With the recent birthday of Dr. Seuss, I have been seeing a lot of his books, and quotes online. And I will be damned if it hasn't been bringing a little joy, and nostalgia to my days. So I was thinking that maybe a thread with some of our favorite childhood poems and quotes might bring a little light to the denizens of this board. It's TiB. We're angry, and when were not angry, we're drunk. I understand that. Hell that's why I come here, but maybe we could have a nice thread. A thread free of anger, venom, and hair brushes. So, FOCUS: Favorite poems and quotes, from childhood, or that you found later in life. Anything from Seuss, to Silverstein. Let's break out the silly.
Aww, see, it's a nice thread for once. Spoiler My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother's countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.
Great green globs of greasy, grimey gopher guts, mutilated monkey nuts. French fried eyeballs in a bowl of bloody meat, And I can't find my spoon. Milk, milk, lemonade. Around the corner, fudge is made. Stick your finger in a hole, Now you have a tootsie roll. There's a place in France where the naked ladies dance. There's a hole in the wall where the men can see it all.
I second Shel Silverstein. My grandmother got me "Where the Sidewalk Ends" for Christmas this year and it was the best gift ever. "I will not go to school today Said little Peggy Ann McKay I have the measles and the mumps A gash, a rash, and purple bumps..."
The first book I was able to read on my own was Green Eggs and Ham. Thanks, Ted. Focus: Old Man Lucas had a lot of mucus coming right out of his nose He picked and picked 'til it made you sick but back again it grows
I've learned there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead. Some come from behind. But I've brought a large bat. I'm all ready you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me.
Fine, I'll be the first one to be sentimental. Who else is excited about the new Winnie the Pooh movie? I've been watching the old ones online and it has been making me turn into a giant baby. For example:
"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh" said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?" "What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?" "I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said.
This is one of my favorites, and I don't even like poems that much. Spoiler Come my tan-faced children, Follow well in order, get your weapons ready, Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes? Pioneers! O pioneers! For we cannot tarry here, We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers! O you youths, Western youths, So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, Pioneers! O pioneers! Have the elder races halted? Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas? We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson, Pioneers! O pioneers! All the past we leave behind, We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world, Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march, Pioneers! O pioneers! We detachments steady throwing, Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep, Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways, Pioneers! O pioneers! We primeval forests felling, We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines within, We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving, Pioneers! O pioneers! Colorado men are we, From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus, From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come, Pioneers! O pioneers! From Nebraska, from Arkansas, Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental blood intervein'd, All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern, Pioneers! O pioneers! O resistless restless race! O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all! O I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all, Pioneers! O pioneers! Raise the mighty mother mistress, Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress, (bend your heads all,) Raise the fang'd and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon'd mistress, Pioneers! O pioneers! See my children, resolute children, By those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or falter, Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us urging, Pioneers! O pioneers! On and on the compact ranks, With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill'd, Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping, Pioneers! O pioneers! O to die advancing on! Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come? Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is fill'd. Pioneers! O pioneers! All the pulses of the world, Falling in they beat for us, with the Western movement beat, Holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all for us, Pioneers! O pioneers! Life's involv'd and varied pageants, All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work, All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves, Pioneers! O pioneers! All the hapless silent lovers, All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked, All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying, Pioneers! O pioneers! I too with my soul and body, We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way, Through these shores amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing, Pioneers! O pioneers! Lo, the darting bowling orb! Lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets, All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams, Pioneers! O pioneers! These are of us, they are with us, All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind, We to-day's procession heading, we the route for travel clearing, Pioneers! O pioneers! O you daughters of the West! O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives! Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united, Pioneers! O pioneers! Minstrels latent on the prairies! (Shrouded bards of other lands, you may rest, you have done your work,) Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us, Pioneers! O pioneers! Not for delectations sweet, Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious, Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment, Pioneers! O pioneers! Do the feasters gluttonous feast? Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock'd and bolted doors? Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground, Pioneers! O pioneers! Has the night descended? Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged nodding on our way? Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious, Pioneers! O pioneers! Till with sound of trumpet, Far, far off the daybreak call--hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind, Swift! to the head of the army!--swift! spring to your places, Pioneers! O pioneers! I also like Oh Captain, My Captain, by the same guy, but not because it's a good poem. It's fun to dramatically reference it because EVERYBODY had to memorize it in high/gradeschool.
Percy Shelley, Ozymandias I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: `My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away".
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveller, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference ...Robert Frost
Does anyone else remember those crazy rhymes that would have the hand-slapping thing to go along with it? I particularly remember this one, which we would only do on the bus because it was 'dirty' and we didn't want our parents to hear and us get in trouble: Miss Suzy had a steamboat The steamboat had a bell Miss Suzy went to heaven The steamboat went to Hell-o operator Please give me number nine and if you disconnect me I'll chop of your Behind the 'frigerator There was a piece of glass Miss Suzy sat upon it And broke her little Ask me no more questions Please tell me no more lies The boys are in the bathroom Zipping up their Flies are in the meadow The bees are in the park Miss Suzy and her boyfriend Are kissing in the D-A-R-K, D-A-R-K Dark! Dark! Dark! And it probably went on further from there. I have no idea who "Miss Suzy" is.
One my father taught me: One fine day in the middle of the night Two dead boys got up to fight. One was blind, the other couldn't see. Between the two, there were three. Back to back they faced each other, Drew their swords and shot each other. A deaf policeman heard the noise, and came and shot the two dead boys. And if you think this not to be true, Just ask the blind man, He saw it, too. And an early-aged drinking poem: Lincoln! Lincoln! I've been thinkin' What the heck have you been drinkin'? Looks like water, Smells like wine, Oh my God! It's turpentine! That might be Behan, I'm not sure.
More Billy Collins: Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I Pause To Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles It seems these poets have nothing up their ample sleeves they turn over so many cards so early, telling us before the first line whether it is wet or dry, night or day, the season the man is standing in, even how much he has had to drink. Maybe it is autumn and he is looking at a sparrow. Maybe it is snowing on a town with a beautiful name. "Viewing Peonies at the Temple of Good Fortune on a Cloudy Afternoon" is one of Sun Tung Po's. "Dipping Water from the River and Simmering Tea" is another one, or just "On a Boat, Awake at Night." And Lu Yu takes the simple rice cake with "In a Boat on a Summer Evening I Heard the Cry of a Waterbird. It Was Very Sad and Seemed To Be Saying My Woman Is Cruel—Moved, I Wrote This Poem." There is no iron turnstile to push against here as with headings like "Vortex on a String," "The Horn of Neurosis," or whatever. No confusingly inscribed welcome mat to puzzle over. Instead, "I Walk Out on a Summer Morning to the Sound of Birds and a Waterfall" is a beaded curtain brushing over my shoulders. And "Ten Days of Spring Rain Have Kept Me Indoors" is a servant who shows me into the room where a poet with a thin beard is sitting on a mat with a jug of wine whispering something about clouds and cold wind, about sickness and the loss of friends. How easy he has made it for me to enter here, to sit down in a corner, cross my legs like his, and listen.
I do enjoy A.A. Milne's mind: Like Bill Watterson, some people just have wonderful insight into a child's mind, and a way of expressing it. Milne had that as well... and so many of the quotes only get better as you get older.