Anyone have any favourite poems?

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Rub%C3%A1iy%...Le_Gallienne%29

I have read very few but this would be my favourite. I don't always know what the hell each verse means, but in those instances I like the way the words come together.

There's also this: http://www.lordtonymackenzie.com/desiderata.html

Those are nice pieces of work Steve, very well written!! I must read the first one in a bit more depth when I get time.

Poetry was something I was never into, actually what I mean is that it is something that I never got round to checking out. I have one favourite though and that's Milton's 'Paradise Lost'. It is an epic poem about the Fall of Man and the expulsion of Satan and other angels from Heaven.

Because it was written in the 17th century it can be hard to fully understand at first as it is in the Olde English language but it's certainly incredibly well written and worth perservering with if you can find the time to get through the whole thing.

http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/ENLIGHT/PL5.HTM

I would also love to look into Carmina Burana which are a collection of 11th, 12th and 13th century poems which the composer Carl Orff set to music. You're bound to know O Fortuna from Carmina Burrana, piles of metal bands have used it as an intro before.

Yea, I know the piece. Actually first heard it in a movie called "Excalibur".

I'll definately look at Paradise Lost when I get the time.

Yep you're right Steve it was used in that movie Excalibur. I quite liked that film actually. Haven't seen it in a while though.

One of my Favourites - Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Nice poem HK, very poignant!! If memory serves me correct Wifred Owen was one the famous 'War' poets??? I remember studying him and guys like Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke at school.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci6Cw8W0Kn0

Great war poem there.

:D

Stumbled across a poem called "The Hangman" by Maurice Ogden. Very powerful message that resonates today and always will. Here's a video version of it with someone reading it out alongside some cool animation that really sets the mood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZSS3yxpnFU

Here's the text version.

http://www.propertyrightsresearch.org/arti...y_maurice_o.htm

Same message as the famous "First They Came..." poem which was originally written according to Wikipedia "about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group."

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists ,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Could still apply today I think, if you only change the groups at the end.

One of my favourites is "Ellan Vannin" by Eliza Craven Green for patriotic reasons, if nothing else. I don't know if many would consider it literary genius exactly, but I really enjoy it, as it's about my homeland :D

When the summer day is over
And the busy cares have flown,
Then I sit beneath the starlight
With a weary heart. alone,
And there rises like a vision,
Sparkling bright in nature's glee,
My own dear Ellan Vannin
With its green hills by the sea.

Then I hear the wavelets murmur
As they kiss the fairy shore,
Then beneath the em'rald waters
Sings the mermaid as of yore,
And the fair Isle shines with beauty
As in youth it dawned on me,
My own dear Ellan Vannin
With its green hills by the sea.

Then mem'ries sweet and tender
Come like music's plaintive flow,
Of someone in Ellan Vannin
That lov'd me long ago,
So I give with tears and blessings,
And my fondest thoughts to thee,
My own dear Ellan Vannin
With its green hills by the sea.


The Bee Gees also rewrote it into a song.