It’s that time of the week! I’m linking up again with Heather of Mama Knows, Honeychild to bring you five of my favorites. This week I’m sharing five of my favorite poems, which may be intensely boring to many (most?) of you, but I’m an English major so you are just going to have to put up with me. (Alternatively, if you are a literary snob, you will probably sneer at my choices for being too conventional.)
In no particular order:
1. The Daffodils by William Wordsworth
Daffodils growing by the side of the Pellissippi Parkway earlier this year
Daffodils are my favorite flower and always have been. Thanks to the beautification efforts of Lady Bird Johnson, our nation’s capital is covered in them in season. My roommate and I decided to memorize this poem while one of our long walks, inspired by sights like this:
I still know it by heart and could copy it out here for you, but instead I will give you a link.
2. The Master Speed by Robert Frost
You’ve probably never heard of this one. I looked it up after seeing a phrase from it used to title a book on marriage (Frost wrote it on the occasion of a wedding). And later it inspired me to write this story.
No speed of wind or water rushing by
But you have speed far greater. You can climb
Back up a stream of radiance to the sky,
And back through history up the stream of time.
And you were given this swiftness, not for haste
Nor chiefly that you may go where you will,
But in the rush of everything to waste,
That you may have the power of standing still-
Off any still or moving thing you say.
Two such as you with such a master speed
Cannot be parted nor be swept away
From one another once you are agreed
That life is only life forevermore
Together wing to wing and oar to oar
3. The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
This one really needs no explanation. I used to know it almost by heart, because Jake and Teddy loved me to read it aloud to them when they were little. I love the rhyme and rhythm (“and the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain . . .”), and the depiction of endless depression makes my heart ache: “and my soul from out that shadow . . . shall be lifted–nevermore.” Read the whole thing here.
4. Remember by Christina Rossetti
Here’s another one I know by heart. I can’t remember how I discovered it, but I find it to be a lovely reflection on grief and healing. It’s repeated in full in this post.
5. Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
This is much less sentimental than my other choices, but I just love the way it sounds. I don’t know the whole thing by heart, but I wish I did. We had to write a paper analyzing this poem in my Sophomore Honors English class. This led to one of my most embarrassing moments ever in school when one of my friends told the professor that I had a very interesting interpretation, and I had to explain in front of everyone the sexual imagery I found in the poem.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
What’s your favorite poem? Tell me in the comments! And don’t forget to check out the rest of the Five Favorites here.
It’s been a long time since I’ve read The Raven. It’s terribly grim – but the language! So vivid and expressive and poetic! Thanks for sharing. 🙂
🙂 I know! And it’s especially fun to read aloud.
I love these poems! Thanks for linking up to Quote Me Thursday!
Glad you like them and thank you so much for hosting. 🙂