Young Writers Society

WRONG!!!
D-I-C-K-I-N-S-O-N.
""Hope" is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm - That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I've heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of Me."

Oh oh oh! Rainer Maria Rilke's "The Bride." Translated by Edward Snow, of course; he's got the best Rilke translations I've come across so far.

Call to me, love, call to me loudly!
Don't let your bride stand so long at the window.
In the old shaded plane-tree avenues
the evening no longer wakes:
they are empty.

And if you don't come and lock me up with your voice
in the deep nocturnal house,
then I must pour myself out of my hands
into the gardens of
dark blue . . .

I adore Emily Dickinson! I recently recited "Hope is the Thing With Feathers" for my Lit. class, lovely poem. I love how she can say so much in so few words, even her shorter poems have so much complexity:

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say,
I say it just
Begins to live that day.

****

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

Other favorites: Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and "Still I Rise," Langston Hugh's "Harlem", W.B. Yeats' "The Stolen Child"(see my siggy) and "Song of the Wandering Aengus," Alfred Noye's "The Highwayman," (AWESOME poem) "Loveliest of Trees, The Cherry Now," A.E. Houseman, Robert Frost, Robert Burns, Tennyson...