Poems that make you cry.

[SteveH]

I thought I'd started a thread on this topic some time ago, but apparently not. I remember a fairly predictable reply from another member here, but it may have been on the other forum on which we both posted.
Anyway - I recently bought a poetry anthology called 'Poems That Make Grown Men Cry', to which various brainy bods, including Rowan Williams, had been invited to nominate a poem that had moved them to tears. (There is a companion volume for women.) What poems make you blub? Post a link to the poem, or copy and paste it into the thread: most reasonably well-known poems are on-line somewhere.
Here, for starters, is Ben Jonson's heart-breaking little tribute to his son, who died aged seven:

On my First Son
BY BEN JONSON
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Seven years tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon 'scap'd world's and flesh's rage,
And if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say, "Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry."
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.

And a poem about faith, loss of faith, and substitutes for it by my favourite living poet, the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, that can get me a bit choked up at the end:

Prayer

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

Carol Ann Duffy

[Robbie]

Ode on Solitude
BY ALEXANDER POPE

(Applies equally to women.
Studied this for A level & remain impressed to this day)

Happy the man, whose wish and care
   A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
                            In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
   Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
                            In winter fire.

Blest, who can unconcernedly find
   Hours, days, and years slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
                            Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease,
   Together mixed; sweet recreation;
And innocence, which most does please,
                            With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
   Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
                            Tell where I lie.
__________
Ariel by Sylvia Plath

Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue   
Pour of tor and distances.

God’s lioness,   
How one we grow,
Pivot of heels and knees!—The furrow

Splits and passes, sister to   
The brown arc
Of the neck I cannot catch,

Nigger-eye   
Berries cast dark   
Hooks—

Black sweet blood mouthfuls,   
Shadows.
Something else

Hauls me through air—
Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels.

White
Godiva, I unpeel—
Dead hands, dead stringencies.

And now I
Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.   
The child’s cry

Melts in the wall.   
And I
Am the arrow,

The dew that flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive   
Into the red

Eye, the cauldron of morning.

[Aruntraveller]

As I have just sobbed my way through the film version of "Testament of Youth" this by Vera Brittain:

Perhaps (to R.A.L.)

Perhaps some day the sun will shine again,
 And I shall see that still the skies are blue,
 And feel once more I do not live in vain,
 Although bereft of You.

 Perhaps the golden meadows at my feet
 Will make the sunny hours of spring seem gay,
 And I shall find the white May-blossoms sweet,
 Though You have passed away.

 Perhaps the summer woods will shimmer bright,
 And crimson roses once again be fair,
 And autumn harvest fields a rich delight,
 Although You are not there.

 Perhaps some day I shall not shrink in pain
 To see the passing of the dying year,
 And listen to Christmas songs again,
 Although You cannot hear.' 

 But though kind Time may many joys renew,
 There is one greatest joy I shall not know
 Again, because my heart for loss of You
 Was broken, long ago.

[floo]

They are sad. I can't remember when I last piped the eye, just not me.

[SteveH]

They are sad. I can't remember when I last piped the eye, just not me.

Different poems move different people. Some of the poems in the anthology did nothing for me.

[ippy]

There are so many poems I really enjoy and there so many I'm unable to read out without crumbling, I avoid reading them out because this, unavoidable for me, crumbling is embarrassing.

Regards ippy

P S Oh yes, 'Not Waving But Drowning' and 'Alfred the Great', both Stevie Smith. 

[Samuel]

Nice thread. Here is one of my favourites by Thomas Hardy. No tears, but it never fails to move me.

Logs on the Hearth
(A Memory of A Sister)

   The fire advances along the log
      Of the tree we felled,
Which bloomed and bore striped apples by the peck
   Till its last hour of bearing knelled.

   The fork that first my hand would reach
      And then my foot
In climbings upward inch by inch, lies now
   Sawn, sapless, darkening with soot.

   Where the bark chars is where, one year,
      It was pruned, and bled -
Then overgrew the wound.  But now, at last,
   Its growings all have stagnated.

   My fellow-climber rises dim
      From her chilly grave -
Just as she was, her foot near mine on the bending limb,
   Laughing, her young brown hand awave.

[floo]

I wrote this poem some years ago after the son of some friends of ours committed suicide.

Death By Their Own Hand

So tragic,
So sad,
So unnecessary,
So wasteful of potential,
Bemused we shake our heads
In despair and disbelief,
No healing balm was proffered
To ease the agony of the unquiet mind,
The final solution wrought of hopelessness,
Death by their own hand.
 
RJG

[Bramble]

I can't think of a poem that has actually made me cry, though there are plenty that move me. Here's one I'm particularly fond of - A Blade of Grass by Brian Patten:
 
'You ask for a poem.
I offer you a blade of grass.
You say it is not good enough.
You ask for a poem.
 
I say this blade of grass will do.
It has dressed itself in frost,
It is more immediate
Than any image of my making.
 
You say it is not a poem,
It is a blade of grass and grass
Is not quite good enough.
I offer you a blade of grass.
 
You are indignant.
You say it is too easy to offer grass.
It is absurd.
Anyone can offer a blade of grass.
 
You ask for a poem.
And so I write you a tragedy about
How a blade of grass
Becomes more and more difficult to offer,
 
And about how as you grow older
A blade of grass
Becomes more difficult to accept.'

Interruption to a Journey by Norman MacCaig probably brings me as close to tears as any poem could:

'The hare we had run over
Bounced about the road
On the springing curve
Of its spine.

Cornfields breathed in the darkness,
We were going through the darkness and
The breathing cornfields from one
Important place to another.

We broke the hare’s neck
And made that place, for a moment,
The most important place there was,
Where a bowstring was cut
And a bow broken forever
That had shot itself through so many
Darknesses and cornfields.

It was left in that landscape.
It left us in another.'

And finally, for all our grandiosity Basho covers human life in three short lines:

'Journeying through the world, --
To and fro, to and fro,
Harrowing the small field'






 

[Nearly Sane]

Edwin Morgan - When You Go


'When you go,
if you go,
And I should want to die,
there's nothing I'd be saved by
more than the time
you fell asleep in my arms
in a trust so gentle
I let the darkening room
drink up the evening, till
rest, or the new rain
lightly roused you awake.
I asked if you heard the rain in your dream
and half dreaming still you only said, I love you.'

[Harrowby Hall]

It does not bring me to tears, but I find Keats' poem "When I Have Fears" very moving. John Keats, being apprenticed to a surgeon, was well aware of the consequences of his tuberculosis. He died at the age of 25.

When I have fears that I may cease to be
   Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,
   Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,
   Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
   Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
   That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
   Of unreflecting love—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

[Walter]

Edwin Morgan - When You Go


'When you go,
if you go,
And I should want to die,
there's nothing I'd be saved by
more than the time
you fell asleep in my arms
in a trust so gentle
I let the darkening room
drink up the evening, till
rest, or the new rain
lightly roused you awake.
I asked if you heard the rain in your dream
and half dreaming still you only said, I love you.'

cry? it's just emulsion that's washing you over

[Walter]

anyway, I'm parked in a pub carpark on the banks of the river Trent tonight and they've got a singer on. So I think ill go and socialise with real people for a change but I have a major dilemma ; should I wear socks?

 

[Walter]

Footsteps on the dance floor
Remind me Saney of you
🎤🎧🎼

Hey ! She's good x

[Nearly Sane]

A E Houseman

Because I liked you better
Than suits a man to say,
It irked you, and I promised
To throw the thought away.

To put the world between us
We parted, stiff and dry;
‘Good-bye,’ said you, ‘forget me.’
‘I will, no fear’, said I.

If here, where clover whitens
The dead man’s knoll, you pass,
And no tall flower to meet you
Starts in the trefoiled grass,

Halt by the headstone naming
The heart no longer stirred,
And say the lad that loved you
Was one that kept his word.

[Aruntraveller]

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 
Dylan Thomas

[Gordon]

Two from Seamus Heaney, and both well known. The first recounts his being summoned from boarding school following the death of his much younger brother. The second, and one I can relate to, about the shift when a very competent older relative who tolerates you with good grace (his father, and in my case my late aunt) but who then becomes less competent and roles are reversed.

Both have memorable last lines.

Mid-Term Break

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble,'
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

Follower

My father worked with a horse-plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horse strained at his clicking tongue.

An expert. He would set the wing
And fit the bright steel-pointed sock.
The sod rolled over without breaking.
At the headrig, with a single pluck

Of reins, the sweating team turned round
And back into the land. His eye
Narrowed and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly.

I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake,
Fell sometimes on the polished sod;
Sometimes he rode me on his back
Dipping and rising to his plod.

I wanted to grow up and plough,
To close one eye, stiffen my arm.
All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow round the farm.

I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always. But today
It is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away.

[Nearly Sane]

"Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
Today we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighbouring gardens,
And today we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For today we have naming of parts. "

[Nearly Sane]

https://poets.org/poem/still-i-rise

[Nearly Sane]

When you are Old - W B Yeats


When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

[Nearly Sane]

The Mower - Philip Larkin

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found   

A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,   

Killed. It had been in the long grass.


I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.   

Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world   

Unmendably. Burial was no help:


Next morning I got up and it did not.

The first day after a death, the new absence   

Is always the same; we should be careful


Of each other, we should be kind   

While there is still time.

[Nearly Sane]

https://m.poemhunter.com/poem/footsteps/

[Nearly Sane]

Edwin Morgan - When You Go


'When you go,
if you go,
And I should want to die,
there's nothing I'd be saved by
more than the time
you fell asleep in my arms
in a trust so gentle
I let the darkening room
drink up the evening, till
rest, or the new rain
lightly roused you awake.
I asked if you heard the rain in your dream
and half dreaming still you only said, I love you.'

100th anniversary of Morgan's birth.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Morgan_(poet)

[Nearly Sane]

Spring View

A nation is broken by war, yet mountains and rivers exist
Spring comes to the city walls, where grass and trees still grow
This season it feels like blossoms are splashing like tears
I hate to depart, for the birds are scared in their hearts
Three months now, the beacon fires of war have burned
And one letter from home is worth ten thousand pieces of gold
While I scratch my white hair that has grown thin
Darken my desire not to be able to use a hairpin


Du Fu

[Gordon]

I mentioned elsewhere that Michael Rosen has been very ill in hospital and that reminds me of this poem of his written to mark the 60th anniversary of the NHS.

These are the hands

These are the hands
That touch us first
Feel your head
Find the pulse
And make your bed.

These are the hands
That tap your back
Test the skin
Hold your arm
Wheel the bin
Change the bulb
Fix the drip
Pour the jug
Replace your hip.

These are the hands
That fill the bath
Mop the floor
Flick the switch
Soothe the sore
Burn the swabs
Give us a jab
Throw out sharps
Design the lab.

And these are the hands
That stop the leaks
Empty the pan
Wipe the pipes
Carry the can
Clamp the veins
Make the cast
Log the dose
And touch us last.