Favorite poem

[poopypoo]

Straight up, I'll start off with an example (prob not my favorite but I have a mental block right now!)

I became a fabulous opera: I saw that everyone in the world was doomed to happiness. Action isn't life: it's merely a way of ruining a kind of strength, a means of destroying nerves. Morality is water on the brain.

It seemed to me that everyone should have had several other lives as well. This gentleman doesn't know what he's doing: he's an angel. That family is a litter of puppy dogs. With some men, I often talked out loud with a moment from one of their other lives. - That's how I happened to love a pig.

Not a single one of the brilliant arguments of madness, - the madness that gets locked up, - did I forget: I could go through them all again, I've got the system down by heart.

It affected my health. Terror loomed ahead. I would fall again and again into a heavy sleep, which lasted several days at a time, and when I woke up, my sorrowful dreams continued. I was ripe for fatal harvest, and my weakness led me down dangerous roads to the edge of the world, to the Cimmerian shore, the haven of whirlwinds and darkness.

I had to travel, to dissipate the enchantments that crowded my brain. On the sea, which I loved as if it were to wash away my impurity, I watched the compassionate cross arise. I had been damned by the rainbow. Felicity was my doom, my gnawing remorse, my worm: my life would forever be too large to devote to strength and to beauty.

Felicity! The deadly sweetness of its sting would wake me at cockcrow, - ad matutinum, at the Christus venit, - in the somberest of cities:


O seasons, O chateaus!
Where is the flawless soul?

I learned the magic of
Felicity, it enchants us all.

To Felicity, sing life and praise
Whenever Gaul's cock crows.

Now all desire has gone:
It has made my life its own.

That spell has caught heart and soul
And scattered every trial.

O seasons, O chateaus!

And, oh! the day it disappears
Will be the day I die.

O seasons, O chateaus!

All that is over. Today, I know how to celebrate beauty.

 

[digitalwanderer]

"If" by Rudyard Kipling:

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!

 

[Davros]

Mary had a little lamb
she kept it in a bucket
and when the farmer came around
the neibours had a whale of a time watching

 

[ninelven]

Yeah it's common but still my favorite....

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.



O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.



My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

 

[Davros]

Little jack horner
sat in the coner
cos he had a square ass

 

[_xxx_]

Song lyrics actually, but whatever - Cynic: "How could I"

How could I forget such a revelation
To love without fear and learn without question
How could I regret the meant occasions
I must begin this day again

Freedom and reason shine through
Paddle upon the clouds one's own canoe

How could I

Humility take charge of me
Drown me in truth's modest waters
Loosen your grip identity
Free me from an ego's falter

Love too often is only a dream
If I am harsh and unkind to myself
So I share these attitudes with you
Must I try? How could I?

Freedom and reason shine through
Paddle upon the clouds one's own canoe

Love's too often only a dream
If I am harsh and unkind to myself
So I share these attitudes with you
For in this spewing cavern of pride
How could I!

And Death: "Jealousy"

What do you want from me,
what is it you expect
I have spoken my mind from deep inside my soul
Behind the eyes is a place on one will be able to touch
Containing thoughts that cannot be taken away or replaced
You want what is not yours, Jealousy
You want what you cannot have, Jealousy
Spiteful harsh words, it comes as no real surprise.
Tell me what you are.

I cannot understand how you seem to exist
On what people create for you, good must turn bad.
Behind the eyes is a place noone will be able to touch
Containing thoughts that cannot be taken away or replaced
You want what is not yours, Jealousy
You want what you cannot have, Jealousy

 

[The_Wolf_Who_Cried_Boy]

G'Kar reading Yates



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;

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

 

[Simon F]

G'Kar reading Yates

Did you mean Yeats?

 

[The_Wolf_Who_Cried_Boy]

Did you mean Yeats?

Yeah. Him as well.

 

[Simon F]

Yeah. Him as well.

Reminds me a bit of That's "Dikkens" with two `k's, the famous Dutch author.

I don't know what my favourite poem would be.... I'm too uncultured. Maybe I'd put half a vote for Dorothea McKellar's "My Country".

 

[dizietsma]

There was a young lady from Wick
Who asked her mother what was a dick
She said it's a rissole
You stick up your piss'ole
And wiggle around till it's sick


I've actually been to Wick, dreadful place

If by Mr Kipling is an exceedingly good poem it has to be said.

 

[Simon F]

Doesn't scan.

 

[Davros]

Ode to my goldfish

"Oh wet pet"

 

[Davros]

Berkeley California
(Sung to the tune "Hotel California" by the Eagles)

In a dark dim machine room
Cool A/C in my hair
Warm smell of silicon
Rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance
I saw a Solarian(tm) light
My kernel grew heavy, and my disk grew slim
I had to halt(8) for the night
The backup spun in the tape drive
I heard a terminal bell
And I was thinking to myself
This could be BSD or USL
Then they started a lawsuit
And they showed me the way
There were salesmen down the corridor
I thought I heard them say

Welcome to Berkeley California
Such a lovely place
Such a lovely place (backgrounded)
Such a lovely trace(1)
Plenty of jobs at Berkeley California
Any time of year
Any time of year (backgrounded)
You can find one here
You can find one here

Their code was definately twisted
But they've got the stock market trends
They've got a lot of pretty, pretty lawyers
That they call friends
How they dance in the courtroom
See BSDI sweat
Some sue to remember
Some sue to forget
So I called up Kernighan
Please bring me ctime(3)
He said
We haven't had that tm_year since 1969
And still those functions are calling from far away
Wake up Jobs in the middle of the night
Just to hear them say

Welcome to Berkeley California
Such a lovely Place
Such a lovely Place (backgrounded)
Such a lovely trace(1)
They're livin' it up suing Berkeley California
What a nice surprise
What a nice surprise (backgrounded)
Bring your alibies

Windows NT a dreaming
Pink OS on ice
And they said
We are all just prisoners here
Of a marketing device
And in the judges's chambers
They gathered for the feast
They diff(1)'d the source code listings
But they can't kill -9 the beast
Last thing I remember
I was restore(8)'ing | more(1)
I had to find the soft link back to the path I was before
sleep(3) said the pagedaemon
We are programmed to recv(2)
You can swap out any time you like
But you can never leave(1)

 

[Dresden]

"Miss Hilton, I sentence you to 45 days of incarceration" was the most poetic thing I heard in years.

 

[thehulk]

My favourite,

Ozymandias

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 shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd 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."

 

[slider]

@slider's down with poetry. Hell yeah!

http://www.onemonkey.org/text/Monkeyland.htm

Is a good 'un.

I won't comment on it but I'd be interested to hear if anyone had a particular reaction to it on the first read...

 

[Davros]

Er no, what reaction were you expecting ?

 

[Geo]

"Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then." --Bob Seger


"Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year."


"IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below. "

"Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country's flag, she said.
A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader came;
The nobler nature within him stirred
To life at that woman's deed and word;
Who touches a hair of yon gray head
Dies like a dog! March on! he said."

Nearly anything from "The Best Loved Poems of the American People"

 

[slider]

Er no, what reaction were you expecting ?

Indifference? I certainly wasn't expecting everyone to react the same.