Which is your favourite poem and why?

Journey of the Magi by T S Eliot. Love it because he paints such a wonderful picture in words you can just see it. And then the ending, the questioning - were we here for a birth of a death? Gives you a lot to think about.
Was introduced to this at college in an English lecture.

What a beautiful post. I’ve been introduced to some new poems which made me thoughtful, nostalgic and cry.

My mum adored and taught me to recite I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

I grew up living with my parents and sister and my Dad’s father in a slum in the fifties. My Grandad used to shave using a cut throat razor. I used to stand under the mirror to watch him. He used to recite-very carefully-“The Burial of Sir John Moore”.

Sea Fever and Crossing The Bar

Tiger Tiger burning bright.

Also my mum used to recite

Albert and the Lion.

Oh, and for a good chuckle I like Benjamin Zephania - particularly Talking Turkeys!

My favourite is The Rose Beyond The Wall frequently used at internment.

Fennel
Ooh just remembered Siegfried Sassoon “Everyone suddenly burst out singing and I was filled with such delight”
It ends with “ the singing will never be done” Very poignant

Gwyneth Daffodils for me too. It was my mum's favourite and she learnt it at school and would often suddenly recite it for us as children. I read it out at her funeral, and like to think she could hear me and enjoyed it.

Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Sea Fever - John Masefield
Cargoes
Fear No more the Heat of the Sun - Shakespeare and more of his sonnets.
Ozymandias
The Jackdaw of Rheims
The Ancient Mariner
and loads of AA Milne

Wordsworth ...Daffodils always remember this poem from my schooldays.

Pam Ayers for me too.........
I am a little rabbit
Sitting in my hutch
I only sit up this end
I don’t like that end much....?

Spike Milligan’s Smile, very appropriate now I think.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 23,

‘If I Lay Here Dead’

Sounds morbid, but she is speaking of true love.

I know it off by heart.

First saw it on a Pirelli calendar, and still remember it, oh, 50 years later.

If we are 'lowering' the tone, can I say Spike Milligan! I love him!

Same as you, Kitty Shakespeare 116.
But poetry has never been my favourite part of english literature.
Except for this poem by Wilfred Owen
Strange Meeting
which we learnt for A level.
Confirmed my feelings of the uselessness of war.

lemongrove

I like the sound of that Bodach I must look it up.
Btw what is a Bodach??

Bodach (Scots Gaelic): an old man; a spectral figure (often a harbinger of doom); a mountain in Scotland.

Take your pick.

janeainsworth Yes I’m enjoying it too.

I wasn’t sure what response I would get but there are so
many lovely poems I haven’t heard of before. I shall be spending a while googling them all.

To name one is virtually impossible for me. Of those already mentioned I would go with The Highwayman, and Naming of Parts and its companion Judging Distances, the latter always reminding me of our CCF instructor yelling “If the hill looks to you like a humpty-backed camel say ‘the hill like a humpty-backed camel’!”

But I think my favourite would have to be a sonnet, possibly Shakespeare’s 130, My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun. But then, I am a sucker for French sonnets of the Sixteenth Century.

Oh dear, I should never have started this comment.

I've just found the Max Boyce poem on YouTube. It was written about the first lock down so worth a listen.

3dognight aquagranI was only thinking about that poem “The Highwayman” the other day. I don’t know why it came into my head, but I remember our primary school teacher reading it to us and we had to learn the first verse. He was using it as an example of where the beat of the poem copies the beat of a horse galloping, or at least I think he was!?

Sarnia

I shall lower the tone by saying pretty much anything by Pam Ayres. 'Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth' might be appropriate for some of us

Not lowering the tone at all. PA is fantastic.

I like a more recent poem by Max Boyce. I think it's called When only the Tide Went Out.

I like the sound of that Bodach I must look it up.
Btw what is a Bodach??

The Golden Road to Samarkand by James Elroy Flecker is one of my favourites. My mother used to quote large segments, and I learned much of it by osmosis. These two stanzas in particular mean a great deal to me.

We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little further; it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow
Across that angry or that glimmering sea,

White on a throne or guarded in a cave
There lies a prophet who can understand
Why men were born: but surely we are brave,
Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

Sarnia

I shall lower the tone by saying pretty much anything by Pam Ayres. 'Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth' might be appropriate for some of us

Oh yes!

Me too, that one in particular