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The Bells by Edgar Allen Poe does the most wondrous things with words and meter to evoke the emotions of each verse:

O from out the sounding cells
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells
How it dwells
On the Future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels

or

Oh the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!
How they clash and clang and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!

Tied for second place are The Harp that Once on Tara's Halls and Avenging and Bright, both by Thomas Moore (not to be confused with Thomas More) and Dona Dona, by one Aaron Zeigler. They all come with great tunes, but they stand perfectly well as poetry. The Harp uses words almost as well as The Bells and has a beautiful, lilting sadness. Avenging and Bright is chock full of lore that I wouldn't rest until I looked up, and it has a good righteous anger. Dona Dona just touches my free spirit, but as poetry it doesn't match the others. Maybe it does in Hebrew, I wouldn't know.

Wow, I was just about to post The Bells. I love that poem! Its what attracted me Poe in the first place. Its so chilling.

Hear the tolling of the bells-
Iron Bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.

Ah, that and The Raven. I don't think I can get enough of either. I'm so weird.

Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee- by these angels he
hath sent thee
Respite- respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Anything written by Poe is good, be it his short stories or poetry. However, as this topic is about favorite poetry, these are my 3 favorite of his poems. I also love the works of Lord Byron, Emily Dickinson, etc., but in my mind, Poe is the king of poetry.

ALONE
by Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then–in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life–was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

ANNABEL LEE


It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love -
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulcher
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me
Yes! that was the reason
(as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we
Of many far wiser than we
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
In the sepulcher there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.



The Conqueror Worm

Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly-
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!

That motley drama- oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!- it writhes!- with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

Out- out are the lights- out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

I think this one's called Autum. If not tell me what the name is.

Long has paled that sunny sky
Echoes fade and memories die; Autumn frosts have slain July.
Still she haunts me, phantomwise, Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes
Through the looking glass and back
Children yet, the tale to hear, Eager eyes and willing ear, Lovingly shall nestle near
In a Wonderland they lie, Dreaming as the days go by, Dreaming as the summers die
Ever drifting down the stream- Lingering in the golden gleam-Life, what is it but a dream?

We were studying war this term for English, and I learned this really good poem, called 'Ducle et Decorum Est'. I'll recite it for you all

"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 tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped 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,
Obscene as cancer, 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.

'Dulce Et Decorum Est' is Latin for "It is Sweet and Right"
"Pro Patria Mori" is Latin for "To Die for your country"

I'm not much of a poetry lover, but that was one poem I thought was simply incredible.

Preludes by T.S. Eliot, To Autumn by John Keats (SO beautiful ) and Dover Beach (forgot who the poet was ).

I'm thinking of reading "Wasteland" by T.S. Eliot later on.

The Raven by Poe is probably my favourite.
I love the rhythm of the thing, and like it recited in a progressively faster a breathless way.