Poetry

Poems that I like (song lyrics, too)

Sonnet 116 - William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
That 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 not 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.

The Raven - Edgar Allan Poe
Once upon a midnight dreary,
While I pondered, weak and weary
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore -
While I nodded, nearly napping,
Suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door -
Only this and nothing more."
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December:
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow -
Vainly I had sought to borrow
From my book surcease of sorrow, sorrow for the lost Lenore -
Nameless here forevermore.
And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me, filled with fintastic terrors never felt before:
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeatng,
"Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
That it is and nothing more."
Presently my soul grew stronger: hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore:
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you" - here I opened wide the door -
Darkness there and nothing more.
Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing.
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared dream before:
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token<
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word "Lenore!" -
Merely this, and nothing more.
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping, somewhat louder than before>
"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me then what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore -
Tis the wind and nothing more!"
Open here I flung that shutter and with many a flirt and flutter
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he, not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mein of Lord or Lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched above a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door -
Perched and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony bird begailing my sad fancy into smiling
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenace it wore,
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shire!"
Quoth the Raven: "Nevermore."
Much a marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning, little relevency bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast above the sculpured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore."
But the raven sitting lonely on the placid but spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered, not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered "Other friends have flown before -
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before."
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
Startled by the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters, it is only stock and store
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore -
Till the dirges of his Hope the melancholy burden bore
Of "Never - nevermore."
But the Raven still begailing all my fancy into smiling<
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door,
Then upon this velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking, "Nevermore!"
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl, whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On th cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o'er
But whole velvet-violet lining with lamplight gloating o'er
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed by some unseen censer
Swung by seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God has sent lent thee - by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite - respite the nepenthe from the memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"
Quoth the Raven, "NEvermore."
"Prophet!" said I, "Thing of evil! - Prophet still of bird of devil!
Whether Tempter sent or whether tempest tossed thee ashore,
Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by Horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -
Is there, is there balm in Gilead? Tell me - tell me, I implore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
"Prophet!" said I, "Thing of evil! - Prophet still if bird of devil
By that Heaven that bend above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell his soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore -
Clasp a rare and radient maiden whom the angels name Lenore>"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting -
"Get thee back into the tempest and the night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of the lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my lonliness unbroken - quot the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart and take thy form from off my door!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a deman that is dreaming,
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor,
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!

Desiderata - Unknown
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant, they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements, as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble, it is areal possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exrecise caution in your busniess affairs; for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynaical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is perennial as the grass.
Take kindly to the counsel of years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurthure strength of spirit to shield you in face of sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and lonliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive him to be, and whatever your labour and aspirations, in the noisy confucion of life keep peace with your soul.
Will all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.
Be careful.
Strive to be happy

The Way Through The Woods - Rudyard Kipling
They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-doev broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.
Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night air cool on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old, lost road through the woods...
But there is no road through the woods.

Invictus - W E Henley
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever god that be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced, nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears|
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me unafraid.
It matter not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

For All Those Who Died - Erica Jong
For all those who dies - stripped, naked, shaved, shorn.
For all those who screamed in vain to the Great Goddess, only to have their tongues ripped out by the root.
For all those who were pricked, racked, broken on the wheel for the sins of their inquisitors.
For all those whose beauty stirred their torturers to fury; and for those whose ugliness did the same.
For all those who were neither ugly, nor beautiful, but only women who would not submit.
For all those quick fingers broken in the vice.
For all those soft arms, pulled from their sockets.
For all those budding breasts, ripped with hot pincers.
For all those midwives, killed merely for the sin of delivering man to an imperfect world.
For all those witchwomen, my sisters, who breathed freer as the flames took them, knowing as they shed their female bodies, the seared flesh falling like fruit in the flames, that death alone would cleane them of the sin for which they died.
The sin of being born a woman who is more than the sum of her parts.

Fate - Susan Marr Spalding, 1333
two shall be born... the whole wide world apart and speak in different tongues... and have no thought each, of the other's being... and no heed
and these same two
o'er unknown seas, to unknown lands shall cross escaping wreck, defying death and all unconsciously shape each act, and bend each wandering step to this end...
that one day, out of darkness they must meet
and read life's meaning in each others eyes
and these same two
along some narrow way of life shall walk so nearly side by side that should one turn, ever so little space to left... or right
they needs must stand acknowledged, face to face
and yet...
with wistful eyes, that never meet
and groping hands that never clasp with lips, calling in vain, to ears thatnever hear they seek each other all their weary days
and die unsatisfied
... and this is Fate.

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud - William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake,
Beneath the trees,
Flutering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in a sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sprkling waves with glee.
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
What wealth to me the show had brought:
For oft, when lying on my couch
In vacant, or in pensive mood<
They flash upon that iward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.

Frutta Di Mare - Geoffrey Scott
I am a seashell flung
Up from the ancient sea;
Now I lie here among
Roots of a tamarisk tree;
No one listens to me.
I sing to myself all day
In a husky voice, quite low,
Things the great fishes say
And you must need to know;
All night I sing just so.
But lift me from the ground,
And harken at my rim;
Only your sorrow's sound
Amazed, perplexed and dim,
Comes coiling to the brim;
For what the wise whales ponder
Awakening out from sleep,
The key to all your wonder,
The answers of the deep,
These to myself I keep.

The Kraken - Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millenial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous and secret cell
Unnumber'd and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the lumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

Untitled - Unknown
Me, I'm the man that dug the Murray for Sturt to sail down,
I am the one that rode beside the Man from Snowy River, and I'm Ned Kelly's surviving brother (or did I marry his sister? I forget which),
And it was my thumbnail that wrote that Clancy had gone a-droving, and when wood was scarce I set the grass on fire and ran with it three miles to boil my billy, only to find that I'd left the tea and sugar back with my tucker-bag, And it was me, and only me, that shot through with the padre's daughter, shot through with her on the original Bondi tram.
But it's a lie that I died hanging from a parrot's nest with my arm in the hollow limb when my horse moved from under me;
I never die, I'm like the Leichhardt survivor I discovered fifty years after the party had disappeared; I never die,
I'm Lasseter and Leichhardt both;
I joined the wires of the O.T. so that Todd could send the first message from Adelaide to Darwin;
I settled everywhere long before the explorers arrived;
My tracks criss-cross the Simpson Desert like city streets,
And I've hung my hat on Poeppel's Peg a thousand times.
It was me who boiled my billy under the coolabah,
Told the bloke in the flash car to open his own flamin' gates,
Put the goldfield's pipeline through where the experts said nobody could,
Wanted to know, "Who's robbing this coach, you or Ned Kelly?",
Had the dog sit on my tuckerbox outside of Gundagai,
Yarned with Tom Collins while we fished for a cod someone's caught years before,
And gave Henry Lawson the plots to make his stories from.
Me, I've found a hundred wrecked galleons on the Queensland coast, dripping with doubloons, moidoves and golden Inca swords,
And dug a dozen piles of guilders from a Westrailian beach;
I was the one that invented the hollow woodheap, and I built the Transcontinental, despite heat, dust, death, thirst and flies.
I led the ragged thirteen;
I faught at Eureka and Gallipoli and Lae; and I was a day too early (or was it too late?) to discover Coolgardie,
Lost my original Broken Hill share in a game of cribbage, had the old man kangaroo pinch my coat and wallet, threw fifty heads in a row in the big game at Kal, took a paddle steamer seventy miles out of the Darling on a heavy dew, then tamed a Gippsland bunyip, and sooled him on to capture the Tantanoola Tiger and Fisher's Ghost and became Billy Hughes's secretary for a couple of weeks.
Me, I outshone Jacky Howe, gave Buckley his chance, and have had more lonely drinks than Jimmy Wood;
I jumped across Govett's Leap and wore an overcoat in Marble Bar,
Seem to remember riding the white bull through the streets of Wagga,
Sailed a cutter down the Kindur to the Inland Sea, and never travelled till I went to Moonta.
Me, I was the first man ever to climb to the top of Ayer's Rock,
Pinched one of the Devil's Marbles for the kids to play with,
Drained the mud from the Yarra,
Sold the Coathanger for a gold brick, and asked for beer off the ice at Innamincka
Me, yesterday I was a rumour, today I am a legend, tomorrow, history.
If you'd like to know more of me inquire at the pub at Tennant Creek or in any drover's camp
Or shearing shed
Or shout any bloke in any bar a drink,
Or yarn to any bloke asleep on any beach;
They'll tell you about me,
They'll tell you more than I know myself.
After all, they were the ones who created me, even though I'm bigger than any of them now
- in fact, I'm all of them, rolled into one.
For anyone to kill me he'd have to kill every single Australian,
Every single one of them.
Every single one.

The Road Less Travelled - Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all of the difference.

The Female of the Species - Rudyard Kipling
When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail,
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
When Nag, the wayside cobra, hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can,
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail -
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws -
'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale -
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn't his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the others tale -
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Man, a bear in most relations, worm and savage otherwise,
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise;
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.
Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger; Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue - to the scandal of the Sex!
But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same,
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.
She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity - must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions - not in these her honor dwells -
She, the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else!
She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate;
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.
She is wedded to convictions - in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him, who denies!
He will meet no cool discussion, but the instant, white-hot wild
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.
Unprovoked and awful charges - even so the she-bear fights;
Speech that drips, corrodes and poisons - even so the cobra bites;
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw,
And the victim writhes with anguish - like the Jesuit with the squaw!
So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of abstract justice - which no woman understands.
And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern; shall enthrall but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him and Her instincts never fail,
That the female of Her species is more deadly than the male!

Extract from Excelsior by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

Ode - Arthur O'Shaughnessy
We are the music makers
And we are the dreamers of dreams
Wandering by lone sea-breakers
And sitting my desolate streams

If - 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 imposters 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,
Then stop and build them up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch and toss
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after you 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 - what is more- you'll be a man, my son!

The Suicide Ballad - G K Chesterton
The gallows in my garden, people say,
Is new and neat, and adequately tall.
I tie the noose on, in a knowing way
As one that ties his necktie for a ball;
But just as all the neighbours - on the wall -
Are drawing one last breath to shout "Hurray!"
The strangest whim has seized me... After all
I think I will not hang myself today.

Extract from The Song of Honour - Ralph Hodgson
I stood and stared; the sky was lit
The sky was stars all over it,
I stood, I know not why,
Without a wish, without a will,
I stood upon that silent hill
And stared into the sky until
My eyes were blind with stars and still
I stared into the sky.

The Erl King
O who rides by night thro' the woodland so wild?
It is the fond father embracing his child;
And close the boy nestles within his loved arm,
To hold himself fast, and to keep himself warm.
"O father, see yonder! see yonder!" he says;
"My boy, upon what dost thou fearfully gaze?"
"O, 'tis the Erl-King with his crown and his shroud."
"No, my son, it is but a dark wreath of the cloud."
                             The Erl-King Speaks
"O come and go with me, thou loveliest child;
By many a gay sport shall thy time be beguiled;
My mother keeps for thee many a fair toy,
And many a fine flower shall she pluck for my boy."
"O father, my father, and did you not hear
The Erl-King whisper so low in my ear?"
"Be still, my heart's darling--my child, be at ease;
It was but the wild blast as it sung thro' the trees."
                              Erl-King
"O wilt thou go with me, thou loveliest boy?
My daughter shall tend thee with care and with joy;
She shall bear thee so lightly thro' wet and thro' wild,
And press thee, and kiss thee, and sing to my child."
"O father, my father, and saw you not plain
The Erl-King's pale daughter glide past thro' the rain?"
"Oh yes, my loved treasure, I knew it full soon;
It was the grey willow that danced to the moon."
                              Erl-King
"O come and go with me, no longer delay,
Or else, silly child, I will drag thee away."
"O father! O father! now, now, keep your hold,
The Erl-King has seized me--his grasp is so cold!"
Sore trembled the father; he spurr'd thro' the wild,
Clasping close to his bosom his shuddering child;
He reaches his dwelling in doubt and in dread,
But, clasp'd to his bosom, the infant was dead.

Ozymandias - Percy Bysshe Shelly