Shakespeare

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

Desire
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Where true Love burns Desire is Love's pure flame ;
It is the reflex of our earthly frame,
That takes its meaning from the nobler part,
And but translates the language of the heart.

Song.  Earl of Rochester

Leave this gaudy guilded stage,
From custom more than use frequented,
Where fools of either sex and age
Crowd to see themselves presented.


To Love's theatre, the bed,
Youth and beauty fly together,
And act so well it may be said
The laurel there was due to either.

Twixt strifes of love and war, the difference lies in this:
When neither overcomes, love's triumph greater is.

Wow! It's not raining this morning.
The sun is actually shining.

Carpe Diem
Robert Frost

Age saw two quiet children
Go loving by at twilight,
He knew not whether homeward,
Or outward from the village,
Or (chimes were ringing) churchward,
He waited, (they were strangers)
Till they were out of hearing
To bid them both be happy.
'Be happy, happy, happy,
And seize the day of pleasure.'
The age-long theme is Age's.
'Twas Age imposed on poems
Their gather-roses burden
To warn against the danger
That overtaken lovers
From being overflooded
With happiness should have it.
And yet not know they have it.
But bid life seize the present?
It lives less in the present
Than in the future always,
And less in both together
Than in the past. The present
Is too much for the senses,
Too crowding, too confusing-
Too present to imagine.

Pilot Officer Magee composed "High Flight" and sent a copy to his parents on the back of a letter . He had flown up to 33,000 feet in a Spitfire Mk 1, his seventh flight. As he orbited and climbed upward he was struck with the inspiration of a poem, "To touch the face of God." He completed it later that day after landing. Several months later, on Dec. 11, 1941, his Spitfire collided with another plane over England, and Magee, only 19 years of age, crashed to his death.

HIGH FLIGHT
John Gillespie Magee, Jr

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.

Carrot stick your julienne!
------------------------------------
When a ca-rrot
you need to garotte,
does it really need much thought?
No matter how much you pretty it up
it gets stuffed in your face like it ought!

Oh , Mr May,
I just have to say,
I prefer a smart dial and a knob!
Digi-displayin', leave that to game-playin'.
It so complicates every job!

If simple I am,
well, I dont give a damn!
I'm too old now to figure this techno.
It's a car that I'm driving to where I'm arriving
Not playing 'Theft Auto'. Oh heck no!

Elaine x

There's quite a few cat driving pics on here.
This might redress the balance a little.

Almost Out of the Sky (incomplete)
Pablo Neruda

Almost out of the sky, half of the moon
anchors between two mountains.
Turning, wandering night, the digger of eyes.
Let's see how many stars are smashed in the pool.

It makes a cross of mourning between my eyes, and runs away.
Forge of blue metals, nights of stilled combats,
my heart revolves like a crazy wheel.
Girl who has come from so far, been brought from so far,
sometimes your glance flashes out under the sky.
Rumbling, storm, cyclone of fury,
you cross above my heart without stopping.

Where it all began!

James May
11/25/2008 05:36 AM
Maid of Astolat,
THat little poem is rather brilliant. More of this, please.

I've been reading through the poetry that I've chosen.
The old poets I conclude were a miserable lot!
Then I write poetry myself and the serious stuff is
also, mostly, pretty miserable. That must be the key!
Thank goodness that I can still think up silly ditties
for Mr May, thanks James.

Invocation (incomplete)
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Rarely, rarely, comest thou,
Spirit of Delight!
Wherefore hast thou left me now
Many a day and night?
Many a weary night and day
'Tis since thou art fled away.

I love all that thou lovest,
Spirit of Delight!
The fresh Earth in new leaves dressed,
And the starry night;
Autumn evening, and the morn
When the golden mists are born.

I love snow and all the forms
Of the radiant frost;
I love waves, and winds, and storms,
Everything almost
Which is Nature's, and may be
Untainted by man's misery.

I love tranquil solitude,
And such society
As is quiet, wise, and good: -
Between thee and me
What diff'rence? but thou dost possess
The things I seek, not love them less.

I love Love -though he has wings,
And like light can flee,
But above all other things,
Spirit, I love thee -
Thou art love and life! O come!
Make once more my heart thy home!

Come back Speedbird!

My Name

Mark Strand

Once when the lawn was a golden green

and the marbled moonlit trees rose like fresh memorials

in the scented air, and the whole countryside pulsed
with the chirr and murmur of insects, I lay in the grass,
feeling the great distances open above me, and wondered
what I would become and where I would find myself,
and though I barely existed, I felt for an instant
that the vast star-clustered sky was mine, and I heard
my name as if for the first time, heard it the way
one hears the wind or the rain, but faint and far off
as though it belonged not to me but to the silence

from which it had come and to which it would go.

Overnight at the Riverside Tower
Du Fu

Evening colours linger on mountain paths.
Out beyond this study perched over River Gate,
At the cliff's edge, frail clouds stay
All night. Among waves, a lone, shuddering

Moon. As cranes trail off in flight, silent,
Wolves snarl over their kill. I brood on
Our wars, sleepless here and, to right
A relentless Heaven and Earth, powerless.

Hebridean holiday

"Tha gaol agam ort."

Desolate moonscape grabs my heart,
matching my mood. It starts
to rain, the mist descending on
stark, bare mountains, hidden, pretending
they don't exist.
Breaking sun insists
they stand their ground to the eagle's sound,
Reflected in lochs, so still, as if ancient glaciers fill,
my heart, lifted by a lamb's faint cry,
and a hint of a blue Hebridean sky.

Mine

"I'm a little teapot..."