English poetry

[NoName]

Does anyone like English poetry? If so, what are some of your favourite poets/poems?

 

[Crop]

I think everyone pales compared to Keats. To Hope, Lamia and To My Brother George are some of my favourites.

Should Disappointment, parent of Despair,
Strive for her son to seize my careless heart;
When,like a cloud, he sits upon the air,
Preparing on his spell bound prey to dart:
Chase him away, sweet Hope,with visage bright,
And fright him as the morning frightens the night! (To Hope)
-
So rainbow-sided, touched with miseries,
She seemed,at once, some penanced lady elf,
Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self.
Upon her crest she wore a wannish fire
Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne's tiar;
Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet!
She had a woman's mouth with all it's pearls complete; (Lamia)

 

[NoName]

Wow! I'm pleasantly surprised because Keats happens to be my favourite as well! I even have Ode to a Nightingale committed to memory.

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.
...

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.
​

When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be is another personal favourite of mine:

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.​

​

 

[Crop]

That's the poem I discovered him by, funnily enough. I read somewhere that F.Scott Fitzgerald used to cry everytime he read it. I had to check it out

 

[shaah]

There is something
inexpressibly beautiful
about the world
when the sun begins to rise
and fill the dim sky
with soft rays of light
and only the birds are awake
to sing to you “good morning”
while everyone else
is curled up in their beds
unaware of the magnificence
they’re missing
and everything feels so simple
it’s as if six a.m. is an epiphany
that sparks at your fingertips
and spreads until
you are encompassed entirely
by a feeling of clarity
there is something
inexpressibly beautiful
about being awake to behold
the splendor of this world
while everyone else
is still asleep

Unknown