I've enjoyed poetry throughout my life. First in school when a smart English teacher introduced us to some morbid and martial poetry to days of partying and drinking hard at age 20 when I wrote some to periods in my life when I seek some out and enjoy it. Looking back it seems to me that its a 5-10 itch; about every 5-10 years I get a poetry itch that must be scratched. I dont know why and I cant explain it. It just happens.
Most recently I encountered this exert from Philis Wheatley's On Imagination
We on thy pinions can surpass the wind,
And leave the rolling universe behind:
From star to star the mental optics rove,
Measure the skies, and range the realms above.
There in one view we grasp the mighty whole,
Or with new worlds amaze th' unbounded soul.
And on a recommendation I was just reading AE Housman and discovered Epitaph On An Army of Mercenaries
- These, in the day when heaven was falling,
- The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
- Followed their mercenary calling
- And took their wages and are dead.
- Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
- They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;
- What God abandoned, these defended,
- And saved the sum of things for pay.
- I'll be reading a little more of Housman and then I suspect that the itch will be cured for another 5 years.