The Ballicai Share Their Favorite Poems

Brainball's Favorite Poem: "The Old Issue" by Rudyard Kipling

Long-forgotten bondage, dwarfing heart and brain -—

All our fathers died to loose he shall bind again.

Here is naught at venture, random nor untrue -—
Swings the wheel full-circle, brims the cup anew.

Here is naught unproven, here is nothing hid:
Step for step and word for word —- so the old Kings did!

Step by step, and word by word: who is ruled may read.
Suffer not the old Kings: for we know the breed -—

All the right they promise -— all the wrong they bring.
Stewards of the Judgment, suffer not this King!

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Dorydoo's Favorite Poem: "High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless falls of air...
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor eer eagle flew –
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

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Chairman Mao's Favorite Poem: from "Tale of the Man of Lawe" by Geoffrey Chaucer

Let take a cat, and foster him well with milk,

And tender flesh and make his couch of silk,
And let him see a mouse go by the wall,
Anon he waveth milk and flesh and all,
And every dainty that is in that house,
Such appetite he hath to eat a mouse.

=-=

Marilyn MonREOW's favorite poem (which she's reciting to her special mancat, Mickey Mantle): "If thou must love me" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
"I love her for her smile her look her way
Of speaking gently, for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and Certes brought
A sense of ease on such a day"
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee, and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheek dry,
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.