Poetry

[Harp]

thus one can use in poetry
names of Greek shepards
one can attempt to catch the colour of the morning sky
write of love
and also
once again
in dead earnest
offer to the betrayed world
a rose

Zbigniew Herbert, Five Men

[Pompidou]

Roses are red
Violets are blue
That's what they tell me
Because I'm blind

-Gary Larson, Far Side

[Harp]

I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Heaven-Haven

[Harp]

Drawn to the gentle flame,
The moth flies and catches on fire.
So your love draws my soul.

St Therese, Canticle of Celine

[V.C. Brunswick]

I wish I could write a poem
If I only had the talent, I'd show em'
But try and try as I might
Lyrical prose I simply can't write
It seems that no amount of tuition
Will bring to fruition my poetic ambition
Of my attempts at emulation of Byron and Keats
The ignominous result is resounding defeat
But I've pinpointed the reason for my lack of success
And why it is that my efforts, quite frankly, are a total mess
It's the thing that frustrates me time after time
I just can't seem to make the damn thing rhyme!

V.C. Brunswick

[Photoss]

Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator


~ can't recall the author...

[dragonaxe]

A background Grover sets the scene
of private massage on skin so clean.
The trusted touch of a lover known,
release the dreams of life overgrown.

There is no right, there is no wrong,
in this duet, our romantic song.
When harmonics match, they double their sound
and Milton's wrong - it's paradise found!

The flickering rouge of candlelight
captures the tease and playful bite,
upon slick skin with lips apart.
Of stifled moan and beating heart.

As the moon continues its lonely path
and embers sink within the hearth.
No cold creeps in. Our hideaway
creates the heat of summers day.

So together, as one. with eternal bond
from this world, to the ones beyond.
We travel the road, our hearts entwine.
My soul is yours, and yours is mine.

~ me :o

[John Boyer]

Sabbaths 1999: II

I dream of a quiet man
who explains nothing and defends
nothing, but only knows
where the rarest wildflowers
are blooming, and who goes,
and finds that he is smiling
not by his own will.

-Wendell Berry

[John Boyer]

I am content to follow to its source
Every event in action or in thought;
Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!
When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest.

- W.B. Yeats

[Harp]

The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,
As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,
Afar o'er life's turrets and vales does it roam
In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.

Georgia Douglas Johnson, The Heart Of A Woman

[Aviator]

Ed

Ed was in love with a cocktail waitress
But Ed's family and friends didn't approve
So he broke it off

He married a respectable woman
Who played the piano
She played well enough to have been a professional

Ed's wife left him

Years later, at a family gathering
Ed got drunk and made a fool of himself
He said "You know, I should have married Doreen."
"Well", they said, "Why didn't you?"

By Louis Simpson from his Collected Works

["Skeet" McD]

CARMEN VESPERTINUM
A Valediction: Caniscæli Robert Emmet (Bob)


November eve, when still soft twilight manifests

insensibly — but oh! so swift. Swift as that swallow

which skims alone on high: so high, so small,

it seems neighbor to the moon which hangs,

pure and silent, impassive witness to the scene.

In the marsh cat-tails (now bloom’d) and grasses’ whisks

stand: glowing spectres, creatures of the falling dark. 

Time to turn back; now the time to call my dog

whose vesper bell, alone, fills the silence of this hour:

Come ’round! — we’re done.

—K.M. 11/12/10

[Harp]

Now that the shapes of mist...
Slink quietly along the middle of the road
And the lamps draw trails of milk in ponds of lustrous lead
I am decidedly pleased not to be dead.

Or when wet roads at night reflect the clutching
Importunate fingers of trees and windy shadows
Lunge and flounce on the windscreen as I drive
I am glad of the accident of being alive.

Louis MacNiece, Now that the shapes of mist

[Harp]

caithfidh me mo cheird
a ghearradh as coill ur:
mar ta mo gharran Bearla
crann-nochta seasc.

Michael Hartnett, Dan do Rosemary

I have to hone my craft
in a wood that's new:
for my English grove
is naked, barren

Poem for Rosemary

Michael Hartnett saw poetry as both gift and curse.
His use of Gaelic over English was prompted for aesthetic and cultural reasons.
A complex individual, Hartnett eventually resumed writing poetry in English; more's the pity. :(

[Harp]

I want to die while you still love me,
Oh, who would care to live
Til love has nothing more to ask
And nothing more to give!

I want to die while you love me
And never, never see
The glory of this perfect day
Grow dim or cease to be.

Georgia Douglas Johnson, I Want To Die While You Still Love Me

[Harp]

A mound of summer grass,
Are warriors' heroic deeds,
Only dreams that pass?

Basho, Narrow Road to a Far Province;1689

["Skeet" McD]

CONSERVATION OF ENERGY
For Martin Byrne, Reg Hall & Bill Leader, with thanks.

“Edward! EDWARD!” 

The words cut through the years —

did Edward hear? I do. 

Who was he? The barman? A friend just in the door?

And why? to buy — or cadge — another short one?

or was it just the joy of a familiar face,

a bit of home, deep in a city far away?

I am far away, myself; far from my home

and far away from that pub filled

with Irish lads who’d left the West to help rebuild

what Jerry left of London.

‘Twas hard work, any road, and a lonely bed:

Ah! but Saturday night!

I close my eyes to see and know it all:

the warmth inside, clear of the street’s cutting damp;

the air thick with smoke and a happy tumble of words

from the lads, just slightly heightened by the drink,

their pockets heavy with silver

and Monday a long way off.

The fiddle buzzes, rasps, and whines a reel

written (of all things!) in Philadelphia;

the dumpy upright thumps and thuds,

and — somewhere nearby — a reel-to-reel

wheels and steals Maudabawn Chapel’s gait straight

out of the smoky air through — magnetism; that’s it.

Add a jump of fifty years, and more (my own life’s span):

That happy evening, distill’d to tiny sparks of energy, 

lies tucked within the ’phone nestled in my pocket;
pumped
through wires to my ears, it’s reconverted

into tiny sparks of energy flashing now inside my brain —

Nothing lost, and much perhaps that’s found:

Am I walking into eternity along Seven Star Road?

—K.M. 11/30/10

[Harp]

...whose fusillading heart
Is triggered on a thorn
The dark night through...
the nightengale would set
To leave a pyre of roses for the Sun.

R. Campbell, San Juan de la Cruz

[Harp]

I wander her hills and valleys
And still through my sorrow I see
A land that has never known freedom
And only her rivers run free.

Mickey MacConnell, Only Our Rivers Run Free

[Harp]

Locked arm in arm they cross the way,
The black boy and the white,
The golden splendor of the day,
The sable pride of night.

From lowered blinds the dark folk stare,
And hear the fair folk talk,
Indignant that these two should dare
In unison to walk.

Oblivious to look and word
They pass, and see no wonder
That lightning brilliant as a sword
Should blaze the path of thunder.

Countee Cullen, Tableau

Cullen's poetic lyrical elegance, eroticism, and adamantine nature
haunt the Harlem Renaissance.

[John Boyer]

My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top

While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.

W.B. Yeats

[rue]

AT NIGHTFALL

I need so much the quiet of your love,
After the day's loud strife;
I need your calm all other things above,
After the stress of life.

I crave the haven that in your dear heart lies,
After all toil is done;
I need the starshine of your heavenly eyes,
After the day's great sun.

Charles Hanson Towne (1877-1949)

[Harp]

The bullet cleared the briars
off the top of the ditch, drove
particles of his bone at a four
miles per hour walk, to rejoin a road
like a swine with a tusk
which has grown round into his head.

Within minutes of that noontide
priceless manuscripts floated over
the city, releasing the scent
of partition, and the stray light
in the straitjacket of the Republic
paid out the head money of his soul.

Medbh McGuckian, The Truciler

Writing from the advantage distance Time affords, and against literary
background provided by other scribes, McGuckian evokes phantasm; seemingly
sentimental, yet devoid of such amidst paratactic arrangement of metaphors
and dislocated syntax. Her chronology of the assassination of Michael Collins
works backward, past the souless bullet's trajectory to Irish partition, and Collins'
nemesis, Eamon de Valera.

McGuckian's own perspective on Collins is more oblique.
However, she encapsules Churchill's ridicule of Collins:

Corner boy in excelsis, with towels
framed all round the railings,
Ireland is yours, take it.

The antithesis of Yeats, McGuckian is a refreshing breeze, all at once enigmatic
but replete with imagery that inflicts Poetry's mortal wound upon the reader.
McGuckian's paean to Robert Frost, Frost in Beaconsfield opens a window to
her own soul that is both cryptic and compelling, and perhaps reluctantly given.

[Harp]

If the form of this world cannot stay the same,
but suffers so many violent changes,
what folly it is to trust man's tumbling fortunes...
One thing is certain, fixed by eternal law:
nothing that is born can last.

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy; Book II, Poem III

[rue]

Sonnet 14

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
'I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'—
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,—
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.

~Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 – 1861)

[Harp]

"Who so loves believes the impossible."

Elizabeth Barrett Browning :love:

[rue]

One Way Of Love

All June I bound the rose in sheaves.
Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves
And strew them where Pauline may pass.
She will not turn aside? Alas!
Let them lie. Suppose they die?
The chance was they might take her eye.

How many a month I strove to suit
These stubborn fingers to the lute!
To-day I venture all I know.
She will not hear my music? So!
Break the string; fold music's wing:
Suppose Pauline had bade me sing!

My whole life long I learned to love.
This hour my utmost art I prove
And speak my passion---heaven or hell?
She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well!
Lose who may---I still can say,
Those who win heaven, blest are they!

Robert Browning (1812-1889)

[John Boyer]

Welcome Morning

"So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,
dies young."

--Anne Sexton [Excerpt from Welcome Morning]

[Harp]

Let the blood riot,
Give it its will;
It shall grow quiet,
It shall grow still.

Countee Cullen, Nothing Endures

[Berlin]

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs.
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots.
Of tired, outstripped, Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud.
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen
1893 - 1918

[Harp]

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless chimes and starry skies,
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes.....

Lord Byron, She Walks in Beauty ;)

[Pompidou]

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless chimes and starry skies,
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes.....

Lord Byron, She Walks in Beauty ;)

Lord Byron, Mary Shelly and Percy Shelly were all good friends - imagine the conversations they must've had.

[Harp]

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's correspondence with Edgar Allan Poe
offer a whisper of Poetry's life beneath the cloak of conjecture.
Seek out such documents and a door to the past magically opens.

[Wally_Hood]

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

Robert Hayden

[Harp]

The human heart has hidden treasures.
In secret kept, in silence sealed.
The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams,
the pleasures whose charm were broken if revealed.

Charlotte Bronte

[Berlin]

Red lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
O Love, your eyes lose lure
When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!
Your slender attitude
Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,
Rolling and rolling there
Where God seems not to care;
Till the fierce love they bear
Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude.

Your voice sings not so soft,-
Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft,-
Your dear voice is not dear,
Gentle, and evening clear,
As theirs whom none now hear,
Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.

Heart, you were never hot
Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
And though your hand be pale,
Paler are all which trail
Your cross through flame and hail:
Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.



- Wilfred Owen

[lynnequintana]

How Do I Love Thee?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning-

[Nathan Dodge]

I saw myself
a ring of bone
in the clear stream
of all of it

and vowed
always to be open to it
that all of it
might flow through

and then heard
"ring of bone" where
ring is what a

bell does



~Lew Welch

[Harp]

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight....


-Elizabeth Barrett Browning-

Mrs Browning is the wisest of the Sibyls,
wiser even than that mighty figure whom Michael Angelo
painted on the roof of the Sistine Chapel at Rome,
poring over the scroll of mystery, and trying to decipher
the secrets of Fate; for she realized that, while Knowledge
is power, Suffering is part of Knowledge.

Oscar Wilde

A miser critic of conflicted heart and tormented soul,
Wilde's remark peels back layers of emotion which undoubtedly
found solace in Elizabeth's poetry.

How I love this lady. :love:

[Harp]

Heaven in thy creation did decree
That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell;
Whate'er thy thoughts or thy heart's workings be,
Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell.

Shakespeare ;)

[Harp]

Oh Barcelona, queen of Europe's cities,
From dulcet thoughts of you my guts are twisted
With bitter pain of longing for your sights,
And for your hills, your picturesque glory singing,
My feet are mutinous, mine eyes are misted.
Upon my happy thoughts your harbor lights
Are shimmering like bells melodious ringing
With sweet cadenzas of flanenco ditties.

Claude McKay, Barcelona

Robert Hughes' Barcelona escaped my clutches and remains unread.
McKay's poem serves sufficient reminder and the December 2010 National Geographic features the Sagrada Familia.
Cannot wait to see this town. :)

[Harp]

Anyhow you had to perish Hamlet you were not for life
you believed in crystal notions not in human clay
always twitching as if asleep you hunted chimeras...
you chose the easier part an elegant thrust
but what is heroic death compared with eternal watching
with a cold apple in one's hand on a narrow chair
with a view of the ant-hill and the clock's dial

Zbigniew Herbert, Elegy of Fortinbras

[John Boyer]

Yes
even when I don't believe
there is a place in me inaccessible to unbelief
a patch of wild grace
a stubborn preserve
impenetrable
pain untouched sleeping in the body
music that builds its nest in silence

-Anna Kamienska

[Harp]

'Like thieves'-in Simone Weil's wonderful words-
'on the cross of space and time
we human beings are nailed.'
I drift off, and the splinters shock me awake....

Janos Pilinszky, Extract From A Diary

[Harp]

Not that great German master in his dreams
Of harmonies that thundered amongst the stars
At the creation, ever heard a theme
Nobler than "Go Down Moses." Mark its bars
How like a mighty trumpet call they stir
The Blood. Such are the notes that men have sung
Going to valorous deeds; such tones there were
That helped make History when Time was young.

James Weldon Johnson, O Black and Unknown Bards

[Harp]

No single thing abides, but all things flow.
Fragment to fragment clings; the things thus grow.
Until we know and name them. By degrees
They melt, and are no more the things we know.

Lucretius

[John Boyer]

Fear and dream
were my father and mother.
The corridor was the
opening landscape.

That's how I lived. How shall I die?
How am I going to perish?

Earth will betray me. She'll take me in her arms.
The rest is grace.

-Janos Pilinszky

[Harp]

John:

I keep your gift, The Poetry of Survival close for daily reference.
Such an elegiac collection of souls....

[John Boyer]

John:

I keep your gift, The Poetry of Survival close for daily reference.
Such an elegiac collection of souls....

Harp:

I am delighted you are enjoying The Poetry of Survival; it is a wonderful anthology. Also, I am happy you have reintroduced me to Janos Pilinszky . Would you happen to have a title for your earlier post from Pilinszky"s diary? I may want to order this book. John

[Harp]

:)Crater. Poems 1974-75, trans. Peter Jay. London: Anvil Press Poetry, 1978.:)

[John Boyer]

Some people say that every poem should have
God in it somewhere. But of course Wallace Stevens
Wasn't one of those. We live, he said, "in a world
Without heaven to follow." Shall we agree

That we taste heaven only once, when we see
Her at fifteen walking among falling leaves?
It's possible. And yet Stevens lay dying
He invited the priest in. There, I've said it.

The priest is not an argument, only an instance.
But our gusty emotions say to me that we have
Tasted heaven many times: these delicacies
Are left over from some larger party.

-Robert Bly

[Harp]

It whistles off the stars
And the existential, stark
Face of the cosmic dark.

Derek Mahon, 'North Wind: Portrush'

[John Boyer]

Perfect Reverence

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world;
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

-W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming")

[rue]

If you were coming in the Fall,
I'd brush the Summer by
With half a smile, and half a spurn,
As Housewives do, a Fly.
If I could see you in a year,
I'd wind the months in balls—
And put them each in separate Drawers,
For fear the numbers fuse—
If only Centuries, delayed,
I'd count them on my Hand,
Subtracting, till my fingers dropped
Into Van Dieman's Land.
If certain, when this life was out—
That your's and mine, should be—
I'd toss it yonder, like a Rind,
And take Eternity—
But now, uncertain of the length
Of this, that is between,
It goads me, like the Goblin Bee—
That will not state—its sting.

Emily Dickinson

[John Boyer]

Loving him, the mother takes thread in hand;
Leaving her, he'll have this coat on his shoulders.
Now that he's about to go, she mends with fine, fine stitches;
She knows the fear that he'll be gone a long, long time.
Who would say the heart of a tiny blade of grass
Could repay the sun for all the warmth of spring?

-Meng Chiao (751-814 CE Tang Dynasty)

[Harp]

I do confess it Faustus, and rejoice.
'Twas I, that when thou wert i' the way to heaven
Damned up thy passage. When thou took'st the book
To view the scriptures, then I turned the leaves
And led thine eye.

Mephostophilis' Reply

[John Boyer]

Caught-the bubble
in the spirit-level,
a creature divided;
and the compass needle
wobbling and wavering,
undecided.
Freed-the broken
thermometer's mercury
running away;
and the rainbow-bird
from the narrow bevel
of the empty mirror,
flying wherever
if feels like, gay!

-Elizabeth Bishop

[Harp]

The man who searches deeply for the truth,
and wishes to avoid being deceived by false leads,
must turn the light of his inner vision upon himself.
He must guide his soaring thoughts back again
and teach his spirit that it possesses hidden
among its own treasures
whatever it seeks outside itself.

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy; Bk III, Poem XI

[John Boyer]

I thought of walking round and round a space
Utterly empty, utterly a source
Where the decked chestnut tree had lost its place
In our front hedge above the wallflowers.
The white chips jumped and jumped and skited high.
I heard the hatchet's differentiated
Accurate cut, the crack, the sigh
And collapse of what luxuriated
Through the shocked tips and wreckage of it all.
Deep planted and long gone, my coeval
Chestnut from a jam jar in a hole,
Its heft and hush become a bright nowhere,
A soul ramifying and forever
Silent, beyond silence listened for.

-Seamus Heaney

[Harp]

They say there's a secret charm which lies
In some wild floweret's bell,
That grows in a vale where the west wind sighs,
And where secrets best may dwell;

And they who can find the fairy flower,
A treasure possess that might grace a throne;
For, oh! they can rule with the softest power
The heart they would make their own.

Samuel Lover, The Charm

[Harp]

Summer delights the scholar
With knowledge and reason.
Who is happy in hedgerow
Or meadow as he?

Paying no dues to the parish,
He argues in logic
And has no care of cattle
But a satchel and stick...

But in winter by the big fires,
The ignorant hear his fiddle,
And he battles on the chessboard
As the land lord bids him.

Austin Clarke, The Scholar

[Derek WC]

In my signature, which I recently wrote:

As I drift to sleep,
Into wonderful dreams,
I begin to creep.

I think it's called a haiku or something like that.

[Wally_Hood]

In my signature, which I recently wrote:

As I drift to sleep,
Into wonderful dreams,
I begin to creep.

I think it's called a haiku or something like that.

Three lines, with 5 syllables in the first, 7 syllables in the second line, and then 5 syllables in the final line, makes a haiku. Usually about themes of nature, life lessons, or classically, zen encapsulations.

[John Boyer]

Move him into the sun--
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
the kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds,--
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved--still warm--too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
--O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

--Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
[Excellent example of Owens use of pararhyme]

[John Boyer]

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed--see here it is--
I hold it towards you.

--John Keats

[randooch]

In my signature, which I recently wrote:

As I drift to sleep,
Into wonderful dreams,
I begin to creep.

I think it's called a haiku or something like that.

They're also fun when related to human nature:

These are my demands:
Guns, money, and a fast car.
See you in hell, Pal!

[Derek WC]

Ahh, yes. I thought that was what it was called.

That's great, Randooch.

Do any of you guys write your own?

[Wally_Hood]

Move him into the sun--
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
the kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds,--
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved--still warm--too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
--O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

--Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
[Excellent example of Owens use of pararhyme]

Wilfred Owen wrote some amazing poetry. I had learned the term "slant rhyme" for end rhymes that are similarly spelled and pronounced.

[rue]

Insomnia

Thin are the night-skirts left behind
By daybreak hours that onward creep,
And thin, alas! the shred of sleep
That wavers with the spirit's wind:
But in half-dreams that shift and roll
And still remember and forget,
My soul this hour has drawn your soul
A little nearer yet.

Our lives, most dear, are never near,
Our thoughts are never far apart,
Though all that draws us heart to heart
Seems fainter now and now more clear.
To-night Love claims his full control,
And with desire and with regret
My soul this hour has drawn your soul
A little nearer yet.

Is there a home where heavy earth
Melts to bright air that breathes no pain,
Where water leaves no thirst again
And springing fire is Love's new birth?
If faith long bound to one true goal
May there at length its hope beget,
My soul that hour shall draw your soul
For ever nearer yet.

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
(1828 – 1882)

[rue]

If I were King

If I were king---ah love, if I were king!
What tributary nations would I bring
To stoop before your sceptre and to swear
Allegiance to you lips and eyes and hair.
Beneath your feet what treaseures I would fling:---
The stars should be your pearls upon a string,
The world a ruby for your finger ring,
And you should have the sun and moon to wear
If i were king.

Let these wild dreams and wilder words take wing,
Deep in the woods I hear a shepherd sing
A simple ballad to a sylvan air,
Of love that ever finds your face more fair.
I could not give you any godlier thing
If I were king.

Justin Huntly MCCarthy
(1859 – 1936)

[Harp]

Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight
And burned is Apollo's laurel bough
That sometime grew within this learned man.
Faustus is gone; regard his hellish fall,
Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise
Only to wonder at unlawful things,
Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits
To practice more than heavenly power permits.

Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus V;III

[John Boyer]

If I could keep my innermost Me
Fearless, aloof and free
Of the least breath of love or hate,
And not disconsolate
At the sick load of sorrow laid on men;
If I could keep a sanctuary there
Free even of prayer,
If I could do this, then,
With quiet candor as I grew more wise
I could look even at God with grave forgiving eyes.

--Sarah Teasdale (1884-1933)

[Harp]

But we dream we are rooted in earth-Dust!
Flesh falls within sight of us, we, though our flowers the same.
Wave with the meadow, forget that there must
The sour scythe cringe, and the blear share come.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

[John Boyer]

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch

I want them to water-ski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

-Billy Collins

[Harp]

:eusa_clap

[kokopelli]

Possibly a bit O prose... Ode to the range pistol..

Good discussion.. However, a range pistol is in fact a definable thing therefore it does exist. It's not the carry pistol that I shoot at the range, nor is it the target pistol that I shoot bulls-eye or other disciplined matches with. A range pistol is something that lives for that weekly trip to the range.. Like a hunting dog that tears up the path around the fence.. It don't worry much about shot placement or concealment, but when all the magazines are loaded and the truck is pointed toward the range.. It's alive.. When the cover shirt is lifted over the grip frame and/or the pistol is upholstered, everything goes into some sort of exotic slow motion. The recoil from the first shot rocks you back on your feet and the next six are like hot sex or something.. When the slide locks open and you turn the pistol a little to the left to drop the mag, the lane light reflects off the slide and the fresh magazine as it progresses home. Then there's the sound of the slide racking to battery.. It's like the sound of your mothers voice and Madonna all mixed together. The next three minutes and 12 magazines are like the dance of the sugarplum fairies.. Some sort of transcendental blues where time stands still.. When it's over and you're walking out of the range, there's a silence of whispered delight as most everyone with a pistol at heart is now re-living those three minutes.. They, like me, go home with a HOORAH and the desire to own a range pistol.. BUT.. I digress.. Grin Cheers.. Ron

[Harp]

For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey

[Renault]

It doesn't come close to replacing, but this little bit from Brother Kipling has helped me these last couple of years deal with things.

My Boy Jack
1914-1918


'Have you news of my boy Jack?'
Not this tide.
'When d'you think that he'll come back?'
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
'Has anyone else had word of him?'
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing and this tide.
'Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?'
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind-
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.
Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

[John Boyer]

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge
that pass all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the
women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap'd stones, elder,
mullein and poke-weed.

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself [excerpt]

[John Boyer]

Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!
A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.
If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!
If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift!
If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed
By the fine, fine wind that takes its course through
the chaos of the world...

-D.H. Lawrence [Song of a Man Who Has Come Through]

[Harp]

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge
that pass all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the
women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap'd stones, elder,.
mullein and poke-weed.

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself [excerpt]

Rabelais would have enjoyed reading Whitman. :)

[Tux Toledo]

"An Account of a Steamboat's Arrival in San Francisco"

On top of Telegraph Hill, before the earthquake, there as a giant wooden statue of a woman whose arms would be raised whenever a ship bringing mail entered the harbor.

'Twis midday when first I saw the wooden amazon
Reaching her arms into the sky.
This will be the test, I thought,
Whether what I'd heard was just a lie.
I could see the chatter running through the wires
As I stared up at the hill.
My father ran from the barber shop
In close pursuit came old Bill,
A retired sea captain so he told us all,
He had a chest full of stories
And a chart upon the wall
That told the meaning of all the buoys
Scattered about the bay.

It was he with my father that grabbed my arms,
My feet dangling above the street,
Squinting my eyes for a fleeting glimpse
Of a member of that steamer fleet.
It had big black smokestacks coming out of the middle
And I couldn't see any sails.
Her name was "Sherry Ann"
And someone said she hunted whales.
But old Bill was sure he knew,
"It's ivory from Africa that she brings!"
But dad read in the paper the following morn
It just carried mail and other things
I wouldn't give a penny for.

Tux Toledo

[John Boyer]

I rest not from my great task!
To open the Eternal Worlds,
to open the immortal Eyes of Man
Inwards into the Worlds of Thought;
Into eternity, ever expanding
In the Bosom of God,
The Human Imagination.

-William Blake (from Jerusalem)

[Harp]

Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen;
Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green.

George Peele

[John Boyer]

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand
God not in the least...
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four,
and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and
in my own face in the glass;
I find letters from God dropt in the street,
and every one is signed by God's name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know
that whereso'er I go
Others will punctually come forever and ever.

-Wlat Whitman (Excerpt from Song of Myself)

[John Boyer]

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our Life's Star
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness.
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
upon the growing boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy.

-William Wordsworth [Excerpt from Imitations of Immortality]

[markniklas]

Very nice poetry you people shared...
My Favorite poem is:

Never seek to tell thy love,
Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind does move
Silently, invisibly.

I told my love, I told my love,
I told her all my heart;
Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears,
Ah! she did depart!

Soon as she was gone from me,
A traveler came by,
Silently, invisibly
He took her with a sigh.

[markniklas]

Very nice poetry you people shared...
My Favorite poem is:

Never seek to tell thy love,
Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind does move
Silently, invisibly.

I told my love, I told my love,
I told her all my heart;
Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears,
Ah! she did depart!

Soon as she was gone from me,
A traveler came by,
Silently, invisibly
He took her with a sigh.

[Harp]

My Favorite poem is:

Never seek to tell thy love,
Love that never told can be....

Blake had a touch of Donne. :)

[John Boyer]

While browsing today, I stumbled upon these cheerful lines :rolleyes:

When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat;
Yet, fool'd with hope, men favour the deceit;
Trust on, and think tomorrow will repay:
Tomorrow's falser than the former day;
Lies worse, and, while it says we shall be blest
With some new joys, cuts off what we possest.
Strange cozenage! None would live past years again,
Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain;
And, from the dregs of life, think to receive,
What the first sprightly running could not give.

--John Dryden [Aureng-Zebe (1676), Act IV, scene i.]

[Harp]

While browsing today, I stumbled upon these cheerful lines :rolleyes:

When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat;
Yet, fool'd with hope, men favour the deceit;

Interesting that you came across Dryden, John; he haunts me.
The Poet Laureate felled from grace struck a chord heard
no doubt by Newman and Hopkins.

The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape,
shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves---

A Restoration theologian and convert, within his heart, J.D. must have been
an optimist by nature to have withstood all travail; and cynical verse serves
his artistic mirror reflective twist of soul. More a complex cipher
than the cardinal, and more temporal than the Jesuit, but the three shared
similar paths sketched by Boethius inside his prison cell long before
their respective births. Lady Philosophy banishes the sirens,
becoming Poetry herself.

[Harp]

Test your belief

in spirit on their faces staring
at you, on beauty's surrender
to truth, on the soul's selling
of itself for a corner

by the body's fire. Learn the thinness
of the window that is
between you and life, and how
the mind cuts itself if it goes through

R.S. Thomas, The Calling

[John Boyer]

Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

R.S. Thomas, The Bright Field

[Harp]

Thou too, O Earth-thine empires, lands and seas-
Least, with thy stars, of all the galaxies,
Globed from the drift like these, like these thou too
Shalt go. Thou art going, hour by hour, like these.

Nothing abides. Thy seas in delicate haze
Go off; those mooned sands forsake their place;
And where they are shall other seas in turn
Mow with their scythes of whiteness other bays.

Lucretius

[frank nitte]

XXXII.
There was a Door to which I found no Key:
There was a Veil past which I could not see:
Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee
There seemed—and then no more of Thee and Me.- omar kaiyyam

[frank nitte]

VII.
Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly—and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.-omar kaiyyam

[John Boyer]

If the heart were pure enough,
but it is not pure,
you would admit
that nothing compels
any more, nothing
at all abides,
but nostalgia and desire,
the two-way ladder
between heaven and hell.
On the threshold
of the last mystery,
at the brute absolute hour,
you have looked into the eyes
of your creature self,
which are glazed with madness,
and you say
he is not broken but endures,
limber and firm
in the state of his shining,
forever inheriting his salt kingdom,
from which he is banished
forever.

by Stanley Kunitz

[Harp]

Unwearied still, lover by lover
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

W. B Yeats, The Wild Swans at Coole

[John Boyer]

The people yes
The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
You can't laugh off their capacity to take it.
The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas.

--Carl Sandburg

[Harp]

Twists to Plato, Aeschylus,
Seneca and Mimnermus,
Pliny, Dionysius...
Who remove from remarkable hosts
Of agonized and friendly ghosts,
Lean and laugh at one who looks
To find kisses pressed in books.

...Hence from scenic bacchanal,
Preshrunk and droll prodigal!
Smallness that you had to spend,
Spent. Wench, whiskey and tail-end
Of your overseas disease
Rot and rout you by degrees.
-Close your fables and fatigues...

Gwendolyn Brooks, The Anniad

[John Boyer]

And now, I’m nearing sixty-eight;
With wistful, yearning heart
Recheck a host of “Might Have Beens”,
And memory imparts
No answer, dim, not understood,
But knowing it is there;
Yet, all too little I can see,
As on a winding stair.

Could I be granted one fond wish
To cheer my jaded soul;
To overcome each circumstance
That hides the visioned goal;
Then I would say, Give back to me
That priceless, bubbling joy;
That thrilling, pulsing, constant faith,
The glad heart of a boy.

-Howard Austin, The Heart of a Boy

[Harp]

When the far south glittered
Behind grey beaded plains,
And cloudier ships were bitted
Along the pale waves,
The showery breeze-that plies
A mile from Ara-stood
And took our boat on sand:
There by dim wells women tied
A wish on thorn, while rainfall
Was quiet as the turning of books
In the holy schools at dawn.

Austin Clarke, Pilgrimage

[John Boyer]

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

[John Boyer]

Advent poem from an unsuspecting poet (my opinion)...

On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, nor seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can’t honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Lean incandescent

Out of kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then—
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent

By bestowing largesse, honor,
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); skeptical,
Yet politic; ignorant

Of whatever angel may choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait’s begun again,
The long wait for the angel,
For that rare, random descent.

[rue]

CHRISTMAS BELLS by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till, ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said:
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!”

[Marc Chevalier]

.
The Lobster


’Tis the voice of the Lobster; I heard him declare,
"You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair."
As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose
Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes.

When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark,
And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark,
But, when the tide rises and sharks are around,
His voice has a timid and tremulous sound.


-- Charles Lutwidge Dodgson

[rue]

A Drinking Song by W.B. Yeats

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

[John Boyer]

A tempest threw a rainbow in my face
so that I wanted to fall under the rain
to kiss the hands of an old woman to whom I gave my seat
to thank everyone for the fact that they exist
and at times even feel like smiling
I was grateful to young leaves that they were willing
to open up to the sun
to babies that they still
felt like coming into this world
to the old that they heroically
endure until the end
I was full of thanks
like a Sunday alms-box
I would have embraced death
if she'd stopped nearby

Gratitude is a scattered
homeless love

- Anna Kamienska

[Aureliano]

Thinking It Over
They tell me I should exersize to lose weight,
that around 50 fat and cigars are dangerous,
that you have to preserve your figure,
and give time and age a fight.

Well-intentioned experts and doctor friends
recommend diets and ways
to prolong life for a few more years.

I thank them with all my heart but I laugh
at such vain prescriptions and such small wills.
(Death also laughs at such things.)

The only recommendation I consider seriously
is to find a young woman to take to bed,
because by this age
youth can only reach us by contagion.

Jaime Sabines--Translation by Aureliano--

[Jock1914]

Gunga Din

You may talk o' gin and beer
When you're quartered safe out 'ere,
An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it;
But when it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water,
An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.
Now in Injia's sunny clime,
Where I used to spend my time
A-servin' of 'Er Majesty the Queen,
Of all them blackfaced crew
The finest man I knew
Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din.
He was "Din! Din! Din!
You limpin' lump o' brick-dust, Gunga Din!
Hi! slippery "hitherao"!
Water, get it! "Panee lao"! [Bring water swiftly.]
You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din."

The uniform 'e wore
Was nothin' much before,
An' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind,
For a piece o' twisty rag
An' a goatskin water-bag
Was all the field-equipment 'e could find.
When the sweatin' troop-train lay
In a sidin' through the day,
Where the 'eat would make your bloomin' eyebrows crawl,
We shouted "Harry By!" [Mr. Atkins's equivalent for "O brother."]
Till our throats were bricky-dry,
Then we wopped 'im 'cause 'e couldn't serve us all.
It was "Din! Din! Din!
You 'eathen, where the mischief 'ave you been?
You put some "juldee" in it [Be quick.]
Or I'll "marrow" you this minute [Hit you.]
If you don't fill up my helmet, Gunga Din!"

'E would dot an' carry one
Till the longest day was done;
An' 'e didn't seem to know the use o' fear.
If we charged or broke or cut,
You could bet your bloomin' nut,
'E'd be waitin' fifty paces right flank rear.
With 'is "mussick" on 'is back, [Water-skin.]
'E would skip with our attack,
An' watch us till the bugles made "Retire",
An' for all 'is dirty 'ide
'E was white, clear white, inside
When 'e went to tend the wounded under fire!
It was "Din! Din! Din!"
With the bullets kickin' dust-spots on the green.
When the cartridges ran out,
You could hear the front-files shout,
"Hi! ammunition-mules an' Gunga Din!"

I shan't forgit the night
When I dropped be'ind the fight
With a bullet where my belt-plate should 'a' been.
I was chokin' mad with thirst,
An' the man that spied me first
Was our good old grinnin', gruntin' Gunga Din.
'E lifted up my 'ead,
An' he plugged me where I bled,
An' 'e guv me 'arf-a-pint o' water-green:
It was crawlin' and it stunk,
But of all the drinks I've drunk,
I'm gratefullest to one from Gunga Din.
It was "Din! Din! Din!
'Ere's a beggar with a bullet through 'is spleen;
'E's chawin' up the ground,
An' 'e's kickin' all around:
For Gawd's sake git the water, Gunga Din!"

'E carried me away
To where a dooli lay,
An' a bullet come an' drilled the beggar clean.
'E put me safe inside,
An' just before 'e died,
"I 'ope you liked your drink", sez Gunga Din.
So I'll meet 'im later on
At the place where 'e is gone --
Where it's always double drill and no canteen;
'E'll be squattin' on the coals
Givin' drink to poor damned souls,
An' I'll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din!
Yes, Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Though I've belted you and flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

J. Rudyard Kipling

[John Boyer]

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.

- By George Herbert

[rue]

When You Are Old

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face among a crowd of stars.

~William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

[John Boyer]

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment
Little souls who thirst for fight,
These men were born to drill and die
The unexplained glory flies above them
Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom--
A field where a thousand corpses lie.

Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

Swift, blazing flag of the regiment
Eagle with crest of red and gold,
These men were born to drill and die
Point for them the virtue of slaughter
Make plain to them the excellence of killing
And a field where a thousand corpses lie.

Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

-Hart Crane

[John Boyer]

The Joy of Writing

Why does this written doe bound through these written woods?
For a drink of written water from a spring
whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle?
Why does she lift her head; does she hear something?
Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth,
she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips.
Silence - this word also rustles across the page
and parts the boughs
that have sprouted from the word "woods."

Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page,
are letters up to no good,
clutches of clauses so subordinate
they'll never let her get away.

Each drop of ink contains a fair supply
of hunters, equipped with squinting eyes behind their sights,
prepared to swarm the sloping pen at any moment,
surround the doe, and slowly aim their guns.

They forget that what's here isn't life.
Other laws, black on white, obtain.
The twinkling of an eye will take as long as I say,
and will, if I wish, divide into tiny eternities,
full of bullets stopped in mid-flight.
Not a thing will ever happen unless I say so.
Without my blessing, not a leaf will fall,
not a blade of grass will bend beneath that little hoof's full stop.

Is there then a world
where I rule absolutely on fate?
A time I bind with chains of signs?
An existence become endless at my bidding?

The joy of writing.
The power of preserving.
Revenge of a mortal hand.

- Wislawa Szymborska

[Nathan Dodge]

The Pretty Redhead (excerpt)

I judge this long quarrel of tradition and invention
Of Order and Adventure

We who seek adventure everywhere
We are not your enemies

We want to give you vast and strange domains
Where the flowers of mystery offer themselves to all who wish to pluck them
There are new fires and colors never seen before
A thousand inconceivable fantasies
To which must be given reality

We want to explore kindness, the vast country where all is silent


~Guillaume Appolinaire (1880-1918)

[John Boyer]

Men in overalls the same color as earth rise from a ditch.
It's a transitional place, in stalemate, neither country nor city.
Construction cranes on the horizon want to take the big leap,
but the clocks are against it.
Concrete piping scattered around laps at the light with cold tongues.
Auto-body shops occupy old barns.
Stones throw shadows as sharp as objects on the moon surface.
And these sites keep on getting bigger
like the land bought with Judas' silver: "a potter's field for
burying strangers."

- Tomas Transtromer

[John Boyer]

Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
You really are beautiful! Pearls,
harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! all
the stuff they've always talked about

still makes a poem a surprise!
These things are with us every day
even on beachheads and biers. They
do have meaning. They're strong as rocks.

- Frank O'Hara (1950)

[Marc Chevalier]

There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they're always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: "Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!"
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life's been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;
He's a man who won't fit in.


-- Robert William Service

[HadleyH]

If You Forget Me_____ by Pablo Neruda



I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

[John Boyer]

The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever,
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle;--
Why not I with thine?

See! the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven,
If it disdained it's brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea;--
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

-Percy Bysshe Shelley

[kokopelli]

That's nice.. Cheers.. Ron

[John Boyer]

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world

--Mary Oliver

[John Boyer]

The day is ending,
The night is descending;
The marsh is frozen,
The river dead.

Through clouds like ashes
The red sun flashes
On village windows
That glimmer red.

The snow recommences;
The buried fences
Mark no longer
The road o'er the plain;

While through the meadows,
Like fearful shadows,
Slowly passes
A funeral train.

The bell is pealing,
And every feeling
Within me responds
To the dismal knell;

Shadows are trailing,
My heart is bewailing
And tolling within
Like a funeral bell.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

[McMurdo]

Robert Burns would have to be my favourite poet, here is a video of me reciting his masterpiece Tam O'Shanter, I hope you enjoy it. The video is from Burns Night 2011, I have done this for 5 years now, but I think that this was the best rendition that I have on video.


http://youtu.be/9T5ZHhNTjV8

[HadleyH]

A Noiseless Patient Spider

A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.

Walt Whitman

[John Boyer]

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

--W. B. Yeats

[John Boyer]

Loving him, the mother takes thread in hand;
Leaving her, he'll have this coat on his shoulders.
Now that he's about to go, she mends with fine, fine stitches;
She knows the fear that he'll be gone a long, long time.

Who would say the heart of a tiny blade of grass
Could repay the sun for all the warmth of spring?

-Meng Chiao

[countryclubjoe]

I don't drink because I'm a Poet.
I drink because I"m not a Poet.

CCJ

[Flicka]

I love Swedish poet Gustaf Fröding. I never found any good translations of him so I made a quick attempt myself. It botches his perfect sense of rhythm and rhyme (didn't even attempt rhyming) but at least it keeps the meaning intact:

I purchased my love for money
For me, it was all I could get.
Sing prettily, o jangling strings,
Sing prettily of love just the same.

The dream that never came true,
As a dream it was lovely to have.
To him who was banished from Eden
Eden is Eden still.
- Gustav Fröding, 1898

[John Boyer]

After a black day, I play Haydn,
and feel a little warmth in my hands.

The keys are ready. Kind hammers fall.
The sound is spirited, green, and full of silence.

The sound says that freedom exists
and someone pays no taxes to Caesar.

I shove my hands in my haydnpockets
and act like a man who is calm about it all.

I raise my haydnflag. The signal is:
“We do not surrender. But want peace.”

The music is a house of glass standing on a slope;
rocks are flying, rocks are rolling.

The rocks roll straight through the house
but every pane of glass is still whole.

-Tomas Transtromer

[John Boyer]

Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wandering travelers,
Is Reason to the soul; and, as on high
Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Not light us here, so Reason’s glimmering ray
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way;
But guide us upward to a better day.

-John Dryden

[JazzyDame]

A Nation’s Strength

What makes a nation's pillars high
And its foundations strong?
What makes it mighty to defy
The foes that ‘round it throng?

It is not gold. Its kingdoms grand
Go down in battle shock;
Its shafts are laid on sinking sand,
Not on abiding rock.

Is it the sword? Ask the red dust
Of empires passed away;
The blood has turned their stones to rust,
Their glory to decay.

And is it pride? Ah, that bright crown
Has seemed to nations sweet;
But God has struck its luster down
In ashes at His feet.

Not gold but only men can make
A people great and strong;
Men who for truth and honor's sake
Stand fast and suffer long.

Brave men who work while others sleep,
Who dare while others fly...
They build a nation's pillars deep
And lift them to the sky.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Widebrim]

^^Wonderful poem by Emerson, the Transcendentalist.

[JazzyDame]

One day through the primeval wood
A calf walked home, as good calves should,
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail, as all calves do.
Since then three hundred years have fled,
And I infer, the calf is dead;
But still behind he left this trail,
And thereon hangs my moral tale.

The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that passed that way,
And then a wise bell-weather sheep
Pursued that trail o’er dale and steep,
And drew the flock behind him, too,
As good bell-weathers always do,
And from that day o’er hill and glade
Through those old woods a path was made.

And many men wound in and out,
And dodged and turned and bent about,
And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because ‘twas such a crooked path;
But still they follow—do not laugh—
The first migrations of that calf.
The forest became a lane
That bent and turned and turned again;
This crooked lane became a road
Where many a poor horse with his load
Toiled on beneath that burning sun,
And traveled some three miles in one.

The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The village road became a street,
And this, before men were aware,
A city’s crowded thoroughfare.
And soon a central street was this
In a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half
Followed the wanderings of this calf.

Each day a hundred thousand strong
Followed this zigzag calf along;
And o’er his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.
A hundred thousand men were led
By one poor calf, three centuries dead.
For just such reverence is lent
To well established precedent.

A moral lesson this might teach
Were I ordained and called to preach.
For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf paths of the mind;
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.

They follow in the beaten track,
And in and out, and forth and back,
And still their devious paths pursue,
To keep the paths that others do,
They keep the path a sacred grove
Along which all their lives they move
And how the wise old wood-gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf.

~The Cow Path, Samuel Foss


...this poem might as well be titled, "stare decisis".

Thoughtfully,
Cate

[JazzyDame]

To be glad of life,
because it gives you the chance to love
and to work and to play and to look up to the stars;
to be satisfied with your possessions, but not contented with yourself
until you have made the best of them;
to despise nothing in the world except falsehood and meanness,
and to fear nothing except cowardice;
to be governed by your admirations rather than by your disgusts;
to covet nothing that is your neighbors'
except their kindness of heart and gentleness of manners;
to think seldom of your enemies, often of your friends
and every day of Christ; and to spend as much time as you can
with body and spirit, in God's out-of-doors--
these are the little guideposts on the footpath of peace.

~Henry van Dyke

[Widebrim]

^^You come up with some beautiful examples, JazzyDame.

[JazzyDame]

^^You come up with some beautiful examples, JazzyDame.

Thank you, Widebrim--very kind of you to say. I've always enjoyed meaningful poetry, prose and literature, in general.

I see you're also located in California--a pleasure making your acquaintance, neighbor. Cheers!

[JazzyDame]

If on the closed curtain of my sight
My fancy paints thy portrait far away,
I see thee still the same, by night or day;
Crossing the crowded street, or moving bright
'Mid festal throngs, or reading by the light
Of shaded lamp some friendly poet's lay,
Or shepherding the children at their play,--
The same sweet self, and my unchanged delight.

But when I see thee near, I recognize
In every dear familiar way some strange
Perfection, and behold in April guise
The magic of thy beauty that doth range
Through many moods with infinite surprise,--
Never the same, and sweeter with each change.

~Portrait and Reality, Henry van Dyke

(...a little respite from my job results in much reading and perhaps a few too many poetry posts. :) )

[Widebrim]

Thank you, Widebrim--very kind of you to say. I've always enjoyed meaningful poetry, prose and literature, in general.

I see you're also located in California--a pleasure making your acquaintance, neighbor. Cheers!

Likewise, and greetings from L.A. (And Proverbs 3:5,6 is foundational.)

[JazzyDame]

Likewise, and greetings from L.A. (And Proverbs 3:5,6 is foundational.)

Thank you, and yes, it is, indeed. (And John 3:16,17, well...there is no greater Love.) God bless you, new friend.

[JazzyDame]

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head
To work my mind, when body's work's expired:
For then my thoughts--from far where I abide--
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see:
Save that my soul's imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.

~Sonnet XXVII, William Shakespeare

…my dearest Will, how you do woo…

[JazzyDame]

‘Tis Friday, and as the week draws to a close let us remember what blessings we have in “the simple things”, for often the profound truths and beauties of life—of Creation—abide in simplicity. Here’s a poem that serves as a gentle reminder to be mindful in that regard, lest we “get too big for our britches”, as my father used to say.


I would not be too wise--so very wise
That I must sneer at simple songs and creeds,
And let the glare of wisdom blind my eyes
To humble people and their humble needs.

I would not care to climb so high that I
Could never hear the children at their play,
Could only see the people passing by,
And never hear the cheering words they say.

I would not know too much--too much to smile
At trivial errors of the heart and hand,
Nor be too proud to play the friend the while,
Nor cease to help and know and understand.

I would not care to sit upon a throne,
Or build my house upon a mountain-top,
Where I must dwell in glory all alone
And never friend come in or poor man stop.

God grant that I may live upon this earth
And face the tasks which every morning brings
And never lose the glory and the worth
Of humble service and the simple things.

~The Simple Things, Edgar A. Guest

[Widebrim]

^^Again, some lovely examples, JazzyDame, the themes of which merit meditation. I am also partial to Sonnet 116 by Shakespeare:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

[JazzyDame]

^^I have always enjoyed (so much that I committed it to memory long ago) Sonnet 116, as it speaks of the constancy and steadfastness of true love, come fair or foul weather and regardless of the passage of time…and it reminds me of my parents, who will be celebrating their 48th wedding anniversary this August. Their love is my example, my earthly ideal.

Thank you for your comments…I’ve enjoyed this past week and my return to the Lounge. I’ll admit that it’s been a bit of an indulgence, really, and I’ll miss visiting with such frequency when I return to work on Monday. I must make it a point to maintain a regular visitation schedule…so many wonderful conversations take place here, so many historical discoveries to make.

God bless you, Widebrim, and thanks again for making me feel welcome and quite at home.

As ever,
Cate

[JazzyDame]

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push us into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

This we ask in the name of our Captain,
Who is Jesus Christ.

~Sir Francis Drake, 1557, before departing from Portsmouth, England, to circumnavigate the globe.

"Launch out into the deep..." ~Luke 5: 4

[JazzyDame]

Greetings, Mr. Kipling—what say ye?

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

~If, Rudyard Kipling

“It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”~Sir Edmund Hillary

[Widebrim]

^^I've loved that one for many years...

[JazzyDame]

Having spent much of this morning in the garden, I am reminded of a poem written by one of my students...

There is a fence around the garden,
And for its entrance stands one gate.
The Protector and this garden,
Where I arrive by some strange fate.
I glanced the perfect flower,
Or the spark from gentle eye;
Keeper, keep this garden,
Which I chanced to travel by.
If this is water, I am thirst;
A vagrant passing the serene:
A garden tall, a garden sweet,
A garden beautiful in green.
Keeper, keep this garden.
Keep out birds and ward off weeds.
This is your charge from the Protector,
Your reward for planted seeds.
Keeper, see the flowers?—
They are dwelling in the wild;
They are kept by the Protector
Just as you have kept your child.
I live among those flowers.
I have no garden of my own,
But faith is not of flowers—
It’s the hope when seeds are sown.

~Seed Poem, J.H.

[JazzyDame]

^^I've loved that one for many years...

A favorite of mine, as well, though it's clearly written for a male audience. Its message is universal, however, and genderless in quality. I've seen a more contemporary version penned by a different poet and written for a female audience, but I much prefer Mr. Kipling's poem.

[JazzyDame]

I enjoy Clive Staples Lewis—a lot!—yet didn’t discover his poetry until after my formal academic studies of him. Much of Lewis' work (including his poetry) was shrouded in secrecy and he published under various pseudonyms, such as 'Nat Whilk', which is Anglo-Saxon for 'I know not whom'.

On an entirely different note (but there’s a segue just around the corner), I find it comical that folks often forget to differentiate between 'astrology' [a non-science, and a hoax-laden craft purported to predict events and occurrences on Earth by observance of celestial quirks (figuratively) and quarks (literally)], and 'astronomy' (a science based on the discovery and movement of celestial bodies by meticulous observation and prediction). Now, Lewis was known to have had a profound interest in astronomy, and we see this evidenced in a number of his works, including his poem The Meteorite.

…and this is where I need to remind you that there’s a wonderful meteor shower, the Lyrids, slated for this month—April 21st. Mark your calendars, but bear in mind that we’ll have a waxing moon to contend with which may affect viewing. Without further ado…

Among the hills a meteorite
Lies huge; and moss has overgrown,
And wind and rain with touches light
Made soft, the contours of the stone.

Thus easily can Earth digest
A cinder of sidereal fire,
And make her translunary guest
The native of an English shire.

Nor is it strange these wanderers
Find in her lap their fitting place,
For every particle that's hers
Came at the first from outer space.

All that is Earth has once been sky;
Down from the sun of old she came,
Or from some star that travelled by
Too close to his entangling flame.

Hence, if belated drops yet fall
From heaven, on these her plastic power
Still works as once it worked on all
The glad rush of the golden shower.

Ah...I really like that one. I am a sucker for a good meteor shower and, as you may have conjectured, a passion for astronomy.

“Are you conscious of the restful influence which the stars exert? To me they are the most soothing things of Nature. I am proud to say that I don’t know the name of one of them. The glamour and romance would pass away from them if they were all classified and ticketed in one’s brain. But when a man is hot and flurried and full of his own little ruffled dignities and infinitesimal misfortunes, then a star bath is the finest thing in the world.” ~Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Stark Munro Letters

[JazzyDame]

Not to the swift, the race:
Not to the strong, the fight:
Not to the righteous, perfect grace:
Not to the wise, the light.

But often faltering feet
Come surest to the goal;
And they who walk in darkness meet
The Sunrise of the soul.

A thousand times by night
The Syrian hosts have died;
A thousand times the vanquished right
Hath risen, glorified.

The truth the wise men sought
Was spoken by a Child;
The alabaster box was brought
In trembling hands defiled.

Not from my torch, the gleam,
But from the stars above:
Not from my heart, life's crystal stream,
But from the depths of Love.

~ Reliance, Henry van Dyke

[JazzyDame]

No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere;
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And Faith shines equal, arming me from fear.
O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life--that in me has rest,
As I--undying Life--have power in Thee!
Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts--unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,
To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thine infinity;
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of immortality.
With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.
Though earth and man were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou were left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.
There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void;
Thou--Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.

~ No Coward Soul is Mine, Emily Brontë

[JazzyDame]

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

These oft-quoted words by John Donne were not written as a poem, but were taken as prose from Meditation17 (Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions).

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day…it has been nearly 70 years since over 6 million Jews were slaughtered at the hands of an evil despot over a period of four and one half years—a plan known as the “Final Solution”, to rid the world of Jews. Whole communities of Jews were murdered, and it became sport to literally hunt them down, one by one. We’ve all seen the gruesome images of beautiful souls—children, women, men—wasting away in the ghettos, suffering in the camps, being led to the gas chambers…6 million souls. Such unfathomable evil, such indescribable horror.

Let us never forget these atrocities, and let us always remember that we are all “a part of the main”—this wasn’t only a tragedy brought against Jews, but a tragedy brought against humanity. Whatever wickedness and barbarism is wrought ruthlessly against any member of the human race is also wrought against each one of us.

[Widebrim]

^^As you write, may the world never forget when evil itself reigned in the hearts of those who professed to be human, and may we vow to destroy evil wherever and whenever it appears.

[esteban68]

I had to study Thomas Hardy at school some 30 years ago as part of my O level English, In honesty I still have great respect and admiration for the lady who taught us as she brought it all alive, we didn't really study his poetry much but I loved the Darkling Thrush so much that after leaving school I bought his complete poetry paperback, it's now falling apart but I just love his stuff;

To Jan with thanks...

THE DARKLING THRUSH

by: Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seem'd to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seem'd fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carollings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessèd Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

[JazzyDame]

^^Isn’t it interesting that, in reflecting on the passage of years, it was often those subjects or pastimes that seemed as drudgery to us as children/young adults that often become the treasures of enduring joy? I remember, as a child, my father would blast us kids out of bed on Sunday mornings with the high-spirited works of Beethoven. He would turn the phonograph up to full volume and I’d bury my head beneath the pillows to cope with the “rude awakening”, and I outright loathed Beethoven. Today…I love it, and can’t resist turning up the volume on his 5th Symphony, among others, and feeling the force and the power behind each movement.

I recall a similar experience, esteban68, in a high school English class. The subject? Poetry. I mocked it and felt is was my teacher’s method of torment and wondered what we, as a class, could have done that warranted such torture. We read Poe, Shelley, Tennyson, Keats, Frost, and so many others…and I grew to love them, each for their unique poetical offerings and perspectives.

Thank you for sharing Thomas Hardy’s The Darkling Thrush today--what lovely, hope-inspiring prose, and how timely this was…just this morning, I awakened to a “resident mockingbird” that returns each year in the Spring and stays through the Summer and early Autumn. He was singing with wild abandon, as if rejoicing over some good news he'd just received and simply couldn’t contain his enthusiasm. So many signposts in nature remind us to "look up", claim joy, and rejoice!

On that note, I offer this:

I need wide spaces in my heart
Where faith and I can go apart
And grow serene.

Life gets so choked by busy living,
Kindness so lost in fussy giving,
That love slips by unseen.

I want to make a quiet place
Where those I love can see God’s face,
Can stretch their hearts across the earth,
Can understand what Spring is worth,
Can count the stars, watch violets grow,
And learn what birds and children know.
~Streams in the Desert

[esteban68]

Hi JD, similar experiences I guess for many, we were predominantly brought up by our grandparents which may explain my slightly old fashioned ways and likes for a 44 year old!........my grandfather used to play his country and western records every Sunday morning it was part of the pre British Sunday dinner ritual many Britons of that era shared....he was a very hard working man a collier( miner) who had to work long shifts, when he got a Sunday off he made the most of it and chose to spend it with his family instead of 'down the working man's club' like many of his colleagues, at first I hated the C&W but after a while got used to it and now I love some of it especially dare I say it Jim Reeves!!!

When I started work as an engineering apprentice in thye early 80's the only radio station we could get at work was BBC radio 2, again at first I hated it as all it seemed to play was 40's 50's, 60's 70's and some early 80's music not deemed too 'out there' after a while I knew many of the songs off by heart, Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, The Beatles etc etc....interestingly every car we've ever owned has been permanently set to recieve radio 2 and most of our music collection is from those eras, my wife has an extensive Motown, Northern Soul collection of her own.

[MarkJohn]

From my favorite poet Alice Oswald's book Memorial, which is a translation of Homer's Iliad, but pared-down to the deaths of the soldiers on the field, interspersed by beatiful simerlies... Stunning, dark and powerful writing.


The first to die was PROTESILAUS
A focused man who hurried to darkness
With forty black ships leaving the land behind
Men sailed with him from those flower-lit cliffs
Where the grass gives growth to everything
Pyrasus Iton Pteleus Antron
He died in mid-air jumping to be first ashore
There was his house half-built
His wife rushed out clawing her face
Podarcus his altogether less impressive brother
Took over command but that was long ago
He's been in the black earth now for thousands of years

Like a wind-murmur
Begins a rumour of waves
One long note getting louder
The water breathes a deep sigh
Like a land-ripple
When the west wind runs through a field
Wishing and searching
Nothing to be found
The corn-stalks shake their green heads

Like a wind-murmur
Begins a rumour of waves
One long note getting louder
The water breathes a deep sigh
Like a land-ripple
When the west wind runs through a field
Wishing and searching
Nothing to be found
The corn-stalks shake their green heads

ECHEPOLUS a perfect fighter
Always ahead of his men
Known for his cold seed-like concentration
Moving out and out among the spears
Died at the hands of Antilochus
You can see the hole in the helmet just under the ridge
Where the point of the blade passed through
And stuck in his forehead
Letting the darkness leak down over his eyes

ELEPHENOR from Euboea in command of forty ships
Son of Chalcodon nothing is known of his mother
Died dragging the corpse of Echepolus
A little flash of flesh showing under the shield as he bent
Agenor stabbed him in the ninth year of the war
He wore his hair long at the back

Like leaves
Sometimes they light their green flames
And are fed by the earth
And sometimes it snuffs them out

Like leaves
Sometimes they light their green flames
And are fed by the earth
And sometimes it snuffs them out

SIMOISIUS born on the banks of the Simois
Son of Anthemion his mother a shepherdess
Still following the sheep when she gave birth
A lithe and promising young man unmarried
Was met by Ajax in the ninth year of the war
And died full tilt running onto his spear
The point passed clean through the nipple
And came out through the shoulderblade
He collapsed instantly an unspeakable sorrow to his parents

And LEUKOS friend of Odysseus
Little is known of him except his death

And someone's face pierced like a piece of fruit
That was Priam's son unlucky man
Who made his living in the horse country
North of Troy he was stepping backwards
When the darkness hit him with a dull clang
His name was DEMOCOON

Like a man steps back
Seeing a snake almost under his foot
In a heathery hollow
The fear flutters his knees it
Sucks him white he steps back

Like a man steps back
Seeing a snake almost under his foot
In a heathery hollow
The fear flutters his knees it
Sucks him white he steps back

[Widebrim]

On that note, I offer this:

I need wide spaces in my heart
Where faith and I can go apart
And grow serene.

Life gets so choked by busy living,
Kindness so lost in fussy giving,
That love slips by unseen.

I want to make a quiet place
Where those I love can see God’s face,
Can stretch their hearts across the earth,
Can understand what Spring is worth,
Can count the stars, watch violets grow,
And learn what birds and children know.
~Streams in the Desert

One can see why it is considered a classic.

JazzyDame, I tried to send you a Private Message, but this time was unable to; it was indicated that you are not receiving any. -Lee

[JazzyDame]

^^My apologies, Lee. I made a change to my FL account which, consequently, required confirmation from me to activate the change...which I inadvertently neglected. Apparently, one's profile is temporarily suspended pending confirmation. So, I suppose now that I've given the "secret knock", I'm allowed a return entrance to the Lounge. ;)

[JazzyDame]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdphtMWjies

Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness, -
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;
And mid-May’s eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain -
To thy high requiem become a sod.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ‘tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: - Do I wake or sleep?

[Borscht]

Gents, I found mine, hope you find yours as well.


As the tide went out she found him
Lashed to a spar of Despair,
The wreck of his Ship around him--
The wreck of his Dreams in the air;
Found him and loved him and gathered
The soul of him close to her heart--
The soul that had sailed an uncharted sea,
The soul that had sought to win and be free--
The soul of which _she_ was part!
And there in the dusk she cried to the man,
'Win your battle--you can, you can!'

Broken by Fate, unrelenting,
Scarred by the lashings of Chance;
Bitter his heart--unrepenting--
Hardened by Circumstance;
Shadowed by Failure ever,
Cursing, he would have died,
But the touch of her hand, her strong warm hand,
And her love of his soul, took full command,
Just at the turn of the tide!
Standing beside him, filled with trust,
'Win!' she whispered, 'you must, you must!'

Helping and loving and guiding,
Urging when that were best,
Holding her fears in hiding
Deep in her quiet breast;
This is the woman who kept him
True to his standards lost,
When, tossed in the storm and stress of strife,
He thought himself through with the game of life
And ready to pay the cost.
Watching and guarding, whispering still,
'Win you can--and you will, you will!'

This is the story of ages,
This is the Woman's way;
Wiser than seers or sages,
Lifting us day by day;
Facing all things with a courage
Nothing can daunt or dim,
Treading Life's path, wherever it leads--
Lined with flowers or choked with weeds,
But ever with him--with him!
Guidon--comrade--golden spur--
The men who win are helped by _her_!

Somewhere she waits, strong in belief, your soul in her firm, white hands:
Thank well the gods, when she comes to you--the Woman Who Understands!


Everard Jack Appleton

[John Boyer]

Matthew Arnold, romantically describing the Bernese Oberland region of Switzerland:

Hark! the wind rushes past us!
Ah! with that let me go.

There to watch, o'er the sunk vale
The frore mountain-wall,
Where the niched snow-bed sprays down
Its powdery fall.
There its dusky blue clusters
The aconite spreads;
There the pines slope, the cloud-strips
Hung soft in their heads.
No life but, at moments,
The mountain-bee's hum.
--I come, O ye mountains!
Ye pine-woods, I come!

-Matthew Arnold [excerpt from "Parting"]

[Widebrim]

^^Borscht, thanks for posting that! And I'm glad that you've found yours...