If-

If you compare me to a summer's day
or say I walk in beauty like the night
and gather rosebuds for me while ye may
and stay the world enough to make it right

And if you've walked on England's mountains green
and did a stately pleasure-dome decree
and floating high, the daffodils have seen
and thus arisen, gone to Innisfree

 If full of care, you still have time to stare
or walking, take the road less travelled by
and find that the express-train drew up there
and tell me 'let us go then, you and I'

If you are only larking when you wave
and are my moon, my midnight and my song
and wear your slippers in the rain and save
your love for me - my love, you can't go wrong! 


This was posted with a tweet saying that I had been reading a lot of poetry recently and thought it was affecting my own work, ie it was a joke. It originated from my own and others' expressed concern that it was hard not to be influenced by reading other people's poetry - though this wasn't what I, or hopefully they, meant. It also came from someone saying to me that poetry didn't sell - you couldn't write a 'blockbuster' poem - and wondering what did 'sell' well in poetry - at least in the sense that people knew and/or liked the poem. 'If' was the most obvious example I could think of - and the other poems referenced might also fall into the 'known' category. Hope so. It is also an example of me in 'flippant' mood - when I break away from my apparent norm of writing rather darker poetry - see previous post.