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I was at a music festival last weekend and I hear Tennyson's Crossing the Bar but to music twice during the weekend - gave me goosebumps each time!

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 though 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 crossed the bar.

A lovely poem; it brings back memories, specifically two:
When I was in high school, our English teacher required us to memorize poems, usually one every six weeks (Does this bring back memories for anyone else?) One six weeks I memorized "Crossing the Bar." She would also pick students at random and we would have to recite our chosen poem in class. She picked me, and when I finished, she was in tears.

Years later, a musical verison of "Crossing" was sung at my uncle's funeral.

Here is a YouTube of the poem sung by Linda and Robin Williams.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjWTUCDuxFY

On first looking into Chapman’s Homer
by John Keats (1816)

MUCH have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Keats wrote this sonnet after reading Elizabethan playwright George Chapman's new translation of Homer. Until this time, the only translations of Homer available were by John Dryden and Alexander Pope. Obviously Keats was inspired by the new translation. According to Wikipedia, this poem is often cited to "demonstrate the emotional power of a great work of art, and the ability of great art to create an epiphany in its beholder."

"demesne" in line six means domain and is pronounced the same.

John Ciardi discusses the three metaphors used by Keats here: the traveling in "realms of gold", of an astronomer discovering a new planet ("Watcher of the skies"), and the explorer's discovery of the Pacific Ocean.

I love that turn of phrase "Watcher of the skies" by the way, which itself inspired a song by the band Genesis.

I'm sure I mentioned this pedantic detail when the poem came up in "The Top 500 Poems": It was Balboa who held the distinction of first European to view the Pacific from the Americas. If I were Keats I'd probably write "Cortez" even if I knew who the right guy was. Well, the sound and meter require it.

I once read a great biography of Keats by Jackson Bate. This poem is more effective for me as a result, because I'm sure the emotion in the poem is no exaggeration. Keats identified so readily with great literature. His love of literature led him to propose that of anything we can experience, literature is the most real.

Thanks, DWill, I was wondering if that's what Ciardi meant with one of his comments. I looked in the poem for a reference to Balboa and then wondered if Keats got his explorers mixed up since I don't honestly remember much about either of them, only that Cortez gets rather harsh treatment in a Neil Young song.

I got this poem right away, knew what Keats meant when he says "MUCH have I travell’d in the realms of gold". And over the course of the day I read the poem several times, each time appreciating it more and more. I love connecting with the mind of a poet, especially someone who lived in the 1800s and, at the same time, reconnecting with Homer. Because I, too, experienced something of an epiphany when I read Homer a few years back (the Fagles translation).

Sorry to repeat a poem that was already mentioned in the Top 500. Reading through Ciardi's HOW DOES A POEM MEAN, I come across a poem every once in a while that really speaks to me.

I respectfully submit the following; it is one of my favorites:

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

By Rudyard Kipling

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!



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I noticed this thread had faded...

Wild Geese By Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

This a favorite poem of mine. Thanks for posting it.

I've always found this one to be very motivational and inspiring.

If—
By Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!