This Poem has long been my personal favorite, and it gives me great pleasure to recite it for you. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Thanks-  Todd      added 3/3/25

photograph of Robrt Frost ,White haired, distinguished seventy years old black and white photo

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.

Edgar Allan Poe is one of my favorite poets and this romantic poem of grief is one of my all time favorites.    added 2/19/25

young woman in a white flowing gown standing on a cliffside

Annabel Lee

By Edgar Allan Poe

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.

 

I was a child and she was a child,

   In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

   I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

   Coveted her and me.

 

And this was the reason that, long ago,

   In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

   My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

   And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

   In this kingdom by the sea.

 

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

   Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

   In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

   Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

 

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

   Of those who were older than we—

   Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

   Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

 

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

   Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

   In her sepulcher there by the sea—

   In her tomb by the sounding sea.

 

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