Quotations and Literature Forum

O me, o life!
The qestions of these recurring

Of the endless trains of the faithless
Of cities filled with the foolish

Of myself, forever reproaching myself
For who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renewed

Of the poor results of all
Of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest, me intertwined

The question, o me, So sad, recurring:
What good amid these, o me, o life?

Answer:

That you are here; that life exists, and identity
That the powerful play goes on, that you might contribute a verse

-Walt Whitman, O me, O life!

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This poem is, for me, the paragon of poetic verse. It probes the very substance of life's meaning and tries to glean some understanding of the trappings of mortality. I have read and memorized this poem and do consider it one of the great works of lyrical composition.






What poems do you like? What verse shall you contribute?

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"Whom I love? Think a moment-
Think of me, me whom the plainest woman would despise...Whom should I love?

Why, it must be the woman in the world most beautiful!"

-Cyrano de Bergerac

First off, 'Cyrano de Bergerac' and 'O me, O life!' are both wonderful works.

Personally, I absolutely love 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud' by William Wordsworth:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.


Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.


The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:


For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

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To me, this is the quintessence of 'sprightly' poetry, so to say. It is in essence a great focus of my beliefs, of the lively poetic spirit, and of many other sundry things.

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The eighteenth of Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' (which, if I had to choose only one work, I'd say this is his best and perhaps the best piece of literature I have ever read) is probably the best of them all, and the most famous.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

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This is the great turning point, where the speaker stops his harsh attitude toward the lead character in wanting him to marry and conceive, and begins truly describing love as it should be. I love Shakespeare's language and I often try some similar techniques myself, and most of my writings are greatly inspired by Shakespeare's.

I agree with you Pun, that Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 is one of his best, but my favorite is his Sonnet 116.
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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.
Oh 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.

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I think this poem is the perfect example of how love transcend time and faults, and it is unconditional. I have to say that, although my writings are not Shakespeare inspired, I greatly respect his style and subjects.

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Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson