♡ favourite poems

listing some of my fav poems here <3 enjoy

1. when the pawn - fiona apple

when the pawn hits the conflicts he thinks like a king
what he knows throws the blows when he goes to the fight
and he'll win the whole thing 'fore he enters the ring
there's no body to batter when your mind is your might
so when you go solo, you hold your own hand
and remember that depth is the greatest of heights
and if you know where to stand, then you know where to land
and if you fall it won't matter, cause you'll know that you're right



2. piazza di spagna, early morning - richard wilbur

i can't forget,
how she stood at the top of that long marble stair
amazed, and then with a sleepy pirouette,
went dancing slowly down to the fountain-quieted square;

nothing upon her face
but some impersonal loneliness - not then a girl
but as it were a reverie of the place
a called-for falling glide and whirl;

as when a leaf, petal, or thin chip,
is drawn to the falls of a pool, and, circling a moment above it
rides on over the lip -
perfectly beautiful, perfectly ignorant of it.



3. midnight poem - sappho

tonight i've watched
the moon and then 
the pleiades go down

the night is now half-gone;
youth goes;
i am in bed alone



4. my secret life - charles bukowski (excerpt because of length)

i wouldn't reply,
not to him, 
he would never know,
i'd die before i would tell him anything,
he could kill me before i'd tell him.

whatever it is i had done,
it only belonged to me.



5. invictus - william ernest henly

out of the night that covers me,
black as the pit from pole to pole,
i thank whatever gods may be
for my unconquerable soul.

in the fell clutch of circumstance
i have not winced nor cried aloud.
under the bludgeonings of chance
my head is bloody but unbowed.

beyond this place of wrath and tears
looms the horror of the shade,
and the menace of the years
finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

it matters not how strait the gate,
how charged with punishments the scroll,
i am the master of my fate,
i am the captain of my soul