World Poetry Day 2018: These Lines By Great Poets Will Prove Why Poetry is The Music of Soul

World Poetry Day is celebrated on March 21 every year.Held every year on 21 March, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) states that "World Poetry Day celebrates one of humanity’s most treasured forms of cultural and linguistic expression and identity. Practiced throughout history – in every culture and on every continent – poetry speaks to our common humanity and our shared values, transforming the simplest of poems into a powerful catalyst for dialogue and peace." The important aspect in the description of World Poetry Day by UNESCO is equating and attaching poetry with world peace. Poems are a shared treasure that speak to humanity and has the power to move mankind. If music is the universal language, poetry is the music of soul.

According to the UNESCO description, 21 March was adopted as World Poetry Day during the 30th General Conference of the Organisation in Paris in 1999, with the "aim of supporting linguistic diversity through poetic expression and increasing the opportunity for endangered languages to be heard." It also says that "World Poetry Day is the occasion to honour poets, revive oral traditions of poetry recitals, promote the reading, writing and teaching of poetry, foster the convergence between poetry and other arts such as theatre, dance, music and painting, and raise the visibility of poetry in the media." Indeed, when poetry is mixed with others art forms such as music and theater, its potency goes up tremendously.

Keeping in mind the purpose of World Poetry Day, we bring to you some immortal lines and verse written in the English language that is sure to stimulate your imagination and gives word the power to make your heart and soul fly.

1.  "If You Forget Me" By Pablo Neruda

If you forget me

“I want you to know

one thing.

You know how this is:

if I look

at the crystal moon, at the red branch

of the slow autumn at my window,

if I touch

near the fire

the impalpable ash

or the wrinkled body of the log,

everything carries me to you,

as if everything that exists,

aromas, light, metals,

were little boats

that sail

toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,

if little by little you stop loving me

I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly

you forget me

do not look for me,

for I shall already have forgotten you.”

2. "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.

3. "Daffodils" by Wiliam Wordsworth 

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

4. "Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea" by Sylvia Plath

Cold and final, the imagination

Shuts down its fabled summer house;

Blue views are boarded up; our sweet vacation

Dwindles in the hour-glass.

Thoughts that found a maze of mermaid hair

Tangling in the tide's green fall

Now fold their wings like bats and disappear

Into the attic of the skull.

We are not what we might be; what we are

Outlaws all extrapolation

Beyond the interval of now and here:

White whales are gone with the white ocean.

A lone beachcomber squats among the wrack

Of kaleidoscope shells

Probing fractured Venus with a stick

Under a tent of taunting gulls.

No sea-change decks the sunken shank of bone

That chucks in backtrack of the wave;

Though the mind like an oyster labors on and on,

A grain of sand is all we have.

Water will run by; the actual sun

Will scrupulously rise and set;

No little man lives in the exacting moon

And that is that, is that, is that.

5. "A Dream Within A Dream"  by Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow--

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand--

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep--while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

These are some of the immortal poems written by a few incredible poets. This list is supposed to be savoured as selected work by few astounding poets. The intention is to open a window for you that will take you into the world of words and poets, where no dream is too big and no idea taboo. Happy World Poetry Day 2018 to our readers.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 21, 2018 10:05 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).