For literary types and boring folks
Who'd be better off just learning jokes?

Do you find it hard to read, a bore to buy?
Could reading a poem ever make you cry?

Would you, in fact, just run away
Rather than face National Poetry Day?

If that's the case, we have news for you,
That's not what a child would do.

They play with words, they just won't stop,
It makes reading seem much less grown up.

Do you have a favourite poem or two?
If so please tell us which words move you.

This Talking Point has now closed. Read a selection of your comments below.

Surely, one of the most beautiful poems in British literature is "Look, stranger, at this island now" by W.H. Auden. It's pure music, when you read it out aloud!
Theo Klein, Netherlands

Philip Larkin - "They bring you up, your mum and dad". So true.
Iain Haslam, England

Tomorrow you shall play in my garden, that which is paradise

Peter Woodstock, England

Well over 10 years ago, possibly 20, Brian Johnston (the cricket commentator) was interviewed on Radio 4. One of his favourite poems ended with the words "...tomorrow you shall play in my garden, that which is paradise." I can't remember the rest, I don't know the name of the poet nor the title. But I would love to hear that poem once more.
Peter Woodstock, England

It's astonishing how one remembers poetry learned at school. I still remember a dozen poems learned when I was 10 and that was 65 years ago. My favourite was "Roundabouts and Swings" by Patrick R. Chalmers and I can still recite it.
Colin Richardson, Canada

The Leo Marks poem from World War II (I think). I recited it to my wife when I proposed:

The life that I have is all that I have. And the life that I have is yours.
The love that I have of the life that I have is yours and yours and yours.
A sleep I shall have, a rest I shall have yet death will be but a pause,
For the peace of my years in the long green grass Will be yours and yours and yours.

Anon, UK

We have no time to stand and stare

Kelly, Wales

I love this poem by William Henry Morris, it is beautiful to listen to and so peaceful.
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
Kelly, Wales

It's National Poetry Day today
and so in verse I'd like to say
Thank you, poets, for your rhyming,
scansion, metre, sense of timing.

I write a poem every day.
Each one is cheerful in its way.
But then, while I am searching for
the most appropriate metaphor,
it always turns dark.
Always turns dark.
Derek Judd, UK

Why is it that when the curriculum finally gets around to doing poetry we never get Scottish poetry, just English stuff from WWI?
Rhiannon, Glasgow Scotland

I adore Stop all the Clocks by WH Auden

G Rabone, UK

I adore Stop all the Clocks by WH Auden. It is very touching and sensitive. Most people I think will know it from Four Weddings and a Funeral.
G Rabone, UK

I love Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen:
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory
The old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori
Also, AA Milne's poem, which I think is called We Two ("Wherever I go, there's always Pooh, there's always Pooh and me") - we had this read at our wedding!
A Davis, France

I don't know if London Underground still displays the work of unpublished poets on its trains (it used to). However I remember how delighted I would be when I entered a carriage which had this one posted:
"He breathed in air, he breathed out light.
Charlie Parker was my delight."
My other favourite is Genie by Arthur Rimbaud.
Frankie Connolly, Canada

Love, sex, laughs, loss and joy in fourteen lines

Matt B, UK

Not a lot of contemporary stuff getting a mention, which is a shame because there's loads of great poets out there at the moment. No single favourite poem, but some from the top bracket: The More a Man Has, The More a Man Wants by Paul Muldoon (the greatest poet currently writing in the language, for my money), JH Prynne's long, beautiful and virtually incomprehensible News of Warring Clans, and Roddy Lumsden's Yeah, Yeah, Yeah- an impeccable sonnet: love, sex, laughs, loss and joy in fourteen lines.
Matt B, UK

"Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait"
from A Psalm of Life by HW Longfellow. I studied this as part of English language as a subject at school (in India) and has left a lasting impression on me.
Deepa Shastry, UK

Rudyard Kipling war poem: "If any question why we died, tell them, because our fathers lied." So simple, yet so effective. Beautiful.
Simon, Belgium

How to be a Boyfriend by Purple Ronnie. I read it aloud as part of my wedding speech two weeks ago.
Neil, UK

One favourite is W.B. Yeats' An Irish Airman Foresees His Death, which ends with the moving, "I gathered all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of breath, a waste of breath the years behind, in balance with this life, this death."
Chae, Scotland

My favourite author? Has to be William Blake - London is a masterpiece.
Len Gleed, UK

Even such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust!

By Sir Walter Raleigh. Found in his Bible in the Gate-house at Westminster. This isn't my favourite poem but it's one of the saddest I've ever read. It was apparently written on the night before his execution.

Sara, UK

It's both real and ethereal, full of elemental power

Max, Edinburgh, UK

After last year's BBC coverage, my favourite has become Beach Ride by Katrina Porteous. It only works in the sound version. It's both real and ethereal, full of elemental power, horse breath and sea breeze blown, and, I've been there. Brilliant.
Max, Edinburgh, UK

Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith. Wonderful.
Mike Blundell, UK

Shakespeare speaks directly down the centuries. Underrated old Tennyson must have thought in poetry, it's seamless. EE Cummings is so alive and tender. Lewis Carroll's comic poems are the best: his "Poeta fit, non nascitur" (A Poet is made, not born") gently mocks poetic pretensions.
Jenny, UK

McGonagall�s poems show that anyone can become a hero with poetry. I especially like:
In a field there was a coo.
It must have moved cos its no there noo.
Byron - who?
C Coupar, Scotland

I find myself reading five or six poetry books a year. My tastes in poetry change but at the moment it's W B Yeats' The Second Coming. "...that twenty centuries of stony sleep have vex't to nightmare in a rocking cradle/And what rough Beast, its hour come round at last/slouches toward Bethlehem to be born."
Alcuin, UK

Emily Bronte's Last Lines

Helen Bell, England

My favourite poem is Emily Bronte's Last Lines. It's a wonderful testament to her faith and belief. If you think you don't like poetry start with something easy - like Kipling or children's nonsense poems - and try reading it out loud. That way you can feel the rhythms that the poet was aiming for.
Helen Bell, England

Ursula Fanthorpe's St George and the Dragon. A splendidly humorous take on the old story. I'm very fond of an anonymous poem about snails too.
Jenny, UK

"Whose woods these are I do not know
he will not mind me stopping though
to watch his woods fill up with snow on this the coldest evening of the year."
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost. I also like Base Details by Siegfried Sassoon.
Ian Davidson, Scotland

In most cases, a simple couplet or isolated line of blank verse can hit the spot (ie Diadems drop and Doges surrender), but seeing as it's poetry day, for a full poem, I suggest Shelley's Love Philosophy due to it's representative aching wistfulness.
"The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever,
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle;--
Why not I with thine?

See! the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven,
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea;--
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me? "

A Lepki, London, UK

I love poetry very much, always have. My absolute favourite poems are Raven and Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe. I also love some of the Russian poetry especially by Boris Pasternak, but Raven holds a very special place in my heart.
Alex, California, USA

I can remember my first attempt at rhyming, at the age of nine, which didn't go down very well. "Stand up Leggat. What pearl of wisdom do you have to offer?" I stood up and read: "I will not have you in this class. You stuck a tin-tack up his...", I never got to finish. "Get out Leggat!" I got slippered for that. I thought it rhymed pretty well.
Robert Leggat, UK

Favourite Poem: Philip Larkin - The Old Fools.
J Redfern, UK