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My favourite poem? I have several....um....let's see, one I remember right now is this:

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scare could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand.

{The Stolen Child, W.B. Yeats.]

The Stolen Child, by Yeats.
The poem is based on Irish legend and concerns faeries beguiling a child to come away with them. Yeats had a great interest in pagan Irish legends about faeries resulting in his publication of Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry in 1888 and Fairy Folk Tales of Ireland in 1892. The places mentioned in the poem are in Sligo where Yeats spent much of his childhood.
The poem reflects the early influence of Romantic literature and Pre-Raphaelite verse.


On a separate & interesting note:
Parts of the poem are prominently featured in Steven Spielberg's film A.I.. The poem is also featured in the television series Torchwood episode "Small Worlds", being spoken by a fairy who steals a young girl.

oooh...cool!

3nodding 3nodding 3nodding

Does it have to be our own poetry or can it be just any that we like?

this is a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The day is done and darkness falls from the wings of night,
As a feather is wafted downward from an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me that my soul cannot resist.

A feeling of sadness and longing that is not akin to pain
and resembles sorrow only as the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem, some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling and banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters, not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer, Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor, and nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet the restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction that follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume the poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet the beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music, and the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, and as silently steal away.

This is my favorite poem. I know it by heart.