Poems

Jared

Jared

New member
Yes - Strange thread but wanted to see if anyone has poems that they really enjoyed in school or write their own poems.

I'm busy doing drama at university and we have to choose a poem to act out. I came across one of the poems we studied at school which I loved!

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".
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I think this poem would fit into the next Uncharted...lol!

So feel free to post any poems here that you like or have written. Please no bashing of each other here.
 
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Loved this one at school :) Shakespeare

SONNET 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
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Favorite poem always.

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
 
My favourite:

“If”
By: Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!
 
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
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- John Donne (Holy Sonnet X)

John Donne pwns all.

Also:
There once was a man from Nantucket
Whose *cough* was so long he could suck it.
And he said with a grin
As he wiped off his chin,
"If my ear were a *cough*, I would *cough* it."
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This is the one i remember studying at school :), fun times!

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun (Sonnet 130)
by William Shakespeare

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
 
Dirge

Another love-child
Of the modern world
Trampled on endlessly,
Warm winds tugged at her
And the earth moved beneath her in unrest,
Trees were torched to light her way
And burned a lingering black
On the horizon, and scorched
Her eyesight like the coffee stains
On the sides of her waitress’ apron.
She tried to blink them away,
But the stains stayed until
She frantically slammed shut her eyelids,
Shut out the light,
Created her own and inhaled
The smoke of a different ember
That was killing fashionably,
Yet killing all the same.

That morning the sun rose an hour late
From his disturbed slumber,
And baked the world in sleep-deprived fury -
The hourglass burst from the sun’s scolding,
Leaving her to strut over
The sand dunes of time,
With feet shrivelled and blistered and burnt
By the glimmering grains
That already roughed through
Her designer sandals, which now lay
Discarded on a heaped trash pile
That already steeped forty feet high.

But she did notice,
Nor would she care;
She was another love-child
Of the twenty-first century,
Walking on broken promises,
To her thousandth revolution,
To try change the world
For the first time.

The shunned stars shone brightest that night,
When the sun finally found rest
After drinking acid from green clouds.
It was then that the stars drowned themselves
In their own mournful tears and shone no more
For an audience captivated by unnatural light
In an unnatural dark.

But she did not notice,
Nor would she care.
 
Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
 
I got a three day suspension at school for this one

n Gedig Deur AG Visser
Die By

Hier kom n By
Daar fokkof Hy

Wait wait, I also knew another one, can't remember how it goed but starts off
There once was a man from Nantucket
 
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I have collections of Keats, Yeats and Shelley on my desk at work, they're excellent for both inspiration and reminding me that I'm a shitty writer.
 
The bird- George Macbeth
When I got home
Last night I found
A bird the cat
Had brought into the house
On the kitchen floor.
It wasn't dead.
It looked as if
It was, at first.
There were some feathers lying
Against the wall:

The bird itself
with its wings folded
Lay and stared.
It didn't move.
I picked it up:

Quivering like clockwork
Toy in my hand
I carried it out
Into the yard
And put it down

In a slice of light
From the door. I lifted

A long broom
By the handle near to
The head and struck

The bird four times.
The fourth time it
Didn't move.
Blood, in a stringy
Trickle, blotched.

The white concrete.
I edged the remains
Up with a red
Plastic shovel.
Lifting it through

The house to the cellar
I tipped it out
In the dust-bin along with
Snakes of fluff
And empty soup-tins.
When I emptied the tea-leaves
This morning I saw
The bird I killed
Leaning its head
On a broken egg-shell.
 
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