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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Favourite Poems from my youth, and yours!
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Sir Kevin
Ship's Gaffer
# 3492
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Posted
My all-time favourite poem is The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, which I had not read in its entirety since I was about fourteen years old until earlier this morning. I wish I could commit it to memory!
I won't bother to quote it here because almost every adult with a good liberal arts education, which I have, knows it.
I also enjoy the most famous of the Shakespearean sonnets.
Next time I have insomnia I shall tackle "...Practical Cats". I'd like to see how it could be transmogrified into the blockbuster touring stage show that I worked on several times in various iterations (including a purpose-built inflatable!)
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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Writing is currently my hobby, not yet my profession.
Posts: 30517 | From: White Hart Lane | Registered: Oct 2002
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sir Kevin:
I won't bother to quote it here
Good. Because you know how antsy we get about possible copyright infringements.
If anyone does feel moved to post about their favourite verses, a format of brief extract and a link to the full text would be much appreciated.
Thank you.
Firenze
Heaven Host
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Galilit
Shipmate
# 16470
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Posted
Anything (well almost) by Gerard Manley Hopkins.
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She who does Her Son's will in all things can rely on me to do Hers.
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geroff
Shipmate
# 3882
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Posted
Things that go bump in the night.... etc - Spike Milligan. An iconic poem from my childhood - closely followed by the Owl and the Pussycat and The Jumblies (why Lear of course).
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"The first principle in science is to invent something nice to look at and then decide what it can do." Rowland Emett 1906-1990
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
E. Pauline Johnson (Mohawk name: Tekahionwake). The Camper We liked this in Boy Scouts, where a campfire thing to do in the bush was skits and dramatic readings between cups of tea and mosquitos. (She died in 1913, no copyright issues, poem available multiple places online. Here's one of many links.)
quote:
Night 'neath the northern skies, lone, black, and grim:
Naught but the starlight lies 'twixt heaven, and him.
Of man no need has he, of God, no prayer;
He and his Deity are brothers there.
Above his bivouac the firs fling down
Through branches gaunt and black, their needles brown.
Afar some mountain streams, rockbound and fleet,
Sing themselves through his dreams in cadence sweet,
The pine trees whispering, the heron's cry,
The plover's passing wing, his lullaby.
And blinking overhead the white stars keep
Watch o'er his hemlock bed--his sinless sleep.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
I have altogether too many favourites to name. Masefield, Yeats, Kipling and Eliot to name but a few have been quotable at many times throughout my life. I didn't really get properly into poetry until my teens when I discovered Shelley, and never looked back.
I wonder if anyone else here has also enjoyed the quotations that pop up in Dorothy Dunnett's "Lymond" novels? I came to those as a young teenager and some of those quotes have stayed with me too.
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Magersfontein Lugg
Shipmate
# 18240
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Posted
Yes I have loads Ariel too.
I wonder if, without derailing this discussion, if it would be good for us to mention as well a poem which is a favourite from youth but which we may think isn't so well known too.
I love to read 'new' favourites ![[Smile]](smile.gif) today, and find it enriching.
So in this vein I offer:
From a Railway Carriage by Robert Louis Stevenson
I still love the sense of speed it gives in recitation
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
A couple I enjoy Wild Geese by Mary Oliver and Ode by Arthur O'Shaughnessy.
I have plenty of others but not all night for posting.
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
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Magersfontein Lugg
Shipmate
# 18240
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Posted
How lovely, Jengie. You must have had a cultured youth
I didnt know Wild Geese and am grateful to be introduced to it.
but I do remember Ode - I think as a student I heard it set to music by ?Elgar.
Really looking forward to reading more new favourites!
Posts: 104 | From: Bottle Street | Registered: Oct 2014
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Magersfontein Lugg:
Really looking forward to reading more new favourites!
If you like meeting new poems, this thread unearthed a few gems.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Magersfontein Lugg
Shipmate
# 18240
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Posted
Thanks for that link, I've been and had a look. Great.
I do like peoples childhood favourites, though, especially when they are not ones I already know
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
I think I was in 4th grade (age 10 or so) when introduced to Alfred Noyes' poem "the Highwayman".
My adult self looks askance at this rather lurid ballad, but at the time, I lived near the sea, loved all references to same, and a new word for a type of ship, galleon, imprinted itself permanently on my brain from its first (and the last) stanza. Also, I memorized the poem. I absolutely loved its powerful rhythm.
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
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Drifting Star
Drifting against the wind
# 12799
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie jon:
...Ode[/URL] by Arthur O'Shaughnessy.
I have plenty of others but not all night for posting.
Jengie
Do you know the full text Jengie? There are 9 stanzas, although the first three are most widely known because it was abridged to go into Palgrave's Treasury. I can remember being so excited to find another 6 verses! Elgar's setting used all of them.
(tiny url goes to wikisource page with unacceptable characters in its url)
I used to learn poetry by heart while walking into and out of town when I was a teenager (3 miles each way) and again as a young adult. I'm so glad I did - I have a head full of resources whenever I'm stuck without a book!
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The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Heraclitus
Posts: 3126 | From: A thin place. | Registered: Jul 2007
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
This was my favorite poem when I was six years old.
Now I like a lot of Dylan Thomas's poems. I was lucky enough to hear him read some of his poems and other poets'. He read a poem by W. R. Rodgers about Mary Magdalene. I don't recall the title, so I can't find it on the internet. I can still hear Dylan Thomas's voice reciting some of that poem. His voice drove it into my memory.
Moo
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
He read a poem by W. R. Rodgers about Mary Magdalene.
Is this it?
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
He read a poem by W. R. Rodgers about Mary Magdalene.
Is this it?
Yes. thanks.
I will never forget Thomas delivering the lines quote:
Mary saw her God.
Did you hear me? Mary saw her God!
Thomas had a wonderful ability to read poetry.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Piglet
Islander
# 11803
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by geroff:
Things that go bump in the night.... etc - Spike Milligan ...
Thanks for reminding me of that Spike Milligan poem, Geroff - it was in a book by him I had as a child called Silly Verse for Kids, which also had this little gem.
A cheer from me for The Owl and the Pussycat too, which my mum would recite to us, and we read it to her when her "ordinary" memory had all but gone, but she could still fill in the alternate lines.
![[Tear]](graemlins/tear.gif)
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I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music
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Meesothorny
Apprentice
# 17603
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Posted
I love Jane Kenyon:
Let Evening Come
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Full text
(Edited for copyright)
[ 02. November 2014, 06:17: Message edited by: Firenze ]
Posts: 3 | From: Wisconsin | Registered: Mar 2013
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
A reminder of my post up thread.
Extract and link only, please.
(Yes, I know. Absurdly hyper-cautious. But OTOH simple, consistent and easy to remember).
Firenze
Heaven Host
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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the famous rachel
Shipmate
# 1258
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Posted
When I was quite small, certainly before I went to school, my Mum used to read to me from a book called "Hilda Boswell's Treasury of Poetry". She kept it, and I have it beside me now, as I now read to my son from it occaisionally. My favourite poem was "Mice" by Rose Fyleman. I also loved "Bedtime" by Thomas Hood. Interestingly, it took me quite some searching on the Internet to find the right words for this one. It's evidently used as a lullaby in a shorter and less elegant form, which is unfortunate, as my childhood self loved the repetition in the last verse, which usually seems to be omitted or edited:
"Good night, little people
Good night and good night;
Sweet dreams to your eyelids
Til dawning of light;
The evening has come, there's no more to be said,
It's time little people were ging to bed!"
When I was a little bit older, I was given a book of poems by Shel Silverston, My favourite of those was "Hammock". This is too short to quote anything from, and anyway, it really needs the illustration, which is in the linked version.
None of this is very highbrow compared to what other people are quoting, but these are poems which have stuck with me since I was very tiny!
Best wishes,
Rachel.
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A shrivelled appendix to the body of Christ.
Posts: 912 | From: In the lab. | Registered: Aug 2001
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Magersfontein Lugg:
How lovely, Jengie. You must have had a cultured youth
I didnt know Wild Geese and am grateful to be introduced to it.
but I do remember Ode - I think as a student I heard it set to music by ?Elgar.
Really looking forward to reading more new favourites!
Sorry, as my brain was fogged with cold, I ended up semi reading the thread and just choose two rather special verses. Although in my childhood I did request the Complete Odes and Epodes of Horace (in translation) as a teenager. So maybe your observation is not that far off.
The poems that I do turn to from childhood include Sea Fever by John Masefield which is the opening poem in Young Pegasus: An Anthology of Verse parts IV-V. This was my mother's textbook when at school. Also because of a story book The Hound of Heaven which was featured in it.
quote:
Originally posted by Drifting Star
Originally posted by Jengie jon:
...Ode[/URL] by Arthur O'Shaughnessy.
I have plenty of others but not all night for posting.
Jengie
Do you know the full text Jengie? There are 9 stanzas, although the first three are most widely known because it was abridged to go into Palgrave's Treasury. I can remember being so excited to find another 6 verses! Elgar's setting used all of them.
Yes. I sought that verse out when I was in my late twenties for a friend who was going into a convent. As a result, I have a copy in "The Faber Popular Reciter" that has all nine verses. Its just been a while since I have read it.
Jengie
[ 02. November 2014, 20:54: Message edited by: Jengie jon ]
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
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jedijudy
Organist of the Jedi Temple
# 333
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Posted
The Owl and the Pussycat (thanks for the memories!) and Hey Diddle Diddle were my favorite poems when I was very wee! I think my mother read them to us every night, probably because I asked for her to do so!
For many years now, my favorite poet is Baxter Black, Cowboy Poet.
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Jasmine, little cat with a big heart.
Posts: 18017 | From: 'Twixt the 'Glades and the Gulf | Registered: Aug 2001
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Sir Kevin
Ship's Gaffer
# 3492
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie jon:
Also because of a story book The Hound of Heaven which was featured in it.
Jengie
That's not a poem - that's a tome! I'll read it after school.
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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Writing is currently my hobby, not yet my profession.
Posts: 30517 | From: White Hart Lane | Registered: Oct 2002
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Heavenly Anarchist
Shipmate
# 13313
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Posted
I was a serious romantic child with a taste for the more traditional; Shelley's Love's Philosophy and Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Then in my later teens it was Ted Hughes, both his Crow series and his nature poems, oh, and Full Moon and little Freda. It wasn't until I was older that I discovered the more childish delights of Belloc's Lords - Lundy is my favourite.
I love reading out loud and I subjected my children to endless readings of Dahl's Revolting Rhymes. I still read the Edgar's The Lion and Albert to my youngest, in a Lancastrian accent honed from childhood elderly relatives.
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'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.' Douglas Adams
Dog Activity Monitor
My shop
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
The only poem I memorized that I still know by heart: An Irish Airman Foresees His Death. Quite sad and romantic. So much by Yeats- The Second Coming, Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, When You Are Old, and the Jane and the Bishop poems. I am also fond of J. Alfred Prufrock.
When I was a child, I had two volumes of poems by A. A. Milne. Two favorites were Hoppity and The King's Breakfast- quote:
The King sobbed, "Oh, deary me!"
And went back to bed.
"Nobody,"
He whimpered,
"Could call me
A fussy man;
I only want
A little bit
Of butter for
My bread!"
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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St. Gwladys
Shipmate
# 14504
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Posted
I remember learning "The war song of Dinas Vawr" by Thomas Love Peacock. "Rhe mountain sheep are sweeter but the valley shhep are fatter" - now, whenever I see a picture of Carreg Cennen in west Wales, I think of that poem.
I also love "Sea Fever", which wsa the recitation in a school eisteddfod (sort of an arts competition).
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"I say - are you a matelot?"
"Careful what you say sir, we're on board ship here"
From "New York Girls", Steeleye Span, Commoners Crown (Voiced by Peter Sellers)
Posts: 3333 | From: Rhymney Valley, South Wales | Registered: Jan 2009
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Lord Jestocost
Shipmate
# 12909
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Posted
At school I made a deliberate effort to seek out Wilfrid Gibson's Ballad of Flannan Isle, for no reason other than that Tom Baker quotes a snippet at the end of "Horror of Fang Rock".
Full text under the link; the snippet goes:
quote:
Aye: though we hunted high and low,
And hunted everywhere,
Of the three men's fate we found no trace
Of any kind in any place,
But a door ajar, and an untouched meal,
And an overtoppled chair.
Posts: 761 | From: The Instrumentality of Man | Registered: Aug 2007
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bib
Shipmate
# 13074
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Posted
I love Yeat's poem "When you are old and grey and full of sleep". Many of his poems are wonderful in my eyes.
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"My Lord, my Life, my Way, my End, accept the praise I bring"
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Bob Two-Owls
Shipmate
# 9680
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Posted
As a special treat, if we had been especially good, the Latin teacher would let us translate some of the fruitier poems by Catullus. My latin is no longer up to it but I still love reading them with a parallel translation for the harder bits (fnarr fnarr).
Dear old Lesbia, I often wondered what she looked like.
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Sir Kevin
Ship's Gaffer
# 3492
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lord Jestocost:
At school I made a deliberate effort to seek out Wilfrid Gibson's Ballad of Flannan Isle, for no reason other than that Tom Baker quotes a snippet at the end of "Horror of Fang Rock".
A very fine poem but unsettling: did three dead men fail to sit down to dinner?
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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Writing is currently my hobby, not yet my profession.
Posts: 30517 | From: White Hart Lane | Registered: Oct 2002
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
Back in the far off days when I was at school, one of the subjects I did for A Level was English. In those days, you spent two years going from O level to A level, but the Examination Boards did not publish what the set books were going to be until just before the end of the first year. So you spent that year exploring your subject more generally. One of the things we had to do was to write a study of a particular writer, and for various reasons I chose Clare. He was not that well known then, and I still think he's underrated. I can hardly think of anything he wrote that isn't a gem.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Adam.
Like as the
# 4991
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Posted
The only poetry I've ever memorized have been verse plays (having done a few Shakespeare), a poem about summer by Catullus that I had to memorize for Latin (and can't remember any of now), and Psalm 95 for Hebrew class (which I can still do a fair bit of). The 8th graders at our parish school are studying Romeo & Juliet in language arts right now, so I went in a performed Romeo's "banished?!" speech for them. I'd forgotten how exhilarating it can be to inhabit those texts as a performer.
I had my main poet-crush on Yeats as a teenager, my favorite probably being Tread softly.
My current favorite poem is almost certainly Herbert's Love bade me welcome, which is all the theology anyone needs to no, expressed beautifully.
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Ave Crux, Spes Unica!
Preaching blog
Posts: 8164 | From: Notre Dame, IN | Registered: Sep 2003
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churchgeek
Have candles, will pray
# 5557
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Posted
I can't say how much it warms the heart to see this discussion of poetry.
I've also always loved "Prufrock," as well as "The Hollow Men," which Daniel Amos paraphrased in a song that I listened to over and over as a teenager.
In college, I had to recite a poem in French (in my French phonetics class), and I picked Baudelaire's "Harmonie du soir." It's a pantoum, which I didn't know at the time. But I used the pattern to write one of my own, which you can read (and hear a musical setting done by a stranger on the internet - I mean, someone I met on another web forum) here.
I'm also a huge fan of Sylvia Plath. Her poem "Street Song" is a favorite of mine, 'cause I relate to it. But that's not from my youth.
Oh, and Yeats, of course - I particularly like the way the Waterboys set "The Stolen Child."
And John Cale's Words for the Dying - setting of four Dylan Thomas poems. You can hear Thomas read "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" online (google it, I'm too lazy to do that now), and hear that Cale seems to have based his setting on Thomas' own vocal cadences. Really cool. I love that in part because, as sort of a poet myself, when I used to do readings, I found that around the 3rd or 4th time I read any poem, it developed a "tune," so to speak. I wonder if that's a common experience among poets?
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I reserve the right to change my mind.
My article on the Virgin of Vladimir
Posts: 7773 | From: Detroit | Registered: Feb 2004
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Robert Armin
All licens'd fool
# 182
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Posted
When I was about 9, we did Blake's "Tyger" at school. At 21 I wrote about it in a final's paper, and continue to see new things there. How many poems are accessible to such a wide age range?
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Keeping fit was an obsession with Fr Moity .... He did chin ups in the vestry, calisthenics in the pulpit, and had developed a series of Tai-Chi exercises to correspond with ritual movements of the Mass. The Antipope Robert Rankin
Posts: 8927 | From: In the pack | Registered: May 2001
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St. Gwladys
Shipmate
# 14504
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Posted
My English master used to use "Tyger" as an example of how not to recite poetry:
Ty-ger ty-ger burn-ning bright
In the for-ests of the night
so the rhythm was deda deda de dada
deda deda de de da
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"I say - are you a matelot?"
"Careful what you say sir, we're on board ship here"
From "New York Girls", Steeleye Span, Commoners Crown (Voiced by Peter Sellers)
Posts: 3333 | From: Rhymney Valley, South Wales | Registered: Jan 2009
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
I have a happy memory of learning the opening lines of Tennyson's 'The Revenge' with mu mum when I was quite young. Can't remember when but it was before I was seven.
[ 10. November 2014, 17:45: Message edited by: Albertus ]
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My beard is a testament to my masculinity and virility, and demonstrates that I am a real man. Trouble is, bits of quiche sometimes get caught in it.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Darllenwr
Shipmate
# 14520
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Posted
Am I alone in having been taught a profound loathing of poetry by my Grammar School English master?
I'm sure that I cannot be the only one who learned to dread the questions that started, "What does the poet mean when he says ...?" It never seemed to matter what I wrote, it was always wrong. I don't think I would have minded so much if my teacher had ever troubled to explain why I was wrong. Equally, it would have been easier to accept if he hadn't taken a malicious delight in reading out your mistakes to an eager class, before throwing your exercise book at your head. I learned to loath poetry with a passion and it is a loathing I still have nearly 40 years later.
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If I've told you once, I've told you a million times: I do not exaggerate!
Posts: 1101 | From: The catbox | Registered: Jan 2009
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
How very, very sad.
Also bloody stupid way to teach poetry. Poems are not bits of explanatory prose mucked about with in order to make them harder to understand. To translate them into some kind of 'meaning' is to miss the point.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Huia
Shipmate
# 3473
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Posted
Slightly different, but wasn't there a composer (Mozart or one of the famous ones) who, on being asked what a piece of music meant simply played it again? Always sounded like a good answer to me.
Huia
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Charity gives food from the table, Justice gives a place at the table.
Posts: 10382 | From: Te Wai Pounamu | Registered: Oct 2002
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
Here is one poet's statement about meaning in poetry.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Sir Kevin
Ship's Gaffer
# 3492
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
How very, very sad.
Also bloody stupid way to teach poetry.
Not my wife's method I am sure, though some of her pupils might benefit from having a composition book thrown at them she has not done so yet! She teaches English language and literature to young teenagers at a school about 15 minutes drive from the house. She does a poetry unit every Friday and encourages the lads and lasses to write poems themselves, for a grade.
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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Writing is currently my hobby, not yet my profession.
Posts: 30517 | From: White Hart Lane | Registered: Oct 2002
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Egeria
Shipmate
# 4517
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Posted
Our sixth grade teacher, who had been an English major, not only taught us a load of grammar but also required us to memorize poetry; we usually had a choice of several poems. My favorite from that time was "Sea Fever" by John Masefield. Thanks, Mrs. Cooper!
I came across "Forgive My Guilt" by Robert P. Tristram Coffin a couple of years later; just thinking about that one makes the tears pop right out.
On my own I memorized "the Master Speed" by Robert Frost. And Frost's "Two Tramps in Mud Time"--about doing work "for heaven's and the future's sake"--ought to be in every student's syllabus.
But my favorite now and for many years past is "The Old Ships" by James Ellroy Flecker. I memorized it as a teenager and have a copy posted above my desk at work among the postcards and cat photos.
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"Sound bodies lined / with a sound mind / do here pursue with might / grace, honor, praise, delight."--Rabelais
Posts: 314 | From: Berkeley, CA | Registered: May 2003
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Ariel
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# 58
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Posted
Flecker isn't as well-known as he should be, and printed collections of his poems are hard to get hold of. I enjoyed his poems when I finally got hold of them. "Pillage" has a very pleasing internal rhyme scheme, and "Tenebris Interlucentem" is short but good. "Old Ships" is certainly one of his best.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Bernard Mahler
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# 10852
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Posted
Masefield's 'Cargoes' and Tennyson's 'Crossing the Bar' I know these by heart. I also love the latter's 'Lady of Shalott'. I haven't yet got it memorized, but I'm working on it!
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"What does it matter? All is grace" Georges Bernanos
Posts: 622 | From: Auckland New Zealand | Registered: Jan 2006
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Ariel
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# 58
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Posted
I bought a delightful little pocket anthology of poems the other day, with lovely headers and gilded edges and a bookmark. It's for keeping in my handbag for those times when you feel like dipping into a bit of poetry. The "Poems on the Underground" is what gave me the idea; sometimes they can divert you quite effectively into an appreciation of something altogether nicer and more wholesome than gritty public transport.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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