Some poems I like
4 April 2024
I came across this poem in the New Yorker and it made me despair somewhat.
In response, these are some of the poems I often find myself coming back to, reading aloud to myself, and writing out repeatedly as a means of procrastination.
A Shropshire Lad, XL
A.E. Housman
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.
Moonlight Night
R.M. Rilke
South-German night! The ripe moon hangs above Weaving enchantment o'er the shadowy lea. From the old tower the hours fall heavily Into the dark as though into the sea— A rustle, a call of night-watch in the grove, Then for a while void silence fills the air; And then a violin (from God knows where) Awakes and slowly sings: Oh Love . . . Oh Love . . .
He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven
W.B. 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.
The Eye-Mote
Sylvia Plath
Blameless as daylight I stood looking At a field of horses, necks bent, manes blown, Tails streaming against the green Backdrop of sycamores. Sun was striking White chapel pinnacles over the roofs, Holding the horses, the clouds, the leaves Steadily rooted though they were all flowing Away to the left like reeds in a sea When the splinter flew in and stuck my eye, Needling it dark. Then I was seeing A melding of shapes in a hot rain: Horses warped on the altering green, Outlandish as double-humped camels or unicorns, Grazing at the margins of a bad monochrome, Beasts of oasis, a better time. Abrading my lid, the small grain burns: Red cinder around which I myself, Horses, planets and spires revolve. Neither tears nor the easing flush Of eyebaths can unseat the speck: It sticks, and it has stuck a week: I wear the present itch for flesh, Blind to what will be and what was. I dream that I am Oedipus. What I want back is what I was Before the bed, before the knife, Before the brooch-pin and the salve Fixed me in this parenthesis; Horses fluent in the wind, A place, a time gone out of mind.
Brahma
R.W. Emerson
If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again. Far or forgot to me is near; Shadow and sunlight are the same; The vanished gods to me appear; And one to me are shame and fame. They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt, I am the hymn the Brahmin sings. The strong gods pine for my abode, And pine in vain the sacred Seven; But thou, meek lover of the good! Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.
Sonnet 29
William Shakespeare
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, (Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate; For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
The Sorcerer Departs (unfinished)
Clark Ashton Smith
I pass… but in this lone and crumbling tower, Builded against the burrowing seas of chaos, My volumes and my philtres shall abide: Poisons more dear than any mithridate, And spells far sweeter than the speech of love… Half-shapen dooms shall slumber in my vaults And in my volumes cryptic runes that shall Outblast the pestilence, outgnaw the worm When loosed by alien wizards on strange years Under the blackened moon and paling sun.