Poetrypoetrypoetry!

My poetry contest submission date is almost here and I only have 8 pages left to write. I am so glad I actually did this whole thing-- I now have an entirely new appreciation and love of poetry! Not just writing it, but reading others' poetry as well. I am really getting into Walt Whitman, Shel Silverstein, and I just introduced myself to the works of Pablo Neruda, William Wordsworth and Langston Hughes, who I've never read or even heard of before. I used to feel very indifferent about poetry; I could take it or leave it. But now, I love reading it and writing it (even though I'm a total novice); I just find it so beautiful and can now see myself keeping up writing a few poems every now and then, even after this competition, for many years to come.

Here is a poem I'm sure everyone has seen or heard before, I know I have, but I still love it (by William 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 leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but 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.