Poetry

I've been telling people or posting in Facebook, Multiply and Plurk that I loved my class last semester where we just did a lot of analyzing of poems, and a little bit on short story. English 11, if I get it right.

Shakepeare's Sonnet 116 or Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds...

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

And also Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Another one is the famous poem by Elizabeth Browning How Do I Love Thee

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with a passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

It's the feeling of reading poems and analyzing, understanding them, that just makes me feel like, wow. After every class I feel good when I just read and appreciate poems. I wish others appreciate poetry too.

Poems taken in the class had deep meanings or are already acclaimed. But the first poem I have actually memorized from first grade is what would be forever memorable. It's from our first grade book, which I forgot the title. My apologies to the publisher and author.

When I was one, my sister was two

When I was three, my sister was four

When I was five, my sister was six

Now I'm seven and going to eight

Won't someone please tell

My sister to wait.