UKC

mine's the one about the jumbalies who went to sea in a sieve and they had green heads and blue hands

what about you?

In reply to Lotty:

There was an old lady from China.....

In reply to Lotty:

alf tennyson

Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O, well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me

In reply to m0nkeyboy minus cookies!!:

de da da da da da da -ina
it didn't half pinch
whey they installed the winch
but worth it to feel the first miner

In reply to Lotty:

A PARCEL O' ROGUES
Robert Burns

Fareweel to a' our Scottish fame,
Fareweel to ancient glory,
Fareweel evan tae the Scottish name
Sae famed in martial story !
Now Sark rins o'er the Solway sands
And Tweed rins tae the ocean,
To mark where England's province stands
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation.
What force or guile could not subdue,
Thro' mony warlike ages,
Is wrought now by a coward few
For hireling traitor wages;
The English steel we could distain
Secure in valours station,
But English gold has been our bane,
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation.
Oh, would ere I had seen the day
That treason thus could sell us,
My auld gray head had lien in clay
Wi' Bruce and loyal Wallace,
But pith and power to my last hour
I'll mak' this declaration –
We're bought and sold for English gold,
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation























Only kidding....

In reply to Lotty: I like The Ryme of the ancient mariner. Brilliant. Coleridge was a genius.

In reply to Lotty: Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”



Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.



Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.



Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.



Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.



Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.



And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

In reply to BrianT: Beowulf (seamus heaney's translation). theres language you can get your teeth into.
Shelleys Ode To Misery. If youre going to have existentialist angst, heres how to do it properly.

In reply to Lotty:

The lady of shalott by tennyson.

James

In reply to Lotty:
There’s a bogey
On the ‘X’ button
Of my keyboard
I’ve been avoiding it all afternoon
Thank god its worth
10 points in scrabble
I’ve checked all the crap I’ll
Write today
So it won’t go astray
And end up on a spoon
But what perchance
Is the likelihood
Of it moving onto ‘Y’
Its sure to travel somewhere else
From a letter that’s only five
Half way through the poem
And no mistakes are made
Its not so sticky now
I checked it with my pen
On the button it has stayed
I can watch it for ever
And a day
But, say, when will it degrade?
Will the cleaners notice it
Whilst emptying all the bins
Should I try to scare it off
Or fry it with a lens
One thing is for sure you know
Its bound to get misplaced
End up on my cheek maybe
Or make someone shout
Stuck in the copier
The fax,
The phone or scanner
But never in the mouth

Copyright Fex Wazner 2004

In reply to Vertically_Challenged:

>Beowulf

copy and paste it i've not read that one

In reply to Vertically_Challenged:

I usually trot out 'If' when this thread comes round.

I'll do it again:

IF
by Rudyard Kipling

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 imposters 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 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!

(Forgive the sexism)

In reply to Vertically_Challenged:

8.
Kiss me;—oh! thy lips are cold:
Round my neck thine arms enfold—
They are soft, but chill and dead;
And thy tears upon my head
Burn like points of frozen lead. 40
9.
Hasten to the bridal bed—
Underneath the grave ’tis spread:
In darkness may our love be hid,
Oblivion be our coverlid—
We may rest, and none forbid. 45


You get the general idea

In reply to Lotty:

e.e.cummings, since feeling is first.

KB

In reply to KB:

on the pier at kinlochbervie by Norman maccaig, or pretty much anything by William Carlos Williams, or Denise Levertov, or (to be perverse) Philip Larkin

In reply to Lotty:

Norman MacCaig - Clachtoll

In reply to DougG:

Don't know, something by William Blake possibly or maybe Paradise Lost by Milton, or Morte D'Arthur by Mallory.

In reply to Black Heart Billy: You are kidding, its a dark ages saga, you buy it as a book. But the language and imagery are great, and you dont have to agree with dark ages morality for it to send tingles down your spine.

Heaney's rendering into English of ... and the Anglo-Saxon poem BEOWULF (1999), which was composed towards the end of the first millennium. The translation won the Whitebread Award as the best book of 1999.

"You have won renown: you are known to all men
far and near, now and forever.
Your sway is wide as the wind's home,
as the sea around cliffs."
(from Beowulf, trans. by Heaney)
The epic records the great deed of the heroic warrior Beowulf in his youth and maturity. The hero kills three monsters: a maneater called Grendel, Grendel's mother in her underwater dwelling, and 50 years later a fire-breathing dragon, which is stirred by the theft of a goblet. It mortally wounds Beowulf before expiring. The poem ends with Beowulf's funeral pyre. Central theme is the workings of fate (wyrd) in human lives. It is generally accepted that originally Beowulf was the work of a single poet, who has recounted legends, that were passed down orally from several centuries earlier. Heaney's retelling makes the hero's tragic stature prophetic: when he dies his people wait of the disaster that will descend on them.

It is always better
to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning.
For every one of us,
living in this world
means waiting for our end.
Let whoever can
win glory before death.
When a warrior is gone,
That will be his best and only bulwark.
(from Beowulf, 1999)

In reply to Black Heart Billy: It's pages and pages long, is Beowulf.

In reply to Rothermere:

i love that-has good memories of youthful days

In reply to Lotty: i quite like this

THE DOUBTER
Whenever we seemed
To have found the answer to a question
One of us untied the string of the old rolled-up
Chinese scroll on the wall, so that it fell down and
Revealed to us the man on the bench who
Doubted so much.

I, he said to us
Am the doubter. I am doubtful whether
The work was well done that devoured your days.
Whether what you said would still have value for anyone if it
Were less well said.
Whether you said it well but perhaps
Were not concvinced of the truth of what you said.
Whether it is not ambiguous;each possible misunderstanding
Is your responsibility. Or it can be unambiguous
And take the contracdictions out of things; is it too
Unambiguous?
If so, what you say is useless. Your thing has no life in it.
Are you truly in the stream of happening? Do you accept
All that develops? Are you developing? Who are you? To
Whom
Do you speak? Who finds what you say useful? And , by the
Way:
Is it sobering? Can it be read in the morning?
Is it also linked to what is already there? Are the sentences
That were
Spoken before you made use of, or at least refuted? Is
Everything verifiable?
By experience? By which one? But above all
Always above all else: how does one act
If one believes what you say? Above all: how does one act?

Reflectively, curiously, we studied the doubting
Blue man on the scroll, looked at each other and
Made a fresh start.

Bertolt Brecht

In reply to BrianT:

Really?

In reply:

and anything by poe

In reply to BrianT: theres a lot of words in it

In reply to Lotty:

A classic bit of Spike - rip

Tis due to pigeons that alight
on Nelson's hat that makes it white

In reply to BrianT:

Yup, a bit long but the only one a can remember much of!!

Fex.

In reply to Lotty:

A gf used to mail it to me when she missed me.

james

In reply to Fex Wazner:
There’s a bogey
Copyright Fex Wazner 2004

Brilliant.... let me know where it ends up!

CG

In reply to Vertically_Challenged:

beowulf-excellent

shelley is obviously brilliant! just look who her mum was

In reply to Lotty:

Perhaps not my absolute favourite, but close;

From Prufrock and Other Observations. 1917. T.S. Eliot (1888–1965).

1. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so
peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its
crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor
And this, and so much more?
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . .
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

In reply to Dom Orsler:

http://www.salon.com/audio/2000/10/05/eliot/

In reply to Dom Orsler:

mmmmmm - I love Eliot. 'A game of chess' from The Wasteland is wonderful, as is Rhapsody on a Windy Night if only for the 'madman shaking a dead geranium' simile.

KB

In reply to Lotty:

hee hee. Quite right, I get your point.

In reply to Vertically_Challenged:

wasn't wollstonecraft was it?

In reply to Lotty:

THE BALLAD OF IDWAL SLABS
by Showell Styles

I'll tell you the tale of a climber; a drama of love on the crags;
A story to pluck at your heartstrings. And tear your emotions to rags.
He was tall, he was fair, he was handsome;
John Christopher Brown was his name;
The Very Severes nearly him bored him to tears ------
and he felt about girls much the same.

Till one day, while climbing at Ogwen, he fell (just a figure of speech)
For the president's beautiful daughter, named Mary Jane Smith---What a peach!
Her figure was slim as Napes Needle;
Her lips were as red as Red Wall;
A regular tiger, she'd been up the Eiger...
North Wall, with no pitons at all!

Now Mary had several suitors, but never a one would she take,
Though it seemed that she favoured one fellow, a villain named Reginald Hake;
This Hake was a cad who used pitons,
And wore a long silken moustarsh,
Which he used, so they say, as an extra belay----
But perhaps we're being too harsh.

John took Mary climbing on Lliwedd, and proposed while on Mallory's Slab;
It took him three pitches to do it, for he hadn't much gift of the gab.
He said: "Just belay for a moment---
There's a little spike by your knee-
And tell me, fair maid, when you're properly belayed,
Would you care to hitch up with me?"

Said Mary, "It's only a toss-up between you and Reginald Hake,
And the man I am going to marry must perform some great deed for my sake.
I will marry whichever bold climber shall excel at the following feat
Climb headfirst down Hope, with no rubbers or rope,
At our very next climbing club meet!"

Now when Mary told the committee, she had little occasion to plead,
For she was fair as a jug-handle hold at the top of a hundred foot lead.
The club ratified her proposal,
And the President had to agree;
He was fond of his daughter, but felt that she oughter
Get married, between you and me.

There was quite a big crowd for the contest, lined up at the foot of the slabs;
The Mobs came from Bangor in Buses, and the Nobs came from Capel in Cabs.
There were Fell and rock, climbers', and rucksack,
And the pinnacle club (in new hats)
And a sight to remember!... an Alpine club member,
in very large crampons and spats.

The weather was fine for a wonder; the rocks were as dry as a bone.
Hake arrived with a crowd of his backers, but John brown strode up quite alone;
A rousing cheer greeted the rivals;
A coin was produced, and they tossed.
"Have I won?" cried John Brown as the penny came down.
"No you fool!" hissed is rival, "You've lost!"

So Hake had first go at the contest; he went up by the Ordinary Route.
And only the closest observer would have noticed a bulge in each boot.
Head first he came down the top pitches,
Applying his moustache as a brake;
He didn't relax till he'd passed the twin cracks,
And the crowd shouted "Attaboy Hake!"

At the foot of the Slabs Hake stood sneering, and draining a bottle of Scotch;
" Your time was ten seconds," the President said, consulting the Treasurer's watch.
Now Brown. if you'd win, you have to beat that."
Our Hero's Sang Froid was sublime;
He took one look at Mary, and light as a fairy,
Ran up to the top of the climb.

Now though Hake had made such good going, John wasn't discouraged a bit,
For he was the speedier climber Even Hake would have had to admit.
So smiling as if for a snapshot,
Not a hair of his head out of place,
Our Hero John Brown started wriggling down...
But Look! What a change on his face!

Prepare for a shock, gentle ladies; gentlemen, check the blasphemous word;
For the villainy I am to speak of is such as you never have heard!
Reg. Hake had cut holes in the toes of his boots,
And filled up each boot with soft soap!
As he slid down the climb, he had covered
With slime every handhold and foothold on Hope!

Conceive (if you can) the terror that gripped the vast concourse below,
When they saw Mary's lover slip downwards, like an arrow that's shot from a bow! "
He's done for!" gasped twenty score voices.
"Stand from under!" Roared John from above.
As he shot down the slope, he was steering down Hope...
Still fighting for life and for love!

Like lightning he flew past the traverse... in a flash he had reached the Twin Cracks
The friction was something terrific---there was smoke coming out of his slacks
He bounced off the shelf at the top of pitch two,
And bounded clean over it's edge!
A shout of "He's gone!" came from all... except one;
And that one of course, was our Reg.

But it's not the expected that happens, in this sort of story at least;
And just as John thought he was finished, he found that his motion had ceased!
His braces (Pre.War and elastic)
Had caught on a small rocky knob,
And so... safe and sound, he came gently to ground,
'Mid the deafening cheers of the Mob!

"Your time was five seconds!" the President cried. "She's yours, my boy...
take her, You win!"
" My hero!" breathed Mary, and kissed him; while Hake gulped a bottle of Gin,
And tugged at his moustache and whispered,
"Aha! My advances you spurn!
"Curse a chap that wins races by using his braces!"
And he slunk away ne'er to return.

They were wed at the Church of St. Gabbro; And the Vicar, quite carried away,
Did a hand-traverse into his pulpit, and shouted out "let us belay"
John put the ring on Mary's finger
A snap-link it was, made of steel,
And they walked to the taxis
'Neath an arch of ice axes,
While all the bells started to peal.

The morals we draw from this story, are several, I'm happy to say:
It's virtue that wins in the long run; long silken moustaches don't pay;
Keep the head uppermost when you're climbing;
If you must slither, be on a rope;
Steer clear of the places that sell you cheap braces---
And the fellow that uses soft soap!

In reply to Lotty:

Try To Praise the Mutilated World

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.


You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the grey feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.

In reply to BrianT:

Have to agree with you there Coleridge was a genius and Ancient Mariner was a fine piece but he wrote a hell of a lot of very good poetry ( mathimatical problem ? i think its called is another good one, also alot shorter but interesting)

i had the good fortune to find a copy of his complete works when i was in India and then spent several very stoned weeks in Nepal reading it cover to cover

Phil

In reply to DougG: I've got this on two CDs and never undertood a word. Thanks for the text, mind I still don't understand a word...

In reply to Cosmic John:

Like The Highwayman, also like a lot of Burns, like The Golden Journey to Samarkand by James Elroy Flecker,

Also quite like these two poems which are little known, and both connected.

The first was to commemorate the Death of William Cleland of the Cameronians, who was killed at the Battle of Dunkeld:-

Well all must stoop to death, none dare gainsay,
If it command, of force we must obey:
Life, honour, Riches, Glory of our State
Lyes at the disposing Will of Fate:
If't were not so, why then by sad loud thunder
And sulpherous crashes, which rends the skies asunder
Must a brave Cleland by a sad destiny

Culled out a victime for his country die.
Lo here's a divine hand we find in all,
Eternal Wisdom has decreed his fall.
Let all lament it, while loud fame reports.
And sound his praise in Country, Cities, Courts.
No old forgetful Age shall end his story,
Death cuts his days but could not stain his Glory

The Poems first letters spell out Clelands name. At the disbandment of the regiment nearly three hundred years later, a similar poem was written by the Colonel (Dow):-

Would you approve of how the tree has grown?
I like to think so. You beqeathed your own
Love of a harassed land and honest cause,
Love which without advertisement or Pause
Inspired a hundred Clelands less renowned
And warm platoons of Thompsons in the ground,
Men who have walked this road and shared this view.

Campbell and Lindsay forged the sword with you.
Lit by your pride they handed on the text.
Each generation shaping up the next.
Lindsay and Campbell finish it today.
Axed lies the tree. Now put the sword away.
No old forgetful age will end our story.
Death cuts short our days, but could not stain our glory.

In reply to Vertically_Challenged:

This is weird, i was just taking a break from reading Beowulf, when i read this thread.

Then he drew himself up beside his shield.
The fabled warrior in his war-shirt and helmet
trusted in his own strength entirely
and went under the crag. No coward path.


..what i had just been reading

In reply to Lotty:

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.

In reply to Norrie Muir: When did you write that?

In reply to Lotty:

Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti (my spelling gets worse and worse) has been a favourite from childhood as is This be the verse by Larkin.

Don't stand by my grave and weep is always a good one, makes me cry , but really like ...

Resume by Doroth Parker;

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

In reply to Lotty:

Andrew Marvell : To his Coy Mistress


Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.


This must surely be one of the greatest, and truest, of all poems. (Isn't copy-and-paste wonderful?)

However, Blues singer Geeshie Wiley ( http://www.wirz.de/music/wileyfrm.htm ), amazingly, in her 1930 song "Come on Over to My Place", managed to condense the entire Marvell poem into just 2 lines :

Ashes to ashes, Dust to dust
Oh, Come on, Baby, You must! You must!

Perfection.

In reply to BrianT:

http://lnstar.com/literature/beowulf/index.html

Not the recommended translation, but not bad

Y.

In reply to Cosmic John:

Its far too long to post here but Pope's 'Eloise to Abelard' is sublime.

Sir Philip Sydney's 'The Bargain' is also a favourite

My true love hath my heart and I have his,
By just exchange one for another given:
I hold his dear and mine he cannot miss,
There never was a better bargain driven:
My true love hath my heart and I have his.

His heart in me keeps him and me in one,
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:
He loves my heart for once it was his own,
I cherish his because in me it bides:
My true love hath my heart and I have his.

In reply to Tiggs:

Didn't their "forbidden love" lead to Abelard's castration?

Nice.

In reply to Cosmic John:

It's not what happened that matters its the emotion that is expressed.

In reply to Tiggs:

Yes, of course. "True love conquers all" even goes that far.

In reply to Cosmic John:

Absolutely!

In reply to Lotty:

W B Yeats - An Irish Airman "in balance with this life, this death"
or Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est (pro patria mori).
They sort of fit my moribund mood of the moment, but I have to applaud Alison Stockwell & Norrie Muir, brilliant contributions.

In reply to Mike C:

Dulce et Decorum Est, is a good poem, but definatley a bit depressing, but hey, what can I say ... one of my favourite poets/authors is Sylvia Plath!

In reply to Lotty: Matthew Arnold's 'Dover Beach' is a personal fave of mine, though Wordworth's 'Intimations of Immortality' and many of Shakespeare's sonnets would also be in my Top 5:

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

[1867]

In reply to Oxford Sarah:

Depressing I agree, but I really feel for the cynicism of dying for one's country in such a war that he so beautifully puts over, so tragic he was to go the same way.

In reply to Norrie Muir:

Nice one Norrie, The Men That Don't Fit In.

In reply to Lotty: couldn't resist posting Sonnet 29 - a beautiful love poem:

When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

In reply to Cosmic John: Dave Garnett does a brilliant climbing adaptation of To His Coy Mistress (To a Coy Buttress) in The Owl & the Cragrat.

In reply to Mike C:

and then there's this

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

In reply to all:

And if you're talking really grim but nevertheless moving, there's Anna Akhmatova's Reqiuem, a bit long to post in its entirety, but the start is worth quoting:

Mountains fall before this grief,
A mighty river stops its flow,
But prison doors stay firmly bolted
Shutting off the convict burrows
And an anguish close to death.
Fresh winds softly blow for someone,
Gentle sunsets warm them through; we don't know this,
We are everywhere the same, listening
To the scrape and turn of hateful keys
And the heavy tread of marching soldiers.
Waking early, as if for early mass,
Walking through the capital run wild, gone to seed,
We'd meet - the dead, lifeless; the sun,
Lower every day; the Neva, mistier:
But hope still sings forever in the distance.
The verdict. Immediately a flood of tears,
Followed by a total isolation,
As if a beating heart is painfully ripped out, or,
Thumped, she lies there brutally laid out,
But she still manages to walk, hesitantly, alone.
Where are you, my unwilling friends,
Captives of my two satanic years?

In reply to DougG:

Brilliant of course, Anthem for a doomed youth ??? I'm using memory here not google!

In reply to Marc C: and surely the finest hymn to nature and defiant espousal of life against death ever? Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality (heavily abridged)...

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.

Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,
And the children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:—
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
—But there's a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

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;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish'd one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

In reply to Lotty: Many many many from Thom Gunn, but among the favourites:

The pulsing stops where time has been,
The garden is snow-bound,
The branches weighed down and the paths filled in,
Drifts quilt the ground.
We lie soft-caught, still now it's done,
Loose-twined across the bed
Like wrestling statues; but it still goes on
Inside my head.

In reply to Mike C:

A bit less exalted, but still hits the spot :

Perfect Moments

Perfect moments have a clean design
Scoring edges that arrest the flow
Skis cut diamonds in the plump of snow
Times my life feels like a friend of mine

Perfect moments wear a single face
Variations on each other's theme
Renoir's mistresses in peach and cream
Rembrandt's mother in a ruff of lace

Perfect moments bear a single name
They're placed together though they never meet
Charlie Chaplin policing Easy Street
Charlie Parker playing My Old Flame

Perfect moments should redeem the day
Their teeming richness ought to be enough
To take the sting out of the other stuff
A perfect bitch it doesn't work that way

A perfect bitch it doesn't work that way


I like the way the word "sting" is used just before the "Sting-in-the-tail" last line.
Very "knowing".

I bet you're surprised when you learn who the author is.

In reply to Cosmic John:

I might be if you let us in on the secret.....

In reply to Simon White:

Just for the sound of the words and the contrasts -

Cargoes by John Masefield

Quinquereme of Nineveh from distant Ophir
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedar wood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the tropics by the palm-grove shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, ironware, and cheap tin trays.

In reply to Mike C:

I like this one as well, being one of the few that didn't get ripped to shreds at school (poor Dulce et Decorum Est got that treatment);

Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in the circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.

In reply to Lotty:

'I shot an arrow into the air, it stuck.'

(can't rem who wrote it, but it's a personal fave)

In reply to Mike C:

Well, you could Google it, I suppose.

Or I could just let you stew for a bit ... (As if you really cared.)

Good, though, isn't it?

In reply to Oxford Sarah:

That's so incredibly touching. Is it Owen also? Have to admit my knowledge of his (& Yeats) is from school sessions, but I am quoting from memory of over 30 years ago, so they really stuck.

In reply to Cosmic John:
Intriguing I must admit. But not in the mood for google so will never know if you don't tell. Just enjoying the words.

In reply to dark_star:

"The boy stood on the burning deck, when all but he had fled. Twit."

In reply to Mike C:

Nobody knows who wrote it, but there have been several suggestions including a Navajo chief and a victorian lady poet! But it has always stuck, first heard it on "Bookworm" a young soldier who had been killed in action in Northern Ireland had asked that it be read in the event of his death.

In reply to Mike C:

'Tis everyone's favourite fat bald Aussie. - Clive James.

Clever bloke underneath the media crap.

In reply to Oxford Sarah:
first heard it on "Bookworm" a young soldier who had been killed in action in Northern Ireland had asked that it be read in the event of his death.

Now I know why it was familiar.
Beautiful words. Have copied it to a file with Alison Stockwells & Norries entries, will seem a bit out of place there but I'll know why!

In reply to Cosmic John:

Ha! Brilliant. Plus I've got some of his books, been a long time since I read them mind.

In reply to Lotty:

I always like Roger McGough's

"To amuse Emu's on warm summer nights.
Kiwis do weewees from spectacular heights."

In reply to Lotty:

Came across this by Ruth Pitter years ago and it stuck:

The hearts desire is full of sleep
for those who have their will
have gained a good they cannot keep
and must go down the hill

Not questioning the seas and skies
not questioning the years
for life itself has closed their eyes
and life has closed their years.

But some, the emperors of desire
the true heirs to all regret
pilgrims and travellers who still enquire
for what they never get

For though they cannot see loves face
they tread his former track
they know him by his empty place
they know him by their lack

I seek the company of such
I wear that worn attire
for I am one who has had much
but not the hearts desire.

In reply to Lotty:

William McGonagle, Scotland's Worst Poet

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

-

'Twas about seven O'clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the black clouds seem'd to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem'd to say-
"I'll blow down the Bridge of the Tay."

-

When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers' hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say-
"I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of the Tay."

-

But when the train came to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

-

So the train sped on with all it's might,
And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sight,
And the passengers' hearts felt light,
Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,
With their friends at home they lov'd most dear,
And wish them all a happy New Year.

-

So the train mov'd slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
The storm fiend did loudly bray,
Because ninety lives had been take away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

-

As soon as the catastrophe came to be known
The alarm from mouth to mouth was blown,
And the cry rang out all oe'r the town,
Good Heavens ! The Tay Bridge is blown down,
And a passenger train from Edinburgh,
Which fill'd all the people's hearts with sorrow,
And made then for to turn pale,
Because none of the passengers were sav'd to tell the tale
How the disaster happen'd on the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

-

It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay.
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central Girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being Killed.


Sorry folks, googled that one, but surprised Doug didn't get there first, must be the Airdrie blood made him ignore it!

In reply to Paul Saunders:

I heard Roger McGough say :

"It says 'Poet' in my passport. I just sit and look at that sometimes. I can't really believe it."

It's all the talk of wine!

Loss by Wendy Cope

The day he moved out was terrible -
That evening she went through hell.
His absence wasn't a problem
But the corkscrew had gone as well.

In reply to Mike C:
that line 'which will be remember'd for a very long time' nails it for me, I think of it each time I cross the Tay Bridge, which goes to show that he is remembered even if he is a rubbish writer.

In reply to Oxford Sarah:
A fate worse than death, nice one!

In reply to wire:
It's the fact he's a rubbish writer that makes it so poignieat, plus the obvious remnants of the old bridge sticking up out of the water......

In reply to Black Heart Billy:

I'm suprised that that old rake Lord Rochester has not made an appearance on this thread yet, so..
[the * is mine]

I rise at eleven, I dine about two,
I get drunk before seven; and the next thing I do,
I send for my whore, when for fear of a clap,
I spend in her hand, and I spew in her lap.
Then we quarrel and scold, 'till I fall fast asleep,
When the bitch, growing bold, to my pocket does creep;
Then slyly she leaves me, and, to revenge the affront,
At once she bereaves me of money and c*nt.
If by chance then I wake, hot-headed and drunk,
What a coil do I make for the loss of my punk!
I storm and I roar, and I fall in a rage,
And missing my whore, I bugger my page.
Then, crop-sick all morning, I rail at my men,
And in bed I lie yawning 'till eleven again.

In reply to Mike C:

Can I class Bob as a poet??

If so -

Desolation Row - Highway 61 Revisited

Its a mystical ride through a collection of short stories that don'y belong in any one world and conjour the imagination like nothing ever before....

Si

In reply to Oxford Sarah:


That's magic Sarah, never seen that before.

In reply to Mike C:


Naaah, I was busy watching the telly

In reply to Lotty:

A Martian Sends A Postcard Home

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings -

they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.

I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.

Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:

then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.

Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the property of making colours darker.

Model T is a room with the lock inside -
a key is turned to free the world

for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.

But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.

In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.

If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep

with sounds. And yet they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.

Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room

with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises

alone. No one is exempt
and everyone's pain has a different smell.

At night when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs

and read about themselves -
in colour, with their eyelids shut.

-- Craig Raine

In reply to DougG:

Right, we need some Burns I reckon

Is there, for honest poverty
That hings his head, an' a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Our toils obscure , an' a' that;
The rank is but the the guinea stamp;
The Man's the gowd for a' that!

What tho' on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hodden grey, an' a' that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A Man's a Man for a' that!
For a' that an' a' that,
Their tinsel show and a' that;
The honest man, though ne'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that!

Ye see yon birkie ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, and stares, an' a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that:
For a' that an' a' that,
His riband, star, and a' that;
The Man of independent mind,
He looks an' laughs at a' that!

A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest Man's aboon his might,
Guid faith he maunna fa' that!
For a' that an' a' that,
Their dignities an' a' that,
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,
Are higher ranks than a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may —
As come it will for a' that —
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,
May bear the gree, and a' that;
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that
That Man to Man the warld o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that!





Magic. I've been on the red wine as well

In reply to DougG:

Remember 4 weddings and a funeral, and John Hannah?

Funeral Blues (WH Auden)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever; I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood,
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

In reply to Lotty:

Oh oh, Dougie's off the couch & Willow's up for the night. Like the Auden btw Doug.

In reply to DougG:

Thank you!!! Have been trying to remeber the last verse for about the last hour. I will freely admit that it has been known to make me cry.

Glad that I've managed to introduce a few more people to Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep.

In reply to Oxford Sarah and MikeC:

I'd never seen heard Funeral Blues before the film; I was in tears when John Hannah read it out.

In reply to Oxford Sarah: Generally the 'Do not stand at my grave...' is attributed to Mary Frye.

In reply to willow

slide away and give it all you got
my today fell in from the top
i dream of you and all the things you say
i wonder wher you now

hold me now all the worlds asleep
i need you now you've knocked me off my feet
i dream of you, we talk of getting old
but you said please don't

slide in baby
together we'll fly
i tried praying
but i don't know what you're saying to me

now that you're mine we'll find a way of chasing the sun
let me be the one that shines with you
and in the morning you don't know what to do
two of a kind, we'll find a way to do what we've done
let me be the one that shines with you
and we can slide away
slide away slide away
away

N.Gallager 1994

In reply to Marc C:

Thank you, such a wealth of knowledge on here tonight!

eating alone
my alphabet soup
speaks to me

Brenda S. Duster

In reply to simmo:

I dare U maybe not to identify with this:


Posivetivly 4th Street - Bon Dylan





You got a lotta nerve
To say you are my friend
When I was down
You just stood there grinning

You got a lotta nerve
To say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on
The side that's winning

You say I let you down
You know it's not like that
If you're so hurt
Why then don't you show it

You say you lost your faith
But that's not where it's at
You had no faith to lose
And you know it

I know the reason
That you talk behind my back
I used to be among the crowd
You're in with

Do you take me for such a fool
To think I'd make contact
With the one who tries to hide
What he don't know to begin with

You see me on the street
You always act surprised
You say, "How are you?" "Good luck"
But you don't mean it

When you know as well as me
You'd rather see me paralyzed
Why don't you just come out once
And scream it

No, I do not feel that good
When I see the heartbreaks you embrace
If I was a master thief
Perhaps I'd rob them

And now I know you're dissatisfied
With your position and your place
Don't you understand
It's not my problem

I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment
I could be you

Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is
To see you



si

x

In reply to simmo:

hey, like that!

In reply to Simon:

good tune bruv, but for a double dare: i like the one that goes, once upon a time you looked so proud...

In reply to Simon:

Simply Red did a bloody good cover of that!

In reply to Lotty:

The white twisted clouds and the endless shades of blue in the ocean make the hum of the spacecraft systems, the radio chatter, even your own breathing disappear.
There is no cold or wind or smell to tell you
that you are connected to Earth.
You have an almost dispassionate platform
remote, Olympian and yet so moving that you can hardly believe how emotionally attached you are to those rough patterns shifting steadily below.

Thomas Stafford, astronaut


Also like the Quangle Wangles Hat.


On the top of the Crumpetty Tree
The Quangle Wangle sat,
But his face you could not see,
On account of his Beaver Hat.
For his Hat was a hundred and two feet wide,
With ribbons and bibbons on every side,
And bells, and buttons, and loops, and lace,
So that nobody ever could see the face
Of the Quangle Wangle Quee.

}.-

Thought would leave you with this, am off to bed;

Eternity

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.

William Blake

In reply to Lotty:

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there.
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctitiy of space
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

By John Gillespie Magee Jr

In reply to Lotty:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

In reply to Lotty:

Ozymandias - Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

In reply to Lotty:

Actually I've always had a soft spot for Rupert Brooke... even if his early war stuff's a bit gung-ho.

He Wonders Whether to Praise or to Blame Her

I have peace to weigh your worth, now all is over,
But if to praise or blame you, cannot say.
For, who decries the loved, decries the lover;
Yet what man lauds the thing he's thrown away?

Be you, in truth, this dull, slight, cloudy naught,
The more fool I, so great a fool to adore;
But if you're that high goddess once I thought,
The more your godhead is, I lose the more.

Dear fool, pity the fool who thought you clever!
Dear wisdom, do not mock the fool that missed you!
Most fair, -- - the blind has lost your face for ever!
Most foul, -- - how could I see you while I kissed you?

So . . . the poor love of fools and blind I've proved you,
For, foul or lovely, 'twas a fool that loved you.

The Old Vicarage, Grantchester
(just a bit 'cause it's a long poem)

God! I will pack, and take a train,
And get me to England once again!
For England's the one land, I know,
Where men with Splendid Hearts may go;
And Cambridgeshire, of all England,
The shire for Men who Understand;
And of that district I prefer
The lovely hamlet Grantchester.
For Cambridge people rarely smile,
Being urban, squat, and packed with guile;
And Royston men in the far South
Are black and fierce and strange of mouth;
At Over they fling oaths at one,
And worse than oaths at Trumpington,
And Ditton girls are mean and dirty,
And there's none in Harston under thirty,
And folks in Shelford and those parts
Have twisted lips and twisted hearts,
And Barton men make Cockney rhymes,
And Coton's full of nameless crimes,
And things are done you'd not believe
At Madingley on Christmas Eve.
Strong men have run for miles and miles,
When one from Cherry Hinton smiles;
Strong men have blanched, and shot their wives,
Rather than send them to St. Ives;
Strong men have cried like babes, bydam,
To hear what happened at Babraham.
But Grantchester! ah, Grantchester!
There's peace and holy quiet there,
Great clouds along pacific skies,
And men and women with straight eyes,
Lithe children lovelier than a dream,
A bosky wood, a slumbrous stream,
And little kindly winds that creep
Round twilight corners, half asleep.
In Grantchester their skins are white;
They bathe by day, they bathe by night;
The women there do all they ought;
The men observe the Rules of Thought.
They love the Good; they worship Truth;
They laugh uproariously in youth...

In reply to Paul Saunders:

Torch beams, candles and diamond dust
Of clacking grey sticks
Pinch black twig homes
Bats above broken roots
Pulled free from foxhole bowls

Cold clear nights leave forests dark
The plough appears now
Sidelong up unmade tracks
The ruts pool drum skin moons
Buck stubbed grit skits its frozen paths

Silver sand tongues stuck
Flushing stubble pricked fields
Shrunk fruits and needles spill
Hawthorne hedgerows huddle close
Draining woods murmur as all stays still

A bitter drizzle sun swings past
Angel silhouettes of pigeon down
Buds of fur wisp on nettle stalks
Perspiring stones in loose mud graves
The sallow light etched with water chalk

Chain neck ringed trunks
Of hacked matchwood trees
Snapped bare sap bones
Peel resilient dead weed turf
Crisped winter mulch bleeds blue in browns


Copyright Fex Wazner 2004

In reply to DougG:

Isn't it called 12 Songs, or something?
I love that though...

I also like the Red Riding Hood part from Roald Dahls Revolting Rhymes:

The small girl smiled, one eyelid flickered
She whipped a pistol from her knickers
Aimed it at the creatures head and bang bang bang she shot it dead.

Good old Roald Dahl!

In reply to mik: I love the alliteration and rhythm, and the back and forwards structure. Can never usually stick with those long poems, but Beowulf is really gripping, and no-one could ever call it poncy!

I also discovered Byron recently - never realised how tongue in cheek and cynical it all was. 'Don Juan' is really funny.

In reply to Black Heart Billy:

HWÆT, WE GAR-DEna in geardagum,
þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon!
oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
monegum mægþum meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas, syððanærest wearð
feasceaft funden; he þæs frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum weorðmyndum þah,
oð þæt him æghwylc ymbsittendra
ofer hronrade hyran scolde,
gomban gyldan; þæt wæs god cyning!
Ðæm eafera wæs æfter cenned
geong in geardum, þone God sende
folce to frofre; fyrenðearfe ongeat,
þe hie ær drugon aldorlease
lange hwile; him þæs Liffrea,
wuldres Wealdend woroldare forgeaf,
Beowulf wæs breme --- blæd wide sprang---
Scyldes eafera Scedelandum in.
Swa sceal geong guma gode gewyrcean,
fromum feohgiftumon fæder bearme,

22-46
þæt hine on ylde eft gewunigen
wilgesiþas, þonne wig cume,
leode gelæsten; lofdædum sceal
in mægþa gehwære man geþeon.
Him ða Scyld gewat to gescæphwile
felahror feran on Frean wære;
hi hyne þa ætbæron to brimes faroðe,
swæse gesiþas, swa he selfa bæd,
þendenwordum weold wine Scyldinga---
leof landfruma lange ahte.
Þær æt hyðe stod hringedstefna
isig ond utfus, æþelingesfær;
aledon þa leofne þeoden,
beaga bryttan on bearm scipes,
mærne be mæste. Þær wæs madma fela
of feorwegum frætwa gelæded;
ne hyrde ic cymlicor ceol gegyrwan
hildewæpnum ond heaðowædum,
billum ond byrnum;him on bearme læg
madma mænigo, þa him mid scoldon
on flodes æht feor gewitan.
Nalæs hi hine læssan lacum teodan,
þeodgestreonum, þon þa dydon,
þe hine æt frumsceafte forð onsendon
ænne ofer yðe umborwesende

and so on, and so on.

In reply to Vertically_Challenged:

Better than the f*cking Iliad thats for sure

In reply to Rob Naylor: and what is really wierd is to think that the language in your excerpt is an older version of english. so you would expect to be able to make some head or tail of it - but I can make less sense of it than dutch.

In reply to Vertically_Challenged:

Like making head nor tail of chaucers english?

In reply to Vertically_Challenged:

Apparently 'Hwaet' means, loosely translated, "Shut up and and listen"

I'd hazard a guess that "þæt wæs god " means "that was good". And thats as close as I get.

In reply to Lotty: Stanage edge is like a hedge, big and small, climbs for all

In reply to Black Heart Billy: Dont know, never done it. My English class wasnt deemed clever enough for Chaucer. Heard its not easy though!

In reply to Alan: Ooh, I love that one. Makes me feel... well, it just makes me feel. Nice one

In reply to Lotty:

Well, seeing as Roger McGough has been mentioned; this is my favourite one of his:

Contact lenses

Somenights
she leaves them in
until after they have made love.
She likes to see clearly
the lines and curves of bodies.
To watch his eyes, his mouth,
Somenights she enjoys that.

Othernights
when taken by the mood
she takes them out before
and abandons herself
to her blurred stranger.
Other senses compete to compensate.
All is flesh. Looks bigger too.

In reply to Lotty: Good thread. Best I've read in ages. I have on that I'll have to try to remember, from the Rattle Bag, which I can't find on the web anywhere - forgive the mistakes.

Young man:
Mashed potato cannot hurt you Darling,
Mashed potato does no harm
Let me bring you mashed potato
From my mashed potato farm

Lady:
Take away your mashed potato
Leave it in the desert to dry.
Take away your mashed potato
You look like Shepherd's Pie.

Brash man:
A packet of chips, a packet of chips
Wrapped in the daily mail
Covered in batter and fried for a week
In the blubber of the Great White Whale.

Lady:
Takd away your fried potato
Use them to clean your ears
You can eat your fried potato
With your Bird's Eye frozen tears.

Old man:
Lady, I have borne this baked potato
O'er the generation gap.
Pray accept this baked potato
Let me lay it in your heated lap.

Lady:
Take away your baked potato
In your fusty, musty van.
Take away your baked potato
You potato-faced old man.

She rejected all potatoes
For a thousand nights and days
'Til a Frenchman woo'd and won her
With Pomme-de-Terre Lyonnaise.

Lady:
O my corrugated lover
So creamy and so brown
Let us fly across to Lyon
And lay our tubers down.

WE’VE fought with many men acrost the seas,
An’ some of ’em was brave an’ some was not:
The Paythan an’ the Zulu an’ Burmese;
But the Fuzzy was the finest o’ the lot.
We never got a ha’porth’s change of ’im:
’E squatted in the scrub an’ ’ocked our ’orses,
’E cut our sentries up at Suakim,
An’ ’e played the cat an’ banjo with our forces.
So ’ere’s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your ’ome in the Soudan;
You’re a pore benighted ’eathen but a first-class fightin’ man;
We gives you your certificate, an’ if you want it signed
We’ll come an’ ’ave a romp with you whenever you’re inclined.
We took our chanst among the Khyber ’ills,
The Boers knocked us silly at a mile,
The Burman give us Irriwaddy chills,
An’ a Zulu impi dished us up in style:
But all we ever got from such as they
Was pop to what the Fuzzy made us swaller;
We ’eld our bloomin’ own, the papers say,
But man for man the Fuzzy knocked us ’oller.
Then ’ere’s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, an’ the missis and the kid;
Our orders was to break you, an’ of course we went an’ did.
We sloshed you with Martinis, an’ it wasn’t ’ardly fair;
But for all the odds agin’ you, Fuzzy-Wuz, you broke the square.

’E ’asn’t got no papers of ’is own,
’E ’asn’t got no medals nor rewards,
So we must certify the skill ’e’s shown
In usin’ of ’is long two-’anded swords:
When ’e’s ’oppin’ in an’ out among the bush
With ’is coffin-’eaded shield an’ shovel-spear,
An ’appy day with Fuzzy on the rush
Will last an ’ealthy Tommy for a year.
So ’ere’s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, an’ your friends which are no more,
If we ’adn’t lost some messmates we would ’elp you to deplore;
But give an’ take’s the gospel, an’ we’ll call the bargain fair,
For if you ’ave lost more than us, you crumpled up the square!

’E rushes at the smoke when we let drive,
An’, before we know, ’e’s ’ackin’ at our ’ead;
’E’s all ’ot sand an’ ginger when alive,
An’ ’e’s generally shammin’ when ’e’s dead.
’E’s a daisy, ’e’s a ducky, ’e’s a lamb!
’E’s a injia-rubber idiot on the spree,
’E’s the on’y thing that doesn’t give a damn
For a Regiment o’ British Infantree!
So ’ere’s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your ’ome in the Soudan;
You’re a pore benighted ’eathen but a first-class fightin’ man;
An’ ’ere’s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, with your ’ayrick ’ead of ’air—
You big black boundin’ beggar—for you broke a British square!

In reply to Lewis climber:
Kipling, I think you forgot to say

In reply to Lotty: One of my faves...
The Flea
John Donne
Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deny'st me is;
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met,
And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that, self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hastthou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself, nor me the weaker now;
'Tis true, then learn how false fears be:
Just so much honor, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee
The Flea
John Donne
I love the metaphysicals

In reply to Lotty:

Distinctly less intellectual than most of the stuff posted, but this from A.A. Milne has always been one of my favourites:

Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair where I sit:
There isn't any other stair quite like it.
It's not at the bottom,
It's not at the top:
So this is the stair where I always stop.

Halfway up the stairs
Isn't up, and isn't down.
It isn't in the nursery, it isn't in the town:
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head:
It isn't really anywhere! It's somewhere else instead!

In reply to Lotty:

If we're allowing lyrics...


Now when I was a young man I carried me pack
And I lived the free life of the rover.
From the Murry's green basin to the dusty outback,
Well, I waltzed my Matilda all over.
Then in 1915 my country said, "Son,
It's time you stop rambling, there's work to be done."
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun
And they marched me away to the war.
And the band played Waltzing Matilda,
As the ship pulled away from the quay
And midst all the cheers, flag waving and tears,
We sailed off for Gallipoli

And how well I remember that terrible day,
How our blood stained the sand and the water
And of how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter.
Johnny Turk, he was ready, he primed himself well.
He showered us with bullets, and he rained us with shells,
And in five minutes flat, he'd blown us all to hell,
Nearly blew us back home to Australia.
(But) And the band played Waltzing Matilda,
As we stopped to bury our slain,
We buried ours, the Turks buried theirs,
Then we started all over again.

And those that were left, well we tried to survive
In that mad world of blood, death and fire.
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
Though around me the corpses piled higher.
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me ass over head
And when I awoke in me hospital bed
And saw what it had done, well I wished I was dead.
Never knew there were worse things than dying.
For I'll go no more Waltzing Matilda,
All around the green bush far and free
To hump tent and pegs, a man needs both legs,
No more waltzing Matilda for me.

So they gathered the crippled, the wounded, and maimed,
And they shipped us back home to Australia.
The legless, the armless, the blind and insane,
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla.
And when our ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where me legs used to be
And I thank Christ there was no body waiting for me
To grieve, to mourn and to pity.
But the Band played Waltzing Matilda
As they carried us down the gangway,
But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared,
Then they turned all their faces away.

So now every April I sit on me porch
And I watch the parade pass before me.
And I see my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reviving old dreams and past glory,
And the old men march slowly, all bone stiff and sore
They're tired old heroes from a forgotten war
And the young people ask "What are they marching for?"
And I ask myself the same question.
But the band plays Waltzing Matilda,
And the old men still answer the call,
But as year follows year, more old men disappear
Someday, no one will march there at all.

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda.
Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me?
And their ghosts may be heard as they march by the billibong
Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me?

Eric Bogle

In reply to Lotty: Poem called flees.
Adam Adam

In reply to Vertically_Challenged:

Chaucer is not too bad. Pre - conquest English (like Beowulf) is horrific: nearer to modern Dutch than modern English

"Hwæt" literally means "what" (so you might translate the first line as "What have we heard of the Spear-danes in days gone by"). But it is a good throat clearing way of starting a poem....

Y.

In reply:

look at all you avid poets!

In reply to Lotty: among many, many others;

At the bottom of my gardens
There’s a hedgehog and a frog
And a lot of creepy-crawlies
Living underneath a log,
There’s a baby daddy long legs
And an easy-going snail
And a family of woodlice,
All are on my nature trail."

There are caterpillars waiting
For their time to come to fly,
There are worms turning the earth over
As ladybirds fly by,
Birds will visit, cats will visit
But they always chose their time
And I've even seen a fox visit
This wild garden of mine.

B. Zephaniah

In reply to Lotty:

I like this (think its Yeats):

Never shall a young man
thrown into dispair
by the great honey coloured ramparts at your ear
love you for yourself alone
and not your yellow hair

But I can get a hair dye
and put such colour there
black or brown or carrot
so that young men in dispair
may love me for myself alone
and not my yellow hair

I heared an old religious man
but yesterday declair
that he had found a text to prove
that only God my dear
can love you for yourself alone
and not your yellow hair

In reply to lee birtwistle:
Think you'll find it was

Fleas
Adam Had 'em

was in some book at school

In reply to Vertically_Challenged:

It's more understandable when spoken out loud, then the "odd looking letters" are translated into more familiar sounds. It's still very hard (impossible in lots of places, unless you've studied the language) to understand, but it *sounds* so much more "poetic" in the original than in any translation I've heard, even though you can't necessarily understand what' it's saying!

A lot of it does become clearer though:

"þæt wæs god cyning" translates literally (and obviously)as "that was a good king", though the English translation I have makes it more poetic as "a good king, that".

"meodosetla" is usually translated as "mead-benches", but again is more obvious if a more obscure word for "bench" is used instead. Then "moedosetla" is directly understandable as "mead-settles". "Oft" is just "often".

You can look at something like: "her lith ure ealdoe eall forheawen" and if you translate it literally, rather than poetically, it's not so far from "here lieth our earls, all hewn apart".

It's a matter of getting your mind into it. I find the modern English translations I've read hard to get gripped by, but I just *love* listening to the original version spoken out loud, even though I haven't formally learned the language, and there are great chunks that I don't understand at all.

In reply to Rob Naylor: I see what you mean!

In reply to Vertically_Challenged:

If such things interest you, http://www.flsouthern.edu/eng/abruce/rood/ROODTEXT/ALL%7E1.HTM

Is an interesting link (an interlinear translation of another anglo saxon poem)

Y.

In reply to Yrmenlaf: just took a look. as you say, interesting to see the line for line translation. Sometimes you can get it, othertimes not.

In reply to Lotty: Though "Do not go Gently" is my favourite, having the honour of reading it at my Dads funeral, I've always had a soft spot for Roger McGough:

Midnight. A knock at the door
Open it? Better had
Three heavy cats, mean and bad.

They offer protection. I ask, "What for?"
The Boss-cat snarls, "You know the score.
Listen man, and listen good

If you wanna stay in the neighbourhood
Pay your dues or toms will call
And wail each night on the backyard wall

Mangle the flowers, and as for the lawn
A smelly minefield awaits you at dawn."
These guys meant business without a doubt

Three cans of tuna, I handed them out
Then they disappeared like bats into hell
Those bad, bad cats from the CPL.

Cat's Protection League by Roger McGough

In reply to Lotty:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.


From The Poetry of Robert Frost

Pete

In reply to Lotty:

"Aftermath" by Siegfried Sassoon. Written in 1919 following the Great War.



Have you forgotten yet?...
For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same--and War's a bloody game...
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz--
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench--
And dawn coming, dirty white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, "Is it all going to happen again?"

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack--
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you

As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads--those ashen-grey
Masks of lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?...
Look up, and swear by the green of spring that you'll never forget.

In reply to Lotty: i have a particular regard for Dylan Thomas and this is one of the many i like,

Fern Hill
by: Dylan Thomas
 
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

In reply to Lotty: and this one

Clown in the Moon
by: Dylan Thomas
 
My tears are like the quiet drift
Of petals from some magic rose;
And all my grief flows from the rift
Of unremembered skies and snows.

I think, that if I touched the earth,
It would crumble;
It is so sad and beautiful,
So tremulously like a dream.

In reply to Lotty:

To suit my mood ...

Nagaraeba
Mata kono goro ya
Shinobaremu
Ushi to mishi yo zo
Ima wa koishiki

(I may live on until
I long for this time
In which I am so unhappy,
And remeber it fondly.)

In reply to all poetry lovers:

Great book tip:

http://www.whsmith.co.uk/WHS/Go.asp?isbn=0563387823&DB=220

Pete

In reply to Pete W: nice to see you back Pete

In reply to Removed User:

The Uncertainty of the Poet




I am a poet.
I am very fond of bananas.

I am bananas.
I am very fond of a poet.

I am a poet of bananas.
I am very fond.

A fond poet of 'I am, I am'-
Very bananas.

Fond of 'Am I bananas?
Am I?'-a very poet.

Bananas of a poet!
Am I fond? Am I very?

Poet bananas! I am.
I am fond of a 'very.'

I am of very fond bananas.
Am I a poet?

Also by Wendy Cope.

I missed you guys. Pete

In reply to Pete W:

BANANAS

WE LOVE 'EM...

... to bits
But bad news. It's
fungal disease
And it's put the squeeze
on bananas. True
the scientists do
their best to seek
a cure. Because weak
mutant strains can't
fight back. They aren'y
strong enough to cope
No phlegm. No hope
for them...

... so one day
unless there's a way
organically (you
never can tell) to
breed a resistant
bunch. Well. The plant
is done for. No more
bananas. Your
last chance to treat
yourself. To eat
a few will - not yet
but soon - go. The threat
is absolute
And so this fruit
is doomed. It will not
survive. It wil rot
down. Die...

... just like my
poetry. What I
write. In ten year's time
perhaps. No rhyme
No words. No verse
And what is worse
The very pits
this news of mine. It's
like losing a friend
you know...

... YOU GO BANANAS!

(the end)

RP

Blue Remembered Hills
A.E. HOUSMAN (1859-19336)

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
This is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain.
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.


Especially poignant ever since I left the UK. It is spoken at the end of one of favourite films, Walkabout, with great resonance, given what has just unfolded.

In reply to Pete W:

This one also by Robert Frost, came to mind when descending from a mountain through a pine forest.


The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

(Robert Frost – Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

In reply to Lotty:

Yeats

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. .

In reply to Bex:

Browning (abridged!)

I.
I wonder do you feel to-day
As I have felt since, hand in hand,
We sat down on the grass, to stray
In spirit better through the land,
This morn of Rome and May?

II.
For me, I touched a thought, I know,
Has tantalized me many times,
(Like turns of thread the spiders throw
Mocking across our path) for rhymes
To catch at and let go.

. . .

XII.
Just when I seemed about to learn!
Where is the thread now? Off again!
The old trick! Only I discern--
Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn.

In reply to Marc C:
I was going to put Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach too, but you beat me to it. Good choice.

In reply to Rich Brown: Glad someone else appreciates it. I've always loved it since my Mum brought home a crackly old 45 with some chap called John Gilbert reading a selection from Palgrave's Golden Treasury. He read it beautifully and sonorously with a touch of pathos and world-weariness.

PS Most of the classic poems mentioned on this thread have been adapted and included in The OatC anthology.

In reply to Bex: Two in the Campagna! A favourite of mine as a romantic drippy 17 year-old - just the image of carefree lovers in the Italian countryside (a la Merchant/Ivory 'A Room with a View!).Inspired me to write a song about it.

In reply to Marc C: For really poignant poems. it's hard to beat Robert Desnos' 'Le Dernier Poem' (written to his wife before he died in a German concentration camp). I'm recalling it from memory (so probably incomplete) - it's in French, but it's fairly easy to translate:

J'ai reve tellement fort de toi
Tellement marche, tellement parle
Qu'il ne me reste plus rien de toi
Il me reste d'etre l'ombre parmi les ombres
D'etre cent fois plus ombre que l'ombre
D'etre l'ombre qui viendra et reviendra
Dans ta vie ensoleilee

(I've dreamed about you so much, walked and talked with you so much. That nothing more remains to me of you. It remains for me to become a shadow among shadows, To be a hundred times more shadowy than the shadow, to be the shadow that will come and come again into your sunny life).

In reply to Lotty:

I can't believe no-one's put this one up yet :


I caught this morning morning's minion, kingdom
of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, - the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

In reply to Marc C:

I just really like the lines:

Only I discern
Infinite passion and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn

says alot about life in general to me, like looking out over a beautiful view or just anything amazing in life and not being able to really share it or express it . . . anyway that's what I thought when I was 17 also!

I also love the hopkins windhover poem, the only one i know off by heart.

In reply to Bex:

The apparation of these faces in a crowd
Petals on a wet black bough