary allusions and rhetorical devices stunning -- a true tour de force.
The Nicest person in the world
the person i want to brag about
Thats you, only you, You are my lady
when im eating something good, i glimmer
when you cough i want to get you a medicine
thats you, only you, You are so pretty
Your my sun, your underserving love
your appearance is blinding, so its not for a guy like me
your my ocean, always filled with your love
i love you like no other, Oh my love
i dont know who was it from but i like it because it gives alot of things about my lover
"Daffodils" (1804)
I WANDER'D 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.....
....
I love daffodils and this poem just paints a picture of the most beautiful scene!
Annabell Lee by Edgar Allen Poe
its so amazingly descriptive and the verses just roll off the tung.
I like Stephen Crane's "The Black Riders". Read it.
i like most things by Ogden Nash