This is where I got the name for my blog:
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania.
---Dorothy Parker
Sarcasm Rocks. But I have to say that my favorite poem of all time is:
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
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.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full fo the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
---William Butler Yeats
That being said, however, the best poet in my mind is Gerard Manley Hopkins. To me, his poems are the definition of poetry, and are to be read aloud, as all good poetry is. Hopkins used words that go together on your tongue, somehow. Look:
Pied Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things -- For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings; Landscape plotted & pieced -- fold, fallow, & plough; And áll trades, their gear & tackle & trim. All things counter, original, spáre, strange; Whatever is fickle, frecklèd, (who knows how?) With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím; He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change: Práise hím.
How great is that??
He also wrote a really awesome poem about youth mourning for the adult it will become, because it will lose its sense of wonder and become cynical, lose a bit of its soul. One thing you have to know about this poem is that when Hopkins was writing, when a girl named Margaret was young her name was pronounced "mar-ga-ret", but when she became a woman she was called "mar-gret". So the last "Margaret" in the poem should be read "mar-gret" and all the rest are "mar-ga-ret"s.
Spring and Fall
To A Young Child
Margaret, are you grieving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Leaves, like the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Ah! as the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By & by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you wíll weep & know why. Now no matter, child, the name: Sorrow's springs are the same. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed: It is the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for.
Thanks for listening.
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