Favorite Poems/Classic Stories

So, Rhea was the first to put up a Shakespearean Sonnet! Good girl, Rhea. I'm surprised we reached this far into the thread without one sooner!

I'll come back with my favourite sonnet tomorrow. Most of my other favourite poems have already been posted up.

[Shaman Navi Saqua]

[quote:2bs0hs6g]...[H]e which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.[/quote:2bs0hs6g][list:2bs0hs6g][list:2bs0hs6g]--William Shakespeare, [i:2bs0hs6g]The Life of Henry V[/i:2bs0hs6g], act 4, scene 3[/list:u:2bs0hs6g][/list:u:2bs0hs6g]

"Young Goodman Brown" - Hawtrhorn
"Fall of the House of Usher" - Poe
"The Raven" - Poe

Also, tho I'm not sure he would be considerd "classic" just yet, is just about anything by Richard Mathason.

Oh, oh Navi. The St Crispins Day speech? Excellent shout, my Whilly friend. A personal favourite of mine.

Which of course brings me to a rather iconic piece of text;

[quote="William Shakespeare":35ojnpik]"To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or, to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing, end them? To die, To sleep,
No more. And by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
that flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consumation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream: Ay! There's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect,
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time;
The oppressor's wrong; the proud man's contumely;
The pangs of despised love; The law's delay;
The insolence of office; And the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he, himself, might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? For who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life;
but that a dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bare those ills we have
Than fly to those we know not of.

Thus, conscience does make cowards of us all.
And thus, the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and motion
With this regard their currents turn awry
And loose the name of action!

Soft you now; the fair Ophelia
Nymph, in thy orisons, be all my sins remember'd."[/quote:35ojnpik]

- William Shakespeare, the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act 3, sc i

... totally wrote all that out first without consulting the text, go my memory! Of course, I did then grab a copy to check spellings and the line breaks and stuff.

Anyway, yeah - something about that speech, aside from how utterly iconic "To be or not to be" is, that I've always enjoyed. That battle with the conscience. Love it.

My fave is the opening soliloquy of Richard III, but I'm too lazy to post it up, but for all the plays on words and alliteration it works as one of his best pieces of writing.

[quote="William Shakespeare":3pf8ezo8]Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visag'd war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front,
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I - that am not shap'd for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass -
I - that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph -
I - that am curtail'd of this fair proporion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark as I halt by them -
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity.
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the King
In deadly hate the one against the other;
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false, and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up -
About a prophecy which says that G
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul. Here Clarence comes.[/quote:3pf8ezo8]

- William Shakespeare, King Richard the Third, Act 1, sc i.

I like that one too. Did have to look it up to type it out, but I do enjoy it. Scheming sod.

Up from Earth's Centre through the Seventh Gate
I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate,
And many Knots unravel'd by the Road;
But not the Knot of Human Death and Fate.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam - passage 31

Thou speak'st aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon and make him smile
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob
And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And 'tailor' cries, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,
And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.
But, room, fairy! here comes Oberon.

-A Midsummer night's dream Act 2 scene 1.

Good shout, Dan! :D

in fifth grade I played Oberon. It was awesome.

With Remembrance Day this week, a poem that always moves me when I hear it, My Boy Jack by Rudyard Kipling, such a sad story behind it too.

There is a really good short story by Roal Dahl, its about a kid playing on the carpet. That game we all did "Don't touch the {{Insert color}}" It was great. I read it so long ago though... time to go find it for you all.

The Charge of the Light Brigade

Half a league, half a league,
├óÔé¼ãÆ Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
├óÔé¼ãÆ Rode the six hundred.
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns' he said:
Into the valley of Death
├óÔé¼ãÆ Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldiers knew
├óÔé¼ãÆ Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
├óÔé¼ãÆ Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to the right of them,
Cannon to the left of them,
Cannon in front of them
├óÔé¼ãÆ Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
├óÔé¼ãÆ Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
├óÔé¼ãÆ All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
├óÔé¼ãÆ Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
├óÔé¼ãÆ Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
├óÔé¼ãÆ All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
├óÔé¼ãÆ Noble six hundred!

├óÔé¼ÔÇØAlfred, Lord Tennyson

Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

-Also Tennyson

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.


"There is Pleasure in the Pathless Woods" - Lord Byron

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us ├óÔé¼ÔÇØ don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

Emily wookiee; "I'm nobody! Who are you?"

Cimmeria

I remember
The dark woods, masking slopes of sombre hills;
The grey clouds' leaden everlasting arch;
The dusky streams that flowed without a sound,
And the lone winds that whispered down the passes.

Vista upon vista marching, hills on hills,
Slope beyond slope, each dark with sullen trees,
Our gaunt land lay. So when a man climbed up
A rugged peak and gazed, his shaded eye
Saw but the endless vista--hill on hill,
Slope beyond slope, each hooded like its brothers.

It was gloomy land that seemed to hold
All winds and clouds and dreams that shun the sun,
With bare boughs rattling in the lonesome winds,
And the dark woodlands brooding over all,
Not even lightened by the rare dim sun
Which made squat shadows out of men; they called it
Cimmeria, land of Darkness and deep Night.

It was so long ago and far away
I have forgotten the very name men called me.
The axe and flint-tipped spear are like a dream,
And hunts and wars are like shadows. I recall
Only the stillness of that sombre land;
The clouds that piled forever on the hills,
The dimness of the everlasting woods.
Cimmeria, land of Darkness and the Night.

-Robert E. Howard.

I am bored.
Bored with such intensity, such ferocity
beyond ostensible to the undeniable absolute defining principal
the truest of truisms in literal form that on this occasion leaves me so forlorn, it is
beyond my skill to circumvent this particular predicament, the perpetuality of the circumstance
in which I chime recite and chant
those words that fools from their charge
oft abhored
those two words
repeated;

I'm bored.

He Wishes For Cloths of Heaven- William Butler Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light.
The blue and the dime and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light.
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Love's Philosophy - Percy Bysshe Shelley

The fountains mingle with the river
And rivers with the Ocean.
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With sweet emotion:
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?-

See the mountains kiss high Heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it's disdained it's brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?