OT: What are you favorite poems?

[askolover]

Life by Nan Terrell Reed

THEY TOLD ME that Life could be just what I made it—
Life could be fashioned and worn like a gown;
I, the designer; mine the decision
Whether to wear it with bonnet or crown.

And so I selected the prettiest pattern—
Life should be made of the rosiest hue—
Something unique, and a bit out of fashion,
One that perhaps would be chosen by few.

But other folks came and they leaned o'er my shoulder;
Somebody questioned the ultimate cost;
Somebody tangled the thread I was using;
One day I found that my scissors were lost.

And somebody claimed the material faded;
Somebody said I'd be tired ere 'twas worn;
Somebody's fingers, too pointed and spiteful,
Snatched at the cloth, and I saw it was torn.

Oh! somebody tried to do all the sewing,
Wanting always to advise or condone.
Here is my life, the product of many;
Where is that gown I could fashion—alone?

 

[askolover]

Sonnet 18 by William Shakespear

<pre>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 dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.</pre>