What Poetry Moved You?

[jelly bean]

“… If anything matters then everything matters.

Because you are important, everything you do is important.

Every time you forgive, the universe changes; every time you reach out and touch a heart or a life, the world changes; with every kindness and service, seen or unseen, my purposes are accomplished and nothing will be the same again.”

– Wm. Paul Young

[Unwritten]

Endymion - A thing of Beauty by John Keats

 

[Seta Sinestro]

If each day falls

inside each night,

there exists a well

where clarity is imprisoned.

 

We need to sit on the rim

of the well of darkness

and fish for fallen light

with patience.

 

- Pablo Neruda

[Unwritten]

“You are always new.

The last of your kisses was ever the sweetest;

the last smile the brightest;

the last movement the gracefullest.

When you pass'd my window home yesterday,

I was fill'd with as much admiration as if

I had then seen you for the first time...

Even if you did not love me I could not help an entire devotion to you.”

 

― John Keats

[boyegoy]

Invictus

[CHRman]

Sorting Laundry" by Elisavietta Ritchie

 

Folding clothes,

I think of folding you

into my life.

 

Our king-sized sheets

like tablecloths

for the banquets of giants,

 

pillowcases, despite so many

washings, seems still

holding our dreams.

 

Towels patterned orange and green,

flowered pink and lavender,

gaudy, bought on sale,

 

reserved, we said, for the beach,

refusing, even after years,

to bleach into respectability.

 

So many shirts and skirts and pants

recycling week after week, head over heels

recapitulating themselves.

 

All those wrinkles

To be smoothed, or else

ignored; they're in style.

 

Myriad uncoupled socks

which went paired into the foam

like those creatures in the ark.

 

And what's shrunk

is tough to discard

even for Goodwill.

 

In pockets, surprises:

forgotten matches,

lost screws clinking the drain;

 

well-washed dollars, legal tender

for all debts public and private,

intact despite agitation;

 

and, gleaming in the maelstrom,

one bright dime,

broken necklace of good gold

 

you brought from Kuwait,

the strangely tailored shirt

left by a former lover…

 

If you were to leave me,

if I were to fold

only my own clothes,

 

the convexes and concaves

of my blouses, panties, stockings, bras

turned upon themselves,

 

a mountain of unsorted wash

could not fill

the empty side of the bed.

[Unwritten]

“Ah! dearest love, sweet home of all my fears,
and hopes, and joys, and panting miseries,
Tonight if I may guess, thy beauty wears a smile of such delight,
As brilliant and as bright
As when with ravished, aching, nassal eyes,
Lost in a soft amaze
I gaze, I gaze”

 

- John Keats. Letters of John Keats

[samsonph]

A Clear Midnight - Poem by Walt Whitman

THIS is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,

Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,

Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou

lovest best.

Night, sleep, death and the stars.

[Olive&Dust]

Fear No More

 

Fear no more the heat o' the sun;
Nor the furious winter's rages,
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages;
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney sweepers come to dust.

Fear no more the frown of the great,
Thou art past the tyrant's stroke:
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning-flash,
Nor the all-dread thunder-stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan;
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renowned be thy grave!

 

- William Shakespeare

[Unwritten]

"Four seasons fill the measure of the year;

There are four seasons in the mind of Man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring's honeyed cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness -to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook: -
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forgo his mortal nature."

 

-John Keats

[Lord Superb]

To Althea, From Prison by Richard Lovelace

 

 

When Love with unconfinèd wings

Hovers within my Gates,

And my divine Althea brings

To whisper at the Grates;

When I lie tangled in her hair,

And fettered to her eye,

The Gods that wanton in the Air,

Know no such Liberty.

When flowing Cups run swiftly round

With no allaying Thames,

Our careless heads with Roses bound,

Our hearts with Loyal Flames;

When thirsty grief in Wine we steep,

When Healths and draughts go free,

Fishes that tipple in the Deep

Know no such Liberty.

When (like committed linnets) I

With shriller throat shall sing

The sweetness, Mercy, Majesty,

And glories of my King;

When I shall voice aloud how good

He is, how Great should be,

Enlarged Winds, that curl the Flood,

Know no such Liberty.

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.

[Lord Superb]

On Love, On Grief by Walter Savage Landor

 

On love, on grief, on every human thing,
Time sprinkles Lethe's water with his wing.

 

 

 

Wow. Game over. Just like that, using only two lines, the poet managed to create a lovely epigram worthy of being inscribed on stone.

Edited June 20, 2017 by Lord Superb

[Unwritten]

An excerpt from John Keats "Ode to a Nightingale"

 

"Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs,

Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. "

[Unwritten]

"I wish to believe in immortality-I wish to live with you forever.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever: Its loveliness increases; It will never Pass into nothingness.

I wish I was either in your arms full of faith, or that a Thunder bolt would strike me.

Dancing music, music sad, Both together, sane and mad…"

 

John Keats

[Unwritten]

"Should ever the fine-eyed maid to me be kind;

Ah! surely it must be whenever I find;

Some flowery spot, sequestered, wild, romantic;

That often must have seen a poet frantic."

 

― Bright Star: John Keats

Edited June 14, 2018 by Unwritten