There’s a project on Americans reading their favorite poems. I found the one with Rev. Michael Haynes reading Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” edifying.

I’m not very good at picking favorites, but apart from Psalms 23 and 139, one of my favorites is Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and gazed down one as far as I could to where it turned in the undergrowth.”

What’s your favorite poem?

Tags: favorite poem, poems, Longfellow, Frost

Sherry is celebrating poetry month, beginning with compressed poetry. Here’s a portion of one for today, from “Winter Is Coming” by Waverley Turner Carmichael.

De frost is fallin’ on de gras’

An’ seem to say “Dis is yo’ las’”—

De air is blowin’ mighty cold

Like it done in days of old.

Or like it done in Minnesota

and then again in Chattanooga.

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,

From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken

The sweet buds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast,

As she dances about the sun.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

And whiten the green plains under,

And then again I dissolve it in rain,

And laugh as I pass in thunder.

From “The Cloud” by Percy Bysshe Shelley

The speckled sky is dim with snow,

The light flakes falter and fall slow;

Athwart the hill-top, rapt and pale,

Silently drops a silvery veil;

And all the valley is shut in

By flickering curtains gray and thin.

Read more of “Midwinter” by John Townsend Trowbridge

“He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;

My woods—the young fir balsams like a place

Where houses all are churches and have spires.

I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas Trees.”

From “Christmas Trees” by Robert Frost

Sherry offers a work by D. Gabriel Rossetti:

She fell asleep on Christmas Eve:

At length the long-ungranted shade

Of weary eyelids overweigh’d

The pain nought else might yet relieve. . . .

Also, Frank Wilson offers a piece he wrote last year:

The leaves are fallen, but the sky is clear

(Though winter’s scheduling an arctic flight).

The rumor is a rendezvous draws near. . . .

Words like these put me in the mood for a song. “Oh by golly, have a holly, jolly–” NOT THAT SONG. Something closer to the holiday will be better. Here’s part of one we sang tonight.

As with joyful steps they sped

To that lowly cradle bed,

There to bend the knee before

Him whom heaven and earth adore;

So may we with willing feet

Ever seek thy mercy-seat.

…

Holy Jesus, ev’ry day

Keep us in the narrow way;

And, when earthly things are past,

Bring our ransomed souls at last

Where they need no star to guide,

Where no clouds thy glory hide.