Poetry

Posted : 6 Nov, 2011 06:13 AM

These are some of my favorite bits of poems... I think that emotional healing comes in holistic ways. So its good to explore the good and the bad, the beautiful and the painful. Poetry can sometimes help me identify with feelings I was not even aware of, the hidden and subconscious and preconscious coming into the conscious. and its a wonderful feeling. For this reason, I think poetry is therapeutic. What say you?



Here are some of the pieces of poetry I love and that have spoken to me. If you have any favorite lines do share them as well.





To Althea from Prison



Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage;

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an hermitage;

If I have freedom in my love

And in my soul am free,

Angels alone, that soar above,

Enjoy such liberty.

--Richard Lovelace





Who Is Silvia?

From Two Gentlemen of Verona



Who is Silvia? What is she,

That all our swains commend her?

Holy, fair, and wise is she;

The heavens such grace did lend her,

That she might admired be.



Is she kind as she is fair?

For beauty lives with kindness.

Love doth to her eyes repair,

To help him of his blindness;

And, being helped, inhabits there.

--William Shakespeare



The Living Juliet

From Romeo and Juliet



Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,

Having some business, do intreat her eyes

To twinkle in their spheres till they return.

What if her eyes were there, they in her head?

The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,

As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven

Would through the airy region stream so bright

That birds would sing and think it were not night.

--William Shakespeare



From an Essay on Man



Behold the child, by nature�s kindly law,

Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw:

Some livelier playthings gives his youth delight,

A little louder, but as empty quite:

Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage,

And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age:

Pleased with this bauble still, as that before;

Till tired he sleeps, and life�s poor play is o�er.

--Alexander Pope



From an Essay on Criticism



A little learning is a dangerous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring;



So pleased at first the towering Alps we try,

Mount o�er the vales, and seem to tread the sky,

The eternal snows appear already past,

And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;

But, those attained, we tremble to survey

The growing labors of the lengthened way,

The increasing prospects tire our wandering eyes,

Hills peep o�er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

--Alexander Pope





Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard



Full many a gem of purest ray serene

The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.



Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere;

Heaven did a recompense as largely send:

He gave to misery all he had, a tear;

He gained from heaven (�twas all he wished) a friend.

--Thomas Gray



Song

From Pippa Passes



The year�s a t the spring

And the day�s at the morn;

Morning�s at seven;

The hill-side�s dew-pearled;

The lark�s on the wing;

The snail�s on the thorn:

God�s in his heaven�

All�s right with the world!

--Robert Browning





The Daffodils



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.

--William Wordsworth



Character of the Happy Warrior



Who, doomed to go in company with pain,

And fear, and bloodshed, miserable train!

Turns his necessity to glorious gain;

�

More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure,

As tempted more; more able to endure,

As more exposed to suffering and distress;

Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.

�

And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law

In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw;

--William Wordsworth



She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways



A violet by a mossy stone

Half hidden from the eye.

�Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

--William Wordsworth



She Walks in Beauty

The smiles that win, the tints that glow

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent.

--George Gordon, Lord Byron





We�ll Go No More A-Roving



So, we�ll go no more a-roving

So late into the night,

Though the heart be still as loving,

And the moon be still as bright.

--George Gordon, Lord Byron



Ode to a Nightingale

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs.

But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet

Wherewith the seasonable month endows

--John Keats



Ode on a Grecian Urn

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

�

And, happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new;

--John Keats



�I Remember, I Remember�

I remember, I remember

The house where I was born,

The little window where the sun

Came peeping in at morn;

�



I remember, I remember

The roses, red and white,

The violets, and the lily-cups�

Those flowers made of light!

And where my brother set

The laburnum on his birthday,--

The tree is living yet!



I remember, I remember

Where I was used to swing,

And thought the air must rush as fresh

To swallows on the wing;

�



I remember, I remember

The fir-trees dark and high;

I used to think their slender tops

Were close against the sky:

�

--Thomas Hood



From The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,

By each let this be heard,

Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word,

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword!



Some kill their love when they are young,

And some when they are old;

Some strangle with the hands of Lust,

Some with the hands of Gold:

The kindest use a knife, because

The dead so soon grow cold.



Some love too little, some too long,

Some sell, and others but;

Some do the deed with many tears,

And some without a sigh:

For each man kills the thing he loves,

Yet each man does not die.

�

And twice a day he smoked his pipe,

And drank his quart of beer:

His soul was resolute, and held

No hiding-place for fear;

He often said that he was glad

The hangman�s hands were near.



But why he said so strange a thin

No Warder dared to ask:

For he to whom a watcher�s doom

Is given as his task,

Must set a lock upon his lips,

And make his face a mask.



Yet all is well; he has but passed

To Life�s appointed bourne�

And alien tears will fill for him

Pity�s long-broken urn,

For his mourners will be outcast men,

And outcasts always mourn.

--Oscar Wilde

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