Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Who are your favorite poets?

Robert Service
Robert Frost
Edgar Allen Poe
Rudyard Kipling
and a bunch of songwriters living and dying in 3/4 time

“A promise made is a debt unpaid”. Robert Service
Words to live by if you’re a man of your word and handshake deals.

Ulysses
BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Ice Cube

Slim you aint changed very much!!

Kipling was mentioned in the OP.

As far as my favorites:
Kipling
Homer
Virgil
Dante

Maybe not in that order. Every man should read Homer and Virgil.

George Carlin
Andrew Dice Clay
Richard Pryor

The Raven ~ Edgar Allen Poe

I have clinched and closed with the naked north
I have learned to defy and defend
Shoulder to shoulder we have fought it out
Yet the wild must win in the end

Robert Service
From a Yukon Jack ad

No!

Shel Silverstein

A Boy Named Sue!

Cash made it famous!

Little Johnny.

Christopher Robin, Christopher Schmobin
A bear has got to eat
(Haiku to Pooh Bear)

I have the collected works of Robert Service on my nightstand. My father gave it to me 40 years ago. I actually read a little to the grandkids last month.

Poe and Kipling are also on my list, plus Robert Frost.

Ogden Nash

The trouble with a kitten is that eventually it becomes a cat.

In high school we all had to do a reading of a favorite in our literature class. I did Paul Revere. Near all of us went through pages of boring material. The kid that did the above also got an A even though he did not have to read his material. The only true genius in our class.

He had a home a few miles from me in the Florida Keys. Don't know if he was a full time resident or not, but his front yard was always good for a chuckle or three.



https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/grinch-speeding-drivers-onions-tickets-florida-keys/

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

William Blake
Robert Service
Baxter Black

When you see the southern cross for the first time
You understand now why you came this way
'Cause the truth you might be runnin' from is so small
But it's as big as the promise
The promise of a comin' day
So I'm sailing for tomorrow, my dreams are a-dyin'
And my love is an anchor tied to you
Tied with a silver chain
I have my ship and all her flags are a-flyin'
She is all that I have left, and music is her name

Stills, Curtis, and Curtis



There are others, but my memory isn't as sharp as it once was.