"Write something every day" they said...

I am still here.

I have been busy. In lieu of actual content, here is a rerun of a post from 2014.

I pulled this post shortly after it was published because the Sage of Eaton Rapids objected to my sharing HIS list. He has since slipped his mortal coil and I don't think he will be bothered if I share this partial list.

Warning, the links may be stale.

***

The guys I drink coffee with are old-school, masculine men.  It is not something they wear on their sleeves.  It is something that you pick up over time, a comment dropped here, a short anecdote there.

One of the guys is very well read.  He prefers to avoid notoriety.  He will be called "The Sage of Eaton Rapids".

I wheedled his list of Favorite Poems to share with the readers of this blog.  I may have to retract this post if he objects to it....  Here are the first eleven, in the order shown on TSOER's List.

Title - Author - Year Published - Link - Thumbnail lines

The Fool's Prayer - Edward Sill - circa 1887 - Link

"'T is not by guilt the onward sweep

Of truth and right, O Lord, we stay;

'T is by our follies that so long

We hold the earth from heaven away.

 

House by the Side of the Road - Sam Walter Foss - 1928 - Link   
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
Where the race of men go by-
The men who are good and the men who are bad,
As good and as bad as I.

Annabell Lee - Poe - 1849 - Link

It was many and many a year ago,
 In a kingdom by the sea

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

  By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

 Than to love and be loved by me.

Tintern Abbey - Wordsworth - 1798 - Link

Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a sweet inland murmur.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Coleridge - 1834 - Link

It is an ancient Mariner,

And he stoppeth one of three.

'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,

Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

Sampson Agonistes - Milton - 1671 - Link
A little onward lend thy guiding hand
To these dark steps, a little further on;
For yonder bank hath choice of Sun or shade,
There I am wont to sit...

Marriage of True Minds - Shakespeare - - Link
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove....
...But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

O Captain, My Captain - Whitman - 1865 - Link

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

Charge of the Light Brigade - Tennyson - 1854 - Link

All in the valley of Death

   Rode the six hundred...

... Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,

Cannon in front of them

Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of hell

Rode the six hundred.

Bonny George Campbell - Anon - 1700s - Link
Hie upon the Highlands, and laigh upon the Tay,
Bonnie George Campbell rode, out on a day.

The Shooting of Dan McGrew - Service - 1907 - Link
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou.