As we pointed out in the Spring 2012 issue of QSB Magazine, April is Poetry Month. Do you have a favorite poem or favorite poet? T.S. Eliot is, upon occasion, my favorite poet (I’m suffering from failure to choose). Then there’s Robert Hass. And Emily Dickinson. And I did spend two years studying Petrarca in the original (don’t ask…really, don’t go there).
Longfellow‘s “The Rainy Day” is a favorite work–most likely because lines were frequently quoted in my house when I was growing up (thanks, Dad! it’s not very cheerful) and the poem is stuck in my head to this day. In fact, I thought it was a perfect poem for our winter issue but it didn’t rain so I couldn’t take any appropriate illustrative photos. Stupid weather. You haven’t dodged that bullet, though, for here’s “The Rainy Day” in its entirety:
The Rainy Day
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.
And how about you? Poems? Poets? Do tell.
Robert Frost is one of my favorites, especially “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
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.
Among other favorites: “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley; e.e. cummings; and Shel Silverstein:
Where the Sidewalk Ends
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.