The High Brow Poetry Thread

[KirkVining]

Please post your favorite poem. Let us put on some beat music, don our berets, pour some hot espresso, and seek deep meaning in them. Or just post your favorite poem. Here is one I am currently struggling with the meaning of, written by New England's most famous poet, Robert Frost. The meaning of his poems still cause great controversy today. Feel free to give us your analysis or post your own enigmic rhyme.


TO EARTHWARD

Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on air
That crossed me from sweet things,
The flow of- was it musk
From hidden grapevine springs
Down hill at dusk?

I had the swirl and ache
From sprays of honeysuckle
That when they're gathered shake
Dew on the knuckle.

I craved strong sweets, but those
Seemed strong when I was young;
The petal of the rose
It was that stung.

Now no joy but lacks salt
That is not dashed with pain
And weariness and fault;
I crave the stain

Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove.

When stiff and sore and scarred
I take away my hand
From leaning on it hard
In grass and sand,

The hurt is not enough:
I long for weight and strength
To feel the earth as rough
To all my length.

[shane]

Getting older and realizing the mortality of it all; as the body wears down physically, and the emotions become less intense due to this as well. The mental strain of being too idealogical in love, etc. takes its timely toll as well. Until you can no longer let yourself go to that heightened place of sensation when you were young and everything was new. Back when you were still exploring/learning regardless of the cost.
My two cents. Alot more could be read into this poem. This to me, is the most obvious.

[jjl]

I have of late,—but wherefore I know not,—lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire,—why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me, nor woman neither.



One of my favorites.

[jjl]

A Poison Tree


I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water'd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with my smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veil'd the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree

William Blake


This one seems particularly appropriate for OD.

[blackmercedes]

My love of the outdoors makes me a natural Robert Frost fan.

His work Mountain Interval is a favourite, as it is for many. It's most known for The Road Not Taken, but there are other great writings in it. Like Out, Out--...

'OUT, OUT--'
The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside them in her apron
To tell them 'Supper'. At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap--
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh.
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all--
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart--
He saw all spoiled. 'Don't let him cut my hand off
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!'
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then -- the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little -- less -- nothing! -- and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
--------------------------------------------------------------

And Birches...


BIRCHES
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate wilfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree~
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

[blackmercedes]

Frost's first work, A Boy's Will, is not nearly as popular as Mountain Interval, and is less developed in style, but it's simplicity is attractive...

Stars
How countlessly they congregate
O'er our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
When wintry winds do blow!--

As if with keeness for our fate,
Our faltering few steps on
To white rest, and a place of rest
Invisible at dawn,--

And yet with neither love nor hate,
Those starts like somw snow-white
Minerva's snow-white marble eyes
Without the gift of sight.

And returning to Mountain Interval, we have to post Robert Frost's best known work, and with good reason,

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

[blackmercedes]

Those of us that grew up near mountains and aspired to climb them, read Canadian author Earle Birney's David with awe, and with saddness.
David

David and I that summer cut trails on the Survey,
All week in the valey for wages, in air that was steeped
in the wail of mosquitoes, but over the sunalive week-ends
we climbed, to get from the ruck of the camp, they surly

Poker, the wrangling, the snoring under the fetid
Tents, and because we had joy in our lengthening of coltish
Muscles, and mountains for David were made to see over,
Stairs fro the valleys and steps to the sun's retreats.

Our first was Mount Gleam, We hiked in the long afternoon
To a curling lake and lost the lure of the faceted
Cone in the swell of its sprawing shoulders. Past
The inlet we grilled our bacon, the strips festooned

On a poplar prong, in the hurring slant of the sunset.
Then the two of us rolled in the blanket while round us the cold
Pines thrust at the stars. The dwan was a floating
Of mists still we reached to the slopes above timber, and won

To snow like fire in the sunlight. The peak was upthrust
Like a fist in a frozen ocean of rock that swirled
Into valleys the moon could be rolled in. Remotely unfurling
Eastward the alien prairie glittered. Down through the dusty

Skree on the west we descended, and David showed me
How to use the give of shale for fiant incredible
Strides. I remember, before the larches' edge,
That I jumped on a long green surf of juniper flowing

Away from the wind, and landed in gentian and saxifrage
Spilled on the moss, Then the darkening firs
And the sudden whirning of water that knifed down a fern-hidden
Cliff and spashed unseen into mist in the shadows.

One Sunday on Rampart's arête a rainsquall caught us,
And passed, and we clung by our blueing fingers and bootnails
An endless hour in the sun, not daring to move
Till the ice had steamed from the slate. And David taught me

How time on a knife-edge can pass with the guessing of fragments
Remembered from poets, the naming of strata beside one,
And matching of stories from schooldays ... We crawled astride
The peak to feast on the marching ranges flagged

By the fading shreds of the shattered stomcloud, Lingering
there it was David who spied to the south, remote,
And unmapped, a sunlit spire on Sawback, an overhang
Crooked like a talon. David named it the Finger.

That day we chanced on the skull and the splayed white ribs
Of a mountina goat underneath a cliff, caught
On a rock. Around were the silken feathers of hawks.
And that was the first I knew that a goat could slip.

And when Inglismaldie. Now I remember only
The long ascent of the lonely valley, the live
Pine spirally scarred by lightning, the slicing pipe
Or invisible pike, and great prints, by the lowest

Snow, of a grizzly. There it was too that David
Taught me to read the scroll of coral in limestone
And the beetle-seal in the shale of ghostly trilobites,
Letters delivered to man from the Cambrian waves.

On Sundance we tried from the col and the going was hard.
The air howled from our feet to the smudged rocks
And the papery lake below. At an outthrust we balked
Till David clung with his left to a dint in the scarp,

Lobbed the iceaxe over the rocky lip,
Slipped from his holds and hung by the quivering pick,
Twisted his long legs up into space and kicked
To the crest. Then, grinning, he reached with his frecked wrist

And drew me up after. We set a new time for that climb.
That day returning we found a robin gyrating
In grass, wing-broken. I caught i to tame but David
Took and killed it, and said, "Could you teach it to fly?"

In August, the second attempt, we ascended The Fortress.
By the Forks of the Spray we caught five trout and fried them
Over a balsam fire. The woods were alive
With the vaulting of mule-deer and drenched with clouds all the morning,

Till we burst at noon to the flashing and floating round
Of the peaks. Coming down we picked in our hats the bright
And sunhot raspberries, eating them under a might
Spruce, while marten moving like quicksilver scouted us.

But we always talked of the Finger on Sawback, unknown
And hooked, till the first afternoon in September we slogged
Through the musky woods, past a swamp that quivered with frog-song,
And camped by a bottle-green lake. But under the cold

Breath of the glacier sleep would not come, the moonlight
Etching the finger. We rose and trod past the feathery
Larch, while the stars went out, and the quiet heather
Flushed, and the skyline pulsed with the surging bloom

Of incredible dawn in the Rockies. David spotted
Bighorns across the moraine and sent them leaping
With yodels the ramparts redoubled and rolled to the peaks,
And the peaks to the sun. The ice in the morning thaw

Was a gurgling would of crustal and could blue chasms,
And seracs that shone like frozen salt-green waves.
And the base of the Finger we tried once and failed. Then David
Edged to the west and discovered the chimney; the last

Hundred feet we fought the rock and shouldered and kneed
Our way for an hour and made it. Unroping we formed
A cairn on the rotting tip. Then I turned to look north
At the glistening wedge of giant Assiniboine, heedless

Of handhold. And one foot gave. I swayed and shouted.
David turned sharp and reached out his arm and steadied me
Turning again with a grin and his lips ready
To jest. But the strain crumbled his foothold. Without

A gasp he was gone. I froze to the sound of grating
Edge-nails and fingers, the slither of stones, the lone
Second of silence, the nightmare thud. The only
The wind and the muted beat of unknowing cascades.

Somehow I worked down the fifty impossible feet
To the ledge, calling and getting no answer but echoes
Released in the cirque, and trying no to reflect
What an answer would mean. He lay still, with his lean

Young face upturned and strangely unmarred, but his legs
Splayed beneath him, beside the final drop,
Six hundred feet sheer to the ice. My throat stopped
When I reached him, for he was alive. He opened his grey

Straight eyes and brokenly murmured, "over... over."
And I, feeling beneath him a cruel fang
Of the ledge thrust in his back, but not understanding,
Mumbled stupidly, "Best not to move," and spoke

of his pain. But he said "I can't move ... If only I felt
Some pain." Then my shame stung the tears to my eyes
As I crouched, and I cursed myself, but he cried
Louder, "No, Bobbie! Don't ever blame yourself.

I didn't test my foothold." He shut the lids
Of his eyes to the stare of the sky, while I moistened his lips
From our water flask and tearing my shirt into strips
I swabbed the shredded hands. But the blood slid

From his side and stained the stone and the thirsting lichens,
And yet I dared not lift him up from the gore
Of the rock. Then he whispered, "Bob, I want to go over!"
This time I knew what he meant and I grasped for a lie

And said, "I'll be back here by midnight with ropes
And men from the camp and we'll cradle you out." But I knew
That the day and the night must pass and the cold dews
Of another morning before such men unknowing

The way of mountains could win to the chimney's top.
And the, how long? And he knew ... and the hell of hours
After that, if he lived till we came, roping him out.
But I curled beside him and whispered, "The bleeding will stop.

You can last. "He said only, "Perhaps ... For what? A wheelchair,
Bob?" His eyes brightening with fever upbraided me.
I could not look at him more and said, "Then I'll stay
With you." But he did not speak, for the clouding fever.

I lay dazed and stared at the long valley,
The glistening hair of a creek on the rug stretched
By the firs, while the sun leaned round and flooded the ledge,
The moss, and David still as a broken doll

[blackmercedes]

I hunched on my knees to leave, but he called and his voice
Now was sharpened with fear. "For Christ's sake push me over!
If I could move ... or die ..." The sweat ran from his forehead
But only his head moved. A hawk was buoying

Blackly its wings over the wrinkled ice.
The purr of a waterfall rose and sank with the wind.
Above us climbed the last joint of the Finger
Beckoning bleakly the wide indifferent sky.

Even then in the sun it grew cold lying there ... And I knew
He had tested his holds. It was I who had not ... I looked
At the blood on the ledge, and the far valley. I looked
At last in his eyes. He breathed, "I'd do it for you, Bob."

I will not remember how or why I could twist
Up th wind-deviled peak, and down through the chimney's empty
Horror, and over the traverse alone. I remember
Only the pounding fear i would stumble on It

When I came to the grave-cold maw of the bergschrund ... reeling
Over the sun-cankered snowbridge, shying the caves
In the névé ... the fear, and the need to make sure It was there
On the ice, the running and falling and running, leaping

Of gaping green-throated crevasses, alone and pursued
By the Finger's lengthening shadow. At last through the fanged
And blinding seracs I slid to the milky wrangling
Falls at the glacier's snout, through the rocks piled huge

On the humped moraine, and into the spectral larches,
Alone, By the glooming lake I sank and chilled
My mouth but I could not rest and stumbled still
To the valley, losing my way in the ragged marsh.

I was glad of the mire that covered the stains, on my ripped
Boots, of his blood, but panic was on me, the creek
Of the bog, the purple glimmer of toadstools obscene
In the twilight. I staggered clear to a firewaste, tripped

And fell with a shriek on my shoulder. It somehow eased
My heart to know I was hurt, but I did not faint
And I could not stop while over me hung the range
Of the Sawback. In blackness I searched for the trail by the creek

And found it ... My feet squelched a slug and horror
Rose again in my nostrils. I hurled myself
Down the path. In the woods behind some animal yelped.
Then I saw the glimmer of tents and babbled my story.

I said that he fell straight to the ice where they found him,
And none but the sun and incurious clouds have lingered
Around the marks of that day on the ledge of the Finger,
That day, the last of my youth, on the last of our mountains.

'twas The Night Before Christmas

'twas The Night Before Christmas,
He Lived All Alone
In A One Bedroom House
Made Of Plaster And Stone.

I Had Come Down The Chimney
With Presents To Give,
And To See Just Who
In This Home Did Live.

I Looked All About;
A Strange Sight I Did See:
No Tinsel, No Presents,
Not Even A Tree.

No Stocking By Mantle,
Just Boots Filled With Sand.
On The Wall Hung Pictures
Of Far Distant Lands...

With Medals And Badges,
Awards Of All Kinds...
A Sober Thought
Came Through My Mind.

For This House Was Different.
It Was Dark And Dreary.
I Found A Home Of A Soldier,
Once I Could See Clearly.

The Soldier Lay Sleeping--
Silent, Alone--
Curled Up On The Floor
In This One Bedroom Home.

The Face Was So Gentle,
The Room In Disorder;
Not How I Pictured
A United States Soldier.

Was This The Hero
Of Who I'd Just Read?
Curled Up On A Poncho;
The Floor For A Bed?

I Realized The Families
That I Saw This Night
Owed Their Lives To This Soldier
Who Was Willing To Fight.

Soon 'round The World
The Children Would Play,
And Grownups Would Celebrate
A Bright Christmas Day.

They All Enjoy Freedom
Each Month Of The Year
Because Of The Soldiers
Like The One Lying Here.

I Couldn't Help Wonder
How Many Lay Alone
On A Cold Christmas Eve,
In A Land Far From Home.

The Very Thought
Brought A Tear To My Eye.
I Dropped To My Knees
And Started To Cry.

The Soldier Awakened
And I Heard A Rough Voice,
"santa, Don't Cry.
This Life Is My Choice."

"i Fight For Freedom.
I Don't Ask For More.
My Life Is My God,
My Country, My Corps."

The Soldier Rolled Over
And Drifted To Sleep.
I Couldn't Control It;
I Continued To Weep.

I Kept Watch For Hours,
So Silent And Still;
And We Both Shivered
From The Cold Night's Chill.

I Didn't Want To Leave
On That Cold, Dark Night--
This Guardian Of Honor,
So Willing To Fight.

Then The Soldier Rolled Over
And With A Voice, Soft And Pure,
Whispered, "carry On, Santa.
It's Christmas Day, All's Secure."

One Look At My Watch
And I Knew He Was Right.
"merry Christmas, My Friend,
And To All, A Good Night."

[KirkVining]

A lot of Frost deals with the theme of how fleeting and impermanent the world has become, a process even more accelarated in our day and age. Two poems in particular stand out:

Robert Frost - Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.


FIRE AND ICE
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

[KirkVining]

Originally Posted by Jake

'twas The Night Before Christmas

'twas The Night Before Christmas,
He Lived All Alone
In A One Bedroom House
Made Of Plaster And Stone.

I Had Come Down The Chimney
With Presents To Give,
And To See Just Who
In This Home Did Live.

I Looked All About;
A Strange Sight I Did See:
No Tinsel, No Presents,
Not Even A Tree.

No Stocking By Mantle,
Just Boots Filled With Sand.
On The Wall Hung Pictures
Of Far Distant Lands...

With Medals And Badges,
Awards Of All Kinds...
A Sober Thought
Came Through My Mind.

For This House Was Different.
It Was Dark And Dreary.
I Found A Home Of A Soldier,
Once I Could See Clearly.

The Soldier Lay Sleeping--
Silent, Alone--
Curled Up On The Floor
In This One Bedroom Home.

The Face Was So Gentle,
The Room In Disorder;
Not How I Pictured
A United States Soldier.

Was This The Hero
Of Who I'd Just Read?
Curled Up On A Poncho;
The Floor For A Bed?

I Realized The Families
That I Saw This Night
Owed Their Lives To This Soldier
Who Was Willing To Fight.

Soon 'round The World
The Children Would Play,
And Grownups Would Celebrate
A Bright Christmas Day.

They All Enjoy Freedom
Each Month Of The Year
Because Of The Soldiers
Like The One Lying Here.

I Couldn't Help Wonder
How Many Lay Alone
On A Cold Christmas Eve,
In A Land Far From Home.

The Very Thought
Brought A Tear To My Eye.
I Dropped To My Knees
And Started To Cry.

The Soldier Awakened
And I Heard A Rough Voice,
"santa, Don't Cry.
This Life Is My Choice."

"i Fight For Freedom.
I Don't Ask For More.
My Life Is My God,
My Country, My Corps."

The Soldier Rolled Over
And Drifted To Sleep.
I Couldn't Control It;
I Continued To Weep.

I Kept Watch For Hours,
So Silent And Still;
And We Both Shivered
From The Cold Night's Chill.

I Didn't Want To Leave
On That Cold, Dark Night--
This Guardian Of Honor,
So Willing To Fight.

Then The Soldier Rolled Over
And With A Voice, Soft And Pure,
Whispered, "carry On, Santa.
It's Christmas Day, All's Secure."

One Look At My Watch
And I Knew He Was Right.
"merry Christmas, My Friend,
And To All, A Good Night."

I like that. My own favorite poem on the deep emotionality associated with being a common soldier is this one I've posted before on this site, a poem by Bernie Taupin that was set to music by Elton John and was a hit during the Vietnam War. The poet tries to express the feelings of a dying soldier, and it seems to express the feelings not only of a single particular soldier in a very individual way, it also expresses the resignation to one's fate that all soldiers must adopt to both survive, and to accept death if necessary.

Where to now St. Peter?

I took myself a blue canoe
And I floated like a leaf
Dazzling, dancing
Half enchanted
In my Merlin sleep

Crazy was the feeling
Restless were my eyes
Insane they took the paddles
My arms they paralysed

So where to now St. Peter
If it's true I'm in your hands
I may not be a Christian
But I've done all one man can
I understand I'm on the road
Where all that was is gone
So where to now St. Peter
Show me which road I'm on
Which road I'm on

It took a sweet young foreign gun
This lazy life is short
Something for nothing always ending
With a bad report

Dirty was the daybreak
Sudden was the change
In such a silent place as this
Beyond the rifle range

I took myself a blue canoe

[Kuan]

Wilfred Owen
Dulce et Decorum est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime. —
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, —
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

[dirtysocks]

Blackmercedes "Out, Out" is based on an actual event that Frost read about in a newspaper article. A moving poem. "Mending Wall" and "Design" are probably my favorite Frost poems, so I guess I'll post them for all to enjoy (although enjoy is not really the correct word for Frost's poetry, is it?). I'm finishing up a college course on Frost, Dickinson and Eliot. Frost is the superior of these three imho.


Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."


Design

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth—
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?—
If design govern in a thing so small.

[ramonajim]

There once was a liberated Ms,
Who thought herself a social Ws.
She had an invention,
With equalizing intention.
A method for standing to Ps.

ok, so maybe that doesn't quite meet most people's idea of "highbrow"

Originally Posted by KirkVining

I like that. My own favorite poem on the deep emotionality associated with being a common soldier is this one I've posted before on this site, a poem by Bernie Taupin that was set to music by Elton John and was a hit during the Vietnam War. The poet tries to express the feelings of a dying soldier, and it seems to express the feelings not only of a single particular soldier in a very individual way, it also expresses the resignation to one's fate that all soldiers must adopt to both survive, and to accept death if necessary.

Where to now St. Peter?

I took myself a blue canoe
And I floated like a leaf
Dazzling, dancing
Half enchanted
In my Merlin sleep

Crazy was the feeling
Restless were my eyes
Insane they took the paddles
My arms they paralysed

So where to now St. Peter
If it's true I'm in your hands
I may not be a Christian
But I've done all one man can
I understand I'm on the road
Where all that was is gone
So where to now St. Peter
Show me which road I'm on
Which road I'm on

It took a sweet young foreign gun
This lazy life is short
Something for nothing always ending
With a bad report

Dirty was the daybreak
Sudden was the change
In such a silent place as this
Beyond the rifle range

I took myself a blue canoe

I had heard that song before, but never really listened to the words. Very good work. EJ & Bernie have done some very good stuff.