Posted below are two of my favorite poems in the English language. I am sure many feel the same way. What I love the most about them is how they combine beautiful music of language with soft, tender sentiments. I will never get tired of reading these over and over again. Some moderns may think of them as sentimental; I like to think of them as eternal. John Derbyshire once called poetry one of the traditional male pursuits, along with love and war. Most of my hyper-machismo, game loving, alpha fantasizing, baseball cap wearing, video game addicted, porn saturated, overcompensating male colleagues would probably laugh at this notion. Do they know that General George Patton loved and wrote traditional poetry? I once read a post somewhere by someone who theorized that the true “alpha” has no interest in art or literature, that is the province of sissies or something like that. For all you boys sitting at your little cubicles fantasizing about how alpha you want to be while at the same time taking orders from your female boss, you don’t get any more alpha than Patton. Today however the love of poetry is something that has been lost in the West, in our overly prosaic, technical, materialistic, bureaucratic society, but I still believe in it. In societies like India and Persia poetry is still revered as almost something sacred. I will be posting my favorite poems on here on a regular basis. If you have any please let me know what they are.
There be none of Beauty’s daughters
With a magic like thee;
And like music on the waters
Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmed ocean’s pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lulled winds seem dreaming:
And the midnight moon is weaving,
Her bright chain o’er the deep,
Whose breast is gently heaving
As an infant’s asleep.
So the spirit bows before thee
To listen and adore thee;
With a full but soft emotion,
Like the swell of summer’s ocean.
– Lord Byron
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory–
Odors, when sweet violets sicken
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
–Shelley
yohami said:
making art is very alpha, as long as the artist is alpha as well. peacock theory or whatever, being alpha is not the art of being a porn star but the art of being a strong persona, and the tools for expressing oneself, all of them give a lot of power
whoever a betaish making art about how he cant get laid while pedestalizing a particular girl, that art makes him more pathetic – even though some of those creations are pure genius
Rivelino said:
“being a strong persona, and the tools for expressing oneself, all of them give a lot of power”
I like that. Art is about expressing my power.
Rivelino said:
“when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.”
I think this is a beta poem. It is submissive. It is Peter Cetera from a previous century.
Racer X said:
“when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.”
“I think this is a beta poem. It is submissive. It is Peter Cetera from a previous century.”
That is an interesting way to look at this poem, although I would be reluctant to classify any poetry or art as alpha or beta. Art is just art, and each of us experience it in our own and unique way.
Shelly was certainly a rather effeminate person, and his poetry does reflect that, but that does not lessen its beauty, at least for me.
But don’t these lines sort of express what you are now experiencing with Valentina?
I find this poem a powerful expression of the pain of loss, whether through death or natural break up. Loss can be a haunting experience, and this poem has a haunting quality about it.
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forpuck said:
“sigh” in the most teenybopper hello-kitty-o-Hai of ways at the idea that a poem is ‘beta’…
Nice post all in all.