ITT: Poems you love that are small enough to fit in the comment field

When you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

- WB Yeats

I fucking love Yeats.
Where do people stand on the Byzantium vs Sailing to Byzantium debate?

At evening the autumn woodlands ring
With deadly weapons. Over the golden plains
And lakes of blue, the sun
More darkly rolls. The night surrounds
Warriors dying and the wild lament
Of their fragmented mouths.
Yet silently there gather in the willow combe
Red clouds inhabited by an angry god,
Shed blood, and the chill of the moon.
All roads lead to black decay.
Under golden branching of the night and stars
A sister's shadow sways through the still grove
To greet the heroes' spirits, the bloodied heads.
And softly in the reeds Autumn's dark flutes resound.
O prouder mourning! - You brazen altars,
The spirit's hot flame is fed now by a tremendous pain:
The grandsons, unborn.

Sailing to Byzantium is great

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

wow, such a qt anime boi

I've never seen a purple cow
I'd never like to see one
but i can tell you anyhow
I'd rather see than be one.

Untitled

A sounding.
A low murmur.

A sounding.

A low murmur.

That says:
I am here

That says:
I am here

That says:
I am here
I am here
I am here

The tiger
He destroyed his cage
yes
YES
The tiger is out

In the evening

It wouldn't have lasted long anyway-
years of experience make that clear.
But Fate did put an end to it a bit abruptly.
It was soon over, that wonderful life.
Yet how strong the scents were,
what a magnificent bed we lay in,
what pleasures we gave our bodies.

An echo from my days of indulgence,
an echo from those days came back to me,
something from teh fire of the young life we shared:
I picked up a letter again,
read it over and over till the light faded.

Then, sad, I went out on to the balcony,
went out to change my thoughts at least by seeing
something of this city I love,
a little movement in the streets, in the shops.

- Cavafy

Yonder though I go my heart beats fast for thee
O, fate, why must these things be so?
Undying passion I hath for ye.
Jumping gaily through the lilies hand in hand.
Urban alleys are even like dreams when I'm with you.
So my love must we really part?
Take everything from me if you must.
Leave not my heart empty like this.
O, angel of my heaven, hear my plee!
Save me from myself before I am completely broken.
Though cracked I am I can still be repaired.
The cynics say it is too late but I know it is not so.
However, truly such words seem more and more likely.
Even so I pine for you so desperately.
God, is this actually happening?
A bit of distance was all it took for this to end?
Maybe this really all was just bullshit.
Earth, open up thine nastily jaws and swallow me whole.

¿Qué son labios? ¿qué son miradas que son labios?
Y mi voz ya no es mía
dentro del agua que no moja
dentro del aire de vidrio
dentro del fuego lívido que corta como el grito
Y en el juego angustioso de un espejo frente a otro
cae mi voz
y mi voz que madura
y mi voz quemadura
y mi bosque madura
y mi voz quema dura

Villaurrutia is a goddamn genius

'In the Desert' by Stephen Crane


In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;

“But I like it
“Because it is bitter,
“And because it is my heart.”

In dreams I crossed a barren land,
A land of ruin, far away;
Around me hung on every hand
A deathful stillness of decay;
And silent, as in bleak dismay
That song should thus forsaken be,
On that forgotten ground there lay
The broken flutes of Arcady.

The forest that was all so grand
When pipes and tabors had their sway
Stood leafless now, a ghostly band
Of skeletons in cold array.
A lonely surge of ancient spray
Told of an unforgetful sea,
But iron blows had hushed for aye
The broken flutes of Arcady.

No more by summer breezes fanned,
The place was desolate and gray;
But still my dream was to command
New life into that shrunken clay.
I tried it. Yes, you scan to-day,
With uncommiserating glee,
The songs of one who strove to play
The broken flutes of Arcady.

ENVOY

So, Rock, I join the common fray,
To fight where Mammon may decree;
And leave, to crumble as they may,
The broken flutes of Arcady.

Cavafy can be pretty amazing.

A noisy town, night sky with stars of no numbers, but yet recognized.
A silent peaceful soul besides walk her path, an injured nightingale, who’s heart is a slightly burning candle, and yet, the closer she allows one to be, the stronger the candle burns, with eyes colored of all the wonder anyone ever dreams to see, eyes that see further than the brightest stars can reach.
She wonders in the unknown looking, seeking for answers, the answers that will one day let her fly again, an answer that could heal her injured wings, encumbered by the fear of falling, into the abyss of forever loneliness. One day, she rests, at the edge of a cliff, on a mountain so high the clouds seem to be lower than her exhausted feet, meets a wolf, a lone ranger, a lonely soul that reflected her own.
She tell the wolf “Don’t go too far to the edge or you will fall”
The wolf replies “I wont fall, I will fly”
The nightingale is touched, her candle grows of light, and looked the wolf into the deep eyes, eyes that suffer all the worlds emotions, and tells the wolf “but you are a wolf, you cant fly”
The wolf laugh in a quiet and calm smile and tells her “Im not just a wolf, I am who I choose to be, so I believe I will fly as you once did”
One tear drops off her eye remembering how it feels to fly, and asks “take me with you” and he replies “No spread your wings and let the wind carry you”
The wolf and the nightingale flew over the mountains, across the oceans, and into the candle the wolf is called upon, and together they light up the skies, as the sun went dusk.

I love this poem so much. I'm surprised someone else posted it.

You should know that's an imitation of a poem by Ronsard in the French. It's not a translation, but it certainly isn't an original.

I wasn't aware of that. What's the title? I can read French decently enough.

wow user did you write that? it's wonderful

A slumber did my spirit seal
I had no human fears
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force
She neither hears nor sees
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course
With rocks, and stones, and trees.

I read this poem for the first time now and it sounded ominously beautiful, as if written from the perspective of a serial killer. Then I looked it up and it turns out it's nothing like that. Do I have a fucked up mind?

Yeah, maybe. Read the other Lucy poems though, they're nice.

You said, "I'll go to another land, I'll go to another sea.
I'll find a city better than this one.
My every effort is a written indictment,
and my heart—like someone dead— is buried.
How long will my mind remain in this decaying state.
Wherever I cast my eyes, wherever I look,
I see my life in black ruins here,
where I spent so many years, and ruined and wasted them."

You will not find new lands, you will not find other seas.
The city will follow you. You will roam
the same streets. And you will grow old in the same neighborhood,
and your hair will turn white in the same houses.
You will always arrive in this city. Don't hope for elsewhere—
there is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you have wasted your life here,
in this small corner, so you have ruined it on the whole earth.

With yellow pears the country,
Brimming with wild roses,
Hangs into the lake,
You gracious swans,
And drunk with kisses
Your heads you dip
Into the holy lucid water.

Where, ah where shall I find,
When winter comes, the flowers,
And where the sunshine
And shadows of the earth?
Walls stand
Speechless and cold, in the wind
The weathervanes clatter.

I well know there is nothing
new under the sky,
that what I think of now
others have thought before.

Well, why do I write?
Well, because we are so,
clocks that repeat
forever the same.

Depressing but real

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

A pot of wine among the flowers.
I drink alone, no friend with me.
I raise my cup to invite the moon.
He and my shadow and I make three.

The moon does not know how to drink;
My shadow mimes my capering;
But I'll make merry with them both—
And soon enough it will be spring.

I sing—the moon moves to and fro.
I dance—my shadow leaps and sways.
Still sober, we exchange our joys.
Drunk—and we'll go our separate ways.

Let's pledge—beyond human ties—to be friends,
And meet where the Silver River ends.

A visible darkness grows up mountain paths,
I lodge by river gate high in a study,

Frail cloud on cliff edge passing the night,
The lonely moon topples amid the waves.

Steady, one after another, a line of cranes in flight;
Howling over the kill, wild dogs and wolves.

No sleep for me. I worry over battles.
I have no strength to right the universe.

this is among the greatest things i've ever read.... cannot fucking believe a 6 year old has defeated me

learn how to archaic, my dude. this is my pet peeve.

This was very nice.

I fucking love this, mostly because I know a six-year-old wrote it. There's no subtext, no allegories, no subtlety whatsoever. It was written by a kid ecstatic over the idea of the tiger getting out of his cage.

YES

...

is this from Who Killed Captain Alex?

Do you guys ever memorize poems? I like to do that with short poems like these.

i loved it more before i knew it was by a child. i like childishness in adults-- plus, the "yes / YES" is sinister in a way, championing probable bloodshed of himself and others

You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head—
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."

"You are old," said the youth, "As I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door—
Pray, what is the reason of that?"

"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
"I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment—one shilling the box—
Allow me to sell you a couple?"

"You are old," said the youth, "And your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak—
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose—
What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father; "don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"

yeah boii more cavafy