1) "The Land of Nod"  R.L. Stevenson.  As a child...even now if I admit it!..it did encourage me to welcome sleep rather than fight it!

2) "I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud" Wordsworth.  There isn't a spring awakens in my garden or those around me that I don't think of this poem.  So much so that I plant daffodils every year, everywhere there's room enough for "just one more bulb".

3) "The Pedlar's Caravan" William B. Rands.  That always sounded so romantic...lol...not only to me but to my mother who, I believe, had the travel bug also.  But love of the poem came first...maybe that was what gave me the wanderlust.

4) "Sea Fever" John Masefield.  Hmmm...I see a theme here!  Travel, gypsy, dream.  Some might suggest I've looked at running away all of my life...hahahaha!  Nope...just a big beautiful world out there with never enough time to see all of it.

5) "Silver" Walter De La Mare.  This COULD be the number one favourite and, like Wordsworth's "Daffodils" I never see a silver moon but I run this poem through.  And it was another of my mother's favourites...more than once, I'd find myself standing next to her, gazing skyward.  Without a word to each other, we'd both begin reciting this well-loved poem as we scanned the chimneys and roof tiles, rose gardens gleaming in the moonlight.

6) "Stop All The Clocks" W.H. Auden.  A mournful poem this one but I like it and especially love the descriptive last verse:

"The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good."

7) "A Creed" John Masefield.  Far and away my most favourite.  I first had to learn his "Sea-Fever" in school, loving the words, the images it conjured up, the flow immediately and I never did forget it.  Years later, many years later and long after I had settled into my own "creed" I happened upon the Masefield poem...with much surprise to find we shared a very similar philosophy.  I find it comfortable.

A Creed

I HOLD that when a person dies

His soul returns again to earth;

Arrayed in some new flesh-disguise

Another mother gives him birth.

With sturdier limbs and brighter brain

The old soul takes the road again.

Such is my own belief and trust;

This hand, this hand that holds the pen,

Has many a hundred times been dust

And turned, as dust, to dust again;

These eyes of mine have blinked and shown

In Thebes, in Troy, in Babylon.

All that I rightly think or do,

Or make, or spoil, or bless, or blast,

Is curse or blessing justly due

For sloth or effort in the past.

My life's a statement of the sum

Of vice indulged, or overcome.

I know that in my lives to be

My sorry heart will ache and burn,

And worship, unavailingly,

The woman whom I used to spurn,

And shake to see another have

The love I spurned, the love she gave.

And I shall know, in angry words,

In gibes, and mocks, and many a tear,

A carrion flock of homing-birds,

The gibes and scorns I uttered here.

The brave word that I failed to speak

Will brand me dastard on the cheek.

And as I wander on the roads

I shall be helped and healed and blessed;

Dear words shall cheer and be as goads

To urge to heights before unguessed.

My road shall be the road I made;

All that I gave shall be repaid.

So shall I fight, so shall I tread,

In this long war beneath the stars;

So shall a glory wreathe my head,

So shall I faint and show the scars,

Until this case, this clogging mould,

Be smithied all to kingly gold.

John Masefield

So where did this come from?  Good question...no answer other than it's the wee sma' hours of the morning.  A time when 'oft my thoughts do flee', wander, take me to places that, in the busy daylight hours I don't have much time to spend dallying.  Which is about how I learned the first four or five of those favourites...sitting at my desk in class, chin propped on one elbow with eyes...and mind...casting around the blue and white skies beckoning me through the long windows...day-dreaming.