In the post about My Reading Journey, I had mentioned a few poems that were my favorite. Thought I’d just put them all here. One place to come back to read them over and again!
Harold Bloom on poetry (from How to Read and Why)
“Poems can help us to speak to ourselves more clearly and more fully, and to overhear that speaking… . We speak to an otherness in ourselves, or to what may be best and oldest in ourselves. We read to find ourselves, more fully and more strange than otherwise we could hope.”
“Wherever possible, memorize them… . Silent intensive rereadings of a shorter poem that truly finds you should be followed by recitations to yourself until you discover that you are in possession of the poem… . Committed to memory, the poem will possess you, and you will be able to read it more closely, which great poetry demands and rewards.”
The Arrow and the Song
by H W Longfellow
I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44624/the-arrow-and-the-song
Other favorite Longfellow poems -
- A Psalm of Life (Lives of great men all remind us, We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us, Footprints on the sands of time;)
- The Day is Done (Then read from the treasured volume, The poem of thy choice, And lend to the rhyme of the poet, The beauty of thy voice. And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents … And as silently steal away)
If someone asked me what my favorite poem is, this would come to my mind first. I studied this in school long ago but it has always remained in my mind. One thing that blew me about AK was when I asked her what her favorite poem was, she said ‘The Arrow and the Song’! What a coincidence. Of all the places that I could have gone to in the US, I was placed on a project in Portland, Maine! I still remember seeing Longfellow’s statue in the downtown and marveling at how lucky I was. Another coincidence.
”Hope” is the thing with feathers
by Emily Dickinson
“Hope” is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops - at all
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm
I’ve heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest Sea
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-314
Other favorite Emily Dickinson poems -
- Success is counted sweetest (By those who ne’er succeed.)
- Tell all the truth but tell it slant (The Truth must dazzle gradually, Or every man be blind)
Ithaca
by Konstantinos Kavafis
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51296/ithaka-56d22eef917ec
The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as 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 traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-taken
Other poems by Robert Frost that I liked -
- Stopping by the woods on a Snowy Evening (has the famous lines I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep)
- Mending Wall (Good fences make good neighbors)
- Fire and Ice (Inspiration for George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire)
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 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 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!
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---
Other favorite poems of Kipling -
- The Female of the Species
- Mother o’ Mine (If I were drowned in the deepest sea,… I know whose tears would come down to me)
Invictus
by W. E. Henley
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may 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 matters 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.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51642/invictus
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;\
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Another great poem by Elizabeth Browning -
- If Thou Must Love Me, Let It Be for Naught (Except for love’s sake only)
A Poison Tree
by William Blake
I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I waterd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night.
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.
And into my garden stole,
When the night had veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see;
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45952/a-poison-tree
Other favorite poems by Blake -
- The Tyger
- The Garden of Love
- Never Seek to Tell thy Love
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
by 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,
Fluttering 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 sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45521/i-wandered-lonely-as-a-cloud
Other favorite poems by Wordsworth -
- Ode to Duty
- To the Skylark
- To the Cuckoo
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
by W B Yeats
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43281/the-lake-isle-of-innisfree
Other favorite poems by Yeats -
- When you are old
- The Stolen Child
- He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, (I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams)
SN studied in a school called ‘Innisfree’. That’s how I got to read this poem.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
by William Shakespeare
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 wand’ring 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 prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45106/sonnet-116-let-me-not-to-the-marriage-of-true-minds
Other favorite sonnets -
- Sonnet 30: When To The Sessions Of Sweet Silent Thought
- Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
- Sonnet 104: To me, fair friend, you never can be old
- Sonnet 130: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
No Man Is An Island
by John Donne
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/no-man-is-an-island
Other favorite poems by John Donne that I liked
- Death, be not proud
- The Flea
- Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?
Shadow and Light Source Both
by Rumi (Translated by by Coleman Barks)
How does a part of the world leave the world?
How does wetness leave water?
Dont’ try to put out fire by throwing on
more fire! Don’t wash a wound with blood.
No matter how fast you run, your shadow
keeps up. Sometimes it’s in front!
Only full overhead sun diminishes your shadow.
But that shadow has been serving you.
What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is
your candle. Your boundaries are your quest.
I could explain this, but it will break the
glass cover on your heart, and there’s no fixing that.
You must have shadow and light source both.
Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.
When from that tree feathers and wings sprout on you,
be quieter than a dove. Don’t even open your mouth for even a coo.
https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/shadow-and-light-source-both
Other favorite poems of Rumi
- Moving Water (When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.)
- A Moment Of Happiness (The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar, as we laugh together, … In one form upon this earth, and in another form in a timeless sweet land.)
- Be with those who help your being (Don’t sit with indifferent people, whose breath comes cold out of their mouths.)
On Teaching
by Kahlil Gibran
Then said a teacher, Speak to us of Teaching.
And he said:
No man can reveal to you aught
but that which already lies
half asleep in the dawning
of your knowledge.
The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple,
among his followers,
gives not of his wisdom
but rather of his faith and his lovingness.
If he is indeed wise he does not bid
you enter the house of his wisdom,
but rather leads you
to the threshold of your own mind.
The astronomer may speak to you
of his understanding of space,
but he cannot give you
his understanding.
The musician may sing to you
of the rhythm which is in all space,
but he cannot give you the ear which arrests
the rhythm nor the voice that echoes it.
And he who is versed in the science of numbers
can tell of the regions of weight and measure,
but he cannot conduct
you thither.
For the vision of one man lends not
its wings to another man.
And even as each one of you stands
alone in God’s knowledge,
so must each one of you be
alone in his knowledge of God
and in his understanding of the earth.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/148569/on-teaching
Other favorite poems of Gibran -
- On Love (Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.)
- On Marriage (Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup)
- Half a Life (Half the way will get you no where; Half an idea will bear you no results)
No Enemies
YOU have no enemies, you say?
Alas! my friend, the boast is poor;
He who has mingled in the fray
Of duty, that the brave endure,
Must have made foes! If you have none,\
Small is the work that you have done.
You’ve hit no traitor on the hip,
You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip,
You’ve never turned the wrong to right,
You’ve been a coward in the fight.
https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/upton-sinclair/charles-mackay-2/