Poetry, post it

[Red Rocket]

Our latest english assignment is to study a poem based upon or revolving largely around love.

I thought it might be an oppurtunity for everybody to post poems that they enjoy or have written themselves on the subject of love, basically so that I don't have to research as much.


Anyway, to get the ball rolling, I thought I would post one of my favourites written by W.H. Auden entitled Funeral Blues.

Auden wrote this poem shortly after the death of his partner, and killed himself shortly after he wrote the poem.

“Funeral Blues”

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 crêpe 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 for ever: 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 wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

[Binaural]

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

-Percy Bysshe Shelley

Not really about love, but I like it anyway

[johnny]

I know it's not what what you're looking for and I hope it doesn't annoy you, but here is the world's shortest ever poem. It's by Rolf Harris and it's called........:



Fleas.

Adam Had'm.

[StormFire]

it's not about love...but instead about life in general...but we have this hanging on the wall in our bathroom back home...and it's a cool poem nonetheless...so i thought i may aswell post it.


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 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 make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all 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!

--Rudyard Kipling

[Red Rocket]

I know it's not what what you're looking for and I hope it doesn't annoy you, but here is the world's shortest ever poem. It's by Rolf Harris and it's called........:



Fleas.

Adam Had'm.


HAHAHHAHHAHHHAHHAAHAHAHHAHAHA!!!!!!!

You have no idea how much I laughed at that. In fact, I think this is the poem I shall use, I mean, if Adam Had'm, the fleas must love Adam right? Or maybe the relationship is purely parasitis lust......;)

[RCOH]

She Walks In Beauty - Byron ( I have this pasted on my fridge)

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 mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd 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!

[Commander Dilsnikk]

A butterfly shackled to an earthly roller-coaster,
Carving a fine line between rampant pleasure and mournful pain,
The key to freedom lies buried beneath a shroud of guilt and uncertainty.

Guided by the music of sorrow and the oft sordid, oft benevolent glow of affection,
And pausing only to grace lives with an amorous effervescence,
The beautiful waif soars on.

Ever searching.
-9/4

I feed you my every truth yet endeavour to stay whole,
Alas, enveloped by unrepentant shivering I suffocate,
The insecurities of my deprivation will me only to drown,
In the ever-swelling puddle of lurid emotion which seeps from within,
My darkest secrets laid bare,
Savagely unfathomable.

My only hope, my only dream, my only desire:
Salvation wrapped in a beautiful smile.
-9/4

Flipsides of love. 2005.

[Adrian]

Auden wrote this poem shortly after the death of his partner, and killed himself shortly after he wrote the poem.

Found this on another website. Might interest you. When I studied it it was taught as being about his father...

Stolen from http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/256.html

The poem is not about Mussolini, nor his most well-known lover, Chester
Kallman. With a small amount of research you can see that the poem was
first published (but he could have written it in any of the years
between 1922, when he first began writing poetry, and the year of its
publication) in 1936. Auden meant Kallman sometime after he moved to the
United States in 1939; and though that is blatant proof that "Funeral
Blues" could not possibly be about Kallman, it is further proved by the
fact that Auden died 2 years before Kallman. However, Auden did have a
number of infatuations throughout his lifetime, like most of us, so it
could have been written about another lover. The thought crossed my mind
that the poem could be about his father, but he and his father were not
close; at least not close enough for Auden to refer to him as is North,
his South, his East and West. That's all!

And on the above page the argument goes on...

[Red Rocket]

wow that is interesting.......... I shall have to remember that, thanks for the info adrian.

[Loonspoon]

One off mine....

"Bugger" said the mugger,
the old lady had a gun
and he a bullet in his bum.