BB FANS

A new thread which I am starting to just post and maybe comment on poetry which i have become more interested in lately. So come and join in, post your fav poem, whether it is lighthearted, or serious and any thoughts that strike you.


I'll start with one of my favourite poems ever


he wishes for the cloths of heaven

by W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)
Had I the heavens' 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.

oh I love that one too, especially the last two lines. I will have a think and add something to this

I'm glad someone else is willing to contribute Milly and it is beautiful. It will always remind me of someone very special to me. Another favourite especially when i am feeling morose.

How To Kill a living thing by Eibhlin Nic Eochaidh

Neglect it
Criticise it to its face
Say how it kills the light
Traps all the rubbish
Bores you with its green

Continually
Harden your heart
Then
Cut it down close
To the root as possible

Forget it
For a week or a month
Return with an axe
Split it with one blow
Insert a stone

To keep the wound wide open

Made famous in Four Weddings and a funeral and sums up losing a loved beautifully

W. H. Auden


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 crepe 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.

Elie that second one is powerful!

Isn't it just BBoop and very accessible. Some poems really need an awful lot of thought to dissect and understand which can be very worthwhile and emotional, but others just seem to express an emotion in a very direct way which can touch the heart just as deeply.


A lot of it is the mood you are in when you read a poem i think. Sometimes i can see happiness and sometimes sadness even if it is the same poem.

I love the Auden poem and think that this is a good example of the beauty of words. It is a celebration of love as well as an eulogy.

What a good idea ellie! I'll have a think.

Said Hamlet to Ophelia
I'll draw a sketch of thee,
What kind of pencil shall i use?
2B or not 2B?

by Spike Milligan

The Soldier

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Rupert Brooke

I had to learn this for English Lit O level and I have always remember it. Funny how some things stick in your mind.

Oh CC I was going to have that one!! I have a crush on Rupert Brooke

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)


ee cummings

This is one of my favourite Yeats poems - The Stolen Child. I first heard spoken on a Waterboys song by a guy whose name escapes me, but who was famous as a gaelic poet. The poem worked so well with Mike Scott's beautiful music (he sang the chorus part).

These are all so good! I have a lot of favourite poems, but thought I would post this one which I came across a couple of weeks ago. I met the author in a pub and afterwards looked up his work. This one was named 'Poem for Scotland" in a competition held prior to the openeing of the Scottish parliament.

The Ploughman

The year was 1941, my father told me,
And by moonlight, as he ploughed the field,
Plough and harness a dull grey silver
The dark clouds parted, and revealed
Nazi bombers, bound for Clydebank,
High above over Abernyte,
The boy below, frozen in furrow
Reins in hand, awed by the sight.

I never thought he was the weaker,
In the face of brutality he never bowed down
And the boy, with the horse and the plough, entrusted,
Ploughed his seed into the ground.

I saw a man, just like my father,
In a field planting rice, in Vietnam.
So small he looked, against the bombers,
In the face of vain strength, a resolute man,
A ploughman, like my father
And a man of the land,
Although cultures divide them,
Together they stand.

In Bosnia, I saw the children who fled,
Their homes destroyed, their parents dead.
Their fields unploughed and the seeds unsown,
Their graves unmarked and their names unknown.

They spoke to me of the moonlight man,
Standing alone, with horse and plough,
More than speeches or politicians,
He led the way, he showed me how,
That to stand alone is no great shame
If something is taken in another’s name.
And remember, always, that you are a man
And the reins are held in your own hand
And that children are seeds as yet unsown,
Who may, come the harvest, be your own.

- Scott Martin

Thanks for posting that, anathema device. It's great.

This is very quickly becoming my fav thread on here. All the poems so far have been beautiful (well apart from my spike Milligan one).

Kissing by Fleur Adcock

The young are walking on the riverbank
arms around each other's waists and shoulders,
pretending to be looking at the waterlilies
and what might be a nest of some kindm over
there, which two who are clamped together
mouth to mouth have forgotten about.
The others, making courteous detours
around then, talk, stop talking, kiss.
They can see no one older than themselves
It's their river. They've got all day.

Seeing's not everything. At this very
moment the middle-aged are kissing
in the backs of taxis, on the way
to airports and stations. Their mouths and tongues
are soft and powerful and as moist as ever.
Their hands are not inside each other's clothes
(because of the driver) but locked so tightly
together that it hurts: it may leave marks
on their not of course youthful skin, which they won't
notice. They too may have futures.