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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
The Stolen Child -WB Yeats
Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.
I thought about Houseman. I have A Shropshire Lad.
Any list that does not contain any Shakespeare or Homer cannot be complete.
Iliac or the Oddity?
And who can forget:
He was a bleached blond surfing man
He stoppeth one of three
“Upon my soul” she coyly cried
“How come you all stopped me?”
His biceps glistened in the sun,
“I rode a wave” he said.
“From Malibu to Hell and back.”
“You’re nuts” quoth she, “drop dead.”
I did a separate post on the 10 Great Books, and included both on that list. Paradise Lost, too, which another comment mentioned.
If you focus only on shorter work, which Shakespeare would you pick (presumably a sonnet)?
The rise of English Romantic Poetry which I had to study in high school, pretty much seems to have undone the art of poetry. Some of those are very good, but rarely has there been much good after, and less and less have been good as we approach the present. We do not value poetry now because he have the cinema and other forms of entertainment that make poetry pretty much unneeded. We don’t need poems to stir our imaginations because we have movie makers to stir us explicitly.
I prefer the longer works. I only wish I could read Old English better to really appreciate the original form. My Old English is mostly superficial in understanding. I’m fascinated by the form and meter of the alliterative half lines and I think it would be fascinating to see that used in modern English, just to get a feel for it. I believe Tolkein my have written some such poetry in that style, but I’ve not found (or recognized) a good example yet myself. I intend to keep looking.
According to some of the scholarly work published in the Friends of Freddy newsletter, this is possible but not widely accepted. What is irrefutable is that some of Brooks’ writing created Mr. Ed.
I somehow neglected to add Walt Kelly to my list of personal favorites. He loved the sounds that words make. His poetry was like those wonderful mash-up pieces that Peter Schickele would sneak onto P.D.Q. Bach albums, like the Unbegun Symphony and the Quodlibet.
I gather you’re a believer. I am not, so my poem suits me better, but I see your point.
Or, in Nat Lampoon’s parody, “The Lovesong of J. Edgar Hoover:
“The agents call and call again
Talking of Daniel Berrigan.”
and
“I should have been a pair or rugged cuffs
Clamped upon the wrists of Eldridge C.”
Buffalo Dusk
BY CARL SANDBURG
The buffaloes are gone.
And those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and how they pawed the prairie sod into dust with their hoofs, their great heads down pawing on in a great pageant of dusk,
Those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
And the buffaloes are gone.
This Be The Verse
BY PHILIP LARKIN
They f— you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were f—-d up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
My sister and I do this in a responsive reading for certain elect family gatherings.
Jabberwocky
By Lewis Carroll
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Waltzing Matilda
By Banjo Peterson
Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong,
Under the shade of a coolibah tree,
And he sang as he watched and waited ’til his billy boiled,
Who’ll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me?
Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda,
Who’ll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me?
And he sang as he watched and waited ’til his billy boiled,
Who’ll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me?
Along came a jumbuck to drink at the billabong,
Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him with glee,
And he sang as he stowed that jumbuck in his tucker bag,
You’ll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me.
Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda,
Who’ll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me?
And he sang as he watched and waited ’til his billy boiled,
Who’ll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me?
Up rode the squatter, mounted on his thoroughbred,
Down came the troopers, one, two, three,
Whose is that jumbuck you’ve got in your tucker bag? You’ll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me.
Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda,
Who’ll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me?
And he sang as he watched and waited ’til his billy boiled, Who’ll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me?
Up jumped the swagman, leapt into the billabong,
You’ll never catch me alive, said he,
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by the billabong,
Who’ll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me.
Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda,
Who’ll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me?
And he sang as he watched and waited ’til his billy boiled,
Who’ll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me?
See, the Conqu’ring Hero Comes
lyrics: Thomas Morell
music: George Frideric Handel
See, the conqu’ring hero comes!
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums.
Sports prepare, the laurel bring,
Songs of triumph to him sing.
See the godlike youth advance!
Breathe the flutes, and lead the dance;
Myrtle wreaths, and roses twine,
To deck the hero’s brow divine.
See, the conqu’ring hero comes!
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums.
Sports prepare, the laurel bring,
Songs of triumph to him sing.
See, the conqu’ring hero comes!
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums.
I don’t know about your experience in NC or Israel, but I’ve seen buffaloes in Arizona. They’re not gone, and neither am I.
Interestingly enough it is the song that started to bring me back into the faith after my faith was lost. I can’t speak to the theology of it as I said before Heathen; however, this allowed me to consider a relatable connection to Jesus, which makes the story more powerful to me. I still wouldn’t say my faith is restored; however, It has opened the possibility of returning to the path.
Chorus from the rock is Eliot. I probably should have added the T.S.
I adore Houseman, and A Shropshire Lad. And “I have been to Ludlow Fair” (no necktie, though)
Certainly:
But my favorite Houseman, not from A Shropshire Lad, is only four lines long (and often misquoted), and my heart breaks every time I think of it:
So sad. And so hard to live with, for those who survived.
Here I sit,
Broken-hearted.
Paid a dime,
And only farted.
I read this and literally choked on my coffee. “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” parody (duh), Mad Magazine, late 60’s, Don Martin art. My best friend Denny and I had memorized most of this. I can’t remember any of it besides these opening stanzas, but if fed enough Jameson’s will recite them in a loud voice. However, I would suggest the word is “drawled” instead of “cried”. That may be moot, Randy since it’s possible only you and I in all the world remember this gem.
I thought I remembered finding it on the internet once, but I was unable to find it the other night when I looked for it. I used to know more of it, too, but I never memorized the whole thing.
I still sometimes get an earworm for the song that came as a flexible vinyl 45 in Mad Magazine:
She lets me watch her mom and pop fight.
That’s not how the version I know (thanks to my mother) actually goes. . . .
Yes, there are very few pay toilets any more, and I doubt any are a dime, so the verse got changed to Tried to ….
Post-modernist revisionism. Phooey!
;-)
Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson:
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,We people on the pavement looked at him:He was a gentleman from sole to crown,Clean favored, and imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed,And he was always human when he talked;But still he fluttered pulses when he said,”Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked. And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—And admirably schooled in every grace:In fine, we thought that he was everythingTo make us wish that we were in his place. So on we worked, and waited for the light,And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,Went home and put a bullet through his head.
Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden:
Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.When the rooms were warm, he’d call,and slowly I would rise and dress,fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferently to him,who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well.What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?