James
What is your favorite poem in your native language from your home country.

My favorite poem by an American poet is "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost.

 

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, 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.

 

Apr 21, 2014 12:42 AM
Comments · 8
3

Ночь, улица, фонарь, аптека,
Бессмысленный и тусклый свет.
Живи ещё хоть четверть века —
Всё будет так. Исхода нет.

Умрёшь — начнёшь опять сначала
И повторится всё, как встарь:
Ночь, ледяная рябь канала,
Аптека, улица, фонарь.

 

Александр Блок

 

My freestyle translation :)

 

Night, street, larntern, pharmacy

Senseless and dull light

Live for another quarter century

But everything will be the same. There's no way out

 

You die to start a life all over,

All things repeat as did before

Night, cold wates of a canal

Pharmacy, street, lantern.

 

by Alexander Blok

April 22, 2014
2

here is the translation version of my favorite poem

 

A Withered vine, an ancient tree, crows at dusk
A Little bridge, a flowing stream, some huts
An old road, wind out of the west, an emaciated horse
A heart-broken man on the horizon at sunset.

 

April 22, 2014
2

Hi! I live in Spain, but I hate this type  of poems. To me they don't have sense nor rhythm. That's why I'll give you one from Romania. It's called ''Somnoroase pasarele'' <em>written by Mihai Eminescu</em>.

I have his whole book of poems. All of them are unforgettable.

<em>Somnoroase păsărele...</em>


<em>Somnoroase păsărele </em>

<em>Pe la cuiburi se adună, </em>

<em>Se ascund în rămurele - </em>

<em>                  Noapte bună!</em>

 


<em>Doar izvoarele suspină,</em>

<em> Pe când codrul negru tace;</em>

<em> Dorm şi florile-n grădină -</em>

<em>                 Dormi în pace!</em>


<em>Trece lebăda pe ape</em>

<em> Între trestii să se culce - </em>

<em>Fie-ţi îngerii aproape, </em>

<em>                Somnul dulce!</em>


<em>Peste-a nopţii feerie </em>

<em>Se ridică mândra lună, </em>

<em>Totu-i vis şi armonie -</em>

<em>                Noapte bună!</em>

 

 

April 21, 2014
2

One of my favorite poems is <em>The Voice of the Rain</em> by Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman had a conversation with the falling rain. The rain answered that it was “…the Poem of the Earth” :

 

And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower,
Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:
I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,
Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,
Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form’d, altogether changed, and
yet the same,
I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe,
And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn;
And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin,
and make pure and beautify it;
(For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering,
Reck’d or unreck’d, duly with love returns.)

 

April 21, 2014
1

@James

Great poem.
And short and easy for memorizing for a non-native speaker, isn't it?

 

And my favourite poem in English is 'Alone' by Edgar Allan Poe. I bet you know this one :)

 

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring —
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow — I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone —
And all I lov'd — I lov'd alone —
Then — in my childhood — in the dawn
Of a most stormy life — was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still —
From the torrent, or the fountain —
From the red cliff of the mountain —
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold —
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by —
From the thunder, and the storm —
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view —

 

April 22, 2014
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