This was the first poem I ever read and recited at an Eistedford, aged about 8. After this poetry was always a breeze at school in all three languages studied at school.
MICE
I think mice are rather nice;
Their tails are long, their faces small;
They haven't any chins at all.
Their ears are pink, their teeth are white,
They run about the house at night;
They nibble things they shouldn't touch,
and, no one seems to like them much,
but, I think mice are rather nice.
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I guess most people have come across Kipling's 'IF' at one time or another, or parts of it... It remains one of my favourite poems and one of which just about every line has a bearing on my life at least once a year, every year.
And right now, there are some lines that for me are very relevant:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster,
And treat those two imposters just the same;
TP
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their lives
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
Here is the full Kipling poem
If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Daniela
[B]Here is the full Kipling poem
Heart-breakingly beautiful !!!!
Enjoyed every poem on this thread - keep them coming !!!
:wings:
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Invictus
[B]Life's Call
Invictus (1963-)
Did not like (wanna hear?) this one !!!!
Buried my brother 1 year & 11 months ago .........
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Quote:Originally posted by Invictus
Sorry to hear about your brother.
Buried two of mine when I was nineteen. That's just something I wrote for myself having survived another 22 years since then.
Tx !
I'm impressed !!! Very well written ..........
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I have always loved Dulce et Decorum Est ... (it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country)...by Wilfred Owen. It is not a poem I studied at school ... but rather one I came across when reading poetry one day. It strong words he uses suggests that it is anything but sweet and fitting to die for your country....
Dulce at Decorum Est
Bent double, like beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through the sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick boys! -- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my hapless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues --
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.*
*"Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland"
--Wilfred Owen (1920)
http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/LostPoets/Owen2.html
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Great Thread!
My favourite poem of all time:
Christina Rossetti - Remember
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than you should remember and be sad.
*I have known this off by heart since age 16. I love most of her poetry.
In love there are two things - bodies and words.
I stood and I watched as a mother cried, when she had heard that her son had died. He didn't die because he was sick, or he didn't die because he was in a wreck. He died doing what he felt was right.
I watched a father try to hold back his tears, his son had lived only a scant 19 years. His son had died nine thousand miles away, and what was there left for a father to say? He got down on his knees and said a prayer, his brave son knows his father did care.
I stood and watched as a little girl cried. She didn't understand why her brother had passed on; why he never again played with her on the lawn. Looking at the little girl's tears I knew, that her big brother died fighting for you and me.
Quote:Originally posted by tokoloshie
I stood and I watched as a mother cried, when she had heard that her son had died. He didn't die because he was sick, or he didn't die because he was in a wreck. He died doing what he felt was right.
I watched a father try to hold back his tears, his son had lived only a scant 19 years. His son had died nine thousand miles away, and what was there left for a father to say? He got down on his knees and said a prayer, his brave son knows his father did care.
I stood and watched as a little girl cried. She didn't understand why her brother had passed on; why he never again played with her on the lawn. Looking at the little girl's tears I knew, that her big brother died fighting for you and me.
that is beautiful, who wrote it Toks??
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