Some of My Favorite Poems

I feel like I haven't written a post in a while that was just me talking about something I love. Sure, there have been posts where I'm talking about, say, Catholic authors I love, but there's always an element of analysis. I haven't hardcore gushed in quite a while. (I could be wrong and just...not thinking of something obvious that I gushed about. But I don't feel like I've gushed in a while.)

I was looking for The Nutmeg's thoughts on "Lepanto" a bit ago, because I had to read it aloud to Galadriel, who had to read it for homeschool co-op (they assigned "Lepanto" to 6th & 7th graders. Which is a cool move but also...I barely understood it until, like, college), and I came across her post that listed off twelve of her favorite poems. And I thought to myself..."I like poetry...I could do that!" And since most of my favorite poems are very different from hers, I figured I could categorize it as 'inspiration' and not 'plagiarism'. XD

Also, I talk about death enough in this post that I'm counting it as an entry in Grim's Remember, O Thou Man blog party/event/Lent thing. ;)

Without further ado, in no particular order except that in which they occurred to me, here are fourteen of my favorite poems. 

Bells by Edgar Allan Poe

This poem is possibly the most recitable thing I have ever heard in my entire life, and it is clearly meant to be read aloud, at the very least--why on earth would you put the word "bells" in a line five times, unless you meant it to be read aloud, so it would fit in the rhythm--and if you go look it up and don't read it aloud to yourself, that would be a crime. For the record. The rhythm and the rhyme, and the way it speeds itself up as you recite, and you rush pell-mell towards the end, the iron bells, the ghouls...GAH. 

Also, the sheer vocabulary involved makes me happy, and the way the alliteration emphasizes everything is just perfect. It's divided into four parts: sleigh bells, wedding bells, 'alarum' bells, and iron bells, and each of them has a different feel, while retaining the overall rhythm of the poem, and it's CRAZY.

We sang an arrangement of the first section in choir, but I can't for the life of me find a video of it.

Ring Out, Wild Bells by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I mostly love this poem for the first stanza, whose first line is "ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky", and whose last line is "ring out, wild bells, and let him die", and if that's not just...the perfect wintery motif, I don't know what is. 

But all of the other stanzas are also lovely, even if the poem starts to feel a tad repetitive. And the last stanza... "Ring in the valiant man, and free", and then "Ring in the Christ that is to be", is lovely. But really, I just like the image of wild bells and the wild sky.

(This was also a song that was sung in choir, and I can't find it, either.)

Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I worked on memorizing this poem one summer when I was working on an urban farm--I'd put a few lines one a piece of paper in my pocket and pull it out throughout the day and just repeat a line over and over until I had it memorized. I haven't finished it yet, to date, but I've gotten over half. 

The thing that gets me about this poem--besides the amusement of it totally not reflecting the actual POV of Odysseus, but rather the POV of Tennyson's age and its exploration--is the epicness. 

"I cannot rest from travel, I must drink life to the lees"

"Drunk delight of battle...far on the ringing plains of windy Troy"

"All experience is an arch/Wherethro gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades, forever and forever when I move"

"life piled on life was all too little, and of one to me, little remains"

"for my purpose holds, to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars until I die"

There are just so many good adjectives, too! The language is incredibly rich, and the mouthfeel is incredible. Very chunky, if that's not a weird way to describe a poem.

(This is yet another one we sang in choir, and this time I do have a video for you of the version we did. And it's epic.)

Christmas Bells by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

(Yes, bells again.)

I've liked this one for a while--I can't remember whether I first discovered it as a poem, or in this Audrey Assad song, although I think it was the poem first. It reminds me of Lewis's essay "Learning In War-Time", and also of the general problem of evil...how are we to celebrate Christmas, "peace on earth, good-will to men", when there is so much unrest and sorrow all around the world? 

It doesn't pull any punches, either--it was written during the Civil War, and soon after Longfellow's wife died in a tragic accident, so he doesn't have many illusions. And he says that in the poem. "And in despair, I bowed my head;/'There is no peace on earth', I said". But then the last stanza..."God is not dead, nor doth He sleep"...and it hits you right in the chest.

Death Be Not Proud by John Donne

I'm partial to John Donne in a general way, and while I'm not sure if I'd say that this is my favorite of his poems, it's certainly up there. It's from his Holy Sonnets, and basically mocks death, saying 'look, people say you're mighty and dreadful, but...y'know, I really don't see any reason why I should be afraid of you'. 

It's metric, full of evocative language, and written in an older style that I really like. "Thou are slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men" (so fun to say!). "And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die." It's a peaceful looking-of-death-square-in-the-face, and I like that.

(Oh, and Audrey Assad has a version of this one, too.)

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas is another of my favorite poets--we read several of his poems in my poetry class, junior year of high school, and while DNGGITGN is a very 'basic' poem of his to list, I also really like "Poem in October", if you want to look that one up. ("It was my thirtieth year to heaven"...)

Do Not Go Gentle has grown on me a lot as I've gotten older, I think? I just reread it before writing this post, and it meant much more to me than it had. It's the poem of a younger man to an older, not a graceful looking of death in the face, like "Death Be Not Proud", but rather the desperate cry of a son who does not want to see his father composed and ready to die. Even if he's going into a "good night". And that...hits hard, I guess. 

It's also, I think, a variation of a pantoum, where lines repeat throughout the poem, and which lines repeat always fits in so well with the rest of the stanza, but the repetitions give it almost the feel of the tolling of a bell. (Bells! I can't resist them!)

Is My Team Ploughing by A. E. Housman

If I was to name a favorite poet from my year of poetry class, it would certainly be Housman, as evidenced by the inclusion of, um, four of his poems on this list. 

He just has a way with rhythm, and a way of giving a poem a little twist at the end that makes you go "ARGH", and it's both wonderful and horrible. This is the first one I ever read, and thus the first of his twists I ever experienced... It gives voice to a dead man, who asks his living friend if all is as it was when he was above the ground, and it all is... "the horses trample, the harness jingles", the "lads...chase the leather...the keeper stands up to keep the goal", but when it comes to the question of the man's girl...and his friend...well...um. 

Bredon Hill by A. E. Housman

This poem has grown on me over time. The first time I read it, I didn't like the stanza pattern, which is ABABB...I felt like the last B was redundant and slowed the poem down. I still sort of think that, but now I wonder if that's part of the point? It's a line that doesn't have a partner, and that fits with the content and theme of the poem. 

(This is another one with bells in it. Are you sensing a bit of a trend here?)

The image of the bells ringing across the fields, saying "Come all to church, good people;/Good people, come and pray" is one that I think of whenever I hear church bells--I've visited a friend from college who lives in a small town where the church bells actually ring for Mass, so these lines came to mind and made me smile. 

And the couple foolishly turning and responding "Oh, peal upon our wedding/And we will hear the chime/And come to church in time" tickles me, but feels real, too.

Then, the twist, and the BB lines of the last stanza... "Oh, noisy bells, be dumb;/I hear you, I will come." Shivers.

On Moonlit Heath And Lonesome Bank by A. E. Housman

It's necessary, in order to understand this poem, to know that 'shepherding sheep by moonlight' was a metaphor or expression for being hung, either around the time of or before Housman wrote this poem.

Unlike the irritating hiccup of the ABABB rhyme scheme of "Bredon Hill", the rhythm and rhyme of this poem are one of my favorite parts of it...and again, make sense, because the inevitability is part of the point, and the ABAB marches firmly and inexorably to the end of the poem. (It's irritating because I can't even be irritated about "Bredon Hill" in comparison, because both rhyme schemes work for the content and themes of the poems. Grr.) 

The twist in this one, though! It's more subtle than some of the others, and it just...hits you, and then the whole poem is different. 

Also, the poem reminds me of Lord Peter, because it's referenced in that one scene in Busman's Honeymoon (LPW's middle name is Bredon, you know) and I LOVED that.

("He will hear the stroke of eight/And not the stroke of nine." GAH.) (Also, more bells.)

The Carpenter's Son by A. E. Housman

This poem is both subtle and unsubtle, and I change my mind about how much I like the subtlety/unsubtlety. But again, Housman's rhythm saves the day, because it serves the didactic-dialogic tone SO WELL that it sounds like a poem spoken by a sang-froid-ful young Brit, and that obscures the meaning just enough...

Yeah. I like Housman a lot. Could you tell? 

It's kind of weird, though, because in addition to the rhythm and tone obscuring the somewhat-allegory, the poem itself can't seem to decide whether the fellow is guilty or not. Which is quite interesting, and which we discussed for a long time in class that day. 

Also, the jury is out on whether the use of 'comrades' is meant to be a reference to communism.

So, this one is an interesting enigma. But, I mean, "Live, lads, and I will die." "All the same's the luck we prove,/Though the midmost hangs for love." 

Ballad of the White Horse by G. K. Chesterton

I waffled a little bit at including this basically novella-length poem, since I'm not including, say, Idylls of the King, BUT it's one of my favorite things Chesterton ever wrote, so...here we are. (And I can't include "Lepanto", because even though it's fun...it's not my favorite? But I would feel weird doing a poetry post without Chesterton. So, again, here we are.)

So, anyway. It's about Britain, and the fight of the Anglo-Saxons (led by King Alfred) against the Danes, but it's also about Christianity and whether it's weak or strong, and many other things. Apparently, Chesterton didn't intend it to be historical (shocker), but it still tells truth. 

I love the ballad-y rhythm of it (are you sensing that rhythm is really important to me? yeah.) and the sheer scope.

But the part that I love the most is in the middle, where I think an infidel is talking about Catholicism and the attitude of Christian soldiers, and we get the lines "the men signed with the cross of Christ/Go gaily in the dark", and "the men that drink the blood of God/Go singing to their shame." 

Oh, and also, 

You and all the kind of Christ

Are ignorant and brave,

And you have wars you hardly win

And souls you hardly save.

Crossing the Bar by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I learned this poem first as a song in choir (as I've said about several of these songs!), so I still have a bit of a hard time hearing it as a poem, rather than a song. This is the version my choir sang. But I still love it--both the poem and the song.

It's deceptively simple, only four stanzas, with barely a separation between them, and a clear analogy for death, through the metaphor of crossing the bar--which, in the course of finding the version we sang for choir, I found out is actually a very tricky proceeding, on a boat. That, I think, adds a layer to the poem, which seems so peaceful--crossing the bar is hard to do, and thus, so is death, even if the poet sets out to it bravely. 

And my favorite part, I think, are the two lines which run "Twilight and evening bell,/And after that the dark!" It gives me shivers for reasons I can't explain. (Bells, again.)

Everyone Sang by Siegfried Sassoon

This is yet another to which I was introduced by choir...which I should probably credit more for my love of poetry, because I'm the kind of person who has trouble just sitting down and reading a poem and loving it from that, so I need them to be slammed in my face--either by a class or by singing them over and over--before I can appreciate them. The version we sang is this one. 

Anyway. I'm not sure I love this poem in its poem form quite as much as I love it in the song (none of the text changes, so I'm not sure why this should be), but I do like it quite a bit. 

The description of the flight of the "prisoned birds", "on - on - and out of sight", is beautiful...and when he says "my heart was shaken with tears"...I know that feeling.

I think the thing I really object to is just the line breaks. I feel like there are a few places where the lines could have been distributed better, but eh. 

Siegfried Sassoon is really interesting, too, though--I read about him when I was finding the poem for this post, and apparently he was a soldier in WWI, but an ardent protester of the war, and then ultimately became Catholic, although people don't think his post-conversion poems are as good. Now I want to go read them...

Spring and Fall by Gerard Manley Hopkins

I actually worked through memorizing this poem this past semester on some of my bus rides, because I'd heard the last two lines ("It is the blight man was born for,/It is Margaret you mourn for."), but I didn't know anything else of the poem, though I loved those two lines. 

The rest of the poem is certainly worth it. Starting with "Margaret, are you grieving/Over Goldengrove unleaving?", it continues with the most gorgeous lines and rhythms, though it's not in a strict meter. 

And it's fun to say! Just try saying "worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie" without relishing the feel of it in your mouth. 

It's about death, of course, but it's about death in an oblique way, about the human realization that we will die, and the being reminded of that fact every year in the autumn. It's quiet and calm and a little sad, and I like it very much. 

So, I think what we take from this is that I like death and bells a lot, and rhythm is something that makes and breaks a poem for me. Also, that I like Alfred, Lord Tennyson more than I'm letting on, and that A. E. Housman is awesome. 

Now tell me. Do you like poetry? Does it need to be slammed into your face, too, before you like it? Do you have a different favorite poem from one of the poets I mentioned in this post? Who's your favorite poet? Do you have a favorite poem? Tell me alllllll the things!