[OmicronPersei8]

Sonnet XVII - Pablo Neruda

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

Love his poems.

[Benniboi1]

(Original post by riotgrrl)
"I am the captain of my fate:
I am the master of my soul."

From Invictus by WE Henley.

I also like "They also serve who only stand and wait" from Milton's When I Consider How My Light Is Spent.

YES! I always remember those 2 lines whenever I feel down, such a beautiful poem

[ForgettingWhatsername]

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz

From Howl by Allen Ginsberg.

[CurtisDean]

Go to your wide futures she said - A praise song for my mother

[XxelliexX]

I love Catullus' poem 85, 'Odi et amo',

Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?
nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

meaning...

I hate and I love. Why do I do it, perhaps you might ask?
I don't know, but I feel it happening to me and I am tormented.

Aaaah, I love it. It's so relatable, I've felt intense feelings of hatred and love towards someone at the same time and it's so confusing and horrible and I think this poem sums it up really nicely.

[Miss Trololol]

But I've a rendezvous with Death,
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

- Alan Seeger.

[That Bearded Man]

(Original post by Kallisto)
Did you mean Martin Niemöller, a German theologian in the era of national socialism? then you quoted wrong! social democrat instead off Jew! for the rest your quote is right.

EDIT: I am right, damn it!! It's true the English quote means Jew, but that was wrong translated! In the German one (the original) he mentioned "Sozialdemokraten" (social democrats) and not "Juden" (Jews!!)!". I'm very angry concerning that!

Yes I'm referring to Niemoller, I just remembered "and I was not a communist" line and found the translated version according to wikipedia, I suppose ANY translation is going to be debated.

Why does it make you so angry may I ask? Are you fluent in German for instance?

Also unsure about why you got negged.....

[Goody2Shoes-x]

Ah, Porphyria's Lover... I remember anlysing it in English GCSE... one of my favourites is this little gem we did in A Level - Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes. This is the final verse:

"From hence, ye beauties, undeceiv'd,
Know, one false step is ne'er retriev'd,
And be with caution bold.
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
Nor all, that glisters, gold."

Also, "Tyger tyger burning bright, in the forests, of the night."

Can't beat the classics!

[bambi_eyes]

I have 2 favourites, one from 'Hour' by carol Ann Duffy
'time hates love, /wants love poor/ but love spins gold gold gold from straw'

And this whole poem called 'he wishes for the cloths of heaven' by Yeats


'Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.'

[Kallisto]

(Original post by That Bearded Man)
(...) Why does it make you so angry may I ask? Are you fluent in German for instance?

Also unsure about why you got negged.....

Yes, I am fluent in German, because I'm a German member (look at my flag)!
it is about the principle of quote. If you are or someone quoted a (well-known) person, then you make it right or not, even if by translations!

But I can see it's not your bad. Nevertheless it's wrong in terms of the (German) original.

[That Bearded Man]

(Original post by Kallisto)
Yes, I am fluent in German, because I'm a German member (look at my flag)!
it is about the principle of quote. If you are or someone quoted a (well-known) person, then you make it right or not, even if by translations!

But I can see it's not your bad. Nevertheless it's wrong in terms of the (German) original.

Fair enough, then again "Jews" sounds better?

[thompsonic7]

I couldn't pick a favourite line, so instead have the entirety of my favourite poem! (It's short anyway)


Tightly-folded bud,
I have wished you something
None of the others would:
Not the usual stuff
About being beautiful,
Or running off a spring
Of innocence and love -
They will all wish you that,
And should it prove possible,
Well, you're a lucky girl.

But if it shouldn't, then
May you be ordinary;
Have, like other women,
An average of talents:
Not ugly, not good-looking,
Nothing uncustomary
To pull you off your balance,
That, unworkable itself,
Stops all the rest from working.
In fact, may you be dull -
If that is what a skilled,
Vigilant, flexible,
Unemphasised, enthralled
Catching of happiness is called.

Born Yesterday- Philip Larkin
Written for one of his closest friend's newborn daughter.

[Kallisto]

(Original post by That Bearded Man)
Fair enough, then again "Jews" sounds better?

Because the German Reich had so many Jews gassed? I don't understand why it's better in your opinion. Social democrats and trade unionists were mistreat as well at that time. That shouldn't be forget. That's why it would be fair to quote right in this case.

[Yummy Koochy]

i carry your heart with me
(i carry it in my heart)

from a poem by ee cummings -x-

[Adam C]

All of Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Easily my favourite poem:

"I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

[riotgrrl]

(Original post by XxelliexX)
I love Catullus' poem 85, 'Odi et amo',

Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?
nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

meaning...

I hate and I love. Why do I do it, perhaps you might ask?
I don't know, but I feel it happening to me and I am tormented.

Aaaah, I love it. It's so relatable, I've felt intense feelings of hatred and love towards someone at the same time and it's so confusing and horrible and I think this poem sums it up really nicely.

Speaking of Catullus I'm quite fond of "Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo"

On a slightly more serious note, the whole of Keat's On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer is amazing:


Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

[That Bearded Man]

(Original post by Kallisto)
Because the German Reich had so many Jews gassed? I don't understand why it's better in your opinion. Social democrats and trade unionists were mistreat as well at that time. That shouldn't be forget. That's why it would be fair to quote right in this case.

Why not edit the wiki page?

[more tea vicar?]

The last stanza of An Arundel Tomb by Philip Larkin:

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone finality
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

[JakeAReynolds]

"Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done"

From the marvellous 'Ulysses' by Alfred Lord Tennyson

[Em_Huong]

"So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

- Sonnet 18, Shakespeare.