Here is one I like.
“I think that I shall never see, A billboard lovely as a tree. Indeed, unless the billboards fall, I’ll never see a tree at all.”-Ogden Nash
Thanks to your mom.
What a lovely thread. Memories come flooding back. The very first poem that I memorized in 2nd grade was:
God’s World
O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!
Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart, — Lord, I do fear
Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me, — let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
An elementary school teacher once gave my older sister two poetry books: Poems of Childhood (Eugene Field) and A Child’s Garden of Verses. She abandoned them and guess who appropriated them?
When Cummings came to read his poetry at my college, and he got to the part where he mentions the UN, he pronounced it “the un.” I was the only one who laughed.
A college buddy used to have Eliot on 33rpms. “All aboard. It’s time.” That was what we did instead of studying.
In high school we had to remember a portion of a poem by William Cullen Bryant. I did not like literature classes, but I still remember that poem, “Thanatopsis.”
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust; approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
I love that poem...
About that poem..do you think it’s about a guy weary of life that is thinking about just ending it right there?
One of my favorite poems, though, as a MS born and bred girl, I rarely ever saw snow. It wasn’t until I was an adult, married, and moved north of the Mason Dixon line, that I understood this poem. Standing in the woods, with a heavy snow falling, is just such a peaceful place.
By now I prefer -
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows.
What are those blue remembered hills?
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content -
I see it shining plain.
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
AE Housman A Shopshire Lad.....
Dark, dreary words, in a land of ice and snow,
Where cold is king, and measured ‘in below’,
Pot-belly stoves blaze, not wnough heat fer two,
and all the while lurks, Dangerous Dan McGrew!
Nice poetry thread. Thanks for posting.
You might enlist a few willing to further the uncool.
My mom made us read poems, every Wednesday night.
When I was a wee lad, my mother dragged my pathetic little self to see some old white-haired guy read poetry.
I just wish I’d been old enough to know who Frost was and to appreciate what Mom did for me.
:wq
Shouldn’t you be reading that to someone over the telefon?
Higgledy piggledy, my black hen,
She lays eggs for gentlemen.
Gentlemen come every day
To count what my black hen doth lay.
If perchance she lays too many,
They fine my hen a pretty penny;
If perchance she fails to lay,
The gentlemen a bonus pay.
Mumbledy pumbledy, my red cow,
She’s cooperating now.
At first she didn’t understand
That milk production must be planned;
She didn’t understand at first
She either had to plan or burst,
But now the government reports
She’s giving pints instead of quarts.
Fiddle de dee, my next-door neighbors,
They are giggling at their labors.
First they plant the tiny seed,
Then they water, then they weed,
Then they hoe and prune and lop,
They they raise a record crop,
Then they laugh their sides asunder,
And plow the whole caboodle under.
Abracadabra, thus we learn
The more you create, the less you earn.
The less you earn, the more you’re given,
The less you lead, the more you’re driven,
The more destroyed, the more they feed,
The more you pay, the more they need,
The more you earn, the less you keep,
And now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to take
If the tax-collector hasn’t got it before I wake.
Lot of words just to say, “I found a convenient bush for a needed potty stop.” *<];-)
Uncle Jed was thinking about you again. (wink)