On Planning Ahead

You know how in young women's you made lists about your future spouse?

Or when you used to babysit as a twelve year old and some people had these weird rituals they went through with their kids before bed, that you had to step into? Example, one family had a little jar with song titles and scriptures next to the kid's bed, and the kids got to take turns pulling out little slips, and then singing and reading together.

I always loved that. I thought to myself "I will do that with my children."

You know in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, how Francie and Neely read a page of Shakespeare and a page from the Bible every night?

I always try and think of things that I will do with my future children. For years I've said things like, "I will read poetry to my children before bed, and great literature, and while they may read little kid books, they will only have literature before bed."
I still hold to that.
At least when they're little, I will read them Wordsworth and Keats, I will read them Beowulf if they want stories that have monsters in them, I will read them Tolkien if they want an adventure, but every night I will try to read them some literature. And more importantly, every night I will read them poetry.
About two weeks ago, I bought a beautiful, too-expensive leather bound journal. Since then, I try to copy a poem into it every night before bed. Not my poetry, of course, but great poetry.
Then, all the poems that I love will be in one place, and I will read my children a poem from the book every night.

Haha, oh my iTunes just sang, "You read your Emily Dickinson, and I my Robert Frost." (It's playing The Dangling Conversation, by Simon and Garfunkel)

These are the poems in my book so far, any suggestions? What poets and poems do you love? I literally have hundreds of pages to fill.

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, In a Back Alley, The Altar, I taste a Liquor Never Brewed, The Evening of the Mind, Simon Lee, "They", Sweeny Among the Nightingales, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?, I Am a Little World Made Cunningly, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening, and Ode on a Grecian Urn.