Pro Patria Mori
Thomas Moore

WHEN he who adores thee has left but the name
Of his fault and his sorrows behind,
O! say wilt thou weep, when they darken the fame
Of a life that for thee was resign’d!
Yes, weep, and however my foes may condemn,
Thy tears shall efface their decree;
For, Heaven can witness, though guilty to them,
I have been but too faithful to thee.

With thee were the dreams of my earliest love;
Every thought of my reason was thine:
In my last humble prayer to the Spirit above
Thy name shall be mingled with mine!
O! blest are the lovers and friends who shall live
The days of thy glory to see;
But the next dearest blessing that Heaven can give
Is the pride of thus dying for thee.

Three Minus One

Men's love I now no longer trust,
And find I give no thought to lust,
I'm older, wiser, undeluded,
And live a single life secluded.

When I was young and I could feel,
Then men would vie and men would kneel
And beg me then to be their lover,
And tell me they could love no other.

And three times did I give my heart,
And three times did it fall apart.
Each man thought that he was the one,
I waited till the love was gone.

Love bloomed and then was overblown,
And now I'd rather be alone.
For given most love fades away,
The rose has thorns that always stay.

Now I am strong, my heart secure
from those who'd leave me sad, for sure.
I've lived and loved and now I'm free,
Three minus one, that just leaves me.

Mine

What do you do,
re horse poo?
Do you run through,
or swerve,
unerve
the car or two
behind you?
-----------------------

What can you do
re pollution?
No solution,
or evolve,
solve,
find resolution.
Seek,
Earth's absolution?

It doesn't matter.
We procreate,
desecrate
The Earth,
We overrate
ourselves
Her bane,
we'll cease,
She will remain.
-----------------------
"And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God."
J G Magee, Jr

And what of the man
Who's the Earth seen,
Has been,
High,
Higher than sky,
Eternity serene,
What did it mean?
Feeling emotion,
A tear of ocean,
Beautiful sphere,
Lucky man,
Hold it dear.

Elaine x
-----------------------

When We Two Parted
Lord Byron

When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted,
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sank chill on my brow
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well:
Long, long shall I rue thee
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met
In silence I grieve
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.

Beauty of the World (incomplete)
Frank Wilmot

Not what men see,
Not what they draw from the spread
Of hills looming in cloud-
Not this makes them proud;
But what they can hold in fee
With difficulty and dread
To tell their hearts in pain
Over and over again.
The terror of Beauty is this:
That something may find the abyss,
Some fact of miracle that you have seen
And no one ever know it ever had been
Nor what its miracle would mean.
The spacious suns
Flow through the heart as water runs,
Known and not held,
Leaving no trace.
O'er Earth's wind-ruffled face
Goes the sun-shuddering air...
Of all the Beauty that rides
Violent or velvet-footed everywhere,
So little abides-
The hunger of life's unquelled!

Full well we know
Must pass, must pass away
This joy, that woe;
And learn full well in quiet dismay
That Beauty cannot stay.
But this content for which we vainly grope,
This desperate reach for miracle may give place,
Through an intenser waiting, a more passionate hope,
To nobleness in small things, acts of grace.

I last met James in Selfridges.

Ahh! Bumper stickers - My favourite little motor would suit...
THIS IS NOT AN ABANDONED VEHICLE.
(She's still further down the page somewhere.)

HIGH FLIGHT

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

Hammond - not just an organ!
------------------------------------
Man has always been quite clever and inventive,
His religions looked attractive with a big incentive.
Serfs and slaves, who's lives, were always full of strife,
could look forward to a very cushy afterlife.
For every need, with great spontaneity,
Man invented then an apt and trendy deity.
And some of them were really, REALLY weird
So, no reason then why Hammond cannot be revered.
The added bacchanalia sounds quite a selling point,
And if it's based in Amsterdam, does that include a joint?
If being very silly, having fun, is the result,
Then count me in and sign me up to join the Hammond cult!

Elaine x

Sorry that you didn't get the Bafta James - I really thought
that you'd cracked it this time with Toy Stories.

Music
Walter de la Mare

When music sounds, gone is the earth I know,
And all her lovely things even lovelier grow;
Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees
Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies.

When music sounds, out of the water rise
Naiads whose beauty dims my waking eyes,
Rapt in strange dreams burns each enchanted face,
With solemn echoing stirs their dwelling-place.

When music sounds, all that I was I am
Ere to this haunt of brooding dust I came;
And from Time's woods break into distant song
The swift-winged hours, as I hasten along.

The Trees
Edward L Davison

I did not know your names and yet I saw
The handiwork of Beauty in your boughs,
I worshipped as the Druids did, in awe,
Feeling at spring my pagan soul arouse
To see your leaf-buds open to the day,
And dull green moss upon your ragged girth,
The hoary sanctity of your decay,
Life and Death glimmering upon the Earth.
-----------------------------------------
What is Stonehenge?
Siegfried Sassoon

What is Stonehenge? It is the roofless past;
Man's ruinous myth; his uninterred adoring
Of the unknown in sunrise cold and red;
His quest of stars that arch his doomed exploring.
And what is Time but shadows that were cast
By these storm-sculptured stones while centuries fled?
The stones remain; their stillness can outlast
The skies of history hurrying overhead.


The World Is Too Much With Us
William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune,
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

I was busy taking photos
of the sunset at Weston last night

Thunderstorms
William Henry Davies

My mind has thunderstorms,
That brood for heavy hours:
Until they rain me words,
My thoughts are drooping flowers
And sulking, silent birds.

Yet come, dark thunderstorms,
And brood your heavy hours;
For when you rain me words,
My thoughts are dancing flowers
And joyful singing birds.