This week we’re talking about our favourite poems.
For me, my absolute favourite poem has to be Wordsworth’s ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’. Daffodils are also my favourite flower of all time, and the mental imagery this poem conjures up always lifts me out of a dark mood. Close behind is Max Ehrmann’s 1927 poem ‘Desiderata’. Mr Ehrmann obviously lived a long life, and as we all do, came to understand human nature.
Mum often read poetry to me as a child, and I always remember with affection Alfred Noyes’ ‘The Highwayman’, the one who went riding, riding, up to the old inn-door. I used to lose myself in the love story and imagine Bess plaiting the love-knot into her long black hair. My grandmother would read Robert Browning’s’The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ to me, and send me to sleep dreaming of rats shrieking in fifty different sharps and flats.
My paternal grandfather would read verses of T.W Connor’s ‘The Miser’ to me when I was about seven or eight, and I soon memorised them. I never failed to be amazed at the clock that went round the wrong way, and had to laugh when I first visited our dentist’s surgery some years back. He also had a clock which went the wrong way, and it brought back happy memories of my grandfather.
Dad used to recite an alternative variation of George R. Sims’ poem ‘Christmas Day in the Workhouse’ to me as a youngster at Christmas, and it always used to make me giggle:
‘Twas Christmas Day in the workhouse,
The snow was falling fast.
I don’t want your Christmas pud,
So stick it up your arse!
Very rude I know, but that was Dad; always ready for a laugh and a joke.
What are other bloggers’ favourite poems? Click on the blue button below to find out, or add yours to this blog too.
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Stevie Turner 
Your father sounds must have been a hoot!
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He was. His laugh could be heard in the next street. I miss him sometimes.
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I think its awesome that your mom read poetry to you as a child. Those must be great memories for you plus you learned the love of poetry.
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Yes, Mum was always into creative writing and poetry. I learned a lot from her.
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Reblogged this on aurorawatcherak and commented:
From the blog hop … I always appreciate Stevie’s posts because she’s in England and so the poems and books she read in school are different from America’s and the songs she heard on the radio were different too. But it turns out her favorite poem was among my mother’s favorites.
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Thanks for the re-blog! Yeah, us Brits are a bit different over here…
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It’s a good difference. I keep learning stuff from you that I didn’t know before. Always in favor of learning new stuff.
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Oh, wow! I hadn’t thought of The Highwayman in decades. It was one of my mother’s favorites. Her high school required a lot of memorization to pass the graduation test and that was one of the ones she knew by heart, so she was always quoting it. I’m going to have to go find it and read it in its entirety.
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My mum was always quoting lines of it to me when I was a kid.
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Yeah, my mom too. My kids would think I was so weird if I quoted poetry to them to the level my parents, both of them, did to me.
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With my boys I had to quote poetry that would make them laugh to gain their attention. They used to like Pam Ayres’ poetry as I recall.
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