I can recite "Though art indeed just Lord" by heart and its sentiments of "Why do sinners ways prosper? And why must/ Disappointment all I endeavour end?" tends to hit home every time I catch The Apprentice on telly.

I'm a Philip Phanboi. And for me, it's one of his less known poems - a late one, not in any of his major collections, but available in the Collected Poems WHICH EVERYONE IN THE ENGLISH SPEAKING WORLD MUST OWN BEFORE I GET CROSS.

It's the last two and a half lines that do it: Larkin performs his usual rabbit-out-of-hat trick of taking a particular, unimportant incident and making it speak to universal concerns. And the universal bit in this one is as important to remember as anything I can think of.

I will now stop being an English teacher, I promise. Normal, over-wordy, shut-the-hell-up service resumes.

The Mower

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

was brilliant.

A Word to Husbands

To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup
Whenever you're wrong, admit it
Whenever you're right, shut up.

This delightful verse has adorned most of the cards which we sent congratulating friends on their new babies :

The Baby, by Ogden Nash

A bit of talcum

is always walcum

And all of Tam O'Shanter, which lurks somewhere just out of reach in my memory, but the one section that I can recall of Robert Burns masterpiece is

But pleasures are like poppies spread:
You seize the flow'r, it's bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white-then melts for ever;
Or like the Borealis, race,
That flit ere you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow's lovely form
Evanishing amid the storm.
Nae man can tether time or tide;
The hour approaches Tam maun ride

I can't say I've ever found a use for the first four lines of this old German poem, which I learned at school, but one lives in hope:

Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten,
Daß ich so traurig bin,
Ein Märchen aus uralten Zeiten,
Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.

I do know that other Larkin poem (go on, you know the one I mean) - which is more pertinent to my working life, as a counsellor/therapist!

Just about my favourite poem is Listening To The Koln Concert by Robert Bly. I don't know it by heart. Maybe I will try now, inspired by this thread.

" After we had loved each other intently,
we heard notes tumble together,
in late winter, and we heard ice
falling from the ends of twigs.

The notes abandon so much as they move.
They are the food not eaten, the comfort
not taken, the lies not spoken.
The music is my attention to you.

And when the music came again,
late in the day, I saw tears in your eyes.
I saw you turn your face away
So that others would not see.

When men and women come together,
how much they have to abandon. Wrens
make their nests of fancy threads
and string ends, animals

abandon all their money each year.
What is it that men and women leave?
Harder than wren's doing, they have
to abandon their longing for the perfect.

The inner nest not made by instinct
will never be quite round,
and each has to enter the nest
made by the other imperfect bird."

M'illumino
d'immenso

Mattina by Giuseppe Ungaretti

But it's Larkin for me too. We all know This be the Verse and the one about not wanting to go to a party full of wankers and the one about wanking in the afternoon..

He's immortally good!

I'm useless at remembering poetry - the only one I can safely say I can trot out is Spike Milligan's "Rain".....

"There are holes in the sky
Where the rain gets in.
But they're ever so small
That's why rain is thin."

I love poetry. As I've said elsewhere I'm a huge fan of Simon Armitage in particular.

But this is probably my favourite poem. And useful in times of sadness.

Elizabeth Jennings - Absence

I visited the place where we last met.
Nothing was changed, the gardens were well-tended,
The fountains sprayed their usual steady jet;
There was no sign that anything had ended
And nothing to instruct me to forget.

The thoughtless birds that shook out of the trees,
Singing an ecstasy I could not share,
Played cunning in my thoughts. Surely in these
Pleasures there could not be a pain to bear
Or any discord shake the level breeze.

It was because the place was just the same
That made your absence seem a savage force,
For under all the gentleness there came
An earthquake tremor: Fountain, birds and grass
Were shaken by my thinking of your name.

I'm sorry, fellow Massivers, but I feel a list welling up inside me: my top 10 favourite Larkin poems of all time, to be precise. And quite a few of them have been mentioned already on this thread - further proof that the Word Massive are people of impeccable taste.

1. The Whitsun Weddings
2. The Mower
3. The Dance [Unfinished] - (available in the first edition of the 'Collected Poems,' from the 1980s, but not the in the current one)
4. An Arundel Tomb
5. Going, Going
6. Dockery and Son
7. An April Sunday Brings the Snow
8. The Trees
9. Mr Bleaney
10. Toads

"Larkin, often, is more than memorable: he is instantly unforgettable." - Martin Amis

Oh dear, I seem to have gone a bit off-topic.
Hmmm ... let me see, now. A poem that I know off by heart.
Well, for some reason I know the last 2 verses of Arthur Hugh Clough's "Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth" off by heart:

"For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright!"

Here is Thou Art Indeed Just Lord by Gerald Manley Hopkins as referenced above.

THOU art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?

Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build—but not I build; no, but strain,
Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

Hopkins was a gay English Jesuit based in Ireland, his poetry was not published in his lifetime and, as you can tell, he felt things very deeply. Poetry for me works best when it has form, rhythm, a rhyming scheme, all those old fashioned things which you don't see enough of in modern stuff. This poem is perfect. It's a sonnet with a rhyming scheme but the internal rhythms break down, mimicking Hopkins own feelings. I don't believe in God, but crying out to him in despair is a deeply human thing to do.

Crying out in despair so eloquently and with dignity and such formal precision is bloody remarkable.

Little Jimmy gave a shout
And gouged the baby's eyeballs out.
He jumped on them and made them pop
and mummy said "Jimmy, stop!"

on my mind. An Irish airman foresees his death.

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

Discovered the below in a Lester Bangs review of Astral Weeks about ten years ago.

It remains the most beautiful congregation of words I have ever encountered and I have returned to it enough times over the years to be able to recite it by heart.

My heart of silk
Is filled with lights
With lost bells
With lilies and bees
I will go far
Farther than those hills
Farther than the seas
Close to the stars
To beg Christ the Lord
To give back the soul I had
Of old, when I was a child
Ripened by legends
With a feathered cap
And a wooden sword

I left my vest and socks there, I wonder if they're dry?"

John Masefield / Spike Milligan.

Scots grump-meister, Hugh MacDiarmid, wrote some sublime short poems in the 1920s that breathed new life into the Scots language. Even if you don't get the words, just surf on the sounds:

Mars is braw in crawmassy
Venus in her green silk goun
The auld moon shaks her gowden feathers
Their starry talk's a wheen o blethers
Nane for thee a thochtie sparin
Earth, thou bonnie broukit bairn
But greet and in your tears ye'll droun
The hale clanjamfrie

We had this as a reading at our wedding

Galactic Love Poem, by Adrian Henri

Warm your feet at the sunset
Before we go to bed
Read your book by the light of Orion
With Sirius guarding your head
Then reach out and switch off the planets
We'll watch them go out one by one
You kiss me and tell me you love me
By the light of the last setting sun
We'll both be up early tomorrow
A new universe has begun.

One of the few other poems that I can almost still recite off by heart, having had to learn it at school, is Hilaire Belloc's Tarantella 'Do you remember an inn, Miranda, do you remember an inn ?...'. The first time I understood how poetry can be used to reference a particular rhythm, in this case the dance (I'm sure there is a term for this but I can't remember it !)

Just because this has been ruined for 10 years'-worth of GCSE English students doesn't make it any less heart-stopping.

On My First Sonne
by Ben Jonson

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sinne was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy;
Seven yeeres tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I loose all father, now. For why
Will man lament the state he should envie?
To have so soon scap'd worlds and fleshes rage,
And, if no other miserie, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say here doth lye
Ben. Jonson his best piece of poetrie.
For whose sake, hence-forth, all his vowes be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.

But I distinctly remember hearing this at school, written by John Hegley.

Electric Chair

The volts,
The jolts,
The end.

Can I have fifty pounds to mend the shed? I'm
right on my uppers. I can pay you back
when this postal order comes from Australia.
Honestly.
Hope the bladder trouble's getting
better.
Love,
Ewan

For the ages...

this came to me from a friend who knew it by heart, and I have remembered it as this. She didn't know who had written it, and google hasn't helped me. I don't think it's high literature (how would I know anyway), but I think it captures a particular situation well...

You talk about the one you want
and loving you I listen.
Your words come from a holy font
and hearing you I glisten.
For you are my magic, my tragic, my pet
and I've prayed every prayer I know how to
But that I haven't made you love me yet
is something I must bow to.
Which makes my choices now two.
Either I can run from you, or be the friend you confide in.
And since even in pain I get joy from you,
The latter's the hell I'll abide in.

The one I remember is:

Out of work, divorced
Usually pissed
He aimed low in life
And missed

We learned this by heart at school when I was about 8, and I can still remember most of it! I love the way the meter matches the sounds of a train. Clever.

This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner and the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.

Thro' sparse counties she rampages,
Her driver's eye upon the gauges.
Panting up past lonely farms
Fed by the fireman's restless arms.
Striding forward along the rails
Thro' southern uplands with northern mails.

Winding up the valley to the watershed,
Thro' the heather and the weather and the dawn overhead.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.

Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheepdogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.

Dawn freshens, the climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends
Towards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes,
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In the dark glens, beside the pale-green sea lochs
Men long for news.

Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from the girl and the boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or visit relations,
And applications for situations
And timid lovers' declarations
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled in the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Notes from overseas to Hebrides
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring,
The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

Thousands are still asleep
Dreaming of terrifying monsters,
Or of friendly tea beside the band at Cranston's or Crawford's:
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
And shall wake soon and long for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

I have never seen a sign which says

- POET WANTED -

turnip trimmers
forklift drivers
dog handlers
roustabouts
wranglers
finishers
riveters
tanners
extras

yes

all these and more

wanted

poets

never

I suppose it is because
apart from their mammies
nobody really does.

- Pat Ingolsby ( Dublin poet and man about town, literally )

I once recited this at an open mic music night, as I was the only person who hadn't played something (and am useless on guitar):

I am the vicar of St Pauls
And I'm ringing the steeple bell
The roof of the church is on fire
Or the lid has come off hell

Should I trust in the fire brigade?
Or should I trust in the lord?
Oh no! I've just remembered!
I don't think we're insured!

"What's this then?" says the fire chief
"Is this church C of E?
It is? Then we can't put it out!
My lads are all RC!"

for 35 years. I can remember these word for word: -

Cousin Daisy's favourite sport,
Was standing on street-corners,
Needless to say,
She caught a nasty disease,
Notwithstanding.

Elmer Hoover,
On vac from Vancouver,
Went fishing of the Pier-Head.
He caught an old boot, dysentery,
And a shoal of slimy white balloon-things.

'Mersey Cod!', we told him.
'But you should have seen the one that got away!', he boasted, nonplussing his mates.

Uncle Jed, Durham-bred,
Raced pigeons for money.
He died a poor man, however,
As the pigeons were invariably
Too quick for him.

Also from Martin Halls, 'The Stan Cullis Blues'

The night Stan Cullis died,
Wolverhampton wandered round in circles.
Like a disallowed goal, looking for a friendly linesman.

And

Quasimodo and Richard The Third

Went to Ascot,
Packed their lunches,
Followed the horses,
Played their hunches.

He isn't much remembered now, but Andrew Young's beautifully crafted poems - often about nature and man's relation with it - stick in my mind.

A Dead Mole

Strong-shouldered mole,
That so much lived below the ground,
Dug, fought and loved, hunted and fed,
For you to raise a mound
Was as for us to make a hole;
What wonder now that being dead
Your body lies here stout and square
Buried within the blue vault of the air?

From memory so may not get them quite right...
All strike me as wise and highly memorable. And all contain phrases that stick in the mind forever. Thanks for The Mower, Bob. It's not a poem of his I know, and, you're right, it's truly wonderful. As for Aubade, it never loses its power.

(1) by Stevie Smith
The nearly right,
And yet not quite,
In love, is wholly evil.
And any heart,
That loves in part
Is mortgaged to the devil.

I loved,
Or thought I loved in sort.
Was this to love akin?
To take the best
And leave the rest
And let the devil in?

O lovers true
And others too
Whose best is only better,
Take my advice
Shun compromise
Forget him and forget her.

(2) William Empson
It is this deep blankness is the real thing strange.
The more things happen to you the more you can't
Tell or remember even what they were.

The contradictions cover such a range.
The talk would talk and go so far aslant.
You don't want madhouse and the whole thing there.

(3) AE Housman
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows.
What are those blue remembered hills
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain.
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

Sorry guys. Long post. But I wanted to share. Great thread.

You know, the one which starts

What is this life if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare

And as I felt a bit lazy seeing everyone had posted in full, here it is

W. H. Davies

Leisure

WHAT is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?—
No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

to be knocked sideways by a late contender for thread of the year.

Breathtaking.

Carry on.

I have outlived
my youthfulness
So a quiet life for me.

Where once
I used to
scintillate

now I sin
till ten
past three.

One I do know by heart

Prayer - Carol Ann Duffy

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

And one I wish I could rattle off all the way through

In the Stump of the Old Tree - Hugh Sykes Davies

In the stump of the old tree, where the heart has rotted out, there is a hole the length of a man's arm, and a dank pool at the bottom of it where the rain gathers, and the old leaves turn into lacy skeletons. But do not put your hand down to see, because

in the stumps of old trees, where the hearts have rotted out, there are holes the length of a man's arm, and dank pools at the bottom where the rain gathers and old leaves turn to lace, and the beak of a dead bird gapes like a trap. But do not put your hand down to see, because

in the stumps of old trees with rotten hearts, where the rain gathers and the laced leaves and the dead bird like a trap, there are holes the length of a man's arm, and in every crevice of the rotten wood grow weasel's eyes like molluscs, their lids open and shut with the tide. But do not put your hand down to see, because ...

... in the stumps of old trees where the hearts have rotted out there are holes the length of a man's arm where the weasels are trapped and the letters of the rook language are laced on the sodden leaves, and at the bottom there is a man's arm. But do not put your hand down to see, because

in the stumps of old trees where the hearts have rotted out there are deep holes and dank pools where the rain gathers, and if you ever put your hand down to see, you can wipe it in the sharp grass till it bleeds, but you'll never want to eat with it again.

One of only a coupla wedges of poetry I know by rote is the last verse of Robert Frost's 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening' :

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

..... I read it in all place's in a Clive Barker novel called 'Weaveworld', and there's something about it that's hung in the memory. This has been the case with the other shard of verse that has lodged in my cranium. This, a much much abridged version of Alan Seeger's 'I have a rendezvous with Death', was the soundtrack, of all things, of a TV advert for the videogame 'Gears Of War' (brilliantly and mordantly delivered by W Morgan Sheppard, recently in Mad Men, but to me forever Blank Reg in Max Headroom) - again, this hacked-to-bits version sounded a bell within me - I suspect that if you are possibly ex-military, or are just really really into Bauhaus, it might just do the same :

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath
I have a rendezvous with Death
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

... and in the words of Crimewatch : don't have nightmares!

BR
FT

EASTER ZUNDAY

Last Easter Jim put on his blue
Frock cwoat, the vu'st time-vier new;
Wi' yollow buttons all o' brass,
That glitter'd in the zun lik' glass;
An' pok'd 'ithin the button-hole
A tutty he'd a-begg'd or stole.
A span-new wes-co't, too, he wore,
Wi' yellow stripes all down avore;
An' tied his breeches' lags below
The knee, wi' ribbon in a bow;
An' drow'd his kitty-boots azide,
An' put his laggens on, an' tied
His shoes wi' strings two vingers wide,
Because 'twer Easter Zunday.

An' after mornen church wer out
He come back hwome, an' stroll'd about
All down the vields, an' drough the leane,
Wi' sister Kit an' cousin Jeane,
A-turnen proudly to their view
His yollow breast an' back o' blue.
The lambs did play, the grounds wer green,
The trees did bud, the zun did sheen;
The lark did zing below the sky,
An' roads wer all a-blown so dry,
As if the zummer wer begun;
An' he had sich a bit o' fun!
He meade the maidens squeal an' run,
Because 'twer Easter Zunday.

I used to be able to do a passable accent before it went all foreign, honest Captain!

... when I was about 12, I learnt this Limerick by heart after a political scandal. I find myself reciting it at odd times for no apparent reason.

Now look here Lord Lambton said Ted,
They filmed you quite naked in bed,
But the worst of the story,
Is that you're a damn Tory,
Why couldn't it have been Harold instead

I also had one about the Balcombe Street Siege but it escapes me just now

 
is my favourite poet and the first stanza of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is very memorable - practically ushering in the Modernist area.

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats         
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …         
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
 
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

Since we are revealing favourites (but I can't claim to know them by heart

Song by Auden

Deftly admiral cast your fly
into the slow deep hover
Till the wise old trout mistake and die
Salt are the deeps that cover
the glittering fleets that you led
white is your head

Read on ambassador engrossed
in your favourite Stendhal
The Outer Provinces are lost
Unshaven horsemen swill
the great wines of the chateaux
Where you danced long ago

Do not turn do not lift your eyes
Towards the still pair standing
On the bridge between your properties
Indifferent to your minding
In its glory in its power
This is their hour

Nothing your strength your skill could do
Can alter their embrace
Or dispersuade the Furies who
at the appointed place
With claw and dreadful brow
Wait for them now

Or The Sunlight on the Garden by Louis Macneice. It starts

The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold
We cannot cage the minute
within its nets of gold
etc

Poetry to be said aloud, not read quietly

Edgar Lee Masters' "Spoon River Anthology", mainly because it's the kind of idea you wish you had thought of first...but it also contains some really beautiful poetry.
( Also - it's one of very few books of poetry in the english language that I own...when you all learn to speak swedish my selection will be much more impressive! ;) )
Oh, and if you don't know the idea behind this book; it's a collection of monologues from the deceased part of the population of the Spoon River community...
Here's the voice of

Eugenia Todd

Have any of you, passers-by,
Had an old tooth that was an unceasing discomfort ?
Or a pain in the side that never quite left you ?
Or a malignant growth that grew with time ?
So that even in profoundest slumber
There was shadowy consciousness or the phantom of thought
Of the tooth, the side, the growth ?
Even so thwarted love, or defeated ambition,
Or a blunder in life which mixed your life
Hopelessly to the end,
Will, like a tooth, or a pain in the side,
Float through your dreams in the final sleep
Till perfect freedom from the earth-sphere
Comes to you as one who wakes
Healed and glad in the morning!

Charles Bukowski was an incredibly prolific poet, and much as I love his work, many of the poems sort of blend into one in my mind.

But this one stands out. The last stanza is like a punch.

the bully

actually, I do think that
my father was
insane,
the way he drove his
car,
honking,
cursing at people;
the way he got into
violent arguments
in public places
over the most
trivial incidents;
the way he beat
his only child
almost daily
upon the slightest
provocation.

of course, bullies
sometimes meet their
masters.

I remember once
entering the house
and my mother
told me,
"your father was
in a terrible
fight."

I looked for him,
found him sitting
on the toilet
with the bathroom
door
open.

his face was a mass of
bruises, welts,
puffed and black
eyes.
he even had a broken
arm
in a cast.

I was 13 years old.
I stood looking
at him.
I looked for
some time.

then he screamed,
"what the hell you
staring at!
what's your
problem?"

I looked at him
some more,
then walked
off.

it was to be
3 years later
that
I would knock him
on his
ass, no problem
with that
at
all.

Not as magnificent as some of the previous posts, but tremendous fun to read aloud with melodramatic voices to a 6 year old boy (and a great message too):

The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set —
Or better still, just don't install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we've been,
We've watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone's place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnotised by it,
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don't climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink —
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK — HE ONLY SEES!
'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say,
'But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!'
We'll answer this by asking you,
'What used the darling ones to do?
'How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?'
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
THEY… USED… TO… READ! They'd READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!
Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales
Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
And treasure isles, and distant shores
Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
And pirates wearing purple pants,
And sailing ships and elephants,
And cannibals crouching 'round the pot,
Stirring away at something hot.
(It smells so good, what can it be?
Good gracious, it's Penelope.)
The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,
And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and-
Just How The Camel Got His Hump,
And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,
And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,
There's Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole-
Oh, books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks-
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They'll now begin to feel the need
Of having something to read.
And once they start — oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen
They'll wonder what they'd ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did.

101 Reasons Why He's David Bowie
And You're Not

David uses his spare time
For dreaming up new styles
He never spends Whit Monday
In the bathroom, grouting tiles

David's early efforts
Often dwealt on alienation
He never noted Diesels
Or hung out on Reading station

David shaved both eyebrows
And the net effect was arty
He never had just one done
While unconcious at a party

David in his sixth decade
Still has a head of hair on
And not some strands resembling
A barcode printed thereon

David orders goodies
From an oriental teashop
He doesn't trawl for bargains
In the pound & 50p shop

David dabbled earlier on
With Genet, Brecht and Fassbinder
He didn't lie on sofas
Drinking "spesh" and watching Minder

David put on make-up
And a dress, in search of glamour
And unlike you, he wasn't chased
By skinheads with a hammer

David says "Good evening.
Here's a song of mine from Low ."
And never: "Orright, Dog's Head?
This is one by Status Quo..."

During my O Levels we did a fair bit of Larkin (whom I liked), Wilfred Owen (powerful but made me want to slash my wrists) and John Betjeman. The one that sticks in my mind is this, and looking at the way things are now it resonates with me even more in its typically JB way: quirky, outwardly flippant and glib, but actually quite passionate and sincere below its avuncular surface:

THE VILLAGE INN

"The village inn, the dear old inn,
So ancient, clean and free from sin,
True centre of our rural life
Where Hodge sits down beside his wife
And talks of Marx and nuclear fission
With all a rustic's intuition.
Ah, more than church or school or hall,
The village inn's the heart of all."

So spake the brewer's P. R. O.,
A man who really ought to know,
For he is paid for saying so.
And then he kindly gave to me
A lovely coloured booklet free.
'Twas full of prose that sang the praise
Of coaching inns in Georgian days,
Showing how public-houses are
More modern than the motor-car,
More English than the weald or wold
And almost equally as old,
And run for love and not for gold
Until I felt a filthy swine
For loathing beer and liking wine,
And rotten to the very core
For thinking village inns a bore,
And village bores more sure to roam
To village inns than stay at home.

And then I thought I must be wrong,
So up I rose and went along
To that old village alehouse where
In neon lights is written "Bear".

Ah, where's the inn that once I knew
With brick and chalky wall
Up which the knobbly pear-tree grew
For fear the place would fall?

Oh, that old pot-house isn't there,
It wasn't worth our while;
You'll find we have rebuilt "The Bear"
In Early Georgian style.

But winter jasmine used to cling
With golden stars a-shine
Where rain and wind would wash and swing
The crudely painted sign.

And where's the roof of golden thatch?
The chimney-stack of stone?
The crown-glass panes that used to match
Each sunset with their own?

Oh now the walls are red and smart,
The roof has emerald tiles.
The neon sign's a work of art
And visible for miles.

The bar inside was papered green,
The settles grained like oak,
The only light was paraffin,
The woodfire used to smoke.

And photographs from far and wide
Were hung around the room:
The hunt, the church, the football side,
And Kitchener of Khartoum.

Our air-conditioned bars are lined
With washable material,
The stools are steel, the taste refined,
Hygienic and ethereal.

Hurrah, hurrah, for hearts of oak!
Away with inhibitions!
For here's a place to sit and soak
In sanit'ry conditions.

I particularly love the venomous, "The neon sign's a work of art
And visible for miles."

This is from The Goodies File from about 1974 and it's stuck in my head ever since. It's the original cast of characters from the film White Christmas. (Bing Crosby played "Two-Ears" Laybelle, apparently.)

Irma Dreaming
Arthur White
Chris Muss
Jess Lake
Juan Sui
Hugh Sterneaux.
Wendy Treetops-Glisson
Anne Chilled-Wren
Liz Enn
"Two Ears" Laybelle
Cindy Snow

Emma Dreaming
Arthur White
Chris Musswhit
Avery Chrise
Miss Carr
Dai Wright.
Mayor Dazeby
Mary-Ann Bright
Anne-May Hall-York-Rhys
Mrs B. White

Banging My Head Against A Brick Wall

It's like banging my head against a brick wall
she said.
Banging my head against a brick wall.

I adore Larkin too

This is a short one I've known by heart for years, the last line always slays me...

The View

The view is fine from fifty,
Experienced climbers say;
So, overweight and shifty,
I turn to face the way
That led me to this day.

Instead of fields and snowcaps
And flowered lanes that twist,
The track breaks at my toe-caps
And drops away in mist.
The view does not exist.

Where has it gone, the lifetime?
Search me. What’s left is drear.
Unchilded and unwifed, I’m
Able to view that clear:
So final. And so near.

I learnt this by heart at junior school. Apologies if I've got the words wrong, I haven't seen it written down since about 1970. Don't even know who it's by.

The little ships, the little ships,
Sailed out across the sea,
To save the luckless armies,
From death and slavery

From Tyne and Thames and Tamar,
From the Severn and the Clyde,
The little ships, the little ships,
Sailed out in all their pride.

And home they brought the warriors,
Weary, ragged and worn,
Back to the hills and shires
And towns where they were born.

Three hundred thousand warriors,
From hell to home they came,
In the little ships, the little ships
Of everlasting fame

This is wonderful.

Bursting to add and get involved but am stuck at work.

Epic
I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided: who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.

I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul"
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel -
"Here is the march along these iron stones."

That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was most important? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.

This one's important to me for a couple of reasons: because it's so beautiful that I felt an urgent, completely-out-of character need to learn it by heart - but, by absolute coincidence, I subsequently found out it's the only poem my dad knows too.

Which really got to me. In a good way. Says something about both of us, I think.

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high pil`d 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 feel 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.

at Hull between '82 and '85 I'd regularly see Larkin around the Brynmor Jones library. He'd stand and glower silently and menacingly at any student who dared to chain his/her bike to the University Library railings. He knew how to keep a good stock of jazz records on the top floor, though. I loved hearing recently how annoyed Larkin was supposed to be by Kingsley Amis's choice of records on desert island discs. Apparently Amis was initiated into the joys of jazz by Larkin and all of the former's jazz selections were inspired by stuff Larkin had introduced him to.

I adore poetry, and thus this thread a total treat has been. I get great comfort from poems. Secret jewells existing in books hidden on shelves. I love the rhythms and the silence, and the simultaneity of these. To read alone, and yet to hear the walking or galloping of meter and verse. Nothing else comes close - linguistically at least.

Here's my all time favourite - made myself learn it one year, because I loved it.

Dover Beach - a poem by Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægæan, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

I can recite the whole of The Green Eye Of The Little Yellow God. And the first few verses of Kubla Khan. And there's always the classic My Friend Billy. My favourite, though, is from the pen of Percy Bysse Shelley.

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away

... I yell "Look on my works ye mighty and despair!" I last yelled it after baking bread.

I plan to yell it when I successfully post a picture to this bloody website.

If you're interested in Larkin, you ought to look at Hardy, who was one of his main poetic influences. I became fixated with this poem a few years ago, when I was going through a particularly bad bout of the winter blues. I found it strangely consoling though...

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

This Be The Verse:

They fuck 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 fucked up in their time
By fools in old style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy sweet
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.

It is brilliant still, setting aside the profanity.

Moonlit Apples by John Drinkwater

At the top of the house the apples are laid in rows,
And the skylight lets the moonlight in, and those
Apples are deep-sea apples of green. There goes
A cloud on the moon in the autumn night.

A mouse in the wainscot scratches, and scratches, and then
There is no sound at the top of the house of men
Or mice; and the cloud is blown, and the moon again
Dapples the apples with deep-sea light.

They are lying in rows there, under the gloomy beams;
On the sagging floor; they gather the silver streams
Out of the moon, those moonlit apples of dreams,
And quiet is the steep stair under.

In the corridors under there is nothing but sleep.
And stiller than ever on orchard boughs they keep
Tryst with the moon, and deep is the silence, deep
On moon-washed apples of wonder.

The Smile by David Lusher

He donned his silver visor,
And electronic boots,
His stereophonic helmet,
And nuclear flying suit.
The rocket sat there waiting,
To journey into space.
He kissed his wife and kids goodbye,
A smile upon his face.

Strange worlds, they were waiting,
New planets to explore.
He clambered up the ladder,
And then sealed the airlock door.
The count-down slowly ended,
All engines fired, and then,
The craft, it just exploded,
And vaporised his grin.

..is - IMO - a much underrated poet. I spent a fair amount of this summer taking tour groups around Highgate Cemetery, and the Rossetti/Siddal grave was far and away my favourite stopping off point.

If it's love poetry you're after then I think it's hard to beat "A Birthday"by Christina Rossetti, although I'd particularly recommend "Goblin Market" to anyone which I think is hugely important in the canon of Victorian poetry, and interpretible on a whole number of different levels. A link below if you haven't read it previously, as it's very long:

http://plexipages.com/reflections/goblin.html

A Birthday

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.

We've all been here but Frost expresses it much better than I ever could.

Acquainted with the Night (Robert Frost)

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
A luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

I also came across this Russian poem from the 2nd World War in a wonderful volume of poems about the 20th century entitled "Scanning the Century". I bought it years ago and dip into it now and again.
This poem speaks volumes about what the Russians suffered in that war and the reckoning that came afterwards.

Retribution by Ilya Ehrenburg (a notable Soviet writer).

She lay beside the bridge. The German troops had reckoned
To cheapen her by this. Instead, her nakedness
Was like an ancient statue's unadorned perfection,
Was like unspotted Nature's loveliness and grace.
We covered her and carried her. The bridge, unsteady,
Appeared to palpitate beneath our precious load.
Our soldiers halted there, in silence stood bare-headed,
Each transformed, acknowledging the debt he owed.
The Justice headed westward. Winter was a blessing,
With hatred huddled mute, and snows a fiery ridge.
The fate of Germany that murky day was settled
Because of one dead girl, beside a shaky bridge.

I like the poetry of Andrew Waterhouse (1958-2001). I've had this poem taped on the side of my bookcase for a while now:

Looking for the Comet

You push back the sheet, leave me
naked and cooling in the night air.
You stand by the window,
by the yellow flowers in their blue vase
and there’s moon on your face and shoulders.
“It’s here”, you say, but I’m pretending sleep,
and just watch you, watching the comet
moving off towards the sun and beyond.

A car passes. Headlights fill the window,
making new shadows, that rise, then fall.
You take a flower from the vase,
carry it to me in both hands, slowly wipe
the petals over my face. Now, I can smell
the pollen on my skin, feel the trail.

Lallans Society

Graun' meeting the nicht
Tae debate the spellin'
O' this poster.

Can't be right!

The Whale

The Whale that wanders round the Pole
Is not a table fish.
You cannot bake or boil him whole
Nor serve him in a dish;

But you may cut his blubber up
And melt it down for oil.
And so replace the colza bean
(A product of the soil).

These facts should all be noted down
And ruminated on,
By every boy in Oxford town
Who wants to be a Don

* Aside from Janice's reference

There once was a young man named eenis.......

...to Ogden Nash, here's his Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man

It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts,
That all sin is divided into two parts.
One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important,
And it is what you are doing when you are doing something you ortant,
And the other kind of sin is just the opposite and is called a sin of omission
and is equally bad in the eyes of all right-thinking people, from
Billy Sunday to Buddha,
And it consists of not having done something you shuddha.
I might as well give you my opinion of these two kinds of sin as long as,
in a way, against each other we are pitting them,
And that is, don't bother your head about the sins of commission because
however sinful, they must at least be fun or else you wouldn't be
committing them.
It is the sin of omission, the second kind of sin,
That lays eggs under your skin.
The way you really get painfully bitten
Is by the insurance you haven't taken out and the checks you haven't added up
the stubs of and the appointments you haven't kept and the bills you
haven't paid and the letters you haven't written.
Also, about sins of omission there is one particularly painful lack of beauty,
Namely, it isn't as though it had been a riotous red-letter day or night every
time you neglected to do your duty;
You didn't get a wicked forbidden thrill
Every time you let a policy lapse or forget to pay a bill;
You didn't slap the lads in the tavern on the back and loudly cry Whee,
Let's all fail to write just one more letter before we go home, and this round
of unwritten letters is on me.
No, you never get any fun
Out of things you haven't done,
But they are the things that I do not like to be amid,
Because the suitable things you didn't do give you a lot more trouble than the
unsuitable things you did.
The moral is that it is probably better not to sin at all, but if some kind of
sin you must be pursuing,
Well, remember to do it by doing rather than by not doing.

it was the strings of my guitar"

Joni.

Pure poetry. Sheer class.

Perfect cheekbones.

I've really enjoyed your poems, thank you so much! I can't claim to know this all off by heart, but each year I'm getting a little closer. Have a good Christmas everyone. katyx

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled down for a long winter's nap,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too.
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.
His eyes -- how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night."

From "The Man With Two Brains", I think...

The Pointy Birds
So pointy-pointy,
Anoint my head,
Anointy-nointy.

But seriously my personal favourites are "The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock" by TS Eliot and "This Be The Verse" by Larkin.

The only "proper" poems I know off by heart are two I remember from years back when my stepmum was doing an English lit O level at night school (she hadn't done it at school, you see.) There were two ridiculously short poems in the book, and I remember them clearly:

"Croft" by Stevie Smith

Aloft
In the loft
Sits Croft
He is soft.

Also "Spring" by William Heyer (I think that was the name)

I have seen
The honeysuckle twine
The moss-green rib-cage
Of a fawn.

to us when I was small - I don't know if this is unusual. I still remember them though.

They were usually the same 3 - One was Windy Nights by RLS

Whenever the moon and stars are set,
Whenever the wind is high,
All night long in the dark and wet,
A man goes riding by.
Late in the night when the fires are out,
Why does he gallop and gallop about?

Whhenever the trees are crying aloud,
And ships are tossed at sea,
By, on the highway, low and loud,
By at the gallop goes he.
By at the gallop he goes, and then
By he comes back at the gallop again.

The second was The Pedlar-Man

I wish I lived in a caravan,
With a horse to drive, like the pedlar man!
Where he comes from nobody knows,
Or where he goes to, but on he goes!

He has a wife, with a baby brown,
And they go riding from town to town!
Crying, "Chairs to mend and Delft to sell!"
He clashes the basins like a bell;
Tea-trays, baskets, ranged in order,
Plates with the alphabet round the border!

With the pedlar-man I should like to roam,
And write a book when I came home;
All the people would read my book,
Just like the Travels of Captain Cook!

The 3rd I can can only remember the beginning:-

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

All of these were very exciting for a small child -maybe that was the point.

My Dad used to read us this one. It has a real sense of Gothic tragedy about it.

Title: Lucy Gray
Author: William Wordsworth

Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray,
And when I cross'd the Wild,
I chanc'd to see at break of day
The solitary Child.

No Mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wild Moor,
The sweetest Thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!

You yet may spy the Fawn at play,
The Hare upon the Green;
But the sweet face of Lucy Gray
Will never more be seen.

"To-night will be a stormy night,
You to the Town must go,
And take a lantern, Child, to light
Your Mother thro' the snow."

"That, Father! will I gladly do;
'Tis scarcely afternoon--
The Minster-clock has just struck two,
And yonder is the Moon."

At this the Father rais'd his hook
And snapp'd a faggot-band;
He plied his work, and Lucy took
The lantern in her hand.

Not blither is the mountain roe,
With many a wanton stroke
Her feet disperse, the powd'ry snow
That rises up like smoke.

The storm came on before its time,
She wander'd up and down,
And many a hill did Lucy climb
But never reach'd the Town.

The wretched Parents all that night
Went shouting far and wide;
But there was neither sound nor sight
To serve them for a guide.

At day-break on a hill they stood
That overlook'd the Moor;
And thence they saw the Bridge of Wood
A furlong from their door.

And now they homeward turn'd, and cry'd
"In Heaven we all shall meet!"
When in the snow the Mother spied
The print of Lucy's feet.

Then downward from the steep hill's edge
They track'd the footmarks small;
And through the broken hawthorn-hedge,
And by the long stone-wall;

And then an open field they cross'd,
The marks were still the same;
They track'd them on, nor ever lost,
And to the Bridge they came.

They follow'd from the snowy bank
The footmarks, one by one,
Into the middle of the plank,
And further there were none.

Yet some maintain that to this day
She is a living Child,
That you may see sweet Lucy Gray
Upon the lonesome Wild.

O'er rough and smooth she trips along,
And never looks behind;
And sings a solitary song
That whistles in the wind.

A bit late, but this one hasn't been mentioned yet. I came across it in my teenage years, in Stephen King's "Salem's Lot," and it stuck in my head then and never left it. I never quite understood it, though:

Wallace Stevens - "The Emperor of Ice-cream"

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

It was first published in in the 1920s ('24, I think). It's vaguely about death, he's looking at a body lying out before the wake or something.

Good single too...to be spoken with Manc accent

TWAT

Like a Night Club in the morning, you’re the bitter end.
Like a recently disinfected shit-house, you’re clean round the bend.
You give me the horrors - too bad to be true
All of my tomorrows are lousy coz of you.

You put the Shat in Shatter
Put the Pain in Spain
Your germs are splattered about
Your face is just a stain

You’re certainly no raver, commonly known as a drag.
Do us all a favour; here... wear this polythene bag.

You’re like a dose of scabies; I’ve got you under my skin.
You make life a fairy tale... Grimm!

People mention murder, the moment you arrive.
I’d consider killing you if I thought you were alive.
You’ve got this slippery quality, it makes me think of phlegm,
and a dual personality - I hate both of them.

Your bad breath, vamps disease, destruction, and decay.
Please, please, please, please, take yourself away.
Like a death a birthday party, you ruin all the fun.
Like a sucked and spat out smartie,
you’re no use to anyone.
Like the shadow of the guillotine
on a dead consumptive’s face.
Speaking as an outsider, what do you think of the human race?

You went to a progressive psychiatrist.
He recommended suicide...
before scratching your bad name off his list,
and pointing the way outside.

You hear laughter breaking through, it makes you want to fart.
You’re heading for a breakdown, better pull yourself apart.

Your dirty name gets passed about when something goes amiss.
Your attitudes are platitudes, just make me wanna piss.

What kind of creature bore you
Was is some kind of bat
They can’t find a good word for you,
but I can...
TWAT.

People will tell you it's a dying artform and no-one wants poetry anymore...how wonderful that this thread proves them wrong!

My memory for whole poems is a bit shaky and out of practice though I can still remember a few Cautionary Tales by Hillaire Belloc, a bit of Minesweepers by Kipling and The Listeners by Walter de la Mare and On Julia's Clothes by Herrick.

I love Robert Frost too.

Biographical note on archy: he was a “vers libre bard” who died and transmigrated into the body of a cockroach. As this happened around 1920 or so, archy wrote his poetry by jumping up and down on the keys of a manual typewriter owned by reporter (and poet) Don Marquis, who wrote for the New York Sun. archy couldn’t manage the shift key, so no capital letters and punctuation was too much bother. Apparently typing was an exhausting process – he really suffered for his art!

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows
pull this stunt I asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense

plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for

it is better to be part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself
archy

Both with a 'child' theme. The first a children's poem by Ted Hughes for anyone who has ever come across the tiny smashed bodies of crabs when out pottering amongst the rock pools with children. A little gem, but, oh, the language. The other by Seamus Heaney looking back on his childhood and his mother.

Crab

In the low tide pools
I pack myself like
A handy pocket
Chest of tools.

But as the tide fills
Dancing I go
Under lifted veils
Tiptoe, tiptoe.

And with pliers and pincers
Repair and remake
The daintier dancers
The breakers break.

from The Clearances III

When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives -
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

Itchy dingle dangle,

Dingle dangle do,

Going once, going twice,

SOLD- to Fu Manchu