Status Updates From Classic FM 100 Favourite Poems

‘If thou only lookest at me,
I am happy, I am happy’
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

faves:
High Flight, John Gillespie Magee
The Passionate Shepherd to his Love, Christopher Marlowe
Sea Fever, John Masefield
Christina Rossetti, Remember Me
Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
Stevie Smith, Not Waving but Drowning
W. B. Yeats, When you are old

‘Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?’ Said the Piggy, ‘I will.’
So they took it away and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand
They danced by the light of the moon.’

- Edward Lear, The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

faves:

Warning, by Jenny Joseph
To Autumn, John Keats

‘Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness -
And Wilderness if Paradise enow.’

(The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Edward FitzGerald)

more favourites:

the good-morrow, John Donne

‘If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desir’d, and got, ‘twas but a dreame of thee.’

also being forced to reevaluate T.S. Eliot. I have been extremely prejudiced against him because of Cats the musical but I see now that wasn’t his fault. Macavity would be so fun to read aloud to kids! the last stanza of Journey of the Magi is haunting. also the wasteland!

rime of the ancient mariner!!!! slaps !!!

fun fact: I once memorised the first 100+ lines of this poem for a competition in like year 4. because I was a nasty little teachers pet and a show-off and I love to WIN

‘Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.’

the way some of the little biographies are written really tickles me. love it when a biographer/historian is just like, ‘this guy SUCKED and so did his dad’

favourites so far:
Stop All The Clocks (W.H. Auden)
Jabberwocky (Lewis Carroll)