Fun Stuff > ENJOY
Post a favorite poem!
MarkTBSc:
I know he's not as popular nowadays but I still hold nothing but respect for Kipling.
Sons of Martha
The Sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited that good part;
But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother of the careful soul and the troubled heart.
And because she lost her temper once, and because she was rude to the Lord her Guest,
Her Sons must wait upon Mary's Sons, world without end, reprieve, or rest.
It is their care in all the ages to take the buffet and cushion the shock.
It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care that the switches lock.
It is their care that the wheels run truly; it is their care to embark and entrain,
Tally, transport, and deliver duly the Sons of Mary by land and main.
They say to mountains ``Be ye removèd.'' They say to the lesser floods ``Be dry.''
Under their rods are the rocks reprovèd---they are not afraid of that which is high.
Then do the hill-tops shake to the summit---then is the bed of the deep laid bare,
That the Sons of Mary may overcome it, pleasantly sleeping and unaware.
They finger Death at their gloves' end where they piece and repiece the living wires.
He rears against the gates they tend: they feed him hungry behind their fires.
Early at dawn, ere men see clear, they stumble into his terrible stall,
And hale him forth like a haltered steer, and goad and turn him till evenfall.
To these from birth is Belief forbidden; from these till death is Relief afar.
They are concerned with matters hidden---under the earthline their altars are---
The secret fountains to follow up, waters withdrawn to restore to the mouth,
And gather the floods as in a cup, and pour them again at a city's drouth.
They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose.
They do not preach that His Pity allows them to drop their job when they damn-well choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and the desert they stand,
Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren's ways may be long in the land.
Raise ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat;
Lo, it is black already with the blood some Son of Martha spilled for that!
Not as a ladder from earth to Heaven, not as a witness to any creed,
But simple service simply given to his own kind in their common need.
And the Sons of Mary smile and are blessèd---they know the Angels are on their side.
They know in them is the Grace confessèd, and for them are the Mercies multiplied.
They sit at the feet---they hear the Word---they see how truly the Promise runs.
They have cast their burden upon the Lord, and---the Lord He lays it on Martha's Sons!
And of course the ode to my home:
Grantchester by Rupert Brooke
Just now the lilac is in bloom,
All before my little room;
And in my flower-beds, I think,
Smile the carnation and the pink;
And down the borders, well I know,
The poppy and the pansy blow . . .
Oh! there the chestnuts, summer through,
Beside the river make for you
A tunnel of green gloom, and sleep
Deeply above; and green and deep
The stream mysterious glides beneath,
Green as a dream and deep as death.
---Oh, damn! I know it! and I know
How the May fields all golden show,
And when the day is young and sweet,
Gild gloriously the bare feet
That run to bathe . . . Du lieber Gott!
Here am I, sweating, sick, and hot,
And there the shadowed waters fresh
Lean up to embrace the naked flesh.
Temperamentvoll German Jews
Drink beer around;---and there the dews
Are soft beneath a morn of gold.
Here tulips bloom as they are told;
Unkempt about those hedges blows
An English unofficial rose;
And there the unregulated sun
Slopes down to rest when day is done,
And wakes a vague unpunctual star,
A slippered Hesper; and there are
Meads towards Haslingfield and Coton
Where das Betreten's not verboten.
. . . would I were
In Grantchester, in Grantchester!---
Some, it may be, can get in touch
With Nature there, or Earth, or such.
And clever modern men have seen
A Faun a-peeping through the green,
And felt the Classics were not dead,
To glimpse a Naiad's reedy head,
Or hear the Goat-foot piping low: . . .
But these are things I do not know.
I only know that you may lie
Day long and watch the Cambridge sky,
And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,
Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,
Until the centuries blend and blur
In Grantchester, in Grantchester. . . .
Still in the dawnlit waters cool
His ghostly Lordship swims his pool,
And tries the strokes, essays the tricks,
Long learnt on Hellespont, or Styx.
Dan Chaucer hears his river still
Chatter beneath a phantom mill.
Tennyson notes, with studious eye,
How Cambridge waters hurry by . . .
And in that garden, black and white,
Creep whispers through the grass all night;
And spectral dance, before the dawn,
A hundred Vicars down the lawn;
Curates, long dust, will come and go
On lissom, clerical, printless toe;
And oft between the boughs is seen
The sly shade of a Rural Dean . . .
Till, at a shiver in the skies,
Vanishing the Satanic cries,
The prim ecclesiastic rout
Leaves but a startled sleeper-out,
Grey heavens, the first bird's drowsy calls,
The falling house that never falls.
God! I will pack, and take a train,
And get me to England once again!
For England's the one land, I know,
Where men with Splendid Hearts may go;
And Cambridgeshire, of all England,
The shire for Men who Understand;
And of that district I prefer
The lovely hamlet Grantchester.
For Cambridge people rarely smile,
Being urban, squat, and packed with guile;
And Royston men in the far South
Are black and fierce and strange of mouth;
At Over they fling oaths at one,
And worse than oaths at Trumpington,
And Ditton girls are mean and dirty,
And there's none in Harston under thirty,
And folks in Shelford and those parts
Have twisted lips and twisted hearts,
And Barton men make Cockney rhymes,
And Coton's full of nameless crimes,
And things are done you'd not believe
At Madingley on Christmas Eve.
Strong men have run for miles and miles,
When one from Cherry Hinton smiles;
Strong men have blanched, and shot their wives,
Rather than send them to St. Ives;
Strong men have cried like babes, bydam,
To hear what happened at Babraham.
But Grantchester! ah, Grantchester!
There's peace and holy quiet there,
Great clouds along pacific skies,
And men and women with straight eyes,
Lithe children lovelier than a dream,
A bosky wood, a slumbrous stream,
And little kindly winds that creep
Round twilight corners, half asleep.
In Grantchester their skins are white;
They bathe by day, they bathe by night;
The women there do all they ought;
The men observe the Rules of Thought.
They love the Good; they worship Truth;
They laugh uproariously in youth;
(And when they get to feeling old,
They up and shoot themselves, I'm told) . . .
Ah God! to see the branches stir
Across the moon at Grantchester!
To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten
Unforgettable, unforgotten
River-smell, and hear the breeze
Sobbing in the little trees.
Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand
Still guardians of that holy land?
The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream,
The yet unacademic stream?
Is dawn a secret shy and cold
Anadyomene, silver-gold?
And sunset still a golden sea
From Haslingfield to Madingley?
And after, ere the night is born,
Do hares come out about the corn?
Oh, is the water sweet and cool,
Gentle and brown, above the pool?
And laughs the immortal river still
Under the mill, under the mill?
Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain? . . . oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?
And for those short poem lovers, there was one we were taught at school... I remember very little about its provenance but the poem itself stuck in my head:
Starfish.
Dead.
elcapitan:
celticgeek, I was going to post And Death Shall Have No Dominion, but you beat me to it. Fantastic, as is almost everything by Dylan Thomas.
Two other random favourites of mine:
Wilfred Owen - Dulce Et Decorum Est
--- Quote ---Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
--- End quote ---
Allen Ginsberg - An Eastern Ballad
--- Quote ---I speak of love that comes to mind:
The moon is faithful, although blind;
She moves in thought she cannot speak.
Perfect care has made her bleak.
I never dreamed the sea so deep,
The earth so dark; so long my sleep,
I have become another child.
I wake to see the world gone wild.
--- End quote ---
MissZahrah:
I'm all old-fashioned like... this is one of my favorites
Came a'calling, came a'wooing
Mighty prince with jewels and gold
"Come with me, come marry me,
On thee I'll shower wealth untold."
"Away!" I cried and shut the door.
"Ne'er will I be wed to thee!
Take thy baubles and shiny glass;
A maiden till I die, I'll be."
"Trill lil lil lilly," I sit and I sing,
Spinning at the window sill.
"Father, princes I'll not wed;
A poor maid I shall remain still."
Came a'calling, came a'wooing
Noble from a foreign land
"Come with me, come marry me,
Take my ring upon thy hand."
"Away!" I cried and shut the door.
"Return thou to thy foreign home.
Here was my birth and shall be my death;
'Cross the waters I shall not roam."
"Trill lil lil lally," I sit and I sing,
Weaving yarn to fine brocade.
"Mother, nobles I'll not wed;
In my father's tomb, be laid."
Came a'calling, came a'wooing
Brave and true, this handsome knight.
"Come with me, come marry me,
And for my lady's love I'll fight."
"Away!" I cried and shut the door.
"Fight not for love or lady fair.
I'll be naught for thy delight;
For thy sword I have no care."
"Trill lil lil lolly," I sit and I sing
Beside the hearth I sew my cloth
"Brother, brave knights I'll not wed;
For flow'ry praise I'll not betroth."
Came a'humbly, came a'lowly
Came the blacksmith's son to me.
"I've not gold, nor sword or land,
I've nothing for to tempt your hand."
"Come in!" I cried, threw wide the door
And then I brought him straight inside.
"Oh father, mother, brother; Lo!
For he alone will I be bride.
"A golden dress I have prepared
To wed, I shall be well arrayed.
Upon my hand I took his ring;
Upon his bed, my head I laid."
"The Maiden" - A. Fleming
and just for something completely different:
I FOUND YOUR OLD PAJAMAS BY
THE GUMBALL MACHINE, THE TOUCH OF
FLANNEL LIKE THE CHIROPRACTOR’S ICY
AND ELLIPTICAL PENDULUM. VELVEETA
ISN’T CHEESE, WE ALL KNOW THAT
BUT WHO CAN SAY THAT WHAT WE KNOW
IS MORE THAN FISHBONES, POLISHED WHITE
ON BEACHES HOT WITH SUN AND PASSION.
YES, WE HAVE BANANAS AND WHAT’S MORE
WE’RE OPEN NOW FOR LUNCH, OUR NEW ESTHETIC
PRUNES AND POLYESTER. GOGGLE-EYED,
WE VIEW THE BLUE PLATE SPECIAL: HEY,
DO YOU INTEND TO EAT THAT PICKLE?
NEVER MIND. JUST WONDERING.
Untitled, by Whistler
celticgeek:
--- Quote from: elcapitan on 15 Aug 2008, 01:42 ---celticgeek, I was going to post And Death Shall Have No Dominion, but you beat me to it. Fantastic, as is almost everything by Dylan Thomas
--- Quote ---
This has been a favorite of mine for a long, long time.
--- End quote ---
--- End quote ---
Aimless:
As Ulysses has already been posted, here's another one from my top five:
Pygmalion
Hilda Doolittle
Shall I let myself be caught
in my own light?
shall I let myself be broken
in my own heat?
or shall I cleft the rock as of old
and break my own fire
with its surface?
does this fire thwart me
and my craft,
or does my work cloud this light?
which is the god,
which is the stone
the god takes for his use?
2.
Which am I,
the stone or the power
that lifts the rock from the earth?
am i the master of this fire,
is this fire my own strength?
am I master of this
swirl upon swirl of light?
have I made it as in old times
I made the gods from the rock?
have I made this fire from myself?
or is this arrogance?
is this fire a god
that seeks me in the dark?
3.
I made image upon image for my use,
I made image upon image, for the grace
of Pallas was my flint
and my help was Hephaestos.
I made god upon god
step from the cold rock,
I made the gods less than men
for I was a man and they my work;
and now that is it that has come to pass?
for fire has shaken my hand,
my strivings are dust.
4.
Now what is it that has come to pass?
over my head, fire stands,
my marbles are alert:
each of the gods, perfect,
cries out from a perfect throat:
you are useless,
no marble can bind me,
no stone suggest.
5.
They have melted into the light
and I am desolate;
they have melted;
each from his plinth,
each one departs;
they have gone;
what agony can express my grief?
each from his marble base
has stepped into the light
and my work is for naught.
6.
Now am I the power
that has make this fire
as of old I made the gods
start from the rocks?
am I the god?
or does this fire carve me
for its use?
Btw, does anyone else like Tagore? :)
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version