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What Are The 10 Greatest Poems?
Poetry seems to be almost dead in the modern world. I do not think that this is true. The poets of today are songwriters.
What do you think are the ten greatest poems? My preliminary list:
- King David, Psalm 13
- King David, Psalm 22
- Kipling, The Gods of the Copybook Headings
- Henry van Dyke/Beethoven, Hymn to Joy, (musical performance with lyrics; music by Beethoven)
- Macauley, Horatius at the Bridge
- Whitman, O Captain, My Captain
- John McCrae, In Flanders Fields
- Kipling, If
- Wordsworth, She Was A Phantom Of Delight
- Trent Reznor, Hurt (musical performance by Johnny Cash, with lyrics)
It was hard to keep Kipling down to two. It was really hard to keep King David down to two.
As with my post on Great Books, I ask that you not just toss out poems that you think are good. Prioritize. I’d like to see your Top Ten list — or if you prefer, what you would add to and take off from my list.
Published in Literature
I’m seeing a decent representation of poems I’ve memorized for fun in this thread.
I don’t usually like when people try to ask me why I learned this one or that one. It was compelling, that’s all.
I’m gonna agree with @podkayneofisrael that Psalms are their own category.
Thank you so much for including the lovely tragedy of a song, “Hurt” lyrics by Trent Reznor, and sung and performed by Johnny Cash.
https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-sz-001&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=sz&p=Johnny+Cash+%2B+pain+%2B+hurt#id=2&vid=e185421412826c916b5ae3e81abfecb3&action=click
As eloquent in its magnificence as this poem is, it is beyond sad that it describes a modern world increasingly battered and torn apart, where the center no longer holds.
If I had a shiny gun
I could have a world of fun
Putting bullets through the brains
Of all the folks who give me pains.
Or if I had some poison gas
I could make the moments pass
Bumping off a number of
People whom I do not love.
But I have no lethal weapon.
Thus doth fate our pleasure step on!
So they are still alive and well
Who should be, by rights, in hell.
If we’re talking lyricists, I should add a note of praise for Michael Franks. Anyone who can write a song that rhymes “resurrected” with “when you least expect it” is a poet.
Sadder still that it describes the world as well in 2019 as it did in 1919.
The Cremation of Sam McGee was one of my Grand father’s favorites. I always think about him when I read the poem.
I would swap out all the Kipling for more Yeats. And Tennyson’s Ulysses.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
I discovered the Collected Poems of James Joyce in a used bookstore. One section of multiple poems is “Chamber Music”. Number One:
Strings in the earth and air
Make Music sweet;
Strings by the river where
The willows meet.
There’s music along the river
For Love wanders there,
Pat flowers on his mantle,
Dark leaves on his hair.
All softly playing,
With head to the music bent,
And fingers straying
Upon an instrument.
Only to respect the rule stipulated, I’ll
Replace Psalm 13 with 139
Kipling with Thanatopsis by Wm. Cullen Bryant
Macauley with Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens
Whitman with Cassandra by E.A. Robinson
Wordsworth with i carry your heart with me(I carry it in) by e.e. cummings
John Donne:
DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee, 5
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell, 10
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell’st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.
And one by Thomas Centolella:
“In the evening we shall be examined on love.”
-St. John of the Cross
And it won’t be multiple choice,
Though some of us would prefer it that way.
Neither will it be essay, which tempts us to run on
When we should be sticking to the point, if not together.
In the evening there shall be implications
Our fear will change to complications. No cheating,
We’ll be told, and we’ll try to figure out the cost of being true
To ourselves. In the evening when the sky has turned
That certain blue, blue of exam books, blue of no more
Daily evasions, we shall climb the hill as the light empties
And park our tired bodies on a bench above the city
And try to fill in the blanks. And we won’t be tested
Like defendants on trial, cross-examined
Till one of us breaks down, guilty as charged. No,
In the evening, after the day has refused to testify,
We shall be examined on love like students
Who don’t even recall signing up for the course
And now must take their orals, forced to speak for once
From the heart and not off the top of their heads.
And when the evening is over and it’s late,
The student body asleep, even the great teachers
Retired for the night, we shall stay up
And run back over the questions, each in our own way:
What’s true, what’s false, what unknown quantity
Will balance the equation, what it would mean years from now
To look back and know
We did not fail.
———————–
No one has suggested Don Juan?
Wow.
Do No Go Gentle Into That Good Night – Dylan Thomas
I don’t know if this could be considered one of the 10 great poems, but it certainly affected me more that a lot of others. I think I learned about it here. Merrill Glass:
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.
Source: https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/but-you-didnt-by-merrill-glass
I have Ozymandias by Shelley as my 1.
We had a cat named Ozzie. I always thought it was short for Ozymandias, but the kids said it was Ozzie Osbourne.
That gave me chills. (On behalf of all those who didn’t.)
It does that, doesn’t it?
Good pick, Cato. Here’s an interesting performance:
I want to comment on #4. Interesting choice, and great song. It was my favorite from JCS before I was a believer.
Now I’d pick Could We Start Again Please, which wasn’t on the original soundtrack. Gethsemane is great in expressing the anguish of Christ, but theologically unsound in expressing doubt on the part of Jesus and indicating that He wanted some sort of reward. This works in the song from our perspective, leading up to His ultimate acceptance of his mission. But in the Gospels, He never has a shred of doubt about His mission, and His only reward is that He gets to have us with Him, broken as we are.
These have been a bunch of great suggestions. I’m going to modify my list, but cheat a little — I’m going to disqualify the Psalms. This gives me two more slots.
My new adds are:
Thanks directly to Jeff (#46) for Ozymandias, and indirectly to She (#15) for Charge of the Light Brigade. She suggested Tennyson’s Ulysses, which was great — but it made me think of the Charge, which I think is even better.
The inspiration for Orwell’s Animal Farm.
As for Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium:
It’s a fad among Christians to have a life-verse from the Bible. Mine may, alas, not be from the Bible, but may this poem. In particular —
Dude, where’s my line breaks?! Dang formatting!
I thought you were just modernizing it. :)
I was taught plenty of Yeats in school here in Ireland in the 1970s- but never “Second Coming”. Maybe it was too close to the bone. I loved the poems of his I did learn. Many of them were steeped in the explosive politics of his day and he was very political.
“Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone. It’s with O’Leary in the grave”
”All changed, changed utterly, a terrible beauty is born”
PS Some of my kids have managed to get through school without ever encountering a Yeats poem! He mustn’t be diverse enough.
As a young man, rage seemed appropriate. As an old man, I prefer Bryant’s advice:
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
And no one has suggested anything by Houseman. Or T. S. Eliot (unless I missed it).
Well, link your favorites. I’d like to check them out.