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Take me as I drive alone
through the dark countryside.
As the strong means clear a path,
picking out fences, weeds, late
flowering trees, everything
that streams back into the past
without sound, I smell the grass
and the rich chemical sleep
of the fields. An open moon
sails above, and a stalk
of red lights blinks, miles away.
It is at such moments I
am called, in a voice so pure
I have to close my eyes, and enter
the breathing darkness just beyond
my headlights. I have come back,
I think, to something I had
almost forgotten, a mouth
that waits patiently, sighs, speaks,
and falls silent. No one else
is alive. The blossoms are
white, and I am almost there.
To Dick on his 6th Birthday by Sara Teasdale
Tho' I am very old and wise,
And you are neither wise nor old,
When I look far into your eyes,
I know things I was never told:
I know how flame must strain and fret
Prisoned in a mortal net;
How joy with over-eager wings,
Bruises the small heart where he sings;
How too much life, like too much gold,
Is sometimes very hard to hold. . . .
All that is talking--I know
This much is true, six years ago
An angel living near the moon
Walked thru the sky and sang a tune
Plucking stars to make his crown--
And suddenly two stars fell down,
Two falling arrows made of light.
Six years ago this very night
I saw them fall and wondered why
The angel dropped them from the sky--
But when I saw your eyes I knew
The angel sent the stars to you.
I have many favourites but this is a poem by Lauris Edmond, one of New Zealand's best poets.
Directions
When you slipped in beside me
I wanted to hold you completely,
make one entire, encompassing gesture;
but you remain always a foreign country,
a place where my papers permit me
explorations, also familiar journeys
that may again discover
love's recognisable landmarks
as one might come to a piazza
in a remote and beautiful city
remembering evenings when the violinist
swayed to his song and the black-brimmed
magician strode round his invisible circle
and touched his lips to the crowd
and then called softly in
the expectant dusk his Ah, fantastica!
a short poem by Leonad Cohen has always been one of my favourites:
For Anne
With Annie gone,
whose eyes to compare
with the morning sun?
Not that I did compare
but I do compare
now that she's gone.
Last edited by netwit; 02-11-2011 at 01:26 AM..
Reason: added poem
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
Paradise Lost - John Milton (Thank you Doc Koon wherever you are!)
Anything by Robert Frost
On the Pulse of Morning - Maya Angelou, Spoken at Bill Clinton's innauguration
Fire and Ice--Robert Frost.
Jabberwocky--Lewis Carroll.
Those two would be my favorites, though I also like Shel Silverstein's work, and the free verse found on Blue Mountain Arts greeting cards.
And there's always my own, but there's a personal bias there. One of my poems won an award, and the object was to respond to another poem. I chose Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"
The first lines were "You callow youth, with your honey sweet mouth/You're the man my mama warned me about."
Here is a translation of a poem by Charles Baudelaire that I enjoy.
More Than Night's Vault, It's You That I Adore
More than night's vault, it's you that I adore,
Vessel of sorrow, silent one, the more
Because you flee from me, and seem to place,
Ornament of my nights! more leagues of space
Ironically between me and you
Than part me from these vastitudes of blue.
I charge, attack, and mount to the assault
As worms attack a corpse within a vault.
And cherish even the coldness that you boast,
By which, harsh beast, you subjugate me most.
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 feel 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!
If you meant read from a book then id say "Kubla Kahn" (no, not the guy from Star Trek)
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
================================================== ============
However if you meant recitable, then im afraid the only one i know is "There once was a man from Nantucket"
Since Dutch is my mother tongue, the poets I love most write in Dutch: Guido Gezelle, J.C. Bloem, Karel Van De Woestijne, Herman Gorter, Hendrik Marsman, Hugo Claus...
But I remember very well the very first poem I read in English and up till today I can recite it from the heart. It's by Lord Byron and it's called She Walks In Beauty:
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
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