MAP Forum

I was reading that thread about the Olympian, and it brought to mind the famous 7th stanza of Robert Burns' poem Man was made to Mourn.

Many and sharp the num’rous ills,
Inwoven with our frame!
More pointed still we make ourselves,
Regret, Remorse, and Shame!
And man, whose heav’n-erected face,
The smiles of love adorn,
Man’s inhumanity to Man,
Makes countless thousands mourn.

What poems or poetry inspires you?

A Little Girl Lost

Children of the future age,
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time
Love, sweet love, was thought a crime.

In the age of gold,
Free from winter’s cold,
Youth and maiden bright,
To the holy light,
Naked in the sunny beams delight.

Once a youthful pair,
Filled with softest care,
Met in garden bright
Where the holy light
Had just removed the curtains of the night.

There, in rising day,
On the grass they play;
Parents were afar,
Strangers came not near,
And the maiden soon forgot her fear.

Tired with kisses sweet,
They agree to meet
When the silent sleep
Waves o’er heaven’s deep,
And the weary tired wanderers weep.

To her father white
Came the maiden bright;
But his loving look,
Like the holy book,
All her tender limbs with terror shook.

‘Ona, pale and weak,
To thy father speak!
O the trembling fear!
O the dismal care
That shakes the blossoms of my hoary hair!’

- Songs of Innocence and Experience, William Blake, 1794

Anything from Benjamin Zephaniah.

We two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going -- North and South excursions making,
Power enjoying -- elbows stretching -- fingers clutching,
Arm'd and fearless -- eating, drinking, sleeping, loving,
No law less than ourselves owing -- sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming -- air breathing, water drinking, on the turf or the sea-beach dancing
Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing,
Fulfilling our foray.

--Walt Whitman

Wild Child


You caught a glimpse of her,
once, before,
when she was first born
in the moss-covered ruins
of my heart.

She thrived there,
growing wild among
the thorny bushes
in the vines that wrap around
the cracked, ancient stones.

I buried her once,
when I thought I had no need
of her protection.
But fear now, fear,
for the ghost-child of my heart

has risen again.


~ Anna Rosenfeld