What is one of your favorite poems?
Submitted by marvel is my pen name.
When I saw this question I immediately thought of I am by John Clare which is so beautifully written and heartfelt. After I had looked it up to copy it I got thinking about other poems that I really like and Celia, Celia by Adrian Mitchell came to mind because it always makes me smile. As I now work on High Holborn it is particularly appropriate. It is short so I've cheated and also included it.
I am by John Clare
I am - yet what I am, none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost
I am the self-consumer of my woes -
They rise and vanish in oblivion's host
Like shadows in love-frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live - like vapours tost
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
Even the dearest that I love the best
Are strange - nay, rather stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below - above, the vaulted sky.
Celia, Celia - by Adrian Mitchell
When I am sad and weary
When I think all hope has gone
When I walk along High Holborn
I think of you with nothing on.