I'm neither nostalgic, sentimental nor romantic by personality, but this is a contender for my favourite poem, and one of the few I know by heart.

Clair de Lune

Votre ame est un paysage choisi
Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques,
Jouant du luth, et dansant, et quasi
Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.

Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur
L'amour vainqueur et la vie opportune,
Ils n'ont pas l'air de croire a leur bonheur,
Et leur chanson se mele au clair de lune,

Au calme clair de lune triste et beau
Qui fait rever les oiseaux dans les arbres
Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau
Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres.


Paul Verlaine

I'll attempt translation if requested

My french is not good. edit non-existant.

I have this one on a CD of Yeats poems and I like it. I like to think of it as a victorian version of "schuwiiing"

Politics

HOW can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics? Yet here's a travelled man that knows What he talks about, And there's a politician That has read and thought, And maybe what they say is true Of war and war's alarms, But O that I were young again And held her in my arms! William Butler Yeats