Ok I liked Terri's idea of sharing our favorite poetry. So I thought maybe a new thread would be the place to put it. Here are my favorites:

When we Two parted


WHEN we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow-
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me-
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well:-
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met-
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?-
With silence and tears.

~Lord Byron


Here is another one: (but not by Lord Byron)

Testament


I feel it is a testament to the complexities of the emotions I am faced with.
It brings together at one moment my greatest fears and strongest ambitions.
I know how the story will end, but the experience is how the story is told.
A chance to let those we trust decide our fates, but refusing the insults of others.
This is the time of inner reflection and outward understanding.
It is every thing cliché and everything beautiful.
By it I confess my unending love.
All things are simple
And complex
But this: is
Only true
Because Our Understanding Never Developed

oh Squeak!

Thanks so much! Thanks for sharing yours, who wrote the second one?

I have lots - but I'll start with this one by W.B. Yeats - it is one of my very favorites



When You are Old

WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Yeats is great. (It is also my fishy's name)

The second one is by no one famous, just something I came across that I really liked.

I love what you both have posted! I just may have to look more into Lord Byron...

This is something that I heard quoted by Dr. Wayne Dyer. It's by Soren Kirkerguard, a Danish theologian and after I reread it a few times and really let it sink in, it made so much sense to me that I wrote it down in my personal journal...

To see the world in a grain of sand,
and a heaven in a wildflower,
to hold eternity in the palm of your hand,
and infinity in an hour,
we're lead to believe a lie,
when we see with, not through, the eye,
which was born in a night,
to perish in a night,
when the soul slept in beams of light.

Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood

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,
Then taking 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.

Yes, both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trampled 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.

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.

~ Robert Frost

Ahhh...that's grand...Thanks, Amarantha! And to all of you...this is a great thread!

...more Robert Frost...

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Squeak, you're too modest. Don't want to embarrass you but, that is really beautiful...take credit you shy girl.
Thanks for this thread. It's so wonderful. I'll be back.
Soozie

*climbs out from under the massive amount of papers and stuff on her desk*

Thanks Soozie, but I really didn't write it. It isn't someone famous either. But I did have it read to me once in a cuddly-type setting, and that is the best feeling.

"Leaning into the Afternoons"
By Pablo Neruda




Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets
towards your oceanic eyes.

There in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and flames,
its arms turning like a drowning man's.

I send out red signals across your absent eyes
that move like the sea near a lighthouse.

You keep only darkness, my distant female,
from your regard sometimes the coast of dread emerges.

Leaning into the afternoons I fling my sad nets
to that sea that beats on your marine eyes.

The birds of night peck at the first stars
that flash like my soul when I love you.

The night gallops on its shadowy mare
shedding blue tassels over the land.

I don't know who wrote this but if you do let me know. I really liked it, saw it posted on a friend's bulletin board, he didn't know where he had found it.



The New Story of Your Life

Say you have finally invented a new story of your life.
It is not the story of your defeat or of your impotence and
powerlessness before the large forces of wind and accident.
It is not the sad story of your mother's death or of your abandoned childhood.
It is not, even,
a story that will win you the deep initial sympathies of the
benevolent goddesses or the care of the generous,
but it is a story that requires of you a large thrust into the
difficult life, a sense of plenitude entirely your own.
Whatever the story is, it goes as it goes, and there are
vicissitudes in it, gardens that need to be planted, skills sown,
the long hard labors of prose and enduring love.
Deep down in some long-encumbered self,
it is the story you have been writing all of your life,
where no Calypso holds you against your own willfulness,
where there are no longer dark caves for you to be
imprisoned in, where you can rise from the bleak island of
your old story and tread your way home.

I LOVE reading all the poems you chickies have posted. Some stuff I have read, but a lot I haven't.

I am not sure who that one is by Soozie, but I like it alot. If you find out let me know.


Here are a few more:

Starpainters

The myth is neither here nor there,
from the air.
Just blue lake stains
on green and purified, parcelled squares;
a crazy quilt of spearmint,
of mustard and honey tones;
a scuffed-up kitchen floor of tiles
on top of bones
with a big trap door.
Towns down diagonal lines disappear
and drop out of sight
into the night beyond the national night,
and underneath the grit and glare
into the unfettered nothingness and thin air,
as herds of clouds lazily graze
on thermal sighs of delight.
The Starpainters are taking over now,
their scaffolding is in its place.
Your anaesthesiologist tonight
is washing up and on her way.

~Gord Downie



It was 85 Degrees Today

Silhouette of golden trees
And spinning fans in the twilight
This impetuous spring day
Ends like a hot fall night

Gold leaves on midnight blue
Stand motionless in the gentle wind
A calm center and peace
Before tomorrow's storm
Grown on budding blossoms

Two fans pour into the night
Spinning illusively slow in the shadows
Like misplaced pinwheels
Fighting soflty to go so separate ways
Yet pulled together by their stubborn churn

I am the placid wind in whole-full peace with such a view

~my boy (who also wrote Teastament in the post at the top)

I am love what he writes, but I am a bit biased. I ama tad (ok a lot) overprotective because I did't know if anyone else would like the poems....

Soozie - When I read that poem, it instantly brought to mind a friend of mine who's having trouble dealing with the past. I think maybe I will send it to her.....I wonder who wrote it.

Squeak - I really like your boy's style and imagery. I've always thought of poetry as art, like painting a picture - with words instead of paint.

Here's one I loved as a child. It reminds me of sitting on the windowsill of my grandparents' spare bedroom on the top floor of their old house. They had a farm in upstate NY and I would sometimes get up at night to look outside as the moon shone on the night time world.



Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver, sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breast peep
Of doves in silver-feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws and a silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.

-- Walter de la Mare

Ohhh, Terri...I LOVE that poem...I haven't heard that in a long time...thanks for the memory!

Squeak, thank you for starting this thread. I'm loving everything that all of you girls are sharing.
This is one of my favorites... I don't know if you know Stanley Kunitz... he's American... a darling man around 90 years of age.


Touch Me
by Stanley Kunitz

Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that's late,
it is my song that's flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it's done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.