Magna Est Veritas
Coventry Patmore

Here, in this little Bay,
Full of tumultuous life and great repose,
Where, twice a day,
The purposeless, gay ocean comes and goes,
Under high cliffs, and far from the huge town,
I sit me down.
For want of me the world's course will not fail:
When all its work is done, the lie shall rot;
The truth is great, and shall prevail,
When none cares whether it prevail or not.

Like as a Huntsman
Edmund Spenser

Like as a huntsman after weary chase,
Seeing the game from him escap'd away,
Sits down to rest him in some shady place,
With panting hounds beguiled of their prey:
So after long pursuit and vain assay,
When I all weary had the chase forsook,
The gentle deer return'd the self-same way,
Thinking to quench her thirst at the next brook.
There she beholding me with milder look,
Sought not to fly, but fearless still did bide:
Till I in hand her yet half trembling took,
And with her own goodwill her firmly tied.
Strange thing, me seem'd, to see a beast so wild,
So goodly won, with her own will beguil'd.

My Candle Burns At Both Ends
Edna St Vincent Millay

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -
It gives a lovely light!

Elegy XVII: On His Mistress
John Donne (incomplete)

By our first strange and fatal interview,
By all desires which thereof did ensue,
By our long starving hopes, by that remorse
Which my words' masculine persuasive force
Begot in thee, and by the memory
Of hurts, which spies and rivals threatened me,
I calmly beg: But by thy father's wrath,
By all pains, which want and divorcement hath,
I conjure thee, and all the oaths which I
And thou have sworn to seal joint constancy,
Here I unswear, and overswear them thus:
Thou shalt not love by ways so dangerous.
Temper, O fair love, love's impetuous rage,
Be my true mistress still, not my feign'd page.
I'll go, and, by thy kind leave, leave behind
Thee, only worthy to nurse in my mind
Thirst to come back; O if thou die before,
My soul from other lands to thee shall soar.

My Ladyboys snoozing on the sofa.

Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal
Alfred Lord Tennyson

Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font;
The firefly wakens, waken thou with me.

Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.

Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.

Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts, in me.

Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake.
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.

Been away for a few days.

Saw this...

and these...

and this incredible place...

Sonnets from the Portuguese xiv
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

If thou must love me, let it be for naught
Except for love's sake only. Do not say,
'I love her for her smile--her look--her way
Of speaking gently,--for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'-
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee--and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry:
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.
----------------------------------------------
Ten Years

Been to Papplewick again. I love the beam engines and the underground reservoir.

A Birthday
Christina Georgina Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.

Fairford 2010

Would You Return
Edmund Blunden

Poppies never brighter shone, and never sweeter smelled the hay,
The town with its steeples looked made of silver all the way,
Down in the streamy valley like a treasure that town lay.

Who was not with me there? who in that crystal air
Hastened not beside me on the springy grass did not stare
Miles ahead where those bright tops of mansioned hope were gems aflare?

Come then, know again this same knoll we paused upon,
These poplars with their flashing wind, this singing rill, this silent stone-
The sun pale peering at the shag-haired storm that swooped on Avalon.

GIFSoup

The Turkish Trench Dog
Geoffrey Dearmer

Night held me as I crawled and scrambled near
The Turkish lines. Above, the mocking stars
Silvered the curving parapet, and clear
Cloud-latticed beams o'erflecked the land with bars;
I, crouching, lay between
Tense-listening armies peering through the night,
Twin giants bound by tentacles unseen.
Here in dim-shadowed light
I saw him, as a sudden movement turned
His eyes towards me, glowing eyes that burned
A moment ere his snuffling muzzle found
My trail; and then as serpents mesmerise
He chained me with those unrelenting eyes,
That muscle-sliding rhythm, knit and bound
In spare-limbed symmetry, those perfect jaws
And soft-approaching pitter-patter paws.
Nearer and nearer like a wolf he crept--
That moment had my swift revolver leapt--
But terror seized me, terror born of shame
Brought flooding revelation. For he came
As one who offers comradeship deserved,
An open ally of the human race,
And sniffling at my prostrate form unnerved
He licked my face!

Envoi
P B H Lyon

Earth puts her colours by,
And veils her in one whispering cloak of shadow;
Green goes from the meadow;
Red leaves and flowers and shining pools are shrouded;
A few stars sail upon a windy sky,
And the moon is clouded.

The delicate music, traced
In and out of the soft lights and the laughter,
Is hushed, round ledge and rafter
The last faint echoes into silence creeping:
The harp is mute, the violins encased,
And the singers sleeping.

So, now my songs are done,
Leave me to night awhile and the starlight gleaming,
To silence and sweet dreaming,
Here where no music calls, no beauty shakes me;
Till in my heart the birds sing to the sun
And the new dawn wakes me.

One of my green-eyed monsters!

aka, 'Pretty Purdey Puddy Cat'
T'other one has been exploring up the chimney!
No need to send children up there, use a cat!

It's the 'glorious twelfth' and my birthday.
The present that I would most like now is...
a clear night sky, so that I can for once see
the Perseid meteor shower,
at it's best from tonight till the 22nd.

Hiding this here...
Premonition 21-06-2013
One to twenty may be plenty
but not enough for me
Keep it going,
Keep on showing,
car insanity.

Faint Music
Walter de la Mare

The meteor's arc of quiet; a voiceless rain;
The mist's mute communing with a stagnant moat;
The sigh of a flower that has neglected lain;
That bell's unuttered note:

A hidden self rebels, its slumber broken;
Love secret as crystal forms within the womb;
The heart may as faithfully beat, the vow unspoken;
All sounds to silence come.

My new girls...

Errata...
My girls have developed testicles. They are now officially Ladyboys!

To His Mistress in Absence
Torquato Tasso (1544-95)

Far from thy dearest self, the scope
Of all my aims,
I waste in secret flames;
And only live because I hope.

O when will Fate restore
The joys, in whose bright fire
My expectation shall expire,
That I may live because I hope no more.

I was there.

Dawn
Ivor Gurney - WW1 poet

Dawn came not surprising, but later widened
To great space and a sea of many colours
With slate and pink and blue above the frightened
Mud fields soiled and heavy with War's colours-
And the guns thumped and threatened,
While the bacon frizzled, and the warm incense heightened,
Drifting in bays and dugouts slowly lightened.
First light bringing the thought what familiar star
There was, of town, farm, cottage, over there, over yonder,
And by day before duty settled awhile to
A companionship of good talk, forgetting night's woe.

Is This the Price of Love?
Joseph Seamon Cotter

Never again the sight of her?
Never her winsome smile
Shall light the path of my journeying
O'er many a weary mile?
Never again shall her soft voice come
To cheer me all the while?
O Thou, who hearest from above,
Tell me, is this the price of love?

Never again the touch of her lips?
Never her dark, brown eyes
Shall shine on me with the dancing joy
Of stars in the summer skies?
Never again shall my song be aught
Save minor chords of sighs?
O Thou, who hearest from above,
Tell me, is this the price of love?

If It Be Destined
Francesco Petraca (1304-74)

If it be destined that my Life, from thine
Divided, yet with thine shall linger on
Till, in the later twilight of Decline,
I may behold those Eyes, their lustre gone;
When the gold tresses that enrich thy brow
Shall all be faded into silver-grey,
From which the wreaths that well bedeck them now
For many a Summer shall have fall'n away;
Then should I dare to whisper in your ears
The pent-up Passion of so long ago,
That Love which hath survived the wreck of years
Hath little else to pray for, or bestow,
Thou wilt not to the broken heart deny
The boon of one too-late relenting Sigh.

Jeffery Day (1896-1918) was one of the very few flyer-poets of World War 1.
He was killed in an air battle towards the end of World War I over the sea.

On the Wings of the Morning
Jeffery Day

A sudden roar, a mighty rushing sound,
A jolt or two, a smoothly sliding rise,
A tumbled blur of disappearing ground,
And then all sense of motion slowly dies,
Quiet and calm, the earth slips past below,
As underneath a bridge still waters flow.

My turning wing inclines toward the ground;
The ground itself glides up with graceful swing
And at lane’s far tip twirls slowly round,
Then drops from sight again beneath the wing
To slip away serenely as before,
A cubist-patterned carpet on the floor.

Hills gently sink and valleys gently fill.
The flattened fields grow ludicrously small;
Slowly they pass beneath and slower still
Until they hardly seem to move at all.
Then suddenly they disappear from sight
Hidden by fleeting wisps of faded white.

The wing-tips, faint and dripping, dimly show
Blurred by the wreaths of mist that intervene.
Weird, half-seen shadows flicker to and fro
Across the pallid fog-bank’s blinding screen.
At last the choking mists release their hold,
And all the world is silver, blue and gold.

The air is clear, more clear than sparkling wine;
Compared with this wine is a turgid brew.
The far horizon makes a clean-cut line
Between the silver and depthless blue.
Out of the snow-white level reared on high
Glittering hills surge up to meet the sky.


Outside the wind screen’s shelter gales may race;
But in the seat a cool and gentle breeze
Blows steadily upon my grateful face.
As I sit motionless and at my ease,
Contented just to loiter in the sun
And gaze around me till the day is done.

And so I sit half sleeping, half awake,
Dreaming a happy dream of golden days
Until at last, with a reluctant shake
I rouse myself and with lingering gaze
At all the splendour of the shining plain
Make ready to come down to earth again.


The engine stops; a pleasant silence reigns-
Silence, not broken, but intensified
By the soft, sleepy wire’ insistent strains,
That rise and fall as with a sweeping glide
I slither down the well-oiled sides of space,
Towards a lower, less enchanted place.

The clouds draw nearer, changing as they come.
Now, like a flash, fog grips me by the throat.
Down goes the nose: at once the wire’s low hum
Begins to rise in volume and in note,
Till, as I hurtle from the choking cloud
It swells into a scream, high pitched, and loud.

The scattered hues and shades of green and brown
Fashion themselves into the land I know,
Turning and twisting, as I spiral down
Towards the landing-ground; till, skimming low
I glide with slackening speed across the ground,
And come to rest with lightly grating sound.

Sonnet
Edward Davison

Now that the moonlight withers from the sky
Like hope within my heart, What's left to do
But dream alone until the day I die
On some imagined memory of you?
Believe there was a day when for a space
I looked into your unaverted eyes
To feel my spirit awake at their embrace
Articulate and beautiful and wise;
Or dream I hear your voice in the dim pause
Of dawn, ere birds awake, and feel your hand
Seek mine, when some night-fancy overawes
Your drowsy thoughts, knowing I understand:
Better to falsify you thus and rest
Than know myself forever dispossessed.

Night Flying
Frederick Victor Branford

Aloft on footless levels of the night
A pilot thunders through the desolate stars,
Sees in the misty deep a fainting light
Of far-off cities cast in coal-dark bars
Of shore and soundless sea; and he is lone,
Snatched from the universe like one forbid,
Or like a ghost caught from the slay and thrown
Out on the void, nor God cared what he did.

Till from these unlinked whisperers that pain
The buried earth he swings his boat away,
Even as a lonely thinker who hath run
The gamut of greatlore, and found the Inane,
Then stumbles at midnight upon a sun
And all the honour of a mighty day.

One of my leaving cards.

and a Tshirt present

Serenity
John Middleton Murry

I ask no more for wonders: let me be
At peace within my heart, my fever stilled
By the calm circuit of the year fulfilled,
Autumn to follow summer in the tree
Of my new-ordered being. Silently
My leaves shall on the unfretting earth be spilled,
The pride be slowly scattered that shall gild
A windless triumph of serenity.

Vex me no more with dreams; the tortured mind
Hath turned and rent the dreamer. Foreordain
My motions, and my seasons solemn lead
Each to his own perfection whence declined
Their measured sequence promise shall contain,
And my late-opened husk let fall a seed.

Possession
John Freeman

I saw you,
I held you,
And surely I heard you:
But you were as far as any man living could be.

Though sometimes
I have seen you,
And touched you and heard you,
As together we walked and your sleeve now and then brushed mine;

Yet were you then
Farther, farther
Than with body's absence-
But who walks with you now while your thoughts are here and brush mine?

The slow waters
Of three oceans,
And the change of seasons,
Between us are but as a new-leafy hawthorn hedge,

And I see you
And hold you:-
But are you yet living,
Or come you now nearer than any man living may be?

Tomorrow is my last official
day of work in education.
My emotions are very mixed.

To Lucasta, going beyond the Seas
Richard Lovelace. 1618–1658

If to be absent were to be
Away from thee;
Or that when I am gone
You or I were alone;
Then, my Lucasta, might I crave
Pity from blustering wind or swallowing wave.

Though seas and land betwixt us both,
Our faith and troth,
Like separated souls,
All time and space controls:
Above the highest sphere we meet
Unseen, unknown; and greet as Angels greet.

So then we do anticipate
Our after-fate,
And are alive i' the skies,
If thus our lips and eyes
Can speak like spirits unconfined
In Heaven, their earthy bodies left behind.

Posers today!

and in the garden...

Sonnet 148
William Shakespeare

O me! what eyes hath love put in my head
Which have no correspondence with true sight:
Or if they have, where is my judgement fled
That censures falsely what they see aright?
If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,
What means the world to say it is not so?
If it be not, then love doth well denote
Love's eye is not so true as all men's: No,
How can it? O how can love's eye be true,
That is so vex'd with watching and with tears?
No marvel then though I mistake my view:
The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.

O cunning Love! with tears thou keep'st me blind
Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find!

Mesnevi
Sa'di (- 1291)

If liveihood by knowledge were endowed,
None would be poorer than the brainless crowd;
Yet fortune on the fool bestows the prize,
And leaves but themes for wonder to the wise.

The luck of wealth dependeth not on skill,
But only on the aid of Heaven's will:
So it has happened since the world began-
The witless ape outstrips the learned man;
A poet dies of hunger, grief, and cold;
A fool among the ruins findeth gold.