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

The time of our life is short
Let's make it clean,
Some live by stealing,
Others only by what they gave,
There are poor and rich
The cowards strike the brave;
You who fly to the moon
To the sky you climb
On the backs of new slaves.

On earth we have everything,
Both better and worse,
Good, bad,
Both prisons and freedom,
And what we can and cannot do,
Both mud and stars.
-Adrian Păunescu