# One post, one poem



## Musicforawhile

So it's like the painting thread...Post a poem and say something about what you like about it, what it's about etc. or perhaps you're unsure what it's about but you like it anyway.


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## MagneticGhost

Great idea. 
I love the works of Vernon Scanell. Probably because I saw him read and then had a pint with him 20 years ago. He's sadly passed on now. I had an anthology of his verse which he kindly signed. And now it's brought to mind - I can't find it anywhere 
Anyway - this is one poem which I've never forgotten. A bit dark - but I've just never forgotten the impact of those last 2 lines. 


Vernon Scanell - Dead Dog.

One day I found a lost dog in the street.
The hairs about its grin were spiked with blood,
And it lay still as stone. It must have been 
A little dog, for though I only stood 
Nine inches for each one of my four years, 
I picked it up and took it home. My mother 
Squealed, and later father spaded out 
A bed and tucked my mongrel down in mud.
I can't remember any feeling but 
A moderate pity, cool not lachrymose: 
Almost a godlike feeling now it seems. 
My lump of dog was ordinary as bread; 
I have no recollection of the school 
Where I was taught this terror of the dead.


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## MagneticGhost

And if I may indulge with one more. Romance and the pitiless passage of time. What's not to like.

*To His Coy Mistress*
By Andrew Marvell

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 wingèd 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-preserved 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 amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.


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## MagneticGhost

Yay! Found it. 
Going to go and read it again now!


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## Musicforawhile

Thank you for introducing me to Vernon Scanell, I haven't come across him before. I had a feeling especially from the 'bed...in mud' that it was going to end that way, but still struck me cold to read those last lines. And obviously 'it lay still as stone' was a big clue, but I just thought it was a lovely way of describing stillness. I first came across 'To His Coy Mistress' at school, I pretty much know it off by heart ...not showing off or anything  I just like to memorize poems. The thing I wonder about that poem is how is he saying it, like is he half joking and trying to gross out his lady friend - talking about worms and decay isn't exactly going to put anyone in the mood.


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## MagneticGhost

Musicforawhile said:


> Thank you for introducing me to Vernon Scanell, I haven't come across him before. I had a feeling especially from the 'bed...in mud' that it was going to end that way, but still struck me cold to read those last lines. And obviously 'it lay still as stone' was a big clue, but I just thought it was a lovely way of describing stillness. I first came across 'To His Coy Mistress' at school, I pretty much know it off by heart ...not showing off or anything  I just like to memorize poems. The thing I wonder about that poem is how is he saying it, like is he half joking and trying to gross out his lady friend - talking about worms and decay isn't exactly going to put anyone in the mood.


Very true! I imagine some sort of drunken desperation. 

I'm impressed at your memory feats. Those days are long gone for me. It's enough for me to remember where I left the car keys.

Anyway - we need more poems


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## JACE

*The Idea of Order at Key West*
BY WALLACE STEVENS

She sang beyond the genius of the sea. 
The water never formed to mind or voice, 
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion 
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry, 
That was not ours although we understood, 
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

The sea was not a mask. No more was she. 
The song and water were not medleyed sound 
Even if what she sang was what she heard, 
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred 
The grinding water and the gasping wind; 
But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang. 
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing. 
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew 
It was the spirit that we sought and knew 
That we should ask this often as she sang.

If it was only the dark voice of the sea 
That rose, or even colored by many waves; 
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled, 
However clear, it would have been deep air, 
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound 
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that, 
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind, 
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped 
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres 
Of sky and sea.

It was her voice that made 
The sky acutest at its vanishing. 
She measured to the hour its solitude. 
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea, 
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we, 
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her 
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know, 
Why, when the singing ended and we turned 
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights, 
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there, 
As the night descended, tilting in the air, 
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea, 
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles, 
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon, 
The maker's rage to order words of the sea, 
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred, 
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

************

I love Stevens, and this is one of my favorites -- especially the last two stanzas.

Years ago, my wife made a mug for me in a ceramics class. Inscribed around the lip: "Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon..."


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## Ingélou

*The Given Note* by Seamus Heaney (rest in peace)










*On the most westerly Blasket
In a dry-stone hut
He got this air out of the night.

Strange noises were heard
By others who followed, bits of a tune
Coming in on loud weather

Though nothing like melody.
He blamed their fingers and ear
As unpractised, their fiddling easy

For he had gone alone into the island
And brought back the whole thing.
The house throbbed like his full violin.

So whether he calls it spirit music
Or not, I don't care. He took it
Out of wind off mid-Atlantic.

Still he maintains, from nowhere.
It comes off the bow gravely,
Rephrases itself into the air.
*

What I like about Seamus Heaney is that he is as sensuous as Keats, but mystical as Wordsworth; he is a modern poet, but he does adapt traditional forms and structures - his verse is not shapeless. He is elusive and elliptical; you 'almost grasp' what he's saying - *he* 'almost grasps' what he's saying - and so you come back again and again. This poem speaks of music & poetry as celestial entities.


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## Levanda

I try to keep civil this, I do feel to post this. Thanks

The Socialist A.B.C. 

When that I was a little tiny boy, 
Me daddy said to me, 
’The time has come, me bonny bonny bairn 
To learn your ABC’. 

Now daddy was a Lodge Chairman 
In the coalfields of the Tyne, 
And that ABC was different 
From the Enid Blyton kind. 

He sang; 

A is for Alienation that made me the man that I am 
and B’s for the Boss, who’s a *******, a bourgeois who don’t give a damn. 
C is for Capitalism, the boss’s reactionary creed, 
and D’s for Dictatorship, laddie, but the best proletarian breed. 

E is for Exploitation, that the workers have suffered so long; 
and F is for old Ludwig Feuerbach, the first one to see it was wrong. 

G is for all Gerrymanderers, like Lord Muck and Sir Whatsisname, 
and H is the Hell that they’ll go to, when the workers have kindled the flame. 

I is for Imperialism, and America’s kind is the worst, 
and J is for sweet Jingoism, that the Tories all think of first. 

K is for good old Keir Hardie, who fought out the working class fight 
and L is for Vladimir Lenin, who showed him the Left was all right. 

M is of course for Karl Marx, the daddy and the mammy of them all, 
and N is for Nationalisation, without it we’d crumble and fall. 

O is for Overproduction that capitalist economy brings, 
and P is for Private Property, the greatest of all of the sins. 

Q is for the Quid pro quo, that we’ll deal out so well and so soon, 
when R for Revolution is shouted and the Red Flag becomes the top tune. 

S is for sad Stalinism, that gave us all such a bad name, 
and T is for Trotsky the hero, who had to take all of the blame. 

U’s for the Union of workers, the Union will stand to the end, 
and V is for Vodka, yes, Vodka, the one drink that don’t bring the bends. 

W is for all Willing workers, and that’s where the memory fades, 
for X, Y and Z, me dear daddy said, will be written on the street barricades. 

But now that I’m not a little tiny boy, 
Me daddy says to me, 
’Please try to forget the things I said, 
Especially the ABC.’ 

For daddy’s no longer a Union man, 
And he’s had to change his plea. 
His alphabet is different now, 
Since they made him a Labour MP.

Alex Glasgow
(1935 - 2001)


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## Ingélou

Taggart and I once saw Alex Glasgow perform at the Durham Folk Festival. The song we like best of his is 'Close the coalhouse door'. The play for which this was written I remember seeing on BBC television in the 1960s.


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## JACE

Ingélou said:


> What I like about Seamus Heaney is that he is as sensuous as Keats, but mystical as Wordsworth; he is a modern poet, but he does adapt traditional forms and structures - his verse is not shapeless. He is elusive and elliptical; you 'almost grasp' what he's saying - *he* 'almost grasps' what he's saying - and so you come back again and again. This poem speaks of music & poetry as celestial entities.


Yes. I love Heaney's poetry too.

His poem about the Tollund Man has stayed with me a long time. Another elusive one... but both meditative and striking.

*The Tollund Man*
by Seamus Heaney

I
Some day I will go to Aarhus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eye-lids,
His pointed skin cap.

In the flat country near by
Where they dug him out,
His last gruel of winter seeds
Caked in his stomach,

Naked except for
The cap, noose and girdle,
I will stand a long time.
Bridegroom to the goddess,

She tightened her torc on him
And opened her fen,
Those dark juices working
Him to a saint's kept body,

Trove of the turfcutters'
Honeycombed workings.
Now his stained face
Reposes at Aarhus.

II
I could risk blasphemy,
Consecrate the cauldron bog
Our holy ground and pray
Him to make germinate

The scattered, ambushed
Flesh of labourers,
Stockinged corpses
Laid out in the farmyards,

Tell-tale skin and teeth
Flecking the sleepers
Of four young brothers, trailed
For miles along the lines.

III
Something of his sad freedom
As he rode the tumbril
Should come to me, driving,
Saying the names

Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,
Watching the pointing hands
Of country people,
Not knowing their tongue.

Out here in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes 
I will feel lost, 
Unhappy and at home.


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## SiegendesLicht

I like Rudyard Kipling:

*The Fires*

Men make them fires on the hearth
Each under his roof-tree,
And the Four Winds that rule the earth
They blow the smoke to me.

Across the high hills and the sea
And all the changeful skies,
The Four Winds blow the smoke to me
Till the tears are in my eyes.

Until the tears are in my eyes
And my heart is wellnigh broke
For thinking on old memories
That gather in the smoke.

With every shift of every wind
The homesick memories come,
From every quarter of mankind
Where I have made me a home.

Four times a fire against the cold
And a roof against the rain --
Sorrow fourfold and joy fourfold
The Four Winds bring again!

How can I answer which is best
Of all the fires that burn?
I have been too often host or guest
At every fire in turn.

How can I turn from any fire,
On any man's hearthstone?
I know the wonder and desire
That went to build my own!

How can I doubt man's joy or woe
Where'er his house-fires shine.
Since all that man must undergo
Will visit me at mine?

Oh, you Four Winds that blow so strong
And know that his is true,
Stoop for a little and carry my song
To all the men I knew!

Where there are fires against the cold,
Or roofs against the rain --
With love fourfold and joy fourfold,
Take them my songs again!


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## SiegendesLicht

And Lord Byron:

*Drachenfels*









The castled crag of Drachenfels
Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine,
Whose breast of waters broadly swells
Between the banks which bear the vine.
And hills all rich with blossomed trees,
And fields which promise corn and wine,
And scattered cities crowning these,
Whose far white walls along them shine,
Have strewed a scene, which I should see
With double joy wert thou with me.

And peasant-girls, with deep-blue eyes,
And hands which offer early flowers.
Walk smiling o'er this paradise;
Above, the frequent feudal towers
Through green leaves lift their walls of gray,
And many a rock which steeply lowers,
And noble arch in proud decay.
Look o'er this vale of vintage bowers;
But one thing want these banks of Rhine, -
Thy gentle hand to clasp in mine!

I send the lilies given to me;
Though long before thy hand they touch
I know that they must withered be,
But yet reject them not as such;
For I have cherished them as dear,
Because they yet may meet thine eye,
And guide thy soul to mine even here,
When thou behold'st them drooping nigh,
And know'st them gathered by the Rhine,
And offered from my heart to thine!

The river nobly foams and flows,
The charm of this enchanted ground,
And all its thousand turns disclose
Some fresher beauty varying round:
The haughtiest breast its wish might bound
Through life to dwell delighted here;
Nor could on earth a spot be found
To nature and to me so dear,
Could thy dear eyes in following mine
Still sweeten more these banks of Rhine!

Well, it's quite obvious why I like that one


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## SiegendesLicht

And Hermann Hesse (I will post this one in English and German, since none of the translations I found match the simple beauty of the original):

*In the Mists *

Wondrous to wander through mists! 
Parted are bush and stone: 
None to the other exists, 
Each stands alone.

Many my friends came calling 
then, when I lived in the light; 
Now that the fogs are falling, 
None is in sight.

Truly, only the sages 
Fathom the darkness to fall, 
Which, as silent as cages, 
Separates all.

Strange to walk in the mists! 
Life has to solitude grown. 
None for the other exists: 
Each is alone.

_*Im Nebel*

Seltsam, im Nebel zu wandern! 
Einsam ist jeder Busch und Stein, 
Kein Baum sieht den anderen, 
Jeder ist allein.

Voll von Freunden war mir die Welt, 
Als noch mein Leben licht war, 
Nun, da der Nebel fällt, 
Ist keiner mehr sichtbar.

Wahrlich, keiner ist weise, 
Der nicht das Dunkel kennt, 
Das unentrinnbar und leise 
Von allen ihn trennt.

Seltsam, im Nebel zu wandern! 
Leben ist einsam sein. 
Kein Mensch kennt den anderen, 
Jeder ist allein. _


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## Jos

Watched a BBC-documentary last week or so , about the War-poets. I remembered one from my schooldays, Wilfred Owen. Very beautiful, very sad. Died at 25.
Not my native tongue, but will watch this thread with interest.

Remember "the Raven" by E.A. Poe. Must reread it, I have an interesting book with the original and 3 different Dutch translations.


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## Blake

Samuel Coleridge - _Time, Real and Imaginary._

An Allegory

On the wide level of a mountain's head,
(I knew not where, but 'twas some faery place)
Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails outspread,
Two lovely children run an endless race,
A sister and a brother!
This far outstripped the other;
Yet ever runs she with reverted face,
And looks and listens for the boy behind:
For he, alas! is blind!
O'er rough and smooth with even step he passed,
And knows not whether he be first or last.

I'm still unsure if he's using the girl and boy as personifications of reality and imagination... I think he is.


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## SiegendesLicht

My favorite one of Hermann Hesse is called "Orgelspiel" ("The Organ Playing"), but unfortunately it seems to never have been translated into English, the German text is nowhere to be found online, it is way too long to type it out, and it seems still to be copyrighted. But I would recommend it to all the German-speaking folks on here. It is about music, the appreciation of beauty and preservation of old cultural traditions in the face of hostile modernity. Very philosophical, very beautiful!


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## Cosmos

Percy Bysshe Shelley's not one of my favorite poets, but I do love his famous Ozymandias

Ozymandias:

I met a traveller 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 on 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".


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## Cosmos

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know. 
His house is in the village though; 
He will not see me stopping here 
To watch his woods fill up with snow. 

My little horse must think it queer 
To stop without a farmhouse near 
Between the woods and frozen lake 
The darkest evening of the year. 

He gives his harness bells a shake 
To ask if there is some mistake. 
The only other sound’s the sweep 
Of easy wind and downy flake. 

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.


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## Musicforawhile

Vesuvius said:


> I'm still unsure if he's using the girl and boy as personifications of reality and imagination... I think he is.


It looks like it - if the boy is blind then he represents us passing blindly through time as we have no idea what is going to happen next; we don't know what good things or bad things await us. I am less sure as to who the girl is though? An imagined future we project?


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## JACE

*To Music*
by Rainer Maria Rilke

_Musik: Atem der Statuen. Vielleicht:
Stille der Bilder. Du Sprache wo Sprachen
enden. Du Zeit
die senkrecht steht auf der Richtung
vergehender Herzen.

Gefühle zu wem? O du der Gefühle
Wandlung in was?- in hörbare Landschaft.
Du Fremde: Musik. Du uns entwachsener
Herzraum. Innigstes unser,
das, uns übersteigend, hinausdrängt,-
heiliger Abschied:
da uns das Innre umsteht
als geübteste Ferne, als andre
Seite der Luft:
rein,
riesig
nicht mehr bewohnbar._

Music. The breathing of statues. Perhaps:
The quiet of images. You, language where
languages end. You, time
standing straight from the direction
of transpiring hearts.

Feelings, for whom? O, you of the feelings
changing into what?- into an audible landscape.
You stranger: music. You chamber of our heart
which has outgrown us. Our inner most self,
transcending, squeezed out,-
holy farewell:
now that the interior surrounds us
the most practiced of distances, as the other
side of the air:
pure,
enormous
no longer habitable.


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## Cheyenne

Past ruin'd Ilion Helen lives,	
Alcestis rises from the shades;	
Verse calls them forth; 'tis verse that gives	
Immortal youth to mortal maids.

Soon shall Oblivion's deepening veil 
Hide all the peopled hills you see,	
The gay, the proud, while lovers hail	
These many summers you and me.​- Walter Savage Landor​
I once encountered a version in which the final line ran "In distant ages you and me".


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## norman bates

a bit of antigeneticism:

*This Be The Verse* (By Philip Larkin)

They **** you up, your mum and dad. 
They may not mean to, but they do. 
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were ****** up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats, 
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.


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## Cosmos

A Story about the Body, by Robert Haas

The young composer, working that summer at an artist’s colony, had watched her for a week. She was Japanese, a painter, almost sixty, and he thought he was in love with her. He loved her work, and her work was like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly when she mused and considered answers to his questions. One night, walking back from a concert, they came to her door and she turned to him and said, “I think you would like to have me. I would like that too, but I must tell you that I have had a double mastectomy,” and when he didn’t understand, “I’ve lost both my breasts.” The radiance that he had carried around in his belly and chest cavity-like music-withered quickly, and he made himself look at her when he said, “I’m sorry I don’t think I could.” He walked back to his own cabin through the pines, and in the morning he found a small blue bowl on the porch outside his door. It looked to be full of rose petals, but he found when he picked it up that the rose petals were on top; the rest of the bowl--she must have swept the corners of her studio--was full of dead bees.


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## Musicforawhile

Cosmos, what do you think the Robert Frost poem is about?


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## Albert7

A short and sweet poem by Basho just to give this thread some Eastern flavor:

A monk sips morning tea,
it's quiet,
the chrysanthemum's flowering.


Translated by Robert Hass


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## Blake

Musicforawhile said:


> It looks like it - if the boy is blind then he represents us passing blindly through time as we have no idea what is going to happen next; we don't know what good things or bad things await us. I am less sure as to who the girl is though? An imagined future we project?


I originally thought the girl (reality) was watching the blind boy (imagination). Reality being the unchanging background of awareness, and imagination being the movements of consciousness.


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## Musicforawhile

For some more Eastern flavour, here are some haiku-esque poems that I like:

*On a station of the metro *by Ezra Pound

The apparition of these faces in the crowd; 
Petals, on a wet, black bough.

*To the Roaring Wind* by Wallace Stevens

What syllable are you seeking, 
Vocalissimus, 
In the distances of sleep? 
Speak it.

*Autumn Haze* by Amy Lowell

Is it a dragon fly or maple leaf
That settles softly down upon the water?

I was reading about the Ezra Pound poem which led me onto haiku poetry. This is what I've found out:
Haiku poems are three lines in length - the first and the last contain 5 syllables, and the second line has 7 syllables. Apparently 'syllables' is not really correct but is the closest translation English has of the Japanese word, 'mora,' which is used for counting the rhythmic units. Also, for it to be really a haiku poem all three lines should be about something that is happening in the present at the same time. They usually suggest a season or time of year. This is from wiki: "The essence of haiku is "cutting" (kiru). This is often represented by the juxtaposition of two images or ideas and a kireji ("cutting word") between them, a kind of verbal punctuation mark which signals the moment of separation and colors the manner in which the juxtaposed elements are related."


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## Cosmos

Musicforawhile said:


> Cosmos, what do you think the Robert Frost poem is about?


Taking a moment out of a busy schedule to enjoy the view. I think it's another way of saying that the man is tempted to drop his responsibilities and give in to leisure, but shakes that away. "Work now, play later" type of thing


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## Ingélou

Another burst of Eastern-ness. 










*Poet on a Mountain - Shen Zhou, 1500

'White clouds encircle the mountain waist like a sash;
Stone steps mount high into the void where the narrow path leads far;
Alone, leaning on my rustic staff, I gaze idly into the distance;
My longing for the notes of a flute is answered by the murmurings of the gorge.'
*
and this famous poem, which I've posted elsewhere,
by *Tao Yuanming* also often referred to as *Tao Qian* or *T'ao Ch'ien* (365-427):

*I built my hut in a zone of human habitation,
Yet near me there sounds no noise of horse or coach.
Would you know how that is possible?
A heart that is distant creates a wilderness round it.
I pluck chrysanthemums under the eastern hedge,
Then gaze long at the distant summer hills.
The mountain air is fresh at the dusk of day:
The flying birds two by two return.
In these things there lies a deep meaning;
Yet when we would express it, words suddenly fail us.*

So I'm in breach of the one post/one poem rule, but these are sibling poems. What I like about them is that they convey so intensely the experience of being a thinking conscious individual contemplating nature - what one of E. Nesbit's characters calls 'Our inside-realness'.


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## GreenMamba

Thomas Hardy, *During Wind and Rain*

They sing their dearest songs-
He, she, all of them-yea,
Treble and tenor and bass,
And one to play;
With the candles mooning each face. . . .
Ah, no; the years O!
How the sick leaves reel down in throngs!

They clear the creeping moss-
Elders and juniors-aye,
Making the pathways neat
And the garden gay;
And they build a shady seat. . . .
Ah, no; the years, the years,
See, the white storm-birds wing across.

They are blithely breakfasting all-
Men and maidens-yea,
Under the summer tree,
With a glimpse of the bay,
While pet fowl come to the knee. . . .
Ah, no; the years O!
And the rotten rose is ript from the wall.

They change to a high new house,
He, she, all of them-aye,
Clocks and carpets and chairs
On the lawn all day,
And brightest things that are theirs. . . .
Ah, no; the years, the years; 
Down their carved names the rain-drop ploughs.


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## mirepoix

'Myfanwy' by Sir John Betjeman

Kind o’er the kinderbank leans my Myfanwy,
White o’er the playpen the sheen of her dress,
Fresh from the bathroom and soft in the nursery
Soap scented fingers I long to caress.

Were you a prefect and head of your dormit'ry?
Were you a hockey girl, tennis or gym?
Who was your favourite? Who had a crush on you?
Which were the baths where they taught you to swim?

Smooth down the Avenue glitters the bicycle,
Black-stockinged legs under navy blue serge,
Home and Colonial, Star, International,
Balancing bicycle leant on the verge.

Trace me your wheel-tracks, you fortunate bicycle,
Out of the shopping and into the dark,
Back down the avenue, back to the potting shed,
Back to the house on the fringe of the park.

Golden the light on the locks of Myfanwy,
Golden the light on the book on her knee,
Finger marked pages of Rackham's Hans Anderson,
Time for the children to come down to tea.

Oh! Fullers angel-cake, Robertson’s marmalade,
Liberty lampshade, come shine on us all,
My! what a spread for the friends of Myfanwy,
Some in the alcove and some in the hall.

Then what sardines in half-lighted passages!
Locking of fingers in long hide-and-seek.
You will protect me, my silken Myfanwy,
Ring leader, tom-boy, and chum to the weak.


(This poem reminds me of my late wife. So much so, that for many years I couldn't bring myself to read it. Perhaps with hindsight it makes the memory of her exagerated or even in some ways a caricature. But time heals and passes, and when it does it colours and shades based on who we are and what we feel. And I'm okay with that.)


----------



## mirepoix

'Nuptial Sleep' by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

At length their long kiss severed, with sweet smart:
And as the last slow sudden drops are shed
From sparkling eaves when all the storm has fled,
So singly flagged the pulses of each heart.
Their bosoms sundered, with the opening start
Of married flowers to either side outspread
From the knit stem; yet still their mouths, burnt red,
Fawned on each other where they lay apart.

Sleep sank them lower than the tide of dreams,
And their dreams watched them sink, and slid away.
Slowly their souls swam up again, through gleams
Of watered light and dull drowned waifs of day;
Till from some wonder of new woods and streams
He woke, and wondered more: for there she lay.


(A few moments of that heaven on earth experienced after making love, with not even a hint of post-coital tristesse - unless that's what is being hinted at in the last line, although I choose not to think so.)


----------



## Musicforawhile

When I first came across that Robert Frost poem I thought it seemed kind of pleasant with a nice wintery atmosphere until the very end, where it seemed something wasn't right with the way the line repeats. It feels to me like the speaker, and also the audience, has been lulled into some dreamland and are falling asleep; and this is in the middle of a freezing cold snowy wood where there is no-one around. Not exactly the best place to fall asleep. Anyway, when I read some analyses of this poem, I was shocked to find that critics thought this poem was about suicide...But after the initial shock it started to make sense. And then there is also the horse's reaction, like he knows something is wrong. It's so subtle but quietly insidious. I really like it, but it unsettles me. I am not trying to disparage your ideas Cosmos as I think they make sense too and there is the feeling of a temptation and him trying to change his mind

'The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,'

But I do think there is something sinister going on in the poem. It was really shocking to me initially that it could be about suicide. I hope I haven't put a downer on one of your favourite poems...


----------



## mirepoix

'she being Brand... (XIX)' by e.e. cummings

she being Brand

-new;and you
know consequently a
little stiff i was
careful of her and(having

thoroughly oiled the universal
joint tested my gas felt of
her radiator made sure her springs were O.

K.)i went right to it flooded-the-carburetor cranked her

up,slipped the
clutch(and then somehow got into reverse she
kicked what
the hell)next
minute i was back in neutral tried and

again slo-wly;bare,ly nudg. ing(my

lev-er Right-
oh and her gears being in
A 1 shape passed
from low through
second-in-to-high like
greasedlightning)just as we turned the corner of Divinity

avenue i touched the accelerator and give

her the juice,good

(it

was the first ride and believe i we was
happy to see how nice she acted right up to
the last minute coming back down by the Public
Gardens i slammed on

the
internalexpanding
&
externalcontracting
brakes Bothatonce and

brought allofher tremB
-ling
to a:dead.

stand-
;Still)

(It's the best description I ever read of enjoying how it feels to drive a new car. 



 )


----------



## Vaneyes

The Centre of the Universe 

by Paul Durcan


Pushing my trolley about in the supermarket;
I am the centre of the universe;
Up and down the aisles of beans and juices,
I am the centre of the universe;
It does not matter that I live alone;
It does not matter that I am a jilted lover;
It does not matter that I am a misfit in my job;
I am the centre of the universe.

But I'm always here, if you want me -
For I am the centre of the universe.

I enjoy being the centre of the universe.
It is not easy being the centre of the universe
But I enjoy it.
I take pleasure in,
I delight in,
Being the centre of the universe.
At six o'clock a.m. this morning I had a phone call;
It was from a friend, a man in Los Angeles;
"Paul, I don't know what time it is in Dublin
But I simply had to call you:
I cannot stand LA so I thought I'd call you."
I calmed him down as best I could.

But I'm always here, if you want me -
For I am the centre of the universe.

I had barely put the phone down when it rang again,
This time from a friend in Sao Paulo in Brazil:
"Paul - do you know what is the population of Sao Paulo?
I will tell you: it is twelve million skulls.
Twelve million pairs of feet in one footbath.
Twelve million pairs of eyes in one fishbowl.
It is unspeakable, I tell you, unspeakable."
I calmed him down.

But I'm always here, if you want me -
For I am the centre of the universe.

But then when the phone rang a third time and it was not yet 6.30 a.m.,
The petals of my own hysteria began to wake up and unfurl.
This time it was a woman I know in New York City:
"Paul - Ney York City is a Cage",
And she began to cry a little over the phone,
To sob over the phone,
And from five thousand miles away I mopped up her tears.
I dabbed each tear from her cheek
With just a word or two or three from my calm voice.

I'm always here, if you want me -
For I am the centre of the universe.

But now tonight it is myself;
Sitting at my aluminium double-glazed window in Dublin city;
Crying just a little bit into my black tee shirt.
If only there was just one human being out there
With whom I could make a home? Share a home?
Just one creature out there in the night-
Is there not just one creature out there in the night?
In Helsinki, perhaps? Or in Reykjavik?
Or in Chapelizod? or in Malahide?
So you see, I have to calm myself down also
If I am to remain the centre of the universe;
It's by no means an exclusively self-centred automatic thing
Being the centre of the universe.

I'm always here, if you want me -
For I am the centre of the universe.


----------



## Giordano

Musicforawhile said:


> It looks like it - if the boy is blind then he represents us passing blindly through time as we have no idea what is going to happen next; we don't know what good things or bad things await us. I am less sure as to who the girl is though? An imagined future we project?





Vesuvius said:


> I originally thought the girl (reality) was watching the blind boy (imagination). Reality being the unchanging background of awareness, and imagination being the movements of consciousness.


I would say that the boy represents the reality ruled by the masculine and intellectual paradigm, and the girl represents the imagination fueled by the fluid feminine creativity. Imagination leads the lagging reality by accessing "fanciful" and "useless" truths and sprinkling them into the "real" world so that they may awaken the vision in time.

BTW, "masculine" and "feminine" refer to energy types, not male and female human beings.


----------



## Cosmos

Musicforawhile said:


> But I do think there is something sinister going on in the poem. It was really shocking to me initially that it could be about suicide. I hope I haven't put a downer on one of your favourite poems...


Haha, no you haven't! I've heard other interpretations, but never came across a suicide narrative. Interesting way to look at it


----------



## Blake

Dufay said:


> I would say that the boy represents the reality ruled by the masculine and intellectual paradigm, and the girl represents the imagination fueled by the fluid feminine creativity. Imagination leads the lagging reality by accessing "fanciful" and "useless" truths and sprinkling them into the "real" world so that they may awaken the vision in time.
> 
> BTW, "masculine" and "feminine" refer to energy types, not male and female human beings.


The different levels of interpretation is why I like poetry so much. I dig your viewpoint, as well.

Coleridge was known to be quite enthusiastic about mystical philosophies. That's why I was thinking it could allude to something like the Hindu relation of Shiva and Lila. Shiva being that unchanging awareness, and Lila being the dance of consciousness. But the roles seem to be reversed.


----------



## Musicforawhile

* After Apple-Picking*
by Robert Frost

MY long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree	
Toward heaven still,	
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill	
Beside it, and there may be two or three	
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough. 
But I am done with apple-picking now.	
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,	
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.	
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight	
I got from looking through a pane of glass 
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough	
And held against the world of hoary grass.	
It melted, and I let it fall and break.	
But I was well	
Upon my way to sleep before it fell, 
And I could tell	
What form my dreaming was about to take.	
Magnified apples appear and disappear,	
Stem end and blossom end,	
And every fleck of russet showing clear. 
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,	
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.	
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.	
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin	
The rumbling sound 
Of load on load of apples coming in.	
For I have had too much	
Of apple-picking: I am overtired	
Of the great harvest I myself desired.	
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, 
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.	
For all	
That struck the earth,	
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,	
Went surely to the cider-apple heap 
As of no worth.	
One can see what will trouble	
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.	
Were he not gone,	
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his 
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,	
Or just some human sleep.

I really like how subtle he is - he could be talking about dark themes with the repetition of 'sleep' and also 'long sleep.' I also love the dream sequence bit and how we aren't sure where the dream begins or ends.


----------



## Ingélou

*I FEEL** by Elizabeth Jennings

I feel I could be turned to ice
If this goes on, if this goes on.
I feel I could be buried twice
And still the death not yet be done.

I feel I could be turned to fire
If there can be no end to this.
I know within me such desire
No kiss could satisfy, no kiss

I feel I could be turned to stone,
A solid block not carved at all,
Because I feel so much alone.
I could be grave-stone or a wall.

But better to be turned to earth
Where other things at least can grow.
I could be then a part of birth,
Passive, not knowing how to know.
*


----------



## Ingélou

*The Lake Isle of Innisfree

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.*
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *W. B. Yeats*


----------



## Jos

De tuinman en de dood

Een Perzisch Edelman:

Van morgen ijlt mijn tuinman, wit van schrik,
Mijn woning in: "Heer, Heer, één ogenblik!

Ginds, in de rooshof, snoeide ik loot na loot,
Toen keek ik achter mij. Daar stond de Dood.

Ik schrok, en haastte mij langs de andere kant,
Maar zag nog juist de dreiging van zijn hand.

Meester, uw paard, en laat mij spoorslags gaan,
Voor de avond nog bereik ik Ispahaan!" –

Van middag (lang reeds was hij heengespoed)
Heb ik in 't cederpark de Dood ontmoet.

"Waarom," zo vraag ik, want hij wacht en zwijgt,
"Hebt gij van morgen vroeg mijn knecht gedreigd?"

Glimlachend antwoordt hij: "Geen dreiging was 't,
Waarvoor uw tuinman vlood. Ik was verrast,

Toen 'k 's morgens hier nog stil aan 't werk zag staan,
Die 'k 's avonds halen moest in Ispahaan."

P.N. van Eyck ( 1887-1954 )
Uit: Herwaarts, Nijgh & van Ditmar, Den Haag, 1980


Death and the Gardener

Early this morning he burst in on me,
White with fear. “My lord! I must flee!

“Just now, while I was deadheading the rose,
I saw Death itself behind me. I froze,

“Let fall my basket and paring-knife;
He stretched out a hand; I fled for my life.

“My lord, I'm not ready to breathe my last breath!
I beg you — a horse, to outrun Death!”

He galloped off, a hard day's ride
To Ispahan. — Later, I too spied

Death, in the cedar park, pale and grave,
And scolded him for threatening my slave.

Placidly he smiled. “My lord, I beg your pardon.
“When I met your fellow in the garden,

“ 'Twas no threat; I was merely taken aback
to see him still at work. He has a real knack!

“My own appointment with the man
Is not until tonight, in Ispahan.”

Translation: © Andrew Hewitt, 2007


----------



## Jos

^^Lack of computerskills. Sorry, very much wasted space, tried to edit but failed, iPad froze in the proces.

Anyways, a poem I learned by heart when in highschool. I sometimes recite it at dinerparties  
It has been translated very well into French and English.

Here's a link to the David Reid translation prize: http://subtexttranslations.com/drptp/eyck/eyck.html

Cheers,
Jos

If a moderator could fix the mess I've made, I'd be very greatful !
The space is better used with some nice poems..... Thnx!


----------



## Jos

Thank you, Taggart :tiphat:


----------



## Cheyenne

Jos said:


> De tuinman en de dood


It's still being read in High Schools frequently too.. My teacher loves it.

*L'aveu* _by Jean Marie Mathias Philippe Auguste, comte de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam_

J'ai perdu la forêt, la plaine,
Et les frais avrils d'autre-fois.
Donne tes lèvres, leur haleine
Ce sera le souffle des bois.

J'ai perdu l'océan morose,
Son deuil, ses vagues, ses échos;
Dis-moi n'importe quelle chose,
Ce sera la rumeur des flots.

Lourd d'une tristesse royale
Mon front songe aux soleils enfuis.
Oh! cache-moi dans ton sein pâle!
Ce sera le calme des nuits.

*The Avowal* _translation by Richard Wilbur_

I have lost the wood, the heath,
Fresh Aprils long gone by…
Give me your lips, their breath
Shall be the forest's sigh.

I have lost the sullen Sea,
Its glooms, its echoed caves;
Speak only: it shall be
The murmur of the waves.

By royal grief oppressed
I dream of a vanished light…
Hold me; in that pale breast
Shall be the calm of night.


----------



## Musicforawhile

Thanks so much for your post Jos, I've never heard that poem before and I really love it.

I found some info here on the poem and author, but the translation is a bit off.

http://translate.google.co.uk/trans...ia.org/wiki/De_tuinman_en_de_dood&prev=search


----------



## Jos

You're welcome Musicforawhile, glad you enjoyed it.
Translation is always difficult, but especially in poetry. Good thing there are some passionate translators at work ! Praise to them !!

Cheers,
Jos


----------



## clavichorder

Here is one of the music related poems I read recently:

PIANO

By D.H. Lawrence

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me; 
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see 
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings 
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song 
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong 
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside 
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour 
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour 
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast 
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.


----------



## Chris

in *The Kind Ghosts* Wilfred Owen puts real bitterness inside a covering of dreamy tranquility. The 'She' is one of the 'giddy jilts' as he elsewhere called them; the female patriots who shamed men into volunteering to go to the Front.

The Kind Ghosts

She sleeps on soft, last breaths; but no ghost looms
Out of the stillness of her palace wall,
Her wall of boys on boys and dooms on dooms.

She dreams of golden gardens and sweet glooms,
Not marvelling why her roses never fall
Nor what red mouths were torn to make their blooms.

The shades keep down which well might roam her hall.
Quiet their blood lies in her crimson rooms
And she is not afraid of their footfall.

They move not from her tapestries, their pall,
Nor pace her terraces, their hecatombs,
Lest aught she be disturbed, or grieved at all.


----------



## Xaltotun

_Deniall_ by George Herbert (1593-1633).

When my devotions could not pierce
Thy silent eares;
Then was my heart broken, as was my verse;
My breast was full of fears
And disorder:

My bent thoughts, like a brittle bow,
Did flie asunder:
Each took his way; some would to pleasures go,
Some to the warres and thunder
Of alarms.

As good go any where, they say,
As to benumme
Both knees and heart, in crying night and day,
Come, come, my God, O come,
But no hearing.

O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue
To crie to thee,
And then not heare it crying! all day long
My heart was in my knee,
But no hearing.

Therefore my soul lay out of sight,
Untun'd, unstrung:
My feeble spirit, unable to look right,
Like a nipt blossome, hung
Discontented.

O cheer and tune my heartlesse breast,
Deferre no time;
That so thy favours granting my request,
They and my minde may chime,
And mend my ryme.

--------------------
This is, to me, like music. Or love, for that matter.


----------



## EdwardBast

Just heard that murderous weasel Dick Cheney saying he did nothing wrong, so: 
Two about politicians:

*Dylan Thomas*
The hand that signed the paper

The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death

The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder,
The finger joints are cramped with chalk;
A goose's quill has put an end to murder 
That put an end to talk

The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever,
And famine grew, and locusts came; 
Great is the hand that holds dominion over
Man by a scribbled name.

The five kings count the dead but do not soften
The crusted wound nor stroke the brow;
A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven;
Hands have no tears to flow.

*e. e. cummings*
a politician

a politician is an **** upon which everyone has sat
except a man


----------



## Richannes Wrahms

This one is for the night owls:

*À une heure du matin*

Enfin! seul! On n'entend plus que le roulement de quelques fiacres attardés et éreintés. Pendant quelques heures, nous posséderons le silence, sinon le repos. Enfin! la tyrannie de la face humaine a disparu, et je ne souffrirai plus que par moi-même.

Enfin! il m'est donc permis de me délasser dans un bain de ténèbres! D'abord, un double tour à la serrure. Il me semble que ce tour de clef augmentera ma solitude et fortifiera les barricades qui me séparent actuellement du monde.

Horrible vie! Horrible ville! Récapitulons la journée: avoir vu plusieurs hommes de lettres, dont l'un m'a demandé si l'on pouvait aller en Russie par voie de terre (il prenait sans doute la Russie pour une île); avoir disputé généreusement contre le directeur d'une revue, qui à chaque objection répondait: "- C'est ici le parti des honnêtes gens", ce qui implique que tous les autres journaux sont rédigés par des coquins; avoir salué une vingtaine de personnes, dont quinze me sont inconnues; avoir distribué des poignées de main dans la même proportion, et cela sans avoir pris la précaution d'acheter des gants; être monté pour tuer le temps, pendant une averse, chez une sauteuse qui m'a prié de lui dessiner un costume de Vénustre; avoir fait ma cour à un directeur de théâtre, qui m'a dit en me congédiant: "- Vous feriez peut-être bien de vous adresser à Z...; c'est le plus lourd, le plus sot et le plus célèbre de tous mes auteurs, avec lui vous pourriez peut-être aboutir à quelque chose. Voyez-le, et puis nous verrons"; m'être vanté (pourquoi?) de plusieurs vilaines actions que je n'ai jamais commises, et avoir lâchement nié quelques autres méfaits que j'ai accomplis avec joie, délit de fanfaronnade, crime de respect humain; avoir refusé à un ami un service facile, et donné une recommandation écrite à un parfait drôle; ouf! est-ce bien fini?

Mécontent de tous et mécontent de moi, je voudrais bien me racheter et m'enorgueillir un peu dans le silence et la solitude de la nuit. Ames de ceux que j'ai aimés, âmes de ceux que j'ai chantés, fortifiez-moi, soutenez-moi, éloignez de moi le mensonge et les vapeurs corruptrices du monde, et vous, Seigneur mon Dieu! accordez-moi la grâce de produire quelques beaux vers qui me prouvent à moi-même que je ne suis pas le dernier des hommes, que je ne suis pas inférieur à ceux que je méprise!

_Baudelaire, Le Spleen de Paris._

*Translation (not by me of course): 

At one o'clock in the morning*

Alone at last! Nothing is to be heard but the rattle of a few tardy and tired-out cabs. There will be silence now, if not repose, for several hours at least. At last the tyranny of the human face has disappeared--I shall not suffer except alone. At last it is permitted me to refresh myself in a bath of shadows. But first a double turn of the key in the lock. It seems to me that this turn of the key will deepen my solitude and strengthen the barriers which actually separate me from the world.

A horrible life and a horrible city! Let us run over the events of the day. I have seen several literary men; one of them wished to know if he could get to Russia by land (he seemed to have an idea that Russia was an island); I have disputed generously enough with the editor of a review, who to each objection replied: "We take the part of respectable people," which implies that every other paper but his own is edited by a knave; I have saluted some twenty people, fifteen of them unknown to me; and shaken hands with a like number, without having taken the precaution of first buying gloves; I have been driven to kill time, during a shower, with a mountebank, who wanted me to design for her a costume as Venusta; I have made my bow to a theatre manager, who said: "You will do well, perhaps, to interview Z; he is the heaviest, foolishest, and most celebrated of all my authors; with him perhaps you will be able to come to something. See him, and then we'll see," I have boasted (why?) of several villainous deeds I never committed, and indignantly denied certain shameful things I accomplished with joy, certain misdeeds of fanfaronade, crimes of human respect; I have refused an easy favour to a friend and given a written recommendation to a perfect fool. Heavens! it's well ended.

Discontented with myself and with everything and everybody else, I should be glad enough to redeem myself and regain my self-respect in the silence and solitude.

Souls of those whom I have loved, whom I have sung, fortify me; sustain me; drive away the lies and the corrupting vapours of this world; and Thou, Lord my God, accord me so much grace as shall produce some beautiful verse to prove to myself that I am not the last of men, that I am not inferior to those I despise.​


----------



## clara s

There are not many european poets that look into the human ideals,
with such completeness

"The gypsies 2" is a poem about human being and world

_Over shores covered by forest,
In the time of a mute eve's
Noise and songs sail your tents over,
Over fires you cook with.

Hello, tribe whose life's so easy!
I discern your fires' dance;
In the days, sunk in the Lethe, 
I'd have lived in your gay tents.

In the first rays of the morning
Your free trace will be quite lost,
But your peaceful out-going
Will not have the bard of yours.

He, the roaming lodgings' treasure
And the tricks of the gay old, 
Had left for the country pleasures
And the mute his home holds._

Alexandr Pushkin a great poet and the founder of new russian literature


----------



## Albert7

The Hippopotamus
by T.S. Eliot

Similiter et omnes revereantur Diaconos, ut mandatum Jesu Christi; et Episcopum, ut Jesum Christum, existentem filium Patris; Presbyteros autem, ut concilium Dei et conjunctionem Apostolorum. Sine his Ecclesia non vocatur; de quibus suadeo vos sic habeo.
S. Ignatii Ad Trallianos. 

And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans.


THE BROAD-BACKED hippopotamus	
Rests on his belly in the mud;	
Although he seems so firm to us	
He is merely flesh and blood.	

Flesh and blood is weak and frail, 5
Susceptible to nervous shock;	
While the True Church can never fail	
For it is based upon a rock.	

The hippo’s feeble steps may err	
In compassing material ends, 10
While the True Church need never stir	
To gather in its dividends.	

The ’potamus can never reach	
The mango on the mango-tree;	
But fruits of pomegranate and peach 15
Refresh the Church from over sea.	

At mating time the hippo’s voice	
Betrays inflexions hoarse and odd,	
But every week we hear rejoice	
The Church, at being one with God. 20

The hippopotamus’s day	
Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts;	
God works in a mysterious way—	
The Church can sleep and feed at once.	

I saw the ’potamus take wing 25
Ascending from the damp savannas,	
And quiring angels round him sing	
The praise of God, in loud hosannas.	

Blood of the Lamb shall wash him clean	
And him shall heavenly arms enfold, 30
Among the saints he shall be seen	
Performing on a harp of gold.	

He shall be washed as white as snow,	
By all the martyr’d virgins kist,	
While the True Church remains below 35
Wrapt in the old miasmal mist.


----------



## Cheyenne

*The Old Familiar Faces* by Charles Lamb

I have had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days,
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have been laughing, I have been carousing,
Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies,
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I loved a love once, fairest among women;
Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her -
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man;
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;
Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.

Ghost-like, I paced round the haunts of my childhood.
Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse,
Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother,
Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling?
So might we talk of the old familiar faces -

How some they have died, and some they have left me,
And some are taken from me; all are departed;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.


----------



## Speranza

EdwardBast I loved the Dylan Thomas poem, it made me remember how some quiet paperwork ,something with no overt violence, can be so dangerous which I think is very important to remember.

Happy The Man - John Dryden

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
Be fair or foul or rain or shine
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

I have this saved on my computer because it makes me grateful and happy. That it doesn't matter what comes tomorrow for I have had my hour which is more hours then many. It reminds me that I should always look for things to be grateful for and I hope I will still feel this way if something terrible actually does happen.


----------



## starthrower

The Spider by Loren Eiseley

His science has progressed past stone,
His strange and dark geometries,
Impossible to flesh and bone,
Revive upon the passing breeze
The house the blundering foot destroys.
Indifferent to what is lost
He trusts the wind and yet employs
The jeweled stability of frost.
Foundations buried underfoot
Are forfeit to the mole and worm
But spiders know it and will put
Their trust in airy dreams more firm
Than any rock and raise from the dew
Frail stairs the careless wind blows through.


----------



## GhenghisKhan

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Stalin is dead
How about you?


----------



## Ingélou

Not yet. 
~~~~~~~~
In a drear-nighted December, by John Keats

In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity;
The north cannot undo them,
With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.

In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
About the frozen time.

Ah! would 'twere so with many
A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
Writh'd not at passèd joy?
The feel of not to feel it,
Where there is none to heal it,
Nor numbed sense to steel it,
Was never said in rhyme.


----------



## Musicforawhile

starthrower said:


> The Spider by Loren Eiseley
> 
> His science has progressed past stone,
> His strange and dark geometries,
> Impossible to flesh and bone,
> Revive upon the passing breeze
> The house the blundering foot destroys.
> Indifferent to what is lost
> He trusts the wind and yet employs
> The jeweled stability of frost.
> Foundations buried underfoot
> Are forfeit to the mole and worm
> But spiders know it and will put
> Their trust in airy dreams more firm
> Than any rock and raise from the dew
> Frail stairs the careless wind blows through.


I really love this, thank you starthrower.


----------



## Musicforawhile

GhenghisKhan said:


> Roses are red
> Violets are blue
> Stalin is dead
> How about you?


Am I missing something..?


----------



## Speranza

When I was 15 I thought this was the greatest poem ever I even tried to memorise it (failed). My opinion has changed on it but I still like it and it is my favourite Poe

A Dream within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep - while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?


----------



## Il_Penseroso

My father studied English Literature in Jondi-Shāpour University Ahvāz (named after and in tribute of the ancient  Academy of Gondishāpour)...He used to read poems (both in Persian and English) for me almost every night, when I was a child. I still Remember this William Blake:

The Little Black Boy

My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O! my soul is white;
White as an angel is the English child: 
But I am black as if bereav'd of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree 
And sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And pointing to the east began to say.

Look on the rising sun: there God does live 
And gives his light, and gives his heat away. 
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning joy in the noonday.

And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love, 
And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear 
The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice. 
Saying: come out from the grove my love & care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.

Thus did my mother say and kissed me, 
And thus I say to little English boy. 
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy:

Ill shade him from the heat till he can bear, 
To lean in joy upon our fathers knee. 
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him and he will then love me.


----------



## clara s

I suppose i have a romantic mood tonight

a red, red rose for me

_O my Luve's like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June; 
O my Luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry:

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun:
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee well, my only Luve
And fare thee well, a while! 
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile. _


----------



## clavichorder

A new favorite of mine, by William Blake. I'm just starting to really get into poetry!

The Smile

_There is a Smile of Love 
And there is a Smile of Deceit 
And there is a Smile of Smiles
In which these two Smiles meet

And there is a Frown of Hate 
And there is a Frown of disdain 
And there is a Frown of Frowns
Which you strive to forget in vain

For it sticks in the Hearts deep Core 
And it sticks in the deep Back bone 
And no Smile that ever was smild 
But only one Smile alone

That betwixt the Cradle & Grave
It only once Smild can be 
But when it once is Smild 
Theres an end to all Misery_


----------



## Vronsky

Arthur Rimbaud: Genie

He is affection and the present because he has made the house which is open to the frothy winter and to the murmur of summer, he who has purified drink and food, he who is the charm of fugitive places and the superhuman delight of halts. He is the affection and the future, the strength and the love which we, standing in rage and boredom, see passing in the stormy sky among banners of ectasy.

He is love, the measure perfect and reinvented, marvellous and unexpected reason, and eternity: beloved machine of the fatal powers. We have all known the terror of his yielding and of our own: O delight in our health, impetus of our faculties, selfish affection and passion for him, him who loves us for his eternal life...

And we call him back to us and he travels on... And if Adoration goes away, ring, his promise rings: "Away with these superstitions, these old bodies, these couples and these ages. It is this epoch that has sunk!"

He will not go away, he will not descend from any heaven again, he will not achieve the redemption of women's anger and men's gaieties and all that sin: because it is done, because he exists and is loved.

O his breaths, his heads, his runnings; the terrible swiftness of the perfection of forms and of action.

O fruitfulness of the mind and immensity of the universe.

His body! The dreamed-of redemption, the shattering of grace meeting with new violence!

The sight of him, the sight of him! all the old kneelings and pains lifted at his passing.

His light! the abolition of all audible and moving suffering in more intense music.

His step! migrations more enormous than the old invasions.

O He and We! pride more benign than wasted charities.

O world! and the clear song of new misfortunes!

He has known us all and has loved us all. May we know, this winter night, from promontory to promontory, from the tumultuous pole to the country house, from the multitude to the beach, from looks to looks, strength and feelings wearied, how to hail him and see him, and to send him away, and beneath the tides and at the top of the deserts of snow, to follow his vision, his breath, his body, his light. (translated by Oliver Bernard: Arthur Rimbaud, Collected Poems (1962))


----------



## schigolch

In 1932, the Spanish writer Pedro Salinas was teaching a summer course at the University in Madrid. He was a married man, in his early forties, and his family was away from the heat, spending their holidays at the coast.

Katherine Whitmore (then still Katherine Prue Reding) was an American professor, teaching Spanish literature in Kansas, single and in her mid thirties, that was taking Salinas's summer course.

Salinas fell in love with Katherine. The relationship was the inspiration for _La voz a ti debida_ (My Voice Because of You), a fascinating book of love poetry, including seventy poems, that is also one of my all time favorites. After the book was published, Katherine, a specialist in Spanish 20th century poetry, had to teach the poetry written for her to her students, for a long time until her retirement.

This is one of the poems (the translation is mine, and just intending to provide some understanding of the Spanish words to English speaking people unfamiliar with Spanish).


Ha sido, ocurrió, es verdad.
Fue en un día, fue una fecha
que le marca tiempo al tiempo.
Fue en un lugar que yo veo. 
Sus pies pisaban el suelo
este que todos pisamos.
Su traje
se parecía a esos otros
que llevan otras mujeres. 
Su reló
destejía calendarios,
sin olvidarse una hora:
como cuentan los demás.
Y aquello que ella me dijo 
fue en un idioma del mundo,
con gramática e historia.
Tan de verdad,
que parecía mentira.
No. 
Tengo que vivirlo dentro,
me lo tengo que soñar.
Quitar el color, el número,
el aliento todo fuego,
con que me quemó al decírmelo. 
Convertir todo en acaso,
en azar puro, soñándolo.
Y así, cuando se desdiga
de lo que entonces me dijo
no me morderá el dolor 
de haber perdido una dicha
que yo tuve entre mis brazos,
igual que se tiene un cuerpo.
Creeré que fue soñado.
Que aquello, tan de verdad, 
no tuvo cuerpo, ni nombre.
Que pierdo
una sombra, un sueño más.
It was, it happened, it's true.
It was in a real day, in a real date
that splits Time itself in two.
It was in a place I can actually see
Her feet were stepping on the ground
the same ground we all walk on
Her costume
was similar 
to other women's costumes
Her watch
was undoing calendars
hour after hour
as all watches do
And that what she told me
was in an actual language
embedded in grammar and history
So true
that it seemed a lie
No. 
I have to take this inside of me
I have to make it a dream
I have to strip the color, the number,
her fiery breathing
that burned me when she told me
Make it everything a maybe,
a chance, a dream 
And then, when she take back
her words
pain will not bite me
after losing such a happiness
that I once wrapped in my arms,
as I embraced once a body
I shall believe it was a dream
that such a truth
never had a name, never had a body
that I'm losing
a shadow, just another dream


----------



## clavichorder

I wrote a short one just this morning and I want to know what people think:

*Introspection in Peril*

Faltering fairly unto thought
The structure of a rhyme,
With two of these, I have wrought
No puncture in the time.

With words begot
The search still sought
Till found the horizontal line;
A special one this time, I think,
No gesture with its rhyme.

Its' name is trouble, with it is coupled
Your vision, more than doubled.
And in this fearful state, I find
A reality that ripples:
Erratic always is its rate
Inside a fear that cripples.


----------



## cwarchc

He says a word,
and I say a word - autumn
is deepening.

Takahama, Kyoshi


----------



## Dr Johnson

The boy stood on the burning deck
His lips were all a-quiver
He gave a cough, his leg fell off
And floated down the river.

_Eric Morecambe, after Felicia Dorothea Hemans._


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Well, if amateur translations are acceptable, then here is one of my favorite song texts, by the German neofolk band Darkwood.

*Nibelungenland*

_Von Westen braust der Sturm, der Regen fällt,
Das ist des Nordens wilde, trübe Welt,
Die grüne Wiese ward zum grauen See -
Die weiß noch nichts von Menschenluft und -weh.

Auf glattem Damme schreit' ich stets einher,
Dort auf die Heimat sinkt der Nebel schwer,
Und schaue auf die Flut, die wogt und wallt,
Und Haus und Baum verlieren die Gestalt.

Sturmbrausend, nebelwogend auch mein Sinn -
Jetzt da ich weiß, daß ich der Alte bin.
Das ist Leben, das ist ganzes Sein,
Bin nicht gebrochen, bin vom Zweifel rein.

Und trotzig harr' ich auf dem mächt'gen Damm -
Ich fühl's, ich bin vom Nibelungenstamm,
Bis mir das Bild der Heimat ganz entschwand,
Und rings um mich ist Nibelungenland._

The storm roars from the west, the rain falls,
This is the wild, bleak world of the North,
The green meadow turns to a gray lake
That knows nothing yet of human air and sorrows.

On the smooth dam I walk ever along
There on my homeland sinks a heavy fog 
And I look at the tide that surges and swells
And houses and trees are losing shape.

The same storm roars and the same fog rises also in my mind
Now that I know I am a man of old.
This is life, this is my whole being,
I am unbroken, I am free from doubt.

And defiantly I wait there on the mighty dam -
I feel that I am also one of the tribe of the Nibelungs,
Until the image of my homeland before me has entirely vanished
And all around me is the land of the Nibelungs.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Alexander Pushkin's "I Loved You"

Я вас любил: любовь еще, быть может
В душе моей угасла не совсем;
Но пусть она вас больше не тревожит;
Я не хочу печалить вас ничем.
Я вас любил безмолвно, безнадежно,
То робостью, то ревностью томим;
Я вас любил так искренно, так нежно,
Как дай вам бог любимой быть другим.

I loved you, and I probably still do,
And for a while the feeling may remain...
But let my love no longer trouble you,
I do not wish to cause you any pain.
I loved you; and the hopelessness I knew,
The jealousy, the shyness - though in vain -
Made up a love so tender and so true
As may God grant you to be loved again.


----------



## Jos

Gedicht voor dokter Trimbos.

'Goedkope wijn, masturbatie, bioscoop', schrijft Céline.
De wijn is op, en bioscopen zijn hier niet.
Het bestaan wordt wel eenzijdig.

A poem by Gerard Reve. Dutch writer. 

Poem for docter Trimbos.

"Cheap wine, ************, cinema", says Céline.
The wine is finished, and there are no cinemas down here.
Life gets pretty one-dimensional.

Translation by yours truly, probably wasted on an international forum as there is little to none context regarding this author.
Let's say he was quite a character in Dutch literature and one of my favourites.


----------



## Jos

Whahaha,
I can say masturbatie but not its translation. It's pretty similar; the act and the word......you'll get it


----------



## Dr Johnson

Jos said:


> Whahaha,
> *I can say masturbatie but not its translation.* It's pretty similar; the act and the word......you'll get it


The language nanny is not very bright.

Anyway, to make up for the Eric Morecambe piece, here is a proper, "serious" poem by Philip Larkin:

*Days - Philip Larkin

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.
*


----------



## Ingélou

The poet is Charles Tomlinson - I didn't know him but his obit was in today's paper, and I found this poem, which I love. The picture is 'Mariana' by Valentine Prinsep:










Against Travel

These days are best when one goes nowhere,
The house a reservoir of quiet change,
The creak of furniture, the window panes
Brushed by the half-rhymes of activities
That do not quite declare what thing it was
Gave rise to them outside. The colours, even,
Accord with the tenor of the day-yes, 'grey'
You will hear reported of the weather,
But what a grey, in which the tinges hover,
About to catch, although they still hold back
The blaze that's in them should the sun appear,
And yet it does not. Then the window pane
With a tremor of glass acknowledges
The distant boom of a departing plane.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Ingélou said:


> The poet is Charles Tomlinson


Oh that's who Griffes was named after! That's not the first time I've seen a poet being used for someone's name. _Samuel Coleridge_ Taylor is another example, who was British composer named after here-said British poet.


----------



## clara s

for tonight a poem by Valery Larbaud

The Mask

"I always write with a mask upon my face,
Yes, a mask in the old Venetian style,
Long, with a low forehead,
Like a big muzzle of white satin.
Seated at my desk and raising my head
I look at myself in the mirror opposite
Me and three-quarters turned, I see me there,
That childish bestial profile that I love.
Oh, that some reader, my brother, to whom I speak
Through this pale and shining mask,
Might come and place a slow and heavy kiss
On this low forehead and cheek so pale,
All the more to press upon my face
That other face, hollow and perfumed."


what music would go with it?


----------



## clara s

"Thinking of you is pretty, hopeful, 
It is like listening to the most beautiful song 
From the most beautiful voice on earth... 
But hope is not enough for me any more, 
I don't want to listen to songs any more, 
I want to sing."


Nazim Hikmet


----------



## drpraetorus

I have several poems that I am fond of, or would it be more grammatical to say of which I am fond. Either way, Some of them are just too long to post here. In that category, I would put "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" and "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner". I would guess that my favorite poem, at the moment, is Poes "The Raven". This is not a poem intended to scare but is a portrait of a man driven insane by loss and sorrow. It is full of symbols and inner meanings. The raven is a symbol, the bust of Athena is another symbol. What are the "curious books of forgotten lore" he is searching for "surcease of sorrow"? A poem of much greater depth and meaning than is found in one reading. 


The Raven




By Edgar Allan Poe 


Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, 

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— 

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, 

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. 

“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door— 

Only this and nothing more.” 


Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; 

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. 

Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow 

From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore— 

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore— 

Nameless here for evermore. 


And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain 

Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; 

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating 

“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door— 

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;— 

This it is and nothing more.” 


Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, 

“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; 

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, 

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, 

That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;— 

Darkness there and nothing more. 


Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, 

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; 

But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, 

And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?” 

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”— 

Merely this and nothing more. 


Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, 

Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before. 

“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice; 

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore— 

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;— 

’Tis the wind and nothing more!” 


Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, 

In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore; 

Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; 

But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door— 

Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door— 

Perched, and sat, and nothing more. 


Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, 

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, 

“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven, 

Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore— 

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!” 

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.” 


Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, 

Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore; 

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being 

Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door— 

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, 

With such name as “Nevermore.” 


But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only 

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour. 

Nothing farther then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered— 

Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before— 

On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.” 

Then the bird said “Nevermore.” 


Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, 

“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store 

Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster 

Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore— 

Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore 

Of ‘Never—nevermore’.” 


But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling, 

Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door; 

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking 

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore— 

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore 

Meant in croaking “Nevermore.” 


This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing 

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core; 

This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining 

On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er, 

But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er, 

She shall press, ah, nevermore! 


Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer 

Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. 

“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee 

Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore; 

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!” 

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.” 


“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!— 

Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, 

Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted— 

On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore— 

Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!” 

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.” 


“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil! 

By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore— 

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, 

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore— 

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.” 

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.” 


“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting— 

“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore! 

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! 

Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door! 

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!” 

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.” 


And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting 

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; 

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming, 

And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; 

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor 

Shall be lifted—nevermore!


----------



## gHeadphone

A short one

Interview (Dorothy Parker)

The ladies men admire, I’ve heard,
Would shudder at a wicked word.
Their candle gives a single light;
They’d rather stay at home at night.
They do not keep awake till three,
Nor read erotic poetry.
They never sanction the impure,
Nor recognize an overture.
They shrink from powders and from paints ...
So far, I’ve had no complaints.


----------



## clara s

drpraetorus said:


> I have several poems that I am fond of, or would it be more grammatical to say of which I am fond. Either way, Some of them are just too long to post here. In that category, I would put "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" and "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner". I would guess that my favorite poem, at the moment, is Poes "The Raven". This is not a poem intended to scare but is a portrait of a man driven insane by loss and sorrow. It is full of symbols and inner meanings. The raven is a symbol, the bust of Athena is another symbol. What are the "curious books of forgotten lore" he is searching for "surcease of sorrow"? A poem of much greater depth and meaning than is found in one reading.
> 
> The Raven
> 
> By Edgar Allan Poe
> 
> Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
> 
> Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-
> 
> While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
> 
> As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
> 
> "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door-
> 
> Only this and nothing more."
> 
> Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
> 
> And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
> 
> Eagerly I wished the morrow;-vainly I had sought to borrow
> 
> From my books surcease of sorrow-sorrow for the lost Lenore-
> 
> For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore-
> 
> Nameless here for evermore.
> 
> And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
> 
> Thrilled me-filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
> 
> So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
> 
> "'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door-
> 
> Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;-
> 
> This it is and nothing more."
> 
> Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
> 
> "Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
> 
> But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
> 
> And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
> 
> That I scarce was sure I heard you"-here I opened wide the door;-
> 
> Darkness there and nothing more.
> 
> Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
> 
> Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
> 
> But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
> 
> And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"
> 
> This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!"-
> 
> Merely this and nothing more.
> 
> Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
> 
> Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
> 
> "Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice;
> 
> Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore-
> 
> Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;-
> 
> 'Tis the wind and nothing more!"
> 
> Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
> 
> In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
> 
> Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
> 
> But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door-
> 
> Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door-
> 
> Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
> 
> Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
> 
> By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
> 
> "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,
> 
> Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore-
> 
> Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
> 
> Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."
> 
> Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
> 
> Though its answer little meaning-little relevancy bore;
> 
> For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
> 
> Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door-
> 
> Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
> 
> With such name as "Nevermore."
> 
> But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
> 
> That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
> 
> Nothing farther then he uttered-not a feather then he fluttered-
> 
> Till I scarcely more than muttered "Other friends have flown before-
> 
> On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before."
> 
> Then the bird said "Nevermore."
> 
> Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
> 
> "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store
> 
> Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
> 
> Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore-
> 
> Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
> 
> Of 'Never-nevermore'."
> 
> But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
> 
> Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
> 
> Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
> 
> Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore-
> 
> What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
> 
> Meant in croaking "Nevermore."
> 
> This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
> 
> To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
> 
> This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
> 
> On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
> 
> But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
> 
> She shall press, ah, nevermore!
> 
> Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
> 
> Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
> 
> "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee-by these angels he hath sent thee
> 
> Respite-respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;
> 
> Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"
> 
> Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."
> 
> "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!-prophet still, if bird or devil!-
> 
> Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
> 
> Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted-
> 
> On this home by Horror haunted-tell me truly, I implore-
> 
> Is there-is there balm in Gilead?-tell me-tell me, I implore!"
> 
> Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."
> 
> "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!-prophet still, if bird or devil!
> 
> By that Heaven that bends above us-by that God we both adore-
> 
> Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
> 
> It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore-
> 
> Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."
> 
> Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."
> 
> "Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting-
> 
> "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
> 
> Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
> 
> Leave my loneliness unbroken!-quit the bust above my door!
> 
> Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
> 
> Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."
> 
> And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
> 
> On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
> 
> And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
> 
> And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
> 
> And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
> 
> Shall be lifted-nevermore!


beautiful

the Raven is not just a poem, is a hymn

there is a forgotten lore for anybody, and we all carry it in our mind, sometimes without even knowing it

and the rime of the ancient mariner, is top
although long, it attracts you till the end


----------



## cwarchc

Letter in November
By one of my favourite (at the moment) poets

Love, the world
Suddenly turns, turns color. The streetlight
Splits through the rat's tail
Pods of the laburnum at nine in the morning.
It is the Arctic,

This little black
Circle, with its tawn silk grasses -- babies hair.
There is a green in the air,
Soft, delectable.
It cushions me lovingly.

I am flushed and warm.
I think I may be enormous,
I am so stupidly happy,
My Wellingtons
Squelching and squelching through the beautiful red.

This is my property.
Two times a day
I pace it, sniffing
The barbarous holly with its viridian
Scallops, pure iron,

And the wall of the odd corpses.
I love them.
I love them like history.
The apples are golden,
Imagine it ---

My seventy trees
Holding their gold-ruddy balls
In a thick gray death-soup,
Their million
Gold leaves metal and breathless.

O love, O celibate.
Nobody but me
Walks the waist high wet.
The irreplaceable
Golds bleed and deepen, the mouths of Thermopylae.


----------



## Ingélou

^^^^ Sylvia Plath, apparently - I didn't know this poem, but I like it a lot.

This one is a children's poem, George MacDonald's *The Wind & the Moon*. It was in an anthology that my father read to us several times a week. We were mesmerised by the language & the rhyme scheme of this poem & I noticed the same effect when I read it to my junior school classes. It produced some fab creative writing, too.

The Wind and the Moon - George Macdonald

Said the Wind to the Moon, "I will blow you out;
You stare
In the air
Like a ghost in a chair,
Always looking what I am about -
I hate to be watched; I'll blow you out."

The Wind blew hard, and out went the Moon.
So, deep
On a heap
Of clouds to sleep,
Down lay the Wind, and slumbered soon,
Muttering low, "I've done for that Moon."

He turned in his bed; she was there again!
On high
In the sky,
With her one ghost eye,
The Moon shone white and alive and plain.
Said the Wind, "I will blow you out again."

The Wind blew hard, and the Moon grew dim.
"With my sledge,
And my wedge,
I have knocked off her edge!
If only I blow right fierce and grim,
The creature will soon be dimmer than dim."

He blew and he blew, and she thinned to a thread.
"One puff
More's enough
To blow her to snuff!
One good puff more where the last was bred,
And glimmer, glimmer, glum will go the thread."

He blew a great blast, and the thread was gone.
In the air
Nowhere
Was a moonbeam bare;
Far off and harmless the shy stars shone -
Sure and certain the Moon was gone!

The Wind he took to his revels once more;
On down,
In town,
Like a merry-mad clown,
He leaped and halloed with whistle and roar -
"What's that?" The glimmering thread once more!

He flew in a rage - he danced and blew;
But in vain
Was the pain
Of his bursting brain;
For still the broader the Moon-scrap grew,
The broader he swelled his big cheeks and blew.

Slowly she grew - till she filled the night,
And shone
On her throne
In the sky alone,
A matchless, wonderful silvery light,
Radiant and lovely, the queen of the night.

Said the Wind: "What a marvel of power am I!
With my breath,
Good faith!
I blew her to death -
First blew her away right out of the sky -
Then blew her in; what strength have I!

But the Moon she knew nothing about the affair;
For high
In the sky,
With her one white eye,
Motionless, miles above the air,
She had never heard the great Wind blare.

This is the poem read aloud by a North American:


----------



## Vronsky

P.M. Andreevski: Love Letter I

(from a cycle Five Love Letters)

Nothing is more visible
and nothing is more present than your absence:
not the childish whispers which I discovered
in the crops of the rain,
nor the hint of storm in the cobwebs
in little roadside bars,
nor aerial paths lit up by swallows,
nor that which acquires shape only my hearing,
nor my hearing while a belated cricket
winds up its nocturnal clock,
nor the birthpangs of the scattered seed,
nor the flaming fire on the cockerel's head
while it runs from the shade that descends from the sky,
nor the space which remains to me between your hands,
between your two hot suns,
nor the snake which ruffles the top of the corn,
nor the snowdrifts and hailstorms in poppy fields,
nor the flame which raises like autumn mist
in the fields of pepper,
nor the love and hatred between key and padlock,
nor the hidden light in a purchased match;
nothing is more visible than the trail you left
before me, behind me, with me and in me.


----------



## Xaltotun

Gerald Manley Hopkins: The Windhover

To Christ our Lord


I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-	
dom 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: shéer plód makes plough down sillion	
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,	
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.


----------



## elgar's ghost

Xaltotun said:


> Gerald Manley Hopkins: The Windhover
> 
> To Christ our Lord
> 
> I CAUGHT this morning morning's minion, king-
> dom 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: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
> Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
> Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.


Nice words - I first came across them when hearing Michael Tippett's setting for mixed choir.


----------



## gHeadphone

Hopkins, great choice


----------



## Abraham Lincoln

Repost from another thread. A classic:

leg so hot
hot hot leg
leg so hot u fry an egg


----------



## helenora

*Robinson Jeffers*

To feel and speak the astonishing beauty of things-earth, stone and water,
Beast, man and woman, sun, moon and stars-
The blood-shot beauty of human nature, its thoughts, frenzies and passions,
And unhuman nature its towering reality-
For man's half dream; man, you might say, is nature dreaming, but rock
And water and sky are constant-to feel
Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural
Beauty, is the sole business of poetry.
The rest's diversion: those holy or noble sentiments, the intricate ideas,
The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason.


----------



## Vronsky

Jack Kerouac: In Vain

The stars in the sky
In vain
The tragedy of Hamlet
In vain
The key in the lock
In vain
The sleeping mother
In vain
The lamp in the corner
In vain
The lamp in the corner unlit
In vain
Abraham Lincoln
 In vain
The Aztec empire
In vain
The writing hand: in vain
(The shoetrees in the shoes
In vain
The windowshade string upon
the hand bible
In vain—
The glitter of the greenglass
ashtray
In vain
The bear in the woods
In vain
The Life of Buddha
In vain)


----------



## cwarchc

The war is the only option,
to cheat the poor and leave them destitute,
For the rulers to satisfy,
our illusion of comforts to keep us mute.


----------



## HaydnBearstheClock

cwarchc said:


> The war is the only option,
> to cheat the poor and leave them destitute,
> For the rulers to satisfy,
> our illusion of comforts to keep us mute.


A poem that has actuality.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Shakespeare: Sonnet 66

Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry,
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And guilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

I like that line, "captive good attending captain ill," the righteous serving the wicked.

Anyhow, in 1916 Glazunov liked this poem too for obvious depressing reasons, and for him "my love" referred to music and probably his family too. He set it in Russian:


----------



## Selby

The Lushness of It


It’s not that the octopus wouldn’t love you – 
not that it wouldn’t reach for you
with each of its tapering arms

You’d be as good as anyone, I think,
to an octopus. But the creatures of the sea,
like the sea, don’t think

about themselves, or you. Keep on floating there,
cradled, unable to burn. Abandon
yourself to the sway, the ruffled eddies, abandon

your heavy legs to the floating meadows
of seaweed and feel
the bloom of phytoplankton, spindrift, sea
spray, barnacles. In the dark benthic realm, the slippery nekton
glide over the abyssal plains and as you float you can feel that upwelling of cold, deep water touch
the skin stretched over
your spine. No, it’s not that the octopus
wouldn’t love you. If it touched,

if it tasted you, each of its three
hearts would turn red.

Will theologians of any confession refute me?
Not the bluecap salmon. Not its dotted head.


Mary Szybist


----------



## cwarchc

The lamp once out
Cool stars enter
The window frame.

Natsume Sōseki


----------



## Cheyenne

A neary elm fell and I had to share this amazing and poignant meditation by John Clare...

*The Fallen Elm*

Old elm that murmured in our chimney top
The sweetest anthem autumn ever made
And into mellow whispering calms would drop
When showers fell on thy many coloured shade
And when dark tempests mimic thunder made -
While darkness came as it would strangle light
With the black tempest of a winter night
That rocked thee like a cradle in thy root -
How did I love to hear the winds upbraid
Thy strength without - while all within was mute.
It seasoned comfort to our hearts' desire,
We felt that kind protection like a friend
And edged our chairs up closer to the fire,
Enjoying comfort that was never penned.
Old favourite tree, thou'st seen time's changes lower,
Though change till now did never injure thee;
For time beheld thee as her sacred dower
And nature claimed thee her domestic tree.
Storms came and shook thee many a weary hour,
Yet stedfast to thy home thy roots have been;
Summers of thirst parched round thy homely bower
Till earth grew iron - still thy leaves were green.
The children sought thee in thy summer shade
And made their playhouse rings of stick and stone;
The mavis sang and felt himself alone
While in thy leaves his early nest was made,
And I did feel his happiness mine own,
Nought heeding that our friendship was betrayed,
Friend not inanimate - though stocks and stones
There are, and many formed of flesh and bones.
Thou owned a language by which hearts are stirred
Deeper than by a feeling clothed in word,
And speakest now what's known of every tongue,
Language of pity and the force of wrong.
What cant assumes, what hypocrites will dare,
Speaks home to truth and shows it what they are.
I see a picture which thy fate displays
And learn a lesson from thy destiny;
Self-interest saw thee stand in freedom's ways -
So thy old shadow must a tyrant be.
Thou'st heard the knave, abusing those in power,
Bawl freedom loud and then oppress the free;
Thou'st sheltered hypocrites in many a shower,
That when in power would never shelter thee.
Thou'st heard the knave supply his canting powers
With wrong's illusions when he wanted friends;
That bawled for shelter when he lived in showers
And when clouds vanished made thy shade amends -
With axe at root he felled thee to the ground
And barked of freedom - O I hate the sound
Time hears its visions speak, - and age sublime
Hath made thee a disciple unto time.
- It grows the cant term of enslaving tools
To wrong another by the name of right;
Thus came enclosure - ruin was its guide,
But freedom's cottage soon was thrust aside
And workhouse prisons raised upon the site.
Een nature's dwellings far away from men,
The common heath, became the spoiler's prey;
The rabbit had not where to make his den
And labour's only cow was drove away.
No matter - wrong was right and right was wrong,
And freedom's bawl was sanction to the song.
- Such was thy ruin, music-making elm;
The right of freedom was to injure thine:
As thou wert served, so would they overwhelm
In freedom's name the little that is mine.
And there are knaves that brawl for better laws
And cant of tyranny in stronger power
Who glut their vile unsatiated maws
And freedom's birthright from the weak devour.


----------



## Strange Magic

This poem was my introduction to Robinson Jeffers some 54 years ago. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I was captured forever...

Hurt Hawks

I

The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder,
The wing trails like a banner in defeat,
No more to use the sky forever but live with famine
And pain a few days: cat nor coyote
Will shorten the week of waiting for death, there is game without talons.
He stands under the oak-bush and waits
The lame feet of salvation; at night he remembers freedom
And flies in a dream, the dawns ruin it.
He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse.
The curs of the day come and torment him 
At distance, no one but death the redeemer will humble that head,
The intrepid readiness, the terrible eyes.
The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those
That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant.
You do not know him, you communal people, or you have forgotten him;
Intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him;
Beautiful and wild, the hawks, and men that are dying, remember him.


II

I’d sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk; but the great redtail
Had nothing left but unable misery
From the bones too shattered for mending, the wing that trailed under his talons when he moved.
We had fed him for six weeks, I gave him freedom,
He wandered over the foreland hill and returned in the evening, asking for death,
Not like a beggar, still eyed with the old
Implacable arrogance. I gave him the lead gift in the twilight. What fell was relaxed,
Owl-downy, soft feminine feathers; but what
Soared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its rising
Before it was quite unsheathed from reality.


----------



## Gaspard de la Nuit

Here's a poem that I wrote; the title comes at the end.

Even without a voice, it sings
Even without a breath, it lives
The bridge between heaven and earth,
Its power over man and god alike,
None among the living resists its spell.
Delicate yet forceful,
Exotic yet familiar,
Sensuous yet barbaric,
Ancient but novel.
It breathes destiny into the aimless
Hope into the hopeless
Strength into the strengthless.
Its origin as mysterious as creation,
It flees the mind that seeks to catch it.
Timeless, yet the essence of time
Formless, yet the essence of form
It owes nothing but gives everything.


Title: Music


----------



## cwarchc

Still one of my favourites, from Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage 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.


----------



## Strange Magic

We had a Caedmon ten-inch LP when I was a kid at home, with Dylan Thomas reading Do Not Go Gentle, Fern Hill (fantastic poem also), and A Child's Christmas in Wales--what a treasure! Thanks for posting Do Not Go Gentle.


----------



## clara s

Strange Magic said:


> This poem was my introduction to Robinson Jeffers some 54 years ago. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I was captured forever...
> 
> Hurt Hawks
> 
> I
> 
> The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder,
> The wing trails like a banner in defeat,
> No more to use the sky forever but live with famine
> And pain a few days: cat nor coyote
> Will shorten the week of waiting for death, there is game without talons.
> He stands under the oak-bush and waits
> The lame feet of salvation; at night he remembers freedom
> And flies in a dream, the dawns ruin it.
> He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse.
> The curs of the day come and torment him
> At distance, no one but death the redeemer will humble that head,
> The intrepid readiness, the terrible eyes.
> The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those
> That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant.
> You do not know him, you communal people, or you have forgotten him;
> Intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him;
> Beautiful and wild, the hawks, and men that are dying, remember him.
> 
> II
> 
> I'd sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk; but the great redtail
> Had nothing left but unable misery
> From the bones too shattered for mending, the wing that trailed under his talons when he moved.
> We had fed him for six weeks, I gave him freedom,
> He wandered over the foreland hill and returned in the evening, asking for death,
> Not like a beggar, still eyed with the old
> Implacable arrogance. I gave him the lead gift in the twilight. What fell was relaxed,
> Owl-downy, soft feminine feathers; but what
> Soared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its rising
> Before it was quite unsheathed from reality.


good poetry, inspiring
was it written at the Hawk Tower?

"Long live freedom and damn the ideologies"


----------



## Dedalus

My favorite poem of all time: Ulysses by Lord Alfred Tennyson. I'm a huge fan of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and I just love how this poem captures the Homeric feel, the wandering spirit of Odysseus and by extension all people, and the affirmation of life at the end.  Particularly affirmation of a life lived to the fullest "As though to breathe were life, life piled on life..."

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.


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## Doulton

I love the selections here. One of my favourite relatively recent poems is "Sarabande on Attaining the Age of Seventy-Seven" by Anthony Hecht, one of the foremost formalists of the 20th century:


The harbingers are come. See, see their mark;
White is their colour; and behold my head.
-- George Herbert

Long gone the smoke-and-pepper childhood smell
Of the smoldering immolation of the year,
Leaf-strewn in scattered grandeur where it fell,
Golden and poxed with frost, tarnished and sere.

And I myself have whitened in the weathers
Of heaped-up Januaries as they bequeath
The annual rings and wrongs that wring my withers,
Sober my thoughts, and undermine my teeth.

The dramatis personae of our lives
Dwindle and wizen; familiar boyhood shames,
The tribulations one somehow survives,
Rise smokily from propitiatory flames

Of our forgetfulness until we find
It becomes strangely easy to forgive
Even ourselves with this clouding of the mind,
This cinerous blur and smudge in which we live.

A turn, a glide, a quarter turn and bow,
The stately dance advances; these are airs
Bone-deep and numbing as I should know by now,
Diminishing the cast, like musical chairs. 



Anthony Evan Hecht


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## Strange Magic

@clara s: I think Hurt Hawks probably was written in the Hawk's Tower. The tower was completed in 1924 and the poem was published in 1928. There are several of us here who are aficionados of Jeffers' poetry--it is quite powerful, though not to everyone's taste (but whose poetry is?)


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## clara s

Strange Magic said:


> @clara s: I think Hurt Hawks probably was written in the Hawk's Tower. The tower was completed in 1924 and the poem was published in 1928. There are several of us here who are aficionados of Jeffers' poetry--it is quite powerful, though not to everyone's taste (but whose poetry is?)


Jeffers was an inspiration and friend to Ansel Adams and Edward Weston,
two of my favourite photographers.

Jeffers was epic poet, usually being in solitude, out in the wild nature.
I like this


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## Doulton

Sonnet 73 is my favorite by Shakespeare--and there are many brilliant contenders. I like the fact that it is written from the point of view of a person in the November of his life. The line "Bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang" is sensational. He goes through comparing himself to an almost bare tree, to the twilight of a day, to a fire burning out so that there's only an ember or two left. Knowing that he's old and will die soon, he cherishes his love all the more. As Stevens says, "Death is the mother of beauty".

SONNET 73

That time of year thou may'st in me behold 
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, 
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. 
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day, 
As after sunset fadeth in the west, 
Which by-and-by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. 
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire 
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, 
As the death-bed whereon it must expire 
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by. 
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.


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