.. And I, I took the road less travelled by..

Hey hey! I'm 18, Irish and I've a love for classic poetry! (Despite the username, I will be posting modern poems by the likes of Plath and Bukowski, and even the extremely modern poetry included in modern music etc.) Leave comments on who you'd like to see next!

[classicpoetry]

Introduction to Poetry I ask them to take a poem   and hold it up to the light   like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem   and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem’s room   and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski   across the surface of a poem waving at the author’s name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope   and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose   to find out what it really means.

Billy Collins

[classicpoetry]

Anthem for Doomed Youth 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 good-byes. 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.

Wilfred Owen

[classicpoetry]

I have done it again.   One year in every ten   I manage it—— A sort of walking miracle, my skin   Bright as a Nazi lampshade,   My right foot A paperweight, My face a featureless, fine   Jew linen. Peel off the napkin   O my enemy.   Do I terrify?—— The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?   The sour breath Will vanish in a day. Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be   At home on me And I a smiling woman.   I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three.   What a trash To annihilate each decade. What a million filaments.   The peanut-crunching crowd   Shoves in to see Them unwrap me hand and foot—— The big strip tease.   Gentlemen, ladies These are my hands   My knees. I may be skin and bone, Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.   The first time it happened I was ten.   It was an accident. The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all.   I rocked shut As a seashell. They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. Dying Is an art, like everything else.   I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell.   I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I’ve a call. It’s easy enough to do it in a cell. It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.   It’s the theatrical Comeback in broad day To the same place, the same face, the same brute   Amused shout: ‘A miracle!’ That knocks me out.   There is a charge For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge   For the hearing of my heart—— It really goes. And there is a charge, a very large charge   For a word or a touch   Or a bit of blood Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.   So, so, Herr Doktor.   So, Herr Enemy. I am your opus, I am your valuable,   The pure gold baby That melts to a shriek.   I turn and burn. Do not think I underestimate your great concern. Ash, ash— You poke and stir. Flesh, bone, there is nothing there—— A cake of soap,   A wedding ring,   A gold filling. Herr God, Herr Lucifer   Beware Beware. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair   And I eat men like air.

Sylvia Plath, Ariel

[classicpoetry]

Separation Your absence has gone through me   Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.

W.S. Merwin, The Second Four Books of Poems

[classicpoetry]

Aubade I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify. The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse - The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true. This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anasthetic from which none come round. And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will, And realisation of it rages out In furnace-fear when we are caught without People or drink. Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood. Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can’t escape, Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

Philip Larkin

[classicpoetry]

In my craft or sullen art In my craft or sullen art Exercised in the still night When only the moon rages And the lovers lie abed With all their griefs in their arms, I labour by singing light Not for ambition or bread Or the strut and trade of charms On the ivory stages But for the common wages Of their most secret heart. Not for the proud man apart From the raging moon I write On these spindrift pages Nor for the towering dead With their nightingales and psalms But for the lovers, their arms Round the griefs of the ages, Who pay no praise or wages Nor heed my craft or art.

Dylan Thomas, Deaths and Entrances

[classicpoetry]

Epitaph for a Palestinian Child I lived as best I could, and then I died. Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.

Michael R. Burch 

[classicpoetry]

Here Dead We Lie Here dead we lie Because we did not choose To live and shame the land From which we sprung. Life, to be sure, Is nothing much to lose, But young men think it is, And we were young.

Alfred Edward Housman, More Poems

[classicpoetry]

Piano Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me; Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings. In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide. So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

D.H. Lawrence

[classicpoetry]

The Raven 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 some one 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 books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore— For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—            Nameless here for evermore.    And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;    So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating    “’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door— Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—            This 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 that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;    But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,    And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?” This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the 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 see, 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 the shutter, when, 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 mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door— Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—            Perched, and sat, and nothing more. Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance 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 shore!”            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”    Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy 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 upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,            With such name as “Nevermore.”    But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.    Nothing farther 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.”            Then the bird said “Nevermore.”    Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, “Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its 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 that melancholy burden bore            Of ‘Never—nevermore’.”    But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;    Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking    Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore— What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and 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 the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er, But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,            She shall press, ah, nevermore!    Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.    “Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee    Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy 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, if bird or devil!— Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here 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 or devil! By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—    Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,    It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore— Clasp a rare and radiant 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 that lie thy soul hath spoken!    Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit 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 demon’s that is dreaming,    And the lamp-light 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!

Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven and Other Poems

[classicpoetry]

So You Want To Be A Writer if it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don't do it. if you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter searching for words, don't do it. if you're doing it for money or fame, don't do it. if you're doing it because you want women in your bed, don't do it. if you have to sit there and rewrite it again and again, don't do it. if it's hard work just thinking about doing it, don't do it. if you're trying to write like somebody else, forget about it. if you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently. if it never does roar out of you, do something else. if you first have to read it to your wife or your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your parents or to anybody at all, you're not ready. don't be like so many writers, don't be like so many thousands of people who call themselves writers, don't be dull and boring and pretentious, don't be consumed with self- love. the libraries of the world have yawned themselves to sleep over your kind. don't add to that. don't do it. unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don't do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was.

Chalres Bukowski

[classicpoetry]

Love's Philosophy The fountains mingle with the river,  And the rivers with the ocean;  The winds of heaven mix forever  With a sweet emotion;  Nothing in the world is single;  All things by a law divine  In another’s being mingle–  Why not I with thine?  See, the mountains kiss high heaven,  And the waves clasp one another;  No sister flower could be forgiven  If it disdained its brother;  And the sunlight clasps the earth,  And the moonbeams kiss the sea;–  What are all these kissings worth,  If thou kiss not me?

Percy Bysshe Shelley

[classicpoetry]

Richard Cory Whenever Richard Cory went down town,  We people on the pavement looked at him:  He was a gentleman from sole to crown,  Clean favored, and imperially slim.  And he was always quietly arrayed,  And he was always human when he talked;  But still he fluttered pulses when he said,  ‘Good-morning,’ and he glittered when he walked.  And he was rich - yes, richer than a king -  And admirably schooled in every grace:  In fine, we thought that he was everything  To make us wish that we were in his place.  So on we worked, and waited for the light,  And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;  And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,  Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Edward Arlington Robinson, The Children of the Night

[classicpoetry]

Alone With Everybody the flesh covers the bone  and they put a mind  in there and  sometimes a soul,  and the women break  vases against the walls  and the men drink too  much  and nobody finds the  one  but keep  looking  crawling in and out  of beds.  flesh covers  the bone and the  flesh searches  for more than  flesh.  there’s no chance  at all:  we are all trapped  by a singular  fate.  nobody ever finds  the one.  the city dumps fill  the junkyards fill  the madhouses fill  the hospitals fill  the graveyards fill  nothing else  fills.  Anonymous submission.

Charles Bukowski,

[classicpoetry]

We Only Want the Earth Some men, faint-hearted, ever seek Our programme to retouch, And will insist, whene’er they speak That we demand too much. ’Tis passing strange, yet I declare Such statements give me mirth, For our demands most moderate are, We only want the earth. “Be moderate,” the trimmers cry, Who dread the tyrants’ thunder. “You ask too much and people By From you aghast in wonder.” ’Tis passing strange, for I declare Such statements give me mirth, For our demands most moderate are, We only want the earth. Our masters all a godly crew, Whose hearts throb for the poor, Their sympathies assure us, too, If our demands were fewer. Most generous souls! But please observe, What they enjoy from birth Is all we ever had the nerve To ask, that is, the earth. The “labour fakir” full of guile, Base doctrine ever preaches, And whilst he bleeds the rank and file Tame moderation teaches. Yet, in despite, we’ll see the day When, with sword in its girth, Labour shall march in war array To realize its own, the earth. For labour long, with sighs and tears, To its oppressors knelt. But never yet, to aught save fears, Did the heart of tyrant melt. We need not kneel, our cause no dearth Of loyal soldiers’ needs And our victorious rallying cry Shall be we want the earth!

James Connolly, Songs of Freedom

[classicpoetry]

The Television Poem The most important thing we've learned, So far as children are concerned, Is never, NEVER, NEVER let Them near your television set -- Or better still, just don't install The idiotic thing at all. In almost every house we've been, We've watched them gaping at the screen. They loll and slop and lounge about, And stare until their eyes pop out. (Last week in someone's place we saw A dozen eyeballs on the floor.) They sit and stare and stare and sit Until they're hypnotised by it, Until they're absolutely drunk With all that shocking ghastly junk. Oh yes, we know it keeps them still, They don't climb out the window sill, They never fight or kick or punch, They leave you free to cook the lunch And wash the dishes in the sink -- But did you ever stop to think, To wonder just exactly what This does to your beloved tot? IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD! IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD! IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND! IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND! HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE! HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE! HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES! 'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say, 'But if we take the set away, What shall we do to entertain Our darling children? Please explain!' We'll answer this by asking you, 'What used the darling ones to do? 'How used they keep themselves contented Before this monster was invented?' Have you forgotten? Don't you know? We'll say it very loud and slow: THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ, AND READ and READ, and then proceed To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks! One half their lives was reading books! The nursery shelves held books galore! Books cluttered up the nursery floor! And in the bedroom, by the bed, More books were waiting to be read! Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales And treasure isles, and distant shores Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars, And pirates wearing purple pants, And sailing ships and elephants, And cannibals crouching 'round the pot, Stirring away at something hot. (It smells so good, what can it be? Good gracious, it's Penelope.) The younger ones had Beatrix Potter With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter, And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland, And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and- Just How The Camel Got His Hump, And How the Monkey Lost His Rump, And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul, There's Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole- Oh, books, what books they used to know, Those children living long ago! So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall. Then fill the shelves with lots of books, Ignoring all the dirty looks, The screams and yells, the bites and kicks, And children hitting you with sticks- Fear not, because we promise you That, in about a week or two Of having nothing else to do, They'll now begin to feel the need Of having something to read. And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy! You watch the slowly growing joy That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen They'll wonder what they'd ever seen In that ridiculous machine, That nauseating, foul, unclean, Repulsive television screen! And later, each and every kid Will love you more for what you did.

Roald Dahl, “Television”

[classicpoetry]

My Papa’s Waltz The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy;    But I hung on like death:    Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother’s countenance    Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle;    At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head    With a palm caked hard by dirt,    Then waltzed me off to bed    Still clinging to your shirt.

Theodore Roethke, The Lost Son and Other Poems