Posted on 07/17/2006 4:00:54 PM PDT by SoftballMominVA
I'm looking for suggestions of classic American, British or European poetry.
If you have a favorite poem that in your opinion is an important work and especially one that shaped our nation's character, would you mind posting the name of the poet and poem for her perusal.
This has been a fun project for her--she has enjoyed "disovering" poems that she has never heard!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
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.
Paul Revere's Ride
Thanks
"September 1, 1939" by WH Auden.
Rudyard Kipling. Its all good.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
Naaah, you don't want that one.
When she read The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock she sat with her mouth half-open amazed that anyone could pack so many images into one poem.
She re-reads it almost every night trying to get inside the poem. Eliot was a master.
All you know and all you need to know...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/023108028X/102-3312958-2296928?v=glance&n=283155
Robert Frost.
I love it all.
The way a crow shook down on me
The dust of snow from a hemlock tree
Has given my heart a change of mood
And saved some part of a day I had rued.
There is always the classic, "Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening"
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Thanks--I'll look for that in the library. She prefers printing out her poems so that she can make notes and cross-references. That would be a good reference to copy and print selected works.
Ogden Nash - anything. An American original.
His is among my very favorite poets: literate almost beyond mortal comprehension, but comprehending of humanity nearly beyond all reason. How many poets could express themselves so beautifully not only in their native toungue, but in four or five others as well, including Greek and Latin? The Wasteland begs years of thought and study. I wonder if they teach it anymore in many of today's politically-charged colleges.
Excellent choice. His former home is a few miles down the road from mine. I have stopped by on a few snowy evenings just to see if I could see what he did.
I am enraptured by this master work:
FERN HILL
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
--Dylan Thomas
...or help him with a wall? :)
LOL. I wish someone would help me with mine. Same old New England granite glacial boulders that used to mark one of the seven original boundaries in this town. They've fallen and they can't get up. I can manage to replace a few at a time but then retreat with exhaustion. It always gives me renewed respect for my forebearers that they could do this daily and then tend their fields. I fear we've grown soft as petals fallen from an apple tree...
I'm not big into poetry, and I'm sure you've already tackled this one (or someone else has suggested it), but I'm partial to WB Yeat's "The Second Coming."
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