users' favorite poems

if you can keep your head when all about you
are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
but make allowance for their doubting too:
if you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
or being hated don't give way to hating,
and yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

if you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
if you can think - and not make thoughts your aim,
if you can meet with triumph and disaster
and treat those two impostors just the same:.
if you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
and stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

if you can make one heap of all your winnings
and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
and lose, and start again at your beginnings,
and never breathe a word about your loss:
if you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
to serve your turn long after they are gone,
and so hold on when there is nothing in you
except the will which says to them: "hold on!"

if you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
if all men count with you, but none too much:
if you can fill the unforgiving minute
with sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
yours is the earth and everything that's in it,
and - which is more - you'll be a man, my son!

rudyard kipling

i leant upon a coppice gate
when frost was spectre-grey,
and winter's dregs made desolate
the weakening eye of day.
the tangled bine-stems scored the sky
like strings of broken lyres,
and all mankind that haunted nigh
had sought their household fires.

the land's sharp features seemed to be
the century's corpse outleant,
his crypt the cloudy canopy,
the wind his death-lament.
the ancient pulse of germ and birth
was shrunken hard and dry,
and every spirit upon earth
seemed fervourless as i.

at once a voice arose among
the bleak twigs overhead
in a full-hearted evensong
of joy illimited;
an aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
in blast-beruffled plume,
had chosen thus to fling his soul
upon the growing gloom.

so little cause for carolings
of such ecstatic sound
was written on terrestrial things
afar or nigh around,
that i could think there trembled through
his happy good-night air
some blessed hope, whereof he knew
and i was unaware

thomas hardy the darkling thrush

i wish i wrote the way i thought
obsessively
incessantly
with maddening hunger
i’d write to the point of suffocation
i’d write myself into nervous breakdowns
manuscripts spiralling out like tentacles into abysmal nothing
and i’d write about you
a lot more
than i should

- benedict smith

daydream delusion
limousine eyelash
oh, baby with your pretty face
drop a tear in my wineglass
look at those big eyes
see what you mean to me
sweet cakes and milkshakes
i am a delusion angel
i am a fantasy parade
i want you to know what i think
don’t want you to guess anymore
you have no idea where i came from
we have no idea where we’re going
lodged in life
like two branches in a river
flowing downstream
caught in the current
i’ll carry you. you’ll carry me
that’s how it could be
don’t you know me?
don’t you know me by now?

yet each man kills the thing he loves,
by each let this be heard,
some do it with a bitter look,
some with a flattering word,
the coward does it with a kiss,
the brave man with a sword!

some kill their love when they are young,
and some when they are old;
some strangle with the hands of gold:
the kindest use a knife, because
the dead so soon grow cold.

some love too little, some too long,
some sell and others buy;
some do the deed with many tears,
and some without a sigh:
for each man kills the thing he loves,
yet each man does not die.
oscar wilde