Preserved Topic: Favorite Short Poems

After ReMiXxs' thread on critiquing his own poem, I thought I would post a similar thread on favorite short poems . I would post "Favorite Poems" but as we all know some poems are far too long to fit in posts such as one of my favorites "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe, also one of my favorite poets! So lets hear them! What is your favorite short poem?

A Dream Within A Dream
Take this kiss upon the brow!

And in parting from you now,

This much let me avow--

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a self-tormented shore,

And I hold in my hand

Grains of a golden sand--

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep--while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?


- Poe

So we let them see what is not there, but they cross the barrier that is everywhere. The barrier they see but do not touch. The barrier that breaks down into dust...

Darnit that was my favorite one!

Jabberywocky, Lewis Carroll.

I can still recite the whole thing from memory. And the Walrus and the Carpenter. Classics.

Jabberwocky was cool! Beware the Jabberwocky!

The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost.

Great piece of work but overcommercialized in recent times.

Anything by that M.E. Ohlson guy....
he's gifted with the pen, he is.

Mark Twain

For me, poetry is to the written word like jazz is to music. I just can't relate to either of them Maybe someday I'll develop an appreciation for them, who knows?

Bugs, you like music right? Music is poetry... What are some bands or song you like? Think of the lyrics.

'fire and ice'

Anything by the "Vogonpoet" they are all classics imho! heh

Vogon poetry



[This message has been edited by mahjqa (edited 01-24-2002).]

Another one of my favorites is "Sonnet - To Science" by Edgar Allen Poe.

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

The part about that that really disturbed me was the "dragged Diana from her car" part.

Wrong Diana. That line was merely a juxtaposition of mythology (Diana) and science (car) and it worked pretty well in that sense. Otherwise, just a coincidence.

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were ? I have not seen
As others saw ? I could not bring
My passions from a common spring ?
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow ? I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone ?
And all I lov'd ? I lov'd alone ?
Then ? in my childhood ? in the dawn
Of a most stormy life ? was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still ?
From the torrent, or the fountain ?
From the red cliff of the mountain ?
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold ?
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by ?
From the thunder, and the storm ?
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view

Fill with mingled cream and amber,
I will drain that glass again.
Such hilarious visions clamber
Through the chamber of my brain ?
Faintest thoughts ? queerest fancies
Come to life and fade away;
What care I how time advances?
I am drinking ale today.

doubt that the starts are fire,
doubt that the sun doth move,
doubt truth to be a liar,
never doubt that i love.

and on a lighter note:

there once was a man from japan,
who wrote limericks that just didn't scan;
when told this was so,
he said, "yes i know,
but i like to try and fit as many words into the last line as i possibly can."



___________________
b u n c h a p i x e l s

The Near Future

Nothing is what it appears
The translucent boundary
between fantasy and reality
Is being skilfully engineered;
Kindergarten pre-conditioning....
Can you say `I'll be good` ?
Boys and girls, we knew you would
No questions now just listening.
Get familiar with your desk
Submit to proper authority
Surrender to conformity
Become like everyone else
Sit down, listen and behave
Believe the lies we choose
Don't fight-you'll always lose
Relax.Don't make waves.
Initiative is not allowed
We decide your choices
We mimic your voice
And choreograph the crowd
OK Schools done work starts
That old familiar desk
From school..no more, no less
Blend in, play it smart.
Relax, but please don't think
Tune in to our propoganda
Or Hockey Night in Canada
It's really all the same thing.
Send your kids off to school
For a desk all their own
The one you've outgrown
We'll make them another you.
We must transcend face values
Who's pulling the Nylon over our eyes?
Lets sift the facts from the lies
Before someone rewrites the truth.
fin

A poem by Michael Kaulbach

Natures first green is gold
her hardest hue to hold
her early leafs a flower
but only so an hour

then leaf subsides to leaf
and eden sank to grief
so dawn goes down today
nothing gold can stay


*I know that silence said Robert Frost...too commercialised in recent times, but I guess if this poem hadn't of been in a movie, I may never have stumbled accross it... sorry if i got any of it wrong wobbly memory!
kit

Well DL-44! I had no idea you had any good common sence in taste! just kidding...

I heard of the poem by a nameless poet. This is it:-

We go throughout our lives,
Always rushing, hurrying from place to place.
We run towards the light,
Never stopping to consider how much time we have left.
We charge on from birth unto the grave,
Because we feel that life is a job, a profession.
Not once do we stop and realise
That we only have a short period in this world.
Why are we in a rush to go to the next one?
We only have one life, why waste it,
Why regret not doing what you wanted to do?
Our lives are precious, like diamonds,
Our experiences, each a drop in a lake of life.
Don't waste your life, but live your life,
Because you only have one...

What do you guys think of that one? Try to find the author.

"...And let it be known that all men are created equal, although some men are created more equally than others."
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

A little bird awoke me,
As he sang outside my door.
He sang and trilled so gayly,
His heart just seemed to soar.

I stretched my arms above me.
Rolled over in my bed.
Coaxed him onto the windowsill,
And crushed his God Damned head!

<edit>"And crushed is God Damned head!" didn't make much sense</edit>



[This message has been edited by St. Seneca (edited 02-12-2002).]

See
it was like this when
we waltz into this place
a couple of Papish cats
is doing an Aztec two-step
And I says
Dad let's cut
but then this dame
comes up behind me see
and says
You and me could really exist
Wow I says
Only the next day
she has bad teeth
and really hates
poetry

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

A Coney Island of the mind. "The printing press," he says. " has made poetry so silent that we've forgotten the power of poetry as oral messages. The sound of the street-singer and the Salvation Army speaker is not to be scorned......"

Rain by Spike Milligan

There are holes in the sky
where the rain falls in,
but they're ever so small
that's why rain is thin

See also: www.geocities.com/Broadway/Booth/2009/milligan.html

Emps

For shorties there's nothing more fun than Ogden Nash
The Cow

The cow is of the bovine ilk;
One end is moo, the other, milk.


The guppy

Whales have calves,
Cats have kittens,
Bears have cubs,
Bats have bittens,
Swans have cygnets,
Seals have puppies,
But guppies just have little guppies.



:[ Computers let you make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila. ]:

I have had enough of women, and enough of love,
But the land waits, and the sea waits, and day and night is enough;
Give me a long white road, and grey wide path of the sea,
And the wind's will and the bird's will, and the heartache still in me.

Why should I seek out sorrow, and give gold for strife?
I have loved much and wept much, but tears and love are not life;
The grass calls to my heart, and the foam to my blood cries up,
And the sun shines and the road shines, and the wine's in the cup.

I have had enough of wisdom, and enough of mirth,
For the way's one and the end's one, and it's soon to the end of the earth;
And it's then good-night and to bed, and if heels or heart ache,
Well, it's sound sleep and long sleep, and sleep to deep to wake.


ARTHUR SYMONS-Wanderer's Song

Gutter standing
In front of Tatlers
I barely catch
the movement in
a corner of one eye.
Gesturing hands.
As I turn
shaking fingers, wrapped
in fingerless mittens
arch to nervous lips
and down; a request.
I give hin his dream
Looks like he needs one.
Unable to hear the words
in loud ear-caught music.
He moves on, I turn away,
my thoughts unbroken
are my own. I turn
the music up.

Roses are red
Violets are blue (although they're not, they're actualkly purple, hence the colour Violet)
Most poems rhyme
But this one doesn't

The poem is called "To a baby born without limbs" and the narrater is god

This is just to showyou who is boss around here.
It'll keep you on your toes, so to speak,
Make you put your best foot out, so to speak,
And give you something to turn your hand to, so to spea.
You can face up to it like a man,
Or snivel and whimper like a baby.
That is up to you - nothing to do with me.
If you take it in the right spirit,
You canhave a bloody marveloud life,
With the great rewards courage brings,
and the beauty of accepting your LOT.
And think how much good it'll do your mom and dad
And your Gramps and Grans and the rest of the shower
To be stopped being complacent.
Make sure they babtise you though,
In case some murdereing bastard
Decides to put you away quick,
Which would send you straight to LIMB-O, Ha ha ha
But just a word in your ear, if you've got one,
Mind you DO take this in the right spirít,
And keep a civil tongue in your head about Me
Because if you don't
I've got plenty of other stuff up My sleeve
Such as leukemia and polio,
(Which incidentally you're welcome to anytime,
Whatever spirit you are in).
I've given you a love-pat, right?
You don't want another.
So watch it Jack