Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

Favourite Poem/Saying/Quote?

Options
  • 30-03-2008 5:44pm
    #1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,114 ✭✭✭


    At the moment it would have to be William Wordsworth 'Daffodils' due to it being Spring;

    I WANDER'D 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 stretch'd 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.


«1

Comments

  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 25,558 Mod ✭✭✭✭Dades


    There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
    Herman Melville

    Poetry wrecks my head.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 259 ✭✭life_is_music


    not really poetic....but inspiring:

    "if you don't change direction, you'll end up where you're headed" - some nasa guy


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 155 ✭✭roberta c


    "You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

    -Mahatma Gandhi

    suits my current mood anyway, coming from after hours!
    A nice site for this type of thing when your bored
    http://www.inspirationpeak.com


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,126 ✭✭✭Psychedelic


    "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times" - opening lines of Charles Dickens 'A Tale of Two Cities'


    my favourite poem is Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" - 1st verse below
    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.'


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 11,382 Mod ✭✭✭✭Hermy


    The closing scene from Withnail And I, a slightly edited version of an extract from Hamlet Act II Scene II.

    I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth
    and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition
    that this goodly frame, the earth,
    seems to me a sterile promontory;
    this most excellent canopy, the air, look you,
    this brave ov’rhanging firmament,
    this majestical roof fretted with golden fire;
    why, it appeareth nothing to me
    but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
    What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason,
    how infinite in faculties, how like an angel in apprehension,
    how like a God!
    The beauty of the world, paragon of animals;
    and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
    Man delights not me, no, nor women neither, nor women neither.

    Genealogy Forum Mod



  • Advertisement
  • Closed Accounts Posts: 817 ✭✭✭YogiBear


    Nice to read Wordsworth there!
    I bought Hamlet on dvd a few weeks ago as I did Othello in school and hadn't seen it. Loved it.


    One of my favourite poems is:

    La Belle Dame sans Merci - John Keats O what can ail thee, Knight at arms,
    Alone and palely loitering?
    The sedge has withered from the Lake
    And no birds sing!

    O what can ail thee, Knight at arms,
    So haggard, and so woebegone?
    The squirrel’s granary is full
    And the harvest’s done.

    I see a lily on thy brow
    With anguish moist and fever dew,
    And on thy cheeks a fading rose
    Fast withereth too.

    “I met a Lady in the Meads,
    Full beautiful, a faery’s child,
    Her hair was long, her foot was light
    And her eyes were wild.

    “I made a garland for her head,
    And bracelets too, and fragrant Zone;
    She looked at me as she did love
    And made sweet moan.

    “I set her on my pacing steed
    And nothing else saw all day long,
    For sidelong would she bend and sing
    A faery’s song.

    “She found me roots of relish sweet,
    And honey wild, and manna dew,
    And sure in language strange she said
    ‘I love thee true.’

    “She took me to her elfin grot
    And there she wept, and sighed full sore,
    And there I shut her wild wild eyes
    With kisses four.

    “And there she lulléd me asleep,
    And there I dreamed, Ah woe betide!
    The latest dream I ever dreamt
    On the cold hill side.

    “I saw pale Kings and Princes too,
    Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
    They cried, ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
    Hath thee in thrall!’

    “I saw their starved lips in the gloam
    With horrid warning gapéd wide,
    And I awoke and found me here,
    On the cold hill’s side.

    “And this is why I sojourn here,
    Alone and palely loitering,
    Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
    And no birds sing.”


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,572 ✭✭✭Sconsey


    Read this the other day.....

    'Life - the way it really is - is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse'
    Joseph Brodsky

    My favourite is not a poem, it's the lyrics from Green Fields of France, always puts a lump in my throat:

    Well, how do you do, Private William McBride,
    Do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside?
    And rest for awhile in the warm summer sun,
    I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done.
    And I see by your gravestone you were only 19
    When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916,
    Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
    Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

    Did they Beat the drum slowly, did the play the pipes lowly?
    Did the rifles fir o'er you as they lowered you down?
    Did the bugles sound The Last Post in chorus?
    Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

    And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
    In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined?
    And, though you died back in 1916,
    To that loyal heart are you forever 19?
    Or are you a stranger without even a name,
    Forever enshrined behind some glass pane,
    In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
    And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?

    The sun's shining down on these green fields of France;
    The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance.
    The trenches have vanished long under the plow;
    No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
    But here in this graveyard that's still No Man's Land
    The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
    To man's blind indifference to his fellow man.
    And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

    And I can't help but wonder, no Willie McBride,
    Do all those who lie here know why they died?
    Did you really believe them when they told you "The Cause?"
    Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
    Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
    The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
    For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
    And again, and again, and again, and again.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 11,382 Mod ✭✭✭✭Hermy


    The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins is another favourite of mine.

    I caught this morning morning’s minion,
    kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
    Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
    High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
    In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on a swing,
    As a skate’s wheel sweeps smooth on a bow bend—the hurl and gliding
    rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
    Stirred for a bird—the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

    Brute beauty and valour and act, oh air, pride, plume, here
    Buckle! And the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
    times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

    No wonder of it—shéer plód makes plough down sillion
    shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
    fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

    Genealogy Forum Mod



  • Moderators, Arts Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 9,521 Mod ✭✭✭✭BossArky


    The Listeners - Walter de la Mare. It was on the Junior Cert course back in 1996. One of my all time favourites.

    "The Listeners" is Walter de la Mare's most famous poem. It narrates (in third person) the story of a mysterious man coming to a house in the night on horseback, and subsequently failing, to deliver a message and fulfill a promise. Nobody is there but the "Listeners" (named in the title), who seem to be merely spectral. It is apparent that "The Listeners" hear his knocking and request for assistance, however they choose to ignore it. Some people think that the poem represents missed opportunity on the part of the traveler. The house meant something to him, so he returned to it, but he came back too late and there was nothing left but shadows and memories. Alternatively he may have promised to deliver a message from an acquaintance : "'Tell them I came, and no one answered,/ That I kept my word,' he said"

    ‘IS there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
    Knocking on the moonlit door;
    And his horse in the silence champ’d the grasses
    Of the forest’s ferny floor:
    And a bird flew up out of the turret,
    Above the Traveller’s head:
    And he smote upon the door again a second time;
    ‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
    But no one descended to the Traveller;
    No head from the leaf-fringed sill
    Lean’d over and look’d into his grey eyes,
    Where he stood perplex’d and still.
    But only a host of phantom listeners
    That dwelt in the lone house then
    Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
    To that voice from the world of men:
    Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
    That goes down to the empty hall,
    Hearkening in an air stirr’d and shaken
    By the lonely Traveller’s call.
    And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
    Their stillness answering his cry,
    While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
    ’Neath the starr’d and leafy sky;
    For he suddenly smote on the door, even
    Louder, and lifted his head:—
    ’Tell them I came, and no one answer’d,
    ’That I kept my word,’ he said.
    Never the least stir made the listeners,
    Though every word he spake
    Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
    From the one man left awake:
    Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
    And the sound of iron on stone,
    And how the silence surged softly backward,
    When the plunging hoofs were gone.



    I also really like On Raglan Road - Patrick Kavanagh, especially the last verse.


    "On Raglan Road" is a well-known Irish song from a poem written by Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh named for Raglan Road in Ballsbridge, Dublin.

    It was first published as a poem in the Irish Press on 3 October 1946 under the title "Dark Haired Miriam Ran Away." Peter Kavanagh, Kavanagh's brother said that "it was written about Patrick's girlfriend Hilda [Moriaty] but to avoid embarrassment he used the name of my girlfriend in the title."

    The poem was put to music when the poet met Luke Kelly of the well-known Irish band The Dubliners in a pub in Dublin called The Bailey. It was set to the traditional air "The Dawning of the Day" (Fáinne Geal an Lae) composed by Thomas Connellan in the 17th Century.

    The song, often known simply as "Raglan Road," has since been sung by the Dubliners, Van Morrison, Sinéad O'Connor, Dire Straits, Billy Bragg, Roger Daltrey and Loreena McKennitt among others.



    On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew
    That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;
    I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way,
    And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.

    On Grafton Street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge
    Of the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion's pledge,
    The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay -
    O I loved too much and by such and such is happiness thrown away.

    I gave her gifts of the mind I gave her the secret sign that's known
    To the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone
    And word and tint. I did not stint for I gave her poems to say.
    With her own name there and her own dark hair like clouds over fields of May

    On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking now
    Away from me so hurriedly my reason must allow
    That I had wooed not as I should a creature made of clay -
    When the angel woos the clay he'd lose his wings at the dawn of day.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,114 ✭✭✭doctor evil


    "crocodiles grows up in more than one pond"

    Have it in my sig, can't remember how I came across it. I just love it as it states that there are transitions in life that everyone does differently. Very helpful when stuck in a rut thinking life must be done in A, B, C fashion.

    I remember a great poem for JC years ago about a fire, great ryme and rythm to it.

    I love Seamus Heaverys work particulary Sunlight. Can't remember the others unfortunatley

    here was a sunlit absence.
    The helmeted pump in the yard
    heated its iron,
    water honeyed

    in the slung bucket
    and the sun stood
    like a griddle cooling
    against the wall

    of each long afternoon.
    So, her hands scuffled
    over the bakeboard,
    the reddening stove

    sent its plaque of heat
    against her where she stood
    in a floury apron
    by the window.

    Now she dusts the board
    with a goose's wing,
    now sits, broad-lapped,
    with whitened nails

    and measling shins:
    here is a space
    again, the scone rising
    to the tick of two clocks.

    And here is love
    like a tinsmith's scoop
    sunk past its gleam
    in the meal-bin.

    Very tempting to dig out old schools books for a nostalgic nosey around.

    What I keep meaning to do is put the best saying on a card and have it laminated and it as a bookmark. Would be much more pleasing than using any ole' scrap of paper!


  • Advertisement
  • Registered Users Posts: 2,078 ✭✭✭theCzar


    Dades wrote: »
    There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
    Herman Melville

    I like that an awful lot, hadn't seen if before. Though I have seen the same philosophy expressed in many works (Count of Monte Cristo for one) I've not heard it put that succinctly.
    Dades wrote: »
    Poetry wrecks my head.

    Bad poetry is probably the single worst form of expression ever devised by mankind. I would rather read a txt spk version of the collected works of Dan Brown.

    The quote I had in mind when I came in here:
    We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

    EDIT: Just looking at this page of Wilde quotes, very enjoyable.
    http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Oscar_Wilde/


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 25,558 Mod ✭✭✭✭Dades


    theCzar wrote: »
    I like that an awful lot, hadn't seen if before. Though I have seen the same philosophy expressed in many works (Count of Monte Cristo for one) I've not heard it put that succinctly.
    I still remember reading that line in Moby Dick - it struck a chord with me. Now, years later it seems to be a popular one of Melville's quotes found online. :)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,114 ✭✭✭doctor evil


    Never to forget ;)

    Homer: Are you saying you're never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?
    Lisa: No.
    Homer: Ham?
    Lisa: No.
    Homer: Pork chops?
    Lisa: Dad, those all come from the same animal.
    Homer: Heh heh heh. Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,142 ✭✭✭Karlusss


    I don't know if I can a favourite all-time poem, but Death of a Naturalist had an impression on me recently:

    All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
    Of the townland; green and heavy headed
    Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
    Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
    Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
    Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
    There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
    But best of all was the warm thick slobber
    Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
    In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
    I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
    Specks to range on window-sills at home,
    On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
    The fattening dots burst into nimble-
    Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
    The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
    And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
    Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
    Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
    For they were yellow in the sun and brown
    In rain.

    Then one hot day when fields were rank
    With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
    Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
    To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
    Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
    Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
    On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
    The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
    Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
    I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
    Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
    That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.



    (not that anybody reads blocks of text like that on the internet)

    My favourite quote right now is:

    "It's all smokes and daggers"
    Bertie Ahern.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,209 ✭✭✭gaf1983


    Well one quote I like is the verse that's in my signature. It was penned by the fictional poet Jem Casey who is mentioned in Flann O'Brien's "At Swim Two Birds."

    I also liked these lines from Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting:
    The small flat was heaving. Stevie had never seen Franco, the Beggar, so at ease with himself Rab McLaughlin, or Second Prize, as they called him, hadn't even been assaulted when he'd pished up the back of Begbie's curtains.

    And of course as poems go, I think it's hard to beat some of the anti-war poetry, either from the First World War, such as this Wilfred Owen classic:
    DULCE ET DECORUM EST

    Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
    Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
    Till on the haunting flares2 we turned our backs
    And towards our distant rest3 began to trudge.
    Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
    But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
    Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots4
    Of tired, outstripped5 Five-Nines6 that dropped behind.

    Gas!7 Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
    Fitting the clumsy helmets8 just in time;
    But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
    And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime9 . . .
    Dim, through the misty panes10 and thick green light,
    As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
    In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
    He plunges at me, guttering,11 choking, drowning.

    If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
    Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
    And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
    His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
    If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
    Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
    Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud12
    Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
    My friend, you would not tell with such high zest13
    To children ardent14 for some desperate glory,
    The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
    Pro patria mori.15

    8 October 1917 - March, 1918

    ... or more recently, this one about Vietnam, by Merill Glass:
    But You Didn't

    Remember the time you lent me your car and I dented it?
    I thought you'd kill me...
    but you didn't.

    Remember the time I forgot to tell you the dance was formal
    and you came in jeans?
    I thought you'd hate me...
    But you didn't

    Remember the times I'd flirt with other boys
    just to make you jealous, and you were?
    I thought you'd drop me...
    But you didn't.

    There were plenty of things you did to put up with me,
    to keep me happy, to love me and there are so many things
    I wanted to tell you when you returned from Vietnam...
    But you didn't.

    One of my favourite aphorisms is this one from Soren Kierkegaard:
    People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,209 ✭✭✭gaf1983


    BossArky wrote: »
    The song, often known simply as "Raglan Road," has since been sung by the Dubliners, Van Morrison, Sinéad O'Connor, Dire Straits, Billy Bragg, Roger Daltrey and Loreena McKennitt among others.

    It's also used in one of the closing sequences of the film In Bruges as I discovered this evening.


  • Registered Users Posts: 834 ✭✭✭The Agogo


    mine for poetry would have to be: "when you find a friend good and true, **** over him before he ****s over you" - Anon.

    Or for more notables:

    "i only drink on two occassions: when i'm thirsty and when i'm not" - B Behan

    "Quick! hand me a beaker of wine so that i may wet my mind and say something clever"- Aristophanes


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,437 ✭✭✭Crucifix


    At the moment it would have to be William Wordsworth 'Daffodils' due to it being Spring;

    There once was a poet named Will
    Who tramped his way over a hill
    And was speechless for hours
    Over some stupid flowers
    This was years before TV, but still.
    my favourite poem is Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" - 1st verse below

    There once was a girl named Lenore
    And a bird and a bust and a door
    And a guy with depression
    And a whole lot of questions
    And the bird always says "Nevermore."


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,362 ✭✭✭K4t


    Father
    Its not time to make a change,
    Just relax, take it easy.
    Youre still young, thats your fault,
    Theres so much you have to know.
    Find a girl, settle down,
    If you want you can marry.
    Look at me, I am old, but Im happy.

    I was once like you are now, and I know that its not easy,
    To be calm when youve found something going on.
    But take your time, think a lot,
    Why, think of everything youve got.
    For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not.

    Son
    How can I try to explain, when I do he turns away again.
    Its always been the same, same old story.
    From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen.
    Now theres a way and I know that I have to go away.
    I know I have to go.

    Father
    Its not time to make a change,
    Just sit down, take it slowly.
    Youre still young, thats your fault,
    Theres so much you have to go through.
    Find a girl, settle down,
    If you want you can marry.
    Look at me, I am old, but Im happy.
    (son-- away away away, I know I have to
    Make this decision alone - no)
    Son
    All the times that I cried, keeping all the things I knew inside,
    Its hard, but its harder to ignore it.
    If they were right, Id agree, but its them you know not me.
    Now theres a way and I know that I have to go away.
    I know I have to go.
    (father-- stay stay stay, why must you go and
    Make this decision alone? )


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,362 ✭✭✭K4t


    Crucifix wrote: »
    There once was a poet named Will
    Who tramped his way over a hill
    And was speechless for hours
    Over some stupid flowers
    This was years before TV, but still.



    There once was a girl named Lenore
    And a bird and a bust and a door
    And a guy with depression
    And a whole lot of questions
    And the bird always says "Nevermore."
    haha that's quality.....


  • Advertisement
  • Closed Accounts Posts: 17 Louth Man


    Invictus
    by William Ernest Henley; 1849-1903

    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.

    and/or

    Epic, by Patrick Kavanagh

    I have lived in important places, times
    When great events were decided, who owned
    That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
    Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
    I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul"
    And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
    Step the plot defying blue cast-steel —
    "Here is the march along these iron stones".
    That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
    Was more important? I inclined
    To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
    Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.
    He said: I made the Iliad from such
    A local row. Gods make their own importance


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 27,252 ✭✭✭✭stovelid


    Current fav:

    Lie still, sleep becalmed, sufferer with the wound
    In the throat, burning and turning. All night afloat
    On the silent sea we have heard the sound
    That came from the wound wrapped in the salt sheet.

    Under the mile off moon we trembled listening
    To the sea sound flowing like blood from the loud wound
    And when the salt sheet broke in a storm of singing
    The voices of all the drowned swam on the wind.

    Open a pathway through the slow sad sail,
    Throw wide to the wind the gates of the wandering boat
    For my voyage to begin to the end of my wound,
    We heard the sea sound sing, we saw the salt sheet tell.
    Lie still, sleep becalmed, hide the mouth in the throat,
    Or we shall obey, and ride with you through the drowned.

    - Dylan Thomas


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,114 ✭✭✭doctor evil


    The Road Not Taken

    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, 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 marked 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.

    Robert Frost


  • Moderators, Arts Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 9,521 Mod ✭✭✭✭BossArky


    The Road Not Taken

    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, 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 marked 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.

    Robert Frost

    Nice one Dr.E.


  • Registered Users Posts: 416 ✭✭Coileach dearg


    People with one foot in the past and one foot in the future, often end up pissing in the present - Brendan Behan


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 73 ✭✭co_co


    At the moment it would have to be William Wordsworth 'Daffodils' due to it being Spring;

    I WANDER'D 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.
    .

    'Daffodils' is also my favorit!:)


  • Registered Users Posts: 470 ✭✭Shutuplaura


    I really like the below, called The Kiss by Siegfried Sassoon. Its an ode to the tools of the trade from a poet who was both a pacifist and an effective, brave soldier.

    TO these I turn, in these I trust—
    Brother Lead and Sister Steel.
    To his blind power I make appeal,
    I guard her beauty clean from rust.

    He spins and burns and loves the air, 5
    And splits a skull to win my praise;
    But up the nobly marching days
    She glitters naked, cold and fair.

    Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this:
    That in good fury he may feel 10
    The body where he sets his heel
    Quail from your downward darting kiss.

    I also really like Howl by Allen Ginsberg. I can't find the text online and its probably too long to quote in full anyway. Its has a real us against the world theme.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 25 AceofSpades001


    I love this saying, just for the sheer irony of it.

    "A witty saying proves nothing" - Voltaire.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 637 ✭✭✭Lizzykins


    Patrick kavanagh's In memory of my father.
    Every old man I see reminds me of my father
    When he had fallen in love with death
    One time when sheaves were gathered.

    Anything by Kavanagh or Hopkins really or
    WH Auden
    "Song" I think it's called.
    "Stop all the clocks etc etc....
    It was in Four Weddings and a Funeral


  • Advertisement
  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,619 ✭✭✭Fast_Mover


    The Road Not Taken

    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, 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 marked 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.

    Robert Frost
    God, remember doing that for my J.C 5yrs ago..loved it.


Advertisement