Post your favorite poem or lyrics

[Bidude117]

Is it strained when I call you?
Oh do you think
That I might forget?
I wish I could run
To you when you need me
You know I can’t be found
For long

Heart dont fail me now
Cause there is no time to waste
Dont shut me out, we shouldnt wait another day
Ive searched for you, on my hearts high speed chase
Hear me out, may be the only chance to say
Hold me now
Ive said it every other way…

 

[GayHunting]

I never wanted to be your weekend lover...

 

[unloadonme]

Diary of a Church Mouse
(Sir John Betjeman)

Here among long-discarded cassocks,
Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks,
Here where the vicar never looks
I nibble through old service books.
Lean and alone I spend my days
Behind this Church of England baize.
I share my dark forgotten room
With two oil-lamps and half a broom.
The cleaner never bothers me,
So here I eat my frugal tea.
My bread is sawdust mixed with straw;
My jam is polish for the floor.
Christmas and Easter may be feasts
For congregations and for priests,
And so may Whitsun. All the same,
They do not fill my meagre frame.
For me the only feast at all
Is Autumn's Harvest Festival,
When I can satisfy my want
With ears of corn around the font.
I climb the eagle's brazen head
To burrow through a loaf of bread.
I scramble up the pulpit stair
And gnaw the marrows hanging there.
It is enjoyable to taste
These items ere they go to waste,
But how annoying when one finds
That other mice with pagan minds
Come into church my food to share
Who have no proper business there.
Two field mice who have no desire
To be baptized, invade the choir.
A large and most unfriendly rat
Comes in to see what we are at.
He says he thinks there is no God
And yet he comes ... it's rather odd.
This year he stole a sheaf of wheat
(It screened our special preacher's seat),
And prosperous mice from fields away
Come in to hear our organ play,
And under cover of its notes
Ate through the altar's sheaf of oats.
A Low Church mouse, who thinks that I
Am too papistical, and High,
Yet somehow doesn't think it wrong
To munch through Harvest Evensong,
While I, who starve the whole year through,
Must share my food with rodents who
Except at this time of the year
Not once inside the church appear.
Within the human world I know
Such goings-on could not be so,
For human beings only do
What their religion tells them to.
They read the Bible every day
And always, night and morning, pray,
And just like me, the good church mouse,
Worship each week in God's own house,
But all the same it's strange to me
How very full the church can be
With people I don't see at all
Except at Harvest Festival.

 

[swerve]

I have so many...

But this one is ALWAYS the first to come to mind...

 

[gmoney]

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 imposters 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 wornout 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 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!​

 

[carniolus]

S.Kosovel (1904 - 1926)
"What the hell..."


What the hell, one would say
and order another carafe of wine.
Wasn't it at 4 p.m. that
the artistic heart passed away?
The hollow sounds of bells,
those are the empty poems I know.


There is only one I hold dear,
a Requiem as yet
untouched.


For some time I've lived off
poison and hate, loathing and laughter,
and pain as
my only comfort.
Ah, but I still laugh
at these fools.
You with your round faces,
and yet: I am alive.

 

[MercuryJones]

I'm not posting The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock in its entirety, but here are snippets:

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

**********

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

 

[swerve]

I've also always liked Edgar Allen Poe's "A Tell Tale Heart"...

Performed here by a young Vincent Price...

 

[ozguy]

I had some really tough classes this year, so it's no wonder I felt like this many times over the course of the school year. Damn glad it's over ...


Last Lesson of the Afternoon
by D H Lawrence

When will the bell ring, and end this weariness?
How long have they tugged the leash, and strained apart,
My pack of unruly hounds! I cannot start
Them again on a quarry of knowledge they hate to hunt,
I can haul them and urge them no more.

No longer now can I endure the brunt
Of the books that lie out on the desks; a full threescore
Of several insults of blotted pages, and scrawl
Of slovenly work that they have offered me.
I am sick, and what on earth is the good of it all?
What good to them or me, I cannot see!

So, shall I take
My last dear fuel of life to heap on my soul
And kindle my will to a flame that shall consume
Their dross of indifference; and take the toll
Of their insults in punishment? — I will not! —

I will not waste my soul and my strength for this.
What do I care for all that they do amiss!
What is the point of this teaching of mine, and of this
Learning of theirs? It all goes down the same abyss.

What does it matter to me, if they can write
A description of a dog, or if they can't?
What is the point? To us both, it is all my aunt!
And yet I'm supposed to care, with all my might.

I do not, and will not; they won't and they don't; and that's all!
I shall keep my strength for myself; they can keep theirs as well.
Why should we beat our heads against the wall
Of each other? I shall sit and wait for the bell.

 

[NedNickerson]

I don't know why, but this verse of a poem always stuck in my head ever since i heard it on Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

To see the world in a grain of sand,
and a heaven in a flower.
To hold the Universe in the palm of your hand,
and have unity within an hour.

I think its by William Wordsworth.

You almost got it right:

"To See a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour."
— William Blake

 

[Adrock-JD]

Out of nowhere
You came
From a little dust
And a little rain
And when I looked down at
Your face
It showed to me
The truth in grace

I will always try to keep you very safe

So open up your eyes
So they can look in mine
And see a small reflection
And when you close your eyes
I pray the thoughts inside
Are beautiful and true

I won't always
Be this strong
And I won't always
Be the one
To kiss the bruise
Or heal the scrapes
To wipe the tear drops
From your face


But I will always love you more each day

Always by Plumb

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-S6Yguvdzw[/ame]

 

[NedNickerson]

Funeral Blues
W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good

=====================================

The Look
Sara Teasdale

Stephon kissed me in the spring,
Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
And never kissed at all.
Stephon's kiss was lost in jest,
Robin's lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin's eyes
Haunts me night and day.

=====================================

Sleepless
Sara Teasdale

If I could have your arms tonight-
But half the world and the broken sea
Lie between you and me.

The autumn rain reverberates in the courtyard,
Beating all night against the barren stone,
The sound of useless rain in the desolate courtyard
Makes me more alone.

If you were here, if you were only here -
My blood cries out to you all night in vain
As sleepless as the rain.

=====================================

Madonna of the Evening Flowers
Amy Lowell

All day long I have been working,
Now I am tired.
I call: "Where are you?"
But there is only the oak-tree rustling in the wind.
The house is very quiet,
The sun shines in on your books,
On your scissors and thimble just put down,
But you are not there.
Suddenly I am lonely:
Where are you?
I go about searching.

Then I see you,
Standing under a spire of pale blue larkspur,
With a basket of roses on your arm.
You are cool, like silver,
And you smile.
I think the Canterbury bells are playing little tunes.

You tell me that the peonies need spraying,
That the columbines have overrun all bounds,
That the pyrus japonica should be cut back and rounded.
You tell me these things.
But I look at you, heart of silver,
White heart-flame of polished silver,
Burning beneath the blue steeples of the larkspur,
And I long to kneel instantly at your feet,
While all about us peal the loud, sweet Te Deums of the Canterbury bells.

========================================

I had to translate the following poem for French class many years ago in college.
After about an hour, I had re-written everything neatly, then I said, Okay, now, what do we have here? ... Even 25 years later, I can still recall the wave of shock and sadness that washed over me as I read the last line...

Dejuener du Matin (Breakfast)
Jacques Prevert

He poured the coffee
Into the cup.
He put the milk
Into the cup of coffee.
He put the sugar
Into the coffee with milk.
With a small spoon,
He stirred.
He drank the coffee
And he put down the cup
Without speaking to me.
He finished his coffee with milk
And he put down the cup.
Without speaking to me,
He lit
A cigarette.
He made rings
With the smoke.
He shook off the ash
Into the ashtray
Without speaking to me.
Without looking at me,
He got up
And put his hat
On his head.
He put on
His raincoat
Because it was raining
And he left
Into the rain
Without speaking to me,
Without looking at me --
And I buried
My face in my hands
And I cried.

 

[gsdx]

"AT SEVENTEEN"

By Janis Ian

I learned the truth at seventeen
That love was meant for beauty queens
And high school girls with clear skinned smiles
Who married young and then retired.
The valentines I never knew.
The Friday night charades of youth
Were spent on one more beautiful
At seventeen I learned the truth.

And those of us with ravaged faces
Lacking in the social graces
Desperately remained at home
Inventing lovers on the phone
Who called to say "come dance with me"
And murmured vague obscenities.
It isn't all it seems at seventeen.

A brown eyed girl in hand me downs
Whose name I never could pronounce
Said: "Pity, please, the ones who serve.
They only get what they deserve."
The rich relationed hometown queen
Marries into what she needs
With a guarantee of company
And haven for the elderly.

Remember those who win the game,
Lose the love they sought to gain
In debentures of quality and dubious integrity.
Their small-town eyes will gape at you
In dull surprise when payment due
Exceeds accounts received at seventeen.

To those of us who knew the pain
Of valentines that never came
And those whose names were never called
When choosing sides for basketball,
It was long ago and far away
the world was younger than today
when dreams were all they gave for free
to ugly duckling girls like me.

We all play the game and when we dare
We cheat ourselves at solitaire,
Inventing lovers on the phone,
Repenting other lives unknown,
That call and say: "Come dance with me"
And murmur vague obscenities
At ugly girls like me at seventeen.

 

[braex27]

The Mermaid
by William Butler Yeats

A mermaid found a swimming lad,
Picked him for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
Laughed; and plunging down
Forgot in cruel happiness
That even lovers drown.

Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep
By Mary Elizabeth Frye

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,
I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I do not die.

 

[braex27]

Also -

Travel
By Rupert Brooke

'Twas when I was in Neu Strelitz
I broke my heart in little bits.

So while I sat in the Muritz train
I glued the bits together again.

But when I got to Amerhold,
I felt the glue would never hold.

And now that I'm home to Barton Hill,
I know once broken is broken still.

 

[Mendax]

The Drunken Boat, Arthur Rimbaud

As I was floating down impassive Rivers,
I no longer felt myself steered by the haulers:
gaudy Redskins had taken them for targets,
nailing them naked to coloured stakes.

I cared nothing for all my crews,
carrying Flemish wheat or English cotton.
When, along with my haulers, those uproars stopped,
the Rivers let me sail downstream where I pleased.

Into the ferocious tide-rips, last winter,
more absorbed than the minds of children, I ran!
And the unmoored Peninsulas never
endured more triumphant clamourings.

The storm made bliss of my sea-borne awakenings.
Lighter than a cork, I danced on the waves
which men call the eternal rollers of victims,
for ten nights, without once missing the foolish eye of the harbor lights!

Sweeter than the flesh of sour apples to children,
the green water penetrated my pinewood hull
and washed me clean of the bluish wine-stains
and the splashes of vomit, carrying away both rudder and anchor.

And from that time on I bathed in the Poem
of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk,
devouring the green azures where, entranced
in pallid flotsam, a dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down;

where, suddenly dyeing the blueness,
deliriums and slow rhythms under the gleams of the daylight,
stronger than alcohol, vaster than music,
ferment the bitter rednesses of love!

I have come to know the skies splitting with lightning,
and the waterspouts, and the breakers and currents;
I know the evening, and dawn rising up like a flock of doves,
and sometimes I have seen what men have imagined they saw!

I have seen the low-hanging sun speckled with mystic horrors
lighting up long violet coagulations
like the performers in antique dramas;
waves rolling back into the distances their shiverings of venetian blinds!

I have dreamed of the green night of the dazzled snows,
the kiss rising slowly to the eyes of the seas,
the circulation of undreamed-of saps,
and the yellow-blue awakenings of singing phosphorus!

I have followed, for whole months on end,
the swells battering the reefs like hysterical herds of cows,
never dreaming that the luminous feet of the Marys
could muzzle by force the snorting Oceans!

I have struck, do you realize, incredible Floridas,
where mingle with flowers the eyes of panthers in human skins!
Rainbows stretched like bridles
under the sea's horizon to glaucous herds!

I have seen the enormous swamps seething,
traps where a whole leviathan rots in the reeds!
Downfalls of waters in the midst of the calm,
and distances cataracting down into abysses!

Glaciers, suns of silver, waves of pearl, skies of red-hot coals!
Hideous wrecks at the bottom of brown gulfs
where the giant snakes, devoured by vermin,
fall from the twisted trees with black odours!

I should have liked to show to children those dolphins
of the blue wave, those golden, those singing fish. --
Foam of flowers rocked my driftings,
and at times ineffable winds would lend me wings.

Sometimes, a martyr weary of poles and zones,
the sea whose sobs sweetened my rollings
lifted my shadow-flowers with their yellow sucking disks toward me,
and I hung there like a kneeling woman...

Resembling an island, tossing on my sides the brawls
and droppings of pale-eyed, clamouring birds.
And I was scudding along when across my frayed ropes
drowned men sank backwards into sleep!...

But now I, a boat lost under the hair of coves,
hurled by the hurricane into the birdless ether;
I, whose wreck, dead-drunk and sodden with water,
neither Monitor nor Hanseatic ships would have fished up;

free, smoking, risen from violet fogs,
I who bored through the wall of the reddening sky which bears
a sweetmeat good poets find delicious:
lichens of sunlight mixed with azure snot;

who ran, speckled with tiny electric moons,
a crazy plank with black sea-horses for escort,
when Julys were crushing with cudgel blows
skies of ultramarine into burning funnels;

I who trembled to feel at fifty leagues off
the groans of Behemoths rutting, and the dense Maelstroms;
eternal spinner of blue immobilities,
I long for Europe with it's age-old parapets!

I have seen archipelagos of stars! and islands
whose delirious skies are open to sea wanderers: --
Do you sleep, are you exiled in those bottomless nights,
O million golden birds, Life Force of the future?

But, truly, I have wept too much! Dawns are heartbreaking.
Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter:
sharp love has swollen me up with intoxicating torpor.
O let my keel split! O let me sink to the bottom! <-------------That stanza is basically perfection.

If there is one water in Europe I want, it is the black
cold pool where into the scented twilight
a child squatting full of sadness launches
a boat as fragile as a butterfly in May.

I can no more, bathed in your langours, O waves,
sail in the wake of the carriers of cottons;
nor undergo the pride of the flags and pennants;
nor pull past the horrible eyes of prison hulks.

 

[Mendax]

I also adore this one by Dickinson:

I Died For Beauty, Emily Dickinson

I died for beauty but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth, the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

And, of course, Eliot's The Waste Land, but I've already taken up enough space so I'll refrain from posting it.

 

[ozguy]

One of my favourite songs. The lyrics are beautiful and as for the singer ... well, I just adore her! ....



From a distance the world looks blue and green,
and the snow-capped mountains white.
From a distance the ocean meets the stream,
and the eagle takes to flight.

From a distance, there is harmony,
and it echoes through the land.
It's the voice of hope, it's the voice of peace,
it's the voice of every man.

From a distance we all have enough,
and no one is in need.
And there are no guns, no bombs, and no disease,
no hungry mouths to feed.

From a distance we are instruments
marching in a common band.
Playing songs of hope, playing songs of peace.
They're the songs of every man.
God is watching us. God is watching us.
God is watching us from a distance.

From a distance you look like my friend,
even though we are at war.
From a distance I just cannot comprehend
what all this fighting is for.

From a distance there is harmony,
and it echoes through the land.
And it's the hope of hopes, it's the love of loves,
it's the heart of every man.

It's the hope of hopes, it's the love of loves.
This is the song of every man.
And God is watching us, God is watching us,
God is watching us from a distance.
Oh, God is watching us, God is watching.
God is watching us from a distance

 

[martin6]

Snippets from songs that make me smile:

A man in a silk suit hurries by and as he catches the poor old lady's eye, just for fun he says "Get a job!"

The percentage you're paying is too high-priced while you're living beyond all your means. And the man in the suit has just bought a new car from the profit he's made on your dreams.

Said your mother told you the only thing I could give you was a reputation. She never cared for me, but did she ever say a prayer for me?

His mind is not for rent to any god or government. Always hopeful yet discontent, he knows changes aren't permanent, but change is.

God's the selling point, and the great inventor, of course, of the sweet up and down.

 

[Fire]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g[/ame]