Your favourite poems.

[Wilem]

Just thought this place needed a thread for posting everyone's favourite poems in! I'll start:

Here's my favourite poem, bar non (so far):

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

William Butler Yeats

(I've tried to set that to music so many times it hurts.)

[wouldlikemuscle]

One limerick has always stuck in my head...

searches for it on google and realises I've already posted it on GS! lol. It's the only search result! lol

There was an old Pirate called Pete... http://www.gayspeak.com/forum/showpost.p...ostcount=7


As for other poems... probably Charge of the Light Brigade

The Charge of the Light Brigade
Alfred, Lord Tennyson



Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.


"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.


Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.


Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.


Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.


When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.

[marshlander]

Favourite poems? That's a tough call. Almost as difficult as asking me what is my favourite music. I could end up posting several :eek:

I've had a few things happen recently that have brought this one to the foreground. It has some resonance for me.

My parents kept me from children who were rough

My parents kept me from children who were rough

And who threw words like stones and who wore torn clothes.
Their thighs showed through rags. They ran in the street
And climbed cliffs and stripped by the country streams.

I feared more than tigers their muscles like iron
And their jerking hands and their knees tight on my arms.
I feared the salt coarse pointing of those boys
Who copied my lisp behind me on the road.

They were lithe, they sprang out behind hedges
Like dogs to bark at our world. They threw mud
And I looked another way, pretending to smile.
I longed to forgive them, yet they never smiled.

Stephen Spender

[marshlander]

When I was in my teens, many years ago, I read Leonard Cohen's two novels, The Favourite Game and Beautiful Losers. In the middle of the latter novel there are several pages of prose text written, if I remember correctly, without punctuation and certainly not in the easy to read form in which it is reproduced here. Powerful stuff nonetheless. If you get a chance to listen to a spoken performance take it. Buffy St Marie also recorded an extraordinary version of this.

God is alive, magic is afoot
God is alive, magic is afoot
God is alive, magic is afoot
God is afoot, magic is alive
Alive is afoot, magic never died
God never sickened
Many poor men lied
Many sick men lied
Magic never weakened
Magic never hid
Magic always ruled
God is afoot, God never died
God was ruler
Though his funeral lengthened
Though his mourners thickened
Magic never fled
Though his shrouds were hoisted
The naked God did live
Though his words were twisted
The naked magic thrived
Though his death was published
Round and round the world
The heart did not believe

Many hurt men wondered
Many struck men bled
Magic never faltered
Magic always lead
Many stones were rolled
But God would not lie down
Many wild men lied
Many fat men listened
Though they offered stones
Magic still was fed
Though they locked their coffers
God was always served
Magic is afoot, God is alive
Alive is afoot

Alive is in command
Many weak men hungered
Many strong men thrived
Though they boast of solitude
God was at their side
Nor the dreamer in his cell
Nor the captain on the hill
Magic is alive
Though his death was pardoned
Round and round the world
The heart would not believe

Though laws were carved in marble
They could not shelter men
Though altars built in parliaments
They could not order men
Police arrested magic and magic went with them
Mmmmm.... for magic loves the hungry
But magic would not tarry
It moves from arm to arm
It would not stay with them
Magic is afoot
It cannot come to harm
It rests in an empty palm
It spawns in an empty mind
But magic is no instrument
Magic is the end
Many men drove magic
But magic stayed behind
Many strong men lied
They only passed through magic
And out the other side
Many weak men lied
They came to God in secret
And though they left Him nourished
They would not tell who healed
Though mountains danced before them
They said that God was dead
Though his shrouds were hoisted
The naked God did live
This I mean to whisper to my mind
This I mean to laugh within my mind
This I mean my mind to serve
Til' service is but magic
Moving through the world
And mind itself is magic
Coursing through the flesh
And flesh itself is magic
Dancing on a clock
And time itself
The magic length of God

© 1966- Leonard Cohen.

[Solomon]

This is one of my favourite poems, it's from the disney short 'The Reluctant Dragon'.

[RoydonLeeJ]

A friend sent me this, and gosh, did i laugh.

'Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Most poems rhyme,
This one doesn't'

thank you geo xx
(she wnt read this as im not sure she has ever heard of gayspeak, her being a straight, slightly crazy, girl) o wel

[Phil]

I know this is an old thread but....

Yeats...The Second Coming!

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?



Beautifully hauntin IMO mile:

[fredv3b]

Since this thread has been resurrected....

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -
It gives a lovely light.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

[fjp999]

Phil and Fred, those both really touched me. thanks for sharing!

[Phil]

Most welcome dood here's another...not as eloquent of course ....

The Prayer!

Lord before i lay me down to sleep
i pray for a man who's not a creep
one who is smart,handsome and strong
one who's willy is thick and long

i pray this man will love me no end
and never attempt to shag my best friend
but as i lay here in my bed
i look at the wanker you sent me instead!