Welcome to Litsy!

1. Pretty much anything chocolate, it especially M&Ms
2. Any candy with peanut butter
3. Going to Hawaii and taking part in Halloween there, it‘s like their Marie Gras. Started doing it with my parents 11 years ago, great memories
4. When I was little a Dalmatian, the warmest costume I ever had, didn‘t have to wear a coat over it (CO weather), adult Kitana from Mortal Kombat. #TeamStoker #Scarathlon

This is from yesterday but I love this anthology already! I remember this one from school. This sonnet was written about (and is somewhere inscribed near) the statue of liberty. #Poemsbeforephones #poetry
@monalyisha @cocomass @Redwritinghood @DivineDiana

I enjoyed this collection of poems, considered to be the world‘s best loved. Poems were chosen to memorize and share with family and friends. It was surprising that many contained lines which were familiar to me, and I never realized their source. They were organized in five sections: Sonnets, Songs, Counsels, Tales and Meditations. I will definitely keep this in my collection!
Photo: students reading poetry to the wall. 🙂

Mending Wall
By Robert Frost
“He only says,”Good fences make good neighbors.”
Spring is the mischief in me,and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbors?Isn‘t it
Where there are cows?But there are no cows
Before I built a wall I‘d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom was I like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn‘t love a wall.”
#poemsbeforephones Photo: Berlin Wall

To a Waterfowl
By William Cullen Bryant

“He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.”

I did not expect to do a #poemsbeforephones post today, but this one I wanted to share.

The Owl and the Pussy-cat
By Edward Lear

“The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey,and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
“O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!”

#poemsbeforephones

Jabberwocky
By Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

#poemsbeforephones

The nonsense language reminds me of Dr. Seuss, but darker.

From the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Translated from the Persian
By Edward Fitzgerald

“A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread-and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness-
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!”

Illustration- Edmund Dulac
#poemsbeforephones

The Cat and the Moon
By William Butler Yeats

“The cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For, wander and wail as he would,
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance,Minnaloushe, do you dance?”

#poemsbeforephone

Blow,blow thou winter wind
By William Shakespeare

“Blow,blow thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man‘s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude,
Heigh-ho! heigh-ho unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning,most loving mere folly:
Then,heigh-ho the holly!
This life is most jolly.”

#poemsbeforephones

To Celia
By Ben Johnson

“Drinke to me, only, with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And Ile not look for wine.”

Written in 1616 and later set to music in 1790.However, it is believed that this poem was paraphrased from one written by Philostratus, a Greek in his own language.

Art: George W. Joy

#poemsbeforephones

Those Winter Sundays
By Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
....

Speaking indifferently to him,
Who had driven out the cold
And polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know,what did I know
Of love‘s austere and lonely offices?”

#poemsbeforephones

A Red, Red Rose
Robert Burns

“O my luve‘s like a red, red rose,
That‘s newly sprung in June;
O my luve‘s like the melodie
That‘s sweetly played in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a‘ the seas gang dry.”

#poemsbeforephones

Composed upon Westminster Bridge
September 3, 1802
William Wordsworth

“Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships,towers,domes,theatres,and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.”
#poemsbeforephones

Needed a new book for the #poemsbeforephones challenge and found this on my shelves. So happy to start one from the very extensive #MtTBR !

An excerpt from the sonnet, The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus:

“...Give me your tired,your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless,tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp behind the golden door.”

#poemsbeforephones