Favorite poems

While I know no poem in the language greater than Gerard Manley Hopkins's "The Wreck of the Deutschland," and confess a supremely warm spot for Joyce Kilmer's cozy but forgotten "The 12:45," a favorite is this sonnet by Millay from her collection Fatal Interview. An "anthem" of sorts for me, this poem addresses majestically life's semicircular round-trip route, with a concluding line that "closes the book" with an astonishing insight.

Sonnet XLVIII, by Edna St. Vincent Millay.