Walt Whitman

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  RHP User

  14 years ago

  And the brilliant ending of the movie"Dead Poets Society"     O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won;The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring: But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;Rise up—for :It is some dream that on the deck, You’ve fallen cold and dead. My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won; Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells! But I, with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead     A poem written for Abraham Lincoln after his assassination....the "ship" in question being the United States....   Ah Whitman - they do not write like you did anymore....proud to be an American

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  RHP User

  14 years ago

  But for whatever reason, Whitman just isn't my favorite poet. I liked Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost growing up. I got to do a poetry unit last semester. My favorites from that were John Donne, and the modernists like Yeats and T.S. Eliot. Also, for some reason William Blake, but I think part of that is because I kinda like his crazy philosophies.

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  RHP User

  14 years ago

  Have heard of TS Eliot but I know practically no poetry apart from what I've stumbled across over the years - so reading those names just made me go "...gah?"I visited your profile page looking for clues, but again found myself staring at the screen saying "...gah" - some fabulous pictures and great writing on your page venusflytrapE3.Care to post your favourite example or two since SLK27 and I have posted a little? Always nice to find something new that you like.It is sometimes hard enough "making words go sentence", let alone writing the way talented poets do. Some poetry is flat out amazing.

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  RHP User

  14 years ago

  But she--she heard the violin, And left my side, and entered in: Love passed into the house of lust.   and I love his dry quips Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.

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  2andmore4fun

  14 years ago

  Ah, but the be a prose for some...   I must have lived a life sheltered from such poetic culture, as the first I ever heard of Walt Whitman was....   ".... Damn you Walt Whitman!!..." (Homer Simpson - The Simpson's episode where Homer thought his mother was dead only to discover the grave he thought was hers belongs to Walt Whitman)   Well, one must have a sense of humour (some more frivolous than others) to live on this planet...   Mr Twoandmore...etc

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  RHP User

  14 years ago

  T.S. Eliot is great. He wrote 'The Waste Land' and 'The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock'. Both of those are, too long to post here.Tuscanred, I must read more Oscar Wilde. I have only read 'Dorian Grey', and I did enjoy that.Anyhow, here is some Donne. He was known for being a womanizer in his younger years and then having an unapproved marriage with a protestant woman (he was Catholic and it was the early 17th century) who was I think something between ten and twenty years younger that him. He is also considered one of the best love poets that have written in English. I thought it would be appropriate.THE CANONIZATION.by John DonneFOR God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love ; Or chide my palsy, or my gout ; My five gray hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout ;With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve ; Take you a course, get you a place, Observe his Honour, or his Grace ;Or the king's real, or his stamp'd face Contemplate ; what you will, approve, So you will let me love.Alas ! alas ! who's injured by my love? What merchant's ships have my sighs drown'd? Who says my tears have overflow'd his ground? When did my colds a forward spring remove? When did the heats which my veins fill Add one more to the plaguy bill?Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still Litigious men, which quarrels move, Though she and I do love.Call's what you will, we are made such by love ; Call her one, me another fly, We're tapers too, and at our own cost die, And we in us find th' eagle and the dove. The phoenix riddle hath more wit By us ; we two being one, are it ;So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit. We die and rise the same, and prove Mysterious by this love.We can die by it, if not live by love, And if unfit for tomb or hearse Our legend be, it will be fit for verse ; And if no piece of chronicle we prove, We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms ; As well a well-wrought urn becomesThe greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs, And by these hymns, all shall approve Us canonized for love ;And thus invoke us, "You, whom reverend love Made one another's hermitage ; You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage ;Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove Into the glasses of your eyes ; So made such mirrors, and such spies,That they did all to you epitomize— Countries, towns, courts beg from above A pattern of your love."

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  RHP User

  14 years ago

  Casabianca: son of the Admiral of the Orient during the Battle of the Nile. http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/hemans/works/hf-burning.html The roll Of the Kettledrum:Australia's own Adam Lindsay Gordon - A beautiful and thought provoking poem of an ugly topic (war) written from a War Horse's point of view about Love and Pride and loss. http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/47651/   Flanders Fields: What can one say about this one?? What I mean that is does not say about itself.. http://www.anzacs.net/PoemFlanders.htm   I could list another thousand I have read hear.. damn it!!! I told you not to start me off...   good topic

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  RHP User

  14 years ago

  Beautiful ...

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  RHP User

  14 years ago

  "For it is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not reckon oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively from his own existence."

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  RHP User

  14 years ago

  Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of HeavenHad I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,Enwrought with golden and silver light,The blue and the dim and the dark clothsOf 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. William Butler Yeats

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  RHP User

  14 years ago

  venusflytrap - yes! Donne's command of the language is uniquely compelling in poetry and prose, even to people not usually interested in literature. How much more stirring Hemingway's account of his experiences in the Spanish war became for bearing a title taken from Donne:If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Reading Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray was a a glimpse down the artistic rabbit-hole that I will always cherish. I have saved the introduction to it (too long to post here) but the last few sentences sum it up:We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.

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  RHP User

  14 years ago

  A love that once was Distant Rian Rettino Too cold to speak, too warm to look, you keep your distance from me. A song has played so many nights from a hallow stars mournful call that reminds me of your face and body, your voice, your thoughts, your love. Too dark to walk, too light to meet, you keep your distance from me. If differences and disagreements might tarnish what we have just say it, but if it isn't that you're afraid to loose and understanding then tell me now before I lean too far and fall. Too far to yell, too close to whisper, you keep your distance from me. A memory from a dream that last night came to me kept my mind in rhythm to your hearts unsteady beat. Speak what you want to, tell me abou this one and that, keep my secrets in your hands, but let go now for the pain you put me through is not fair. I care too much about you, I want you to laugh, to smile, to be happy all the time. Too cold to speak, too warm to look, you've kept your distance from me.

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  RHP User

  14 years ago

  William Wordsworth's "She was a Phantom of Delight" has been a constant favorite of mine.I do write my own every now and then, here is one from way back when i was a newly heartbroken 17 year old .~~Someone Else~~I heard you've found someone else, i have heard she is pretty too.i haven't heard you speak of her,or what she means to you.I thought perhaps you'd tell me why,i was the last to know,we used to share our every dream now i see it isn't so.I guess i took to long to find,the words that i should say.you see Ive loved you all this time,I just realized far to late.

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