Have you ever been inspired or moved by a poem?

There is an excerpt from a Tennyson poem that I heard years ago while a freshman in high school in 1959 that stayed with me: "An infant crying in the night/An infant crying for the light/And with no language but a cry." These words describe the psychology of mean or angry people, and have been useful in preventing any desire for retaliation or fury on my part because to retaliate would be like "spanking a baby for crying." With all the emphasis on bullying in our schools, this might be a very useful teaching tool for our youngsters. Perhaps my greatest achievement in life is to have survived mountains of outrageous abuse and injustice without hating the perpetrators, thus transcending---something our former President Barack Obama was able to do with the viciously and criminally partisan right-wing Republicans who plotted against his presidency on Inauguration night for no reason other than his huge popularity and the color of his skin (Robert Draper, 2012: "Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives"). .

yes , i am inspired by a poem in school days.

I was moved by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge's poem "On the Other Sid of the Mirror".

The piece of writing containing the words 'no man is an island' by John Donne isn't a poem, it's prose and part of his 'Meditations' and 'Do it Anyway' is a series of aphorisms by a Dr Kent M Keith, which Mother Theresa is said to have had written on the wall of a children's home in Calcutta - the connection seems a little fragile.

Robert Burns' poem 'Man was made to Mourn' does contain the lines

"Man's inhumanity to man

Makes countless thousands mourn!" though.

A poem that can still move me to tears is Stevie Smith's desolate little verse:

Piggy to Joey,

Piggy to Joe,

Yes that’s what I was—

Piggy to Joe.

Will he come back again?

Oh no, no, no.

Oh how I wish I hadn’t been

Piggy to Joe,

Yes meny times. A boy stuold on a burning deck

Mmm... I'm always touched by Mother Teresa's poem, "Do It Anyway". I've found this about 15 years ago. It straightens my mind whenever i feel negative.

However, sometime i thought that i've become too naive. Like, i think people are naturally good guys, then if someone did me wrong, i keep asking myself (thousand times): what i did wrong, so he/she did it to me.

Ah.. Do good anyway... and they hurt me again... Be kind anyway... They betrayed me... Forgive them anyway... Aaargh. I'm not a saint! :)) then i cry because i don't know how to hate them enough. It never between u and them anyway... I'm too tired to believe #feelingpathetic

Touched, yes. Moved, no. Inspired, not at all.

Poetry---even very strong poetry---is only words in a string. We who read and write poetry GROSSLY overestimate the power of words.

The best, most forceful poems are roughly equivalent to stroking the bowling ball with a feather as it rolls down the alley. It might have some slight effect---not necessarily intended. Maya Angelou's work, for instance, has a perverse effect: it makes me (just a little) disinclined to take black complaints at full face value.

No,the closest would be the Star Spangled Banner

which is a song but can be considered a poem.

Seeing Tennyson mentioned, and to answer your question, "Charge Of The Light Brigade" is quite visual, taken from the factual, and poems related to war, loss, etc. should be expected to move readers.

Indeed.

How true is this,

"No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man

is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine"

Personally, though, for inspiration and total spiritual communion I prefer music (classical, of course). 🙂