What's your favourite poem of all time?

Question

Am in a poem mood, where I can google the poems you recommend and see what I'm missing out on..

Mine is "If" by Rudyard Kipling

Answer 1

why should i ever care

i m always here you aint never here

why was i ever scared

Answer 2

I like

"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost.

But i love a lot of lyrics as well.

Answer 3

"If" is a wonderful choice, on my Top Ten.

Usually, when people ask this question, I post Poe's "Eldorado."

Ever since reading it a few weeks ago, I cannot get Cyril Tourneur's "Atheist's Tragedy" out of my head.

Answer 4

'Twas The Night Before Christmas

(lol...you did say 'of all time', and it's the first one I remember loving)

Answer 5

I really like "If" too. My favourite is by Leo Marks. He wrote it to be used to communicate with agent Violette Szabo in code during World War 2.

The life that I have

Is all that I have

And the life that I have

Is yours

The love that I have

Of the life that I have

Is yours and yours and yours.

A sleep I shall have

A rest I shall have

Yet death will be but a pause

For the peace of my years

In the long green grass

Will be yours and yours and yours.

Answer 6

Oi  viverio!

I used to recite this to Lady Ann when I was just a poor Eastend Barrow Boy:

He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven by WB Yeats

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.

L

Answer 7

Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;

Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;

Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:

The firefly wakens: waken thou with me.

Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost,

And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.

Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars,

And all thy heart lies open unto me.

Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves

A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.

Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,

And slips into the bosom of the lake:

So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip

Into my bosom and be lost in me.

This poem by Lord Alfred Tennyson

It's also song sung by Sissel

:)

Answer 8

i carry your heart with me

by e. e. cummings

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)

Answer 9

I love Alan Dugan's poetry, but I don't have a favorite poem.  His "Love Song: I and Thou" always moves me, though.

If you want to find some good poems, visit www.poetryfoundation.org.  They have a good selection of poetry, and whenever I'm bored, I always find something wonderful to read.