/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.5547858]

What's your favorite poem, /lit/?

[Anonymous No.5547865]

the eagle

>dat ear

[Anonymous No.5547869]

>>5547858

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.


Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

[Anonymous No.5547870]

>>5547858
“Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.”

[Anonymous No.5547877]

the odyssey ;~~)

[Anonymous No.5547881]

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

[Anonymous No.5547882]

>>5547858
O, We Are The Outcasts, by Bukowski

[Omnisexual Tyrannosaurus !!33slhp0V42i No.5547896]

Go, Soul, the body's guest,
Upon a thankless errand;
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant:
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.

Say to the court, it glows
And shines like rotten wood;
Say to the church, it shows
What's good, and doth no good:
If church and court reply,
Then give them both the lie.

Tell potentates, they live
Acting by others' action;
Not loved unless they give,
Not strong but by a faction.
If potentates reply,
Give potentates the lie.

Tell men of high condition,
That manage the estate,
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practice only hate:
And if they once reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell them that brave it most,
They beg for more by spending,
Who, in their greatest cost,
Seek nothing but commending.
And if they make reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell zeal it wants devotion;
Tell love it is but lust;
Tell time it metes but motion;
Tell flesh it is but dust:
And wish them not reply,
For thou must give the lie.

Tell age it daily wasteth;
Tell honour how it alters;
Tell beauty how she blasteth;
Tell favour how it falters:
And as they shall reply,
Give every one the lie.

Tell wit how much it wrangles
In tickle points of niceness;
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in overwiseness:
And when they do reply,
Straight give them both the lie.

Tell physic of her boldness;
Tell skill it is pretension;
Tell charity of coldness;
Tell law it is contention:
And as they do reply,
So give them still the lie.

Tell fortune of her blindness;
Tell nature of decay;
Tell friendship of unkindness;
Tell justice of delay:
And if they will reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell arts they have no soundness,
But vary by esteeming;
Tell schools they want profoundness,
And stand too much on seeming:
If arts and schools reply,
Give arts and schools the lie.

Tell faith it's fled the city;
Tell how the country erreth;
Tell manhood shakes off pity
And virtue least preferreth:
And if they do reply,
Spare not to give the lie.

So when thou hast, as I
Commanded thee, done blabbing--
Although to give the lie
Deserves no less than stabbing--
Stab at thee he that will,
No stab the soul can kill.

[Anonymous No.5547931]

Let us browse 4chan, you and I,
When the feelings make you want to die
Like a goldfish remembering his cage.
Let us go, through threads about to be removed,
The endless shitposts
Of all-night postponements of essays almost due
And /pol/-bait better than any sex:
Reaction gifs posted in lieu of argument
To pass the time
That lead you to an overwhelming question...
C'mon, you know it, bro.
Let us go and make our visit.

[Anonymous No.5547933]

>>5547882
one-two-three-four-!

[Anonymous No.5547964]

http://postmetakolsti.tumblr.com/post/95050561255/if-sincerity-is-lowercase-letters-what-if-i-type

[Anonymous No.5547980]

>>5547881
I love Heaney but I was never mad about this poem.

[Poetanon No.5548022]

Poeta, è nome che diverso suona
appo genti diverse in varia etade;
onde, or nel limo vilipeso ei cade,
or l’uom dal mortal essere sprigiona.
5 Ma uman giudizo torre o dar corona
mal può d’un’arte, che divina invade
gli almi suoi mastri, e alle superne strade
con disusato ardito vol gli sprona.
Ben può sentenza il volgo dar su i voti
10 armonïosi incettator d’oblio,
di baje pregni, e al vero Apollo ignoti:
ma prezzar quelli, che il furor natio
sforza a dir carmi a Verità devoti,
non l’osi, no, chi non è Vate, o Iddio.

[Anonymous No.5548042]

Say this gravestone sorrow-laden: 'Death has taken to
his keeping,
in the first flower of her springtide, little Theodote.'
But the little one makes answer to her father: 'Cease from
weeping.
Theodotus, unhappy all men must often be.'

---Philitas of Samos

May! Be thou never grac'd with birds that sing,
nor flora's pride!
In thee all flower and roses spring.
Mine only died.

---William Browne

[Anonymous No.5548047]

>>5548042
>fucked up formatting with the image

I'll show myself out

[Anonymous No.5548063]

>>5547858
I am currently in Rome, and I have come across a rather famous (what I believe to be famous considering it is the poets most famous) poem that I have fallen for.

Sempre caro mi fu quest’ermo colle,
e questa siepe, che da tanta parte
dell’ultimo orizzonte il guardo esclude.
Ma sedendo e mirando, interminati
spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani
silenzi, e profondissima quïete
io nel pensier mi fingo; ove per poco
il cor non si spaura. E come il vento
odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello
infinito silenzio a questa voce
vo comparando: e mi sovvien l’eterno,
e le morte stagioni, e la presente
e viva, e il suon di lei. Così tra questa
immensità s’annega il pensier mio:
e il naufragar m’è dolce in questo mare.

and in English for you pagens and heretics

Always dear to me was this solitary hill
and this hedge, which, from so many parts
of the far horizon, the sight excludes.
But sitting and gazing endless
spaces beyond it, and inhuman
silences, and the deepest quiet,
I fake myself in my thoughts; where almost
my heart scares. As the wind
I hear rustling through these trees, I, that
infinite silence, to this voice
keep comparing: and I feel the eternal,
the dead seasons, the present,
and living one, and the sound of her. So in this
immensity drown my own thoughts:
and sinking in this sea is sweet to me.

-Giacome Leopardi

[Anonymous No.5548072]

Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd—
The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.

They would not guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they

Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the glass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

[Anonymous No.5548089]

>>5548063
"Infinito" by Leopardi
Saying it's famous it's an understatement at best, in Italy it's THE poem.

[Anonymous No.5548092]

>>5548089

Rome is fucking awesome...

Oh god it's so fucking awesome.

[Anonymous No.5548217]

>>5547931
kek

[Poetanon No.5548271]

>>5548089
A me non piace granché l'Infinito, ma sono io che non apprezzo la poetica leopardiana.
Anche se i Paralipomeni sono fantastici, eh

[Anonymous No.5548310]

>>5547858
>Zeeburg
>le funny meme simpsons pictures

[Anonymous No.5548386]

>>5548047
it was still nice anon, thank you for the post.

[Anonymous No.5548436]

>>5548271
That's a shame....a real shame.

[Anonymous No.5548837]

>>5547858
why is fat yellow man so popular in lit?

[Anonymous No.5548843]

>>5548837
uhhh... that guy wrote the odyssey.

[Anonymous No.5548844]

La Beauté
Je suis belle, ô mortels! comme un rêve de pierre,
Et mon sein, où chacun s'est meurtri tour à tour,
Est fait pour inspirer au poète un amour
Eternel et muet ainsi que la matière.
Je trône dans l'azur comme un sphinx incompris;
J'unis un coeur de neige à la blancheur des cygnes;
Je hais le mouvement qui déplace les lignes,
Et jamais je ne pleure et jamais je ne ris.
Les poètes, devant mes grandes attitudes,
Que j'ai l'air d'emprunter aux plus fiers monuments,
Consumeront leurs jours en d'austères études;
Car j'ai, pour fasciner ces dociles amants,
De purs miroirs qui font toutes choses plus belles:
Mes yeux, mes larges yeux aux clartés éternelles!
— Charles Baudelaire

[Anonymous No.5548852]

>>5548843
um.. no i'm pretty sure her name was Illyad

[Anonymous No.5548899]

>>5548844
Baudelaire is so sick, even though I have only read some translations of his work

[Anonymous No.5549222]

Take it off baby bend over let me see it
You looking for a real pussy eater? I can be it
Quit playing with me girl, and bring that over here
and climb aboard my face, put that pussy on my beard.
I ain't tryna take you shopping, buy yo ass no shoes,
I'm tryna lick that clit, while I'm looking up at you
No shame in my game, girl, look back at me
I don't give a fuck if it's shaved or it's nappy
Long as it ain't nasty sanitation smelling
One whiff of that bitch, I'mma be bailing

And if it's smelling sweet, I might lick it for an hour
And even if it's sour I might lick it in the shower
I go dumb and ignorant, when I'm on that clitoris
Lick yo ass delirious my tongue game so damn serious
So bend that ass over let me eat it from the back
That pussy so good have a nigga coming back

--- Sappho of Lesbos [ 630 - 590 BC ]

[Anonymous No.5549887]

You cannot turn back
because life already pushes you
like a never-ending howl.

My daughter 'tis better to live
with the happiness of mankind
than to cry before the blind wall.

You will feel cornered,
you will feel lost or lonely,
maybe you'll wish you hadn't been born.

I know very well they will tell you
that there is no object to life,
that it is an unfortunate affair.

Then always remember
what I wrote one day
thinking of you as I am now thinking.

A man alone, a woman,
Taken like that, one by one,
are like dust, are nothing.

But when I talk to you
when I write these words for you
I also think of other people.

Your destiny is in others,
your future is your own life,
your dignity that of everybody.

Others expect you to hang on,
the help of your happiness,
your song among their songs.

Then always remember
what I wrote one day
thinking of you as I am now thinking.

Never give up or halt
by the road, never say
I can't take it and here I'll remain.

Life is beautiful you will see
how in spite of everything
you'll have love, you'll have friends.

For the rest there is no choice
and this world as it is
will be all you have.

Forgive me, I do not know
what else to say but understand
I am still on my way.

And always, always, remember
what I wrote one day
thinking of you, like I am now thinking.

[Anonymous No.5549891]

When I was six years old
I played Chinese checkers
with a woman
who was ninety-three years old.
She lived by herself
in an apartment down the hall
from ours.
We played Chinese checkers
every Monday and Thursday nights.
While we played she usually talked
about her husband
who had been dead for seventy years,
and we drank tea and ate cookies

and cheated.