Poems that bring you to tears everytime.

[Deleted]

Real men read poetry! What poem has you in tears at every reading? Funeral Blues by W H Auden is mine (even though it's actually from a play), and it was on Stephen Fry's latest show, had me in tears.

So, what poem grabs your heartstrings?

[Deleted]

No poem ever made me cry.

However, this one by John Donne touches me because i feel it is absolutely spot on :

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as a manor of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

[Deleted]

Real men read poetry! What poem has you in tears at every reading? Funeral Blues by W H Auden is mine (even though it's actually from a play), and it was on Stephen Fry's latest show, had me in tears.

So, what poem grabs your heartstrings?

I watched it too, and like you felt quite touched by it.. but after reading it online realised the classical score behind Fry's reading made quite a lot of difference.

Also I only clocked the last two verses(?) when it was on the TV, and think it lost some of its romanticism after seeing the mention of telephones and aeroplanes in the earlier verses. Still, enjoyed the last 4 lines very much.

Here it is for anyone else interested:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

[Troodi]

Not really a tear-jerk poem, but it still pulls my heart strings:

The Cremation of Sam McGee
by Robert Service

http://holyjoe.org/poetry/service2.htm

* * *

[CJack14dt]

This one I heard in a bar once and it made me choke up:

Muscles and beef, he had a ton.
Eyes like the sea longing for fun.
Two drinks and a look and home we went.
The things I could see myself do to this gent.
His jeans gave nod to a big black persuasion.
Tears I held back when I found it was Asian.

[Arcilux]

I've never really cried from a poem. Two of my favorites are:

The Tyger - William Blake
The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost

[Talokami]

I've never really cried from a poem. Two of my favorites are:

The Tyger - William Blake
The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost

Anything by Blake is a worthwhile read!

I'm drawing a blank at the moment but I'd have to say the death of Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet would be my immediate choice. The subject is sad but the scene painted in the language is beautiful.

" There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them;
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clamb’ring to hang, an envious silver broke,
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up;
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes,
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element. But long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death. "

[Arcilux]

Anything by Blake is a worthwhile read!

Yes, I am a huge Blake fan, but Tyger is my favorite:

"Tyger, tyger, burning bright
in the forests of the night
what immortal hand or eye
dare frame thy fearful symmetry?"

Frost, e e cummings, Poe, Emerson, Yeats, I particularly enjoy nature poetry.

Catullus has some good poems translated from Latin

This one I actually got to translate as a senior in high school. Best Latin assignment ever. Aemilius was a politician if I remember correctly, making it all the sweeter.

97. Disgusting: to Aemilius

I did not (may the gods love me) think it mattered,
whether I might be smelling Aemilius’s mouth or arse.
The one’s no cleaner, the other’s no dirtier,
in fact his arse is both cleaner and nicer:
since it’s no teeth. Indeed, the other has
foot long teeth, gums like an old box-cart,
and jaws that usually gape like the open
cunt of a pissing mule on heat.
He fucks lots of women, and makes himself out
to be charming, and isn’t set to the mill with the ass?
Shouldn’t we think, of any girl touching him,
she’s capable of licking a foul hangman’s arse?