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Favourite Poems By Famous & Featured Poets


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#21
Resonance.

Resonance.

    Too cold to shiver.

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London, William Blake.

I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:

How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appalls,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.

But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse

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#22
maktrax

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Here is one by one of my favorite poets, Robert Frost, not exactly an emo poet, but what is poetry other than the written expression of emotion?

Design
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

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#23
S.I.S.K.

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Emily Dickinson? Edgar Allan Poe?

All fine and dandy. But make way for some e. e. cummings:

if strangers meet
e. e. cummings
if strangers meet
life begins-
not poor not rich
(only aware)
kind neither
nor cruel
(only complete)
i not not you
not possible;
only truthful
-truthfully,once
if strangers(who
deep our most are
selves)touch:
forever

(and so to dark)


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#24
Infinity

Infinity

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A sweet one.


Elizabeth Barrett Browning



A WOMAN'S SHORTCOMINGS


She has laughed as softly as if she sighed,
She has counted six, and over,
Of a purse well filled, and a heart well tried -
Oh, each a worthy lover!
They "give her time"; for her soul must slip
Where the world has set the grooving;
She will lie to none with her fair red lip:
But love seeks truer loving.

She trembles her fan in a sweetness dumb,
As her thoughts were beyond recalling;
With a glance for one, and a glance for some,
From her eyelids rising and falling;
Speaks common words with a blushful air,
Hears bold words, unreproving;
But her silence says - what she never will swear -
And love seeks better loving.

Go, lady! lean to the night-guitar,
And drop a smile to the bringer;
Then smile as sweetly, when he is far,
At the voice of an in-door singer.
Bask tenderly beneath tender eyes;
Glance lightly, on their removing;
And join new vows to old perjuries -
But dare not call it loving!

Unless you can think, when the song is done,
No other is soft in the rhythm;
Unless you can feel, when left by One,
That all men else go with him;
Unless you can know, when unpraised by his breath,
That your beauty itself wants proving;
Unless you can swear "For life, for death!" -
Oh, fear to call it loving!

Unless you can muse in a crowd all day
On the absent face that fixed you;
Unless you can love, as the angels may,
With the breadth of heaven betwixt you;
Unless you can dream that his faith is fast,
Through behoving and unbehoving;
Unless you can die when the dream is past -
Oh, never call it loving!

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#25
Avant Garde

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Perhaps one of my favorite poems... smile.gif

You Learn by: Jorge Luis Borges

After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,

And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning
And company doesn't mean security.

And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
And presents aren't promises,
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
And you learn to build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while you learn...
That even sunshine burns if you get too much.
So you plant your garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure...

That you really are strong

And you really do have worth...

And you learn and learn...

With every good-bye you learn.

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#26
XxCensure_TriviumxX

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If I were a mod, I'd send above poster into the eternal abyss...
...with the heel of my shoe.

My favorite poem by my most favorite poet.

Ariel

Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.

God's lioness,
How one we grow,
Pivot of heels and knees! ---The furrow

Splits and passes, sister to
The brown arc
Of the neck I cannot catch,

Nigger-eye
Berries cast dark
Hooks ---

Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
Shadows.
Something else

Hauls me through air ---
Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels.

White
Godiva, I unpeel ---
Dead hands, dead stringencies.

And now I
Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.
The child's cry

Melts in the wall.
And I
Am the arrow,

The dew that flies,
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red

Eye, the cauldron of morning.

~Sylvia Plath
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#27
Algernon

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Rudyard Kipling - If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

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#28
Infinity

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Good News

It was terrible, I tell you,
Waiting to hear the worst;
So that I had no strength left
For - ah, the best.
It came to me and kissed me
Like death, almost.
Then I rejoiced; but faintly,
Like someone lost.

And still I am bruised in places,
Having been saved so late.
The worst had done it's wounding
Deep out of sight.
So when shall I recover?
I asked my heart,
Who told me no one ever
Survived such hurt.

Mark Van Doren.
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#29
BrainSpazm

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To The Whore Who Took My Poems by Charles Bukowski

some say we should keep personal remorse from the
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn't you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems:
I'm not Shakespeare
but sometime simply
there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;
there'll always be mony and whores and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.


How Is Your Heart? by Charles Bukowski

during my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
whores
I always had this certain
contentment-
I wouldn't call it
happiness-
it was more of an inner
balance
that settled for
whatever was occuring
and it helped in the
factories
and when relationships
went wrong
with the
girls.
it helped
through the
wars and the
hangovers
the backalley fights
the
hospitals.
to awaken in a cheap room
in a strange city and
pull up the shade-
this was the craziest kind of
contentment

and to walk across the floor
to an old dresser with a
cracked mirror-
see myself, ugly,
grinning at it all.
what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire.


As The Poems Go by Charles Bukowski

as the poems go into the thousands you
realize that you've created very
little.
it comes down to the rain, the sunlight,
the traffic, the nights and the days of the
years, the faces.
leaving this will be easier than living
it, typing one more line now as
a man plays a piano through the radio,
the best writers have said very
little
and the worst,
far too much.
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#30
Valkyrie

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"I loved you" by Alexander Pushkin:

I loved you; even now I may confess,
Some embers of my love their fire retain;
But do not let it cause you more distress,
I do not want to sadden you again.

Hopeless and tongue-tied, yet I loved you dearly
With pangs the jealous and the timid know;
So tenderly I loved you, so sincerely,
I pray God grant another love you so.
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#31
Algernon

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Not a poem, but a song by the great Tom Waits.

Tom Waits - Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis
Charlie, I'm pregnant
And living on 9th Street
Right above a dirty bookstore
Off Euclid Avenue
Stopped taking dope
Quit drinking whiskey
My old man plays the trombone
Works out at the track

Says that he loves me
Even though it's not his baby
Says that he'll raise him up
Like he would his own son
Gave me a ring that was worn by his mother
Takes me out dancing every Saturday night

Charlie, I think about you
Every time I pass the filling station
On a count of all the grease
You used to wear in your hair
Still have that record
Little Anthony and The Imperials
Someone stole my record player
How do you like that?

Charlie, I almost went crazy
After Mario got busted
Went back to Omaha to live with my folks
But everyone I used to know is either dead or in prison
Came back to Minneapolis
This time I think I'm gonna stay

Charlie, I think I'm happy
For the first time since my accident
Wish I had all the money
We used to spend on dope
I'd buy me a used car lot
And I wouldn't sell any of them
Just drive a different car everyday
Depending on how I feel

Charlie, for Christ sakes
If you wanna know the truth of it
I don't have a husband
He don't play the trombone
I need to borrow money
To pay this lawyer
And Charlie, hey
I'll be eligible for parole
Come Valentines day



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#32
Algernon

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Keats is hit-and-miss, I think. Endymion certainly had its good points, but felt too cloying on much more occasions than one, which dragged it down a bit. Personally I loved Hyperion and it's a shame that he never finished it. As for his shorter poems, 'You Say You Love" might be my favourite:

You say you love; but with a voice
Chaster than a nun's, who singeth
The soft vespers to herself
While the chime-bell ringeth—
O love me truly!

You say you love; but with a smile
Cold as sunrise in September,
As you were Saint Cupid's nun,
And kept his weeks of Ember.
O love me truly!

You say you love; but then your lips
Coral tinted teach no blisses,
More than coral in the sea—
They never pout for kisses—
O love me truly!

You say you love; but then your hand
No soft squeeze for squeeze returneth,
It is like a statue's, dead—
While mine for passion burneth—
O love me truly!

O breathe a word or two of fire!
Smile, as if those words should burn me,
Squeeze as lovers should—O kiss
And in thy heart inurn me—
O love me truly!

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#33
Algernon

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Oh, John Keats is certainly not a bad poet by any stretch of the imagination. He is comfortably ensconced in the upper echelons, if anything. smile.gif Just some of his works are too... sappy, but for most of those he has a beautiful one in return.

I love Goethe, but being German I can't stand to see translations from Goethe, Schiller, Hölderlin, Heine, Novalis or any other of our illustrious poets.

How about Miklós Radnóti, who died in the Holocaust?


Foamy sky

The moon sways on a foamy sky,
I am amazed that I live.
An overzealous death searches this age
and those it discovers are all so very pale.

At times the year looks around and shrieks,
looks around and then fades away.
What an autumn cowers behind me again
and what a winter, made dull by pain.

The forest bled and in the spinning
time blood flowed from every hour.
Large and looming numbers were
scribbled by the wind onto the snow.

I lived to see that and this,
the air feels heavy to me.
A war sound-filled silence hugs me
as before my nativity.

I stop here at the foot of a tree,
its crown swaying angrily.
A branch reaches down -- to grab my neck?
I'm not a coward, nor am I weak,

just tired. I listen. And the frightened
branch explores my hair.
To forget would be best, but I have
never forgotten anything yet.

Foam pours over the moon and the poison
draws a dark green line on the horizon.

I roll myself a cigarette
slowly, carefully. I live.


Excerpt from "Maybe"
... But don't leave me, delicate mind!
Don't let me go crazy.
Sweet wounded reason, don't
leave me now.

Don't leave me. Let me die, without fear,
a clean, lovely death,
like Empedocles, who smiled as he fell
into the crater.
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#34
Algernon

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I accidentally stumbled upon Miklós Radnóti several years ago; right on the two poems I just posted, in fact. The lines from ‘Maybe’ just cut right through me. I could hear a soul-tearing voice cry out those words:

(hoarse, panicked cry) But don't leave me, delicate mind!
(panicked, pleading, loud semi-whisper) Don't let me go crazy.
(fearful, normal whisper) Sweet wounded reason, don't
(barely audible whisper) leave me now.

And that’s how I recited them during an improvisational theatre performance with my old theatre group some time ago. I admit tears ran down my cheeks when I was speaking.

That Elizabeth Bishop sestina is quite beautiful. I hadn’t heard of her before, but now I feel obliged to look into her a bit more. Thanks for sharing. smile.gif

If you want to learn German, do what I did when I wanted to learn French: find some good short-story writers and easy to understand poets and buy a dictionary. It’s a slow process, but it works. I’m thinking of doing the same with Russian, but that’s probably much too difficult a task without any guidance.

Speaking of Russian:

Osip Mandelstam – A Troubled Sigh of Leaves
A troubled sigh of leaves
a black wind rustling by,
a flickering swallow draws
a circle on the darkened sky.

There’s quiet contention
in my tender dying heart
between deepening twilight
and daylight burning out.

Over night-filled woods,
a copper moon’s presence.
Why so little music,
and so much silence?


Alexander Pushkin – Elegy

The vanished joy of my crazy years
Is as heavy as gloomy hang-over.
But, like wine, the sorrow of past days
Is stronger with time.
My path is sad. The waving sea of the future
Promises me only toil and sorrow.

But, O my friends, I do not wish to die,
I want to live – to think and suffer.
I know, I’ll have some pleasures
Among woes, cares and troubles.
Sometimes I’ll be drunk with harmony again,
Or will weep over my visions,
And it’s possible, at my sorrowful decline,
Love will flash with a parting smile.


Mikhail Lermontov - Confession
I’m to believe, but with some fear,
For I haven’t tried it all before,
That every monk could be sincere
And live as he by altar swore;
That smiles and kisses of all people
Could be perfidious only once;
That, sometimes, they forgive the little
Mistakes, the others make by chance;
That time heals sufferers around,
The world is one of joy and gleam;
That virtue is not just a sound,
And life is more than a dream.

But rough and hardened life’s experience,
Repulse my warm faith every time,
My mind, sunk, as before, in grievance,
Has not achieved its goal, prime,
And heart, full of the sharp frustrations,
Holds in its deep the clear trace
Of dead – but blest imaginations,
And vanished senses’ easy shades;
There will be none for it to fear,
And what’s a poison for all them,
Makes it alive and feeds it here
With its ironic, mocking flame.



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#35
Algernon

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I never actually ‘studied’ poetry, as in learning about it in high school or at college, but I have always loved poetry and I try to discern the original meaning (if I believe there is one) on my own, without any professional critique or analysis from arrogant ‘intellectuals’. I’m sure tons of meaning goes right over my head or gets misinterpreted, but I get by. smile.gif

The father of a friend of mine taught himself Russian by simply buying a Russian dictionary and a copy of Leo Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’. He started translating it word for word and it took him over fifteen years to complete. He recently started following evening classes in Russian, but even his teacher told him his pronunciation was terrible and it would be nigh impossible to improve it. After all, if you believe for fifteen years that you have to pronounce something in a certain way, it is very difficult to change it – let alone an entire language. So yes... If I want to study Russian, I will probably do so in night school.

I’ve heard of Doris Lessing and The Grass is Singing; in fact, I think my father has a copy on his bookshelf. I must I must disagree with you, though: poetry and prose can mix. The results can be very beautiful, indeed. Just look at works in Symbolism and the Decadent movement, as well as Russian Symbolism. Or, more blatant examples, prose poetry, e.g. Le Spleen de Paris by Charles Baudelaire or Gaspard de la Nuit by Aloysius Bertrand.

Osip Mandelstam, of whom I posted a poem in my previous post, was actually prosecuted several times by the Stalinist regime. His most famous work, ‘Stalin Epigram’, was called a ‘sixteen-line death sentence’ and he was eventually imprisoned in a correction camp where he died. ‘Only in Russia is poetry respected,’ he said, ‘It gets people killed. Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a motive for murder?’

Both Derek Walcott poems you posted were great. Another author to add to my endlessly bloating list! As you say, it’s rare to meet a truly literate person on here so I’m not going to apologise for possibly hijacking this thread. Just to add something, though, some Charles Baudelaire:

The Albatross
Often, to amuse themselves, the men of a crew
Catch albatrosses, those vast sea birds
That indolently follow a ship
As it glides over the deep, briny sea.

Scarcely have they placed them on the deck
Than these kings of the sky, clumsy, ashamed,
Pathetically let their great white wings
Drag beside them like oars.

That winged voyager, how weak and gauche he is,
So beautiful before, now comic and ugly!
One man worries his beak with a stubby clay pipe;
Another limps, mimics the cripple who once flew!

The poet resembles this prince of cloud and sky
Who frequents the tempest and laughs at the bowman;
When exiled on the earth, the butt of hoots and jeers,
His giant wings prevent him from walking.


Twilight
Behold the sweet evening, friend of the criminal;
It comes like an accomplice, stealthily; the sky
Closes slowly like an immense alcove,
And impatient man turns into a beast of prey.
O evening, kind evening, desired by him
Whose arms can say, without lying: "Today
We labored!" — It is the evening that comforts
Those minds that are consumed by a savage sorrow,
The obstinate scholar whose head bends with fatigue
And the bowed laborer who returns to his bed.

Meanwhile in the atmosphere malefic demons
Awaken sluggishly, like businessmen,
And take flight, bumping against porch roofs and shutters.
Among the gas flames worried by the wind
Prostitution catches alight in the streets;
Like an ant-hill she lets her workers out;
Everywhere she blazes a secret path,
Like an enemy who plans a surprise attack;
She moves in the heart of the city of mire
Like a worm that steals from Man what he eats.
Here and there one hears food sizzle in the kitchens,
The theaters yell, the orchestras moan;

The gambling dens, where games of chance delight,
Fill up with whores and cardsharps, their accomplices;
The burglars, who know neither respite nor mercy,
Are soon going to begin their work, they also,
And quietly force open cash-boxes and doors
To enjoy life awhile and dress their mistresses.

Meditate, O my soul, in this solemn moment,
And close your ears to this uproar;
It is now that the pains of the sick grow sharper!
Somber Night grabs them by the throat; they reach the end
Of their destinies and go to the common pit;
The hospitals are filled with their sighs. — More than one
Will come no more to get his fragrant soup
By the fireside, in the evening, with a loved one.

However, most of them have never known
The sweetness of a home, have never lived!
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#36
Algernon

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Most of the poems I posted were copied from another site; only a handful were manually typed up. I got all of them in print, though, so it's easy to just google a line or two from them. They almost never fail to show up. There are a lot of sites where you can find poetry. They should be easy to find. http://www.gutenberg.org, http://www.bibliomania.com and http://www.thehypertexts.com are a couple that come to mind.

When I'm home, I'll check my bookmarks for some better ones. I should have a lot more of them.
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#37
Algernon

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Another old favourite of mine. The second to last stanza is the most famous part.

William Butler Yeats - A Prayer for my Daughter
Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind,
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.

Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
And later had much trouble from a fool,
While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
Being fatherless could have her way
Yet chose a bandy-leggd smith for man.
It's certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.

In courtesy I'd have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful;
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty's very self, has charm made wise,
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place.

My mind, because the minds that I have loved,
The sort of beauty that I have approved,
Prosper but little, has dried up of late,
Yet knows that to be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.
If there's no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?

Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will;
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.

And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
Where all's accustomed, ceremonious;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares
Peddled in the thoroughfares.
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.

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#38
Grakkis

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My favorite poem. If anybody knows who wrote this(as I do not), do not hesitate to tell me.

One fine day in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys got up to fight,
Back to back they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other,

One was blind and the other couldn't, see
So they chose a dummy for a referee.
A blind man went to see fair play,
A dumb man went to shout "hooray!"
A paralysed donkey passing by,
Kicked the blind man in the eye,
Knocked him through a nine inch wall,
Into a dry ditch and drowned them all,

A deaf policeman heard the noise,
And came to arrest the two dead boys,
If you don't believe this story’s true,
Ask the blind man he saw it too!

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#39
Algernon

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Alexander Blok
At night when troubles settle down
And darkness hides the streets and lanes -
There’s so much music all around,
God sends us such amazing strains!

What is the tempest, if your flowers,
Adorn the blooming garden-bed!
What are the bitter tears of ours,
If sunset flares turning red!

Through blood and torment, grave and crushing,
Oh, Mistress of the Universe,
Accept the foamy cup of passion
From an unworthy slave of yours!

Alexander Blok
Run-down and worn from daily rambles
I will forsake the bustling whims
To bring to mind the sores of troubles
And stir the former, bygone dreams…

If only I could breathe instilling
The joy of spring into her soul!
Oh no, I do not aim at killing
Her childish idleness at all!

I’d better keep my soul from striving
To her unearthly heights, alas,
Where happiness appears shining ,
But it is not designed for us.

Evgeny Baratynsky - The Skull
Departed brother, who has disturbed your sleep
And trampled on the sanctity of the tomb?
Into your house, all dug up, I stepped down —
I took your skull in my hands, dusty and yellow.

The remnants of your hair — it wore them still.
I saw the slow course of decay upon it.
Horrible sight! How powerfully it struck
The sensible inheritor of that ruin.

Along with me a crowd of mindless youths
Above the open pit laughed mindlessly.
If only then, if only in my hands
Your head had burst forth into prophecy!

If only it had taught us — rash, in bloom,
And menaced hourly by the hour of death —
The truths that lie within the ken of tombs,
Uttering them in its impassive voice!

What am I saying? A hundred times is blessed
That law which has embalmed its lips in silence.
And righteous is that custom which demands
Respect for the solemn sleep of the departed.

Let the living live! Let the dead decay in peace!
O man, worthless creation of the Almighty,
Recognize finally that you were made
Neither for wisdom nor for omniscience!

We need our passions as we need our dreams.
They are the law and nourishment of our being:
You will not bring under the selfsame laws
The noise of the world and the silence of the graveyard.

Wise men will not extinguish natural feelings.
The answer they search for no grave shall supply.
Let life bestow its joys upon the living —
And death itself will teach them how to die.


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#40
Algernon

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Jorge Luis Borges - The Just
A man who cultivates his garden, as Voltaire wished.
He who is grateful for the existence of music.
He who takes pleasure in tracing an etymology.
Two workmen playing, in a cafe in the South, a silent game of chess.
The potter, contemplating a color and a form.
The typographer who sets this page well, though it may not please him.
A woman and a man, who read the last tercets of a certain canto.
He who strokes a sleeping animal.
He who justifies, or wishes to, a wrong done him.
He who is grateful for the existence of Stevenson.
He who prefers others to be right.
These people, unaware, are saving the world.

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