Post up your favourite poem

[Voldemort]

Dear Little Flo
I love you so
Especially in your nightie

When the moonlight flits
Across your tits
Oh Jesus Christ Almighty


Peter Cook.

[White-Noise]

There was a young woman from Ealing
Who had a peculiar feeling
She laid on her back
And opened her c&&ck
And p!ssed all over the ceiling

It's just about the only one I remember and I heard it in Bridget Jones.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Brian Bilson ~
WHAT DON CORLEONE DID NEXT

Upon retiring
from the mafia,

he wove aquatic mammals
out of raffia

let me tell you
how I learnt this news:

he made me an otter
I couldn’t refuse

[Speed Badger]

A thousand planets and a million stars, an infinite night can't match those odds. Finding you, again - Stardust, you said, separated and scattered on the winds.

Nobody sees me like you do, nobody sees me truly - only you.

Love doesn't want to leave because we show it the door. Like Greek fire, the smallest droplet of water ignites the fiercest inferno.

I've never found peace like this, a person to love with my soul, it can't be nothing, it can't be all, this life will still keep me breathing you in.

You are my Atlantis, a myth to be discovered, spoken of through centuries, but never real, how could you be? Until one day your island rose from tumultuous seas, shining beauty for miles around.

You called to me, you were no myth, my limits of feeling changed forever.

So many chapters stay unwritten, the story not yet complete. Your pellucid soul is sheet music to my heart, with notes I never knew existed, playing a symphony unheard until we met.

Stardust is what binds us, and to stardust we will return. One day.

One beautiful day.

[Magnum 475]

There was a young sailor from Brighton
Who remarked to his girl, “You’re a tight ‘un”
She replied, “ ‘Pon my soul,
You’re in the wrong ‘ole”
There’s plenty of room in the right ‘un.

[zb]

Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

There was a young man from Bath
Who got limericks and haikus confused.

[siovey]

Beans, Beans, good for the heart
The more you eat, the more you fart
The more you fart, the better you feel
So let's have Beans for every meal!

[vaud]

Remember
By Christina Rossetti


Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

[The Count]

Dust If You Must
by Rose Milligan


Dust if you must, but wouldn't it be better
To paint a picture, or write a letter,
Bake a cake, or plant a seed;
Ponder the difference between want and need?

Dust if you must, but there's not much time,
With rivers to swim, and mountains to climb;
Music to hear, and books to read;
Friends to cherish, and life to lead.

Dust if you must, but the world's out there
With the sun in your eyes, and the wind in your hair;
A flutter of snow, a shower of rain,
This day will not come around again.

Dust if you must, but bear in mind,
Old age will come and it's not kind.
And when you go (and go you must)
You, yourself, will make more dust.

[C n C]

I was going to post "If" by Rudyard Kipling, but (unsurprisingly) it's already been posted. My aunt gave me a birthday card with it on my 18th birthday, and it made quite an impression at the time and since.

Another already posted, and one of my favourites is "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe.

There are some really good poems in this thread (many I'd not read before), so thanks to all for contributing.

For some nonsensical stuff, here's:

"Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

[IJWS15]

Ōdī et amō. Quārē id faciam fortasse requīris.
Nesciŏ, sed fierī sentiō et excrucior.

Catullus.

[silverfoxcc]

C in C


one of my faviurites, but to all who posted there are sone gems on here
this is one thread to revisit many times


so Eskimo Nell.. in its own way up there with the best

A policeman from Near Clapham Junction
Had a penis that just would not function
For the rest of his life
He mislead his poor wife
With some snot on the end of his truncheon

Some of the most tear jerking ones i have seen and gets a lump in my throat each time, are the short ones in Funeral Orders of service


Thank you to all those posters so far, and welcome to those who arrive later.. This thread is a lovely quite place to visit for 10 mins and reflect

Edited by silverfoxcc on Saturday 8th March 09:30

Edited by silverfoxcc on Saturday 8th March 09:31

[dontlookdown]

Some good ones on this post tks. Here's one I keep coming back to over the years

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;

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,

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.

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

[Riley Blue]

IJWS15 said:

Ōdī et amō. Quārē id faciam fortasse requīris.
Nesciŏ, sed fierī sentiō et excrucior.

Catullus.

I couldn't agree more.

[Stuart70]

This has filled in two hours and two coffees on a sunny Saturday morning - thanks to everyone who posted.

My contribution would be The Lotos Eaters, by Tennyson, courtesy of “Trendy” Wendy Robinson, my Higher English teacher in 1987.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45364/the-l...

[ferret50]

I jump, I shout, I leap with joy,

Cos' I was here before Kilroy.

[nigelpugh7]

Ode to a nightingale - John Keats


My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness--
That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond tomorrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Clustered around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets covered up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Called him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain--
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! The fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: - Do I wake or sleep?

[ferret50]

A Serviceman's Ode

We the unwilling.
Led by the ungrateful,
Have done so much for so long with so little.
That we are now qualified to do absolutely anything with fk all!

[Jim H]

Big Rumbly said:

If—
BY RUDYARD KIPLING


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 on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe 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!

I’ve liked ‘If’ for a long time. I first came across it in the early nineties when reading Gerald Donaldson excellent Biography on James Hunt.

Innes Ireland read it at James Celebration of Life memorial service. Innes himself was battling cancer at the time and would be lost a few months later.

Both kindred spirits, James and Innes. A Really poignant poem.