A Poem I Love (also poets whose work I’ve loved through my life)

I have loved many, many poets and poems since I was a young girl of eight or ten.  From Donne to Blake, from Shakespeare to Milton, from Wordsworth to Tennyson, from Eliot to D.H. Lawrence, from Wilde to Yeats, from Emily Dickinson to Robert Frost, from Gwendolyn Brooks, May Sarton, Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou, Sonia Sanchez to Naomi Shihab Nye, from Sarojini Naidu to Rabindranath Tagore …
Here’s a poem by my favorite William Blake (of “Tyger, Tyger burning bright” fame) that just sprang to memory:

The Sick Rose
By William Blake

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

I found myself chilled to the bone when I heard a recording of this poem set to music composed by Benjamin Britten, and sung by his lover, the impeccable tenor Peter Pears:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z8W177eCIY