Hello everyone...

Just wondering,

Do you have a favourite poem, or lyrics to a song that have meaning for you, or just make you feel good?

You don't have to write it all down (unless you want to)..

Not a poem in particular. But I do sing and play guitar so I love music, especially traditional gospel songs. There is one called What a Day That Will Be and it holds a lot of meaning for me.

All Of My Love by Led Zeppelin has special meaning for me. My horse's death was tragic and that song brought me peace.

The piece of music that always soothes and uplifts me is an odd one, especially since I'm not a religious person and it's about Mary mourning for Christ at the cross.     It's Gionvanni Battista Pergolesi's Salve Regina, sung by Cecilia Bartoli and June Anderson.  I've loved it since the first time I heard it back in the early '90's.  It has nothing to do with the lyrics and more to do with the breath taking harmonies.  (But then again, my other favourite 'classical' piece is Chopin's Marche Funebre which most people can't listen to as it reminds them of funerals - to me it is incredibly passionate and has a beautiful melody. I get lost in it every time, especially if it's played by Marta Argerich).

I love poetry but nothing's springing in to my head right now. It is mostly melody and harmony that get hold of me, or colour and form.

There's a perfect line in an old Air Supply Song that goes: . . . and I don't know how you do it, making love out of nothing at all.  I mean I get to kidding around with her that I don't know what she ever saw in me that would make her agree to marry me.. Actually, deep down I'm not kidding and I do wonder sometimes. But lucky for me she did !!

I love the 70-80's slow love songs. Michael Bolton's Steel Bars was a great one.

I must have listened to Lover You Should Have Come Over (the live version ) by Jeff Buckley a zillion times after a bad break up. Great song for when you want to wallow in your lonely pitifulness, lol!

I like anime and my favorite is the theme song of "My Neighbor Totoro"

Before my husband and I were dating, Madonna's song "Ray of Light" was popular. I wanted to ask him out, but was nervous (partly because I had never asked a guy out before and partly because he had dated my sister a few times.) I promised myself that if "Ray of Light" was the next song on the radio I would ask him out, and strangely enough it was. We dated 2 years and just celebrated our 13th anniversary. Who knows what would have happened if they played a different song that day.

Don't Speak by No Doubt.  

When my marriage broke up I played The Pretender's Hymn to Her a lot and really drew strength from it.

And I just love the well known lines from William Blake's Auguries of Innocence:

To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower 

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand 

And eternity in an hour

There are several, but the one that is nearest to me because it got me through a very bad breakup that left me very depressed about 10 years ago or so is  'I've been Searching My Soul", the theme song from Ally McBeal, written by Vonda Shepard. 

The funny thing is that I never watched the show because it didn't appeal to me.


I've been down this road
Walking the line that's painted by pride
And I have made mistakes in my life that i just can't hide.

But I believe I'm ready
for what love has to bring
I've got myself together
Now I'm ready to sing.

I've been searching my soul tonight
I know there's so much more to life
Now I know I can shine a light
to find my way back home.

Baby.
Yeah.
Oh Yeah.

I like this question! There are a few poems that I hold near my heart, but this is the one that has (many times) kept me going.

In a Dark Time

BY THEODORE ROETHKE

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,

I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;   

I hear my echo in the echoing wood—

A lord of nature weeping to a tree.

I live between the heron and the wren,   

Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
 
What’s madness but nobility of soul

At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!   

I know the purity of pure despair,

My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.   

That place among the rocks—is it a cave,   

Or winding path? The edge is what I have.
 
A steady storm of correspondences!

A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,   

And in broad day the midnight come again!   

A man goes far to find out what he is—

Death of the self in a long, tearless night,   

All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
 
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.   

My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,   

Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?

A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.   

The mind enters itself, and God the mind,   

And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

Theodore Roethke, “In a Dark Time” from Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke.  

Copyright [emoji]169[/emoji] 1963 by Beatrice Roethke, Administratrix of the Estate of Theodore Roethke.

Reprinted with the permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.
 
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke  (Doubleday, 1961)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172120

The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde
And
Kaddish sung by Paul Robson.