Your favorite poem

Kunga

My favorite poem of all time is by Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi:

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense."

What's yours?

Jeffrey

Very beautiful I will have to think about that. I am afraid I am not too familiar with poetry to have a favorite but I will try to share:

"If wishes were fishes we'd all cast nets" from the book Dune the character Gurney Halleck? remembers his mother's words

Jeffrey

"When the universe is closing down its doors
It is really just the universe echoing
Keep a light on in your door
Not as a sign to the Lord
And not in open rebellion either
Perhaps just because you can and you wish it"

Jason_PDK

"My beloved friend
You and I had a sweet talk,
Long ago, on Autumn night.
Renewing itself,
This year has rumbled along,
That night still in memory".
Ryokan

Jason_PDK

The Brook :


I come from haunts of coot and hern;

I make a sudden sally

And sparkle out among the fern,

To bicker down a valley.


By thirty hills I hurry down,

Or slip between the ridges,

By twenty thorpes, a little town,

And half a hundred bridges.


Till last by Philip's farm I flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on for ever.


I chatter over stony ways,

In little sharps and trehles,

I bubble into eddying bays,

I babble on the pebbles.


With many a curve my banks I fret

By many a field and fallow,

And many a fairy foreland set

With willow-weed and mallow.


I chatter, chatter, as I flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on for ever.


I wind about, and in and out,

With here a blossom sailing,

And here and there a lusty trout,

And here and there a grayling,


And here and there a foamy flake

Upon me, as I travel

With many a silvery water break

Above the golden gravel,


And draw them all along, and flow

To join the brimming river

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on for ever.


I steal by lawns and grassy plots,

I slide by hazel covers

I move the sweet forget-me-nots

That grow for happy lovers.


I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,

Among my skimming swallows;

I make the netted sunbeam dance

Against my sandy shallows.


I murmur under moon and stars

In brambly wildernesses;

I linger by my shingly bars;

I loiter round my cresses;


And out again I curve and flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on for ever.



By Lord Tennyson


This poem means a lot to me!
Especially the last verse because my grandfather used to say it all the time when I was a child.


Jason

Jeffrey

Both poems awesome. The second poem sticks in my mind how themes of nature and flowing are vivid in the play of the man's feeling about his own experience. I wish to have more time with my grandfather. I will have to tune in when my mom talks about him.

ShiftPlusOne

I used to like Taras Shevchenko's poems. Here's an example:

Don't Envy

Don't envy, friend, a wealthy man:
A rich man's life is spent
Without a friend or faithful love --
Those things he has to rent.
Don't envy, friend, a man of rank,
His power's based on force.
Don't envy, too, a famous man:
The man of note well knows
The crowd's acclaim is not for him,
But for that thorny fame
He wrought with labour and with tears
So they'd be entertained.
But then, when young folk gather 'round,
So fine they are and fair
You'd think it's heaven, -- ah, but look:
See evil stirring there ...

Don't envy anyone my friend,
For if you look you'll find
That there's no heaven on the earth,
No more than in the sky.

Taras Shevchenko
Mirhorod, October 4th, 1845.
Translated by John Weir, Toronto

Edit: I just realized a few lines from this poem are used in Gogol Bordello's Illumination. Kind of strange that I never noticed that before considering that I must've heard that song 100 times.

Jason_PDK

Both poems awesome. The second poem sticks in my mind how themes of nature and flowing are vivid in the play of the man's feeling about his own experience. I wish to have more time with my grandfather. I will have to tune in when my mom talks about him.

I wish everyone would treasure their grandparents while they still have them.

The man who used to say this poem was our neighbor and friend for many years and I used to call him my grandfather. He was one of the nicest men I ever knew.

Jason