Was...

 

and still is!

All Nature Has a Feeling
John Clare

All nature has a feeling: woods, fields, brooks
Are life eternal: and in silence they
Speak happiness beyond the reach of books;
There's nothing mortal in them; their decay
Is the green life of change; to pass away
And come again in blooms revivified.
Its birth was heaven, eternal is its stay,
And with the sun and moon shall still abide
Beneath their dayand night and heaven wide.      

The Constant Lover
Sir John Suckling (1609 - 1642)

Out upon it, I have loved
Three whole days together!
And am like to love three more,
If it prove fair weather.

Time shall moult away his wings
Ere he shall discover
In the whole wide world again
Such a constant lover.

But the spite on 't is, no praise
Is due at all to me:
Love with me had made no stays,
Had it any been but she.

Had it any been but she,
And that very face,
There had been at least ere this
A dozen dozen in her place.

The Secret
John Clare

I loved thee, though I told thee not,
Right earlily and long,
Thou wert my joy in every spot,
My theme in every song.

And when I saw a stranger face
Where beauty held the claim,
I gave it like a secret grace
The being of thy name.

And all the charms of face or voice
Which I in others see
Are but the recollected choice
Of what I felt for thee.      

Love
Rupert Brooke

Love is a breach in the walls, a broken gate,
Where that comes in that shall not go again;
Love sells the proud heart’s citadel to Fate.
They have known shame, who love unloved. Even then,
When two mouths, thirsty each for each, find slaking,
And agony’s forgot, and hushed the crying
Of credulous hearts, in heaven — such are but taking
Their own poor dreams within their arms, and lying
Each in his lonely night, each with a ghost.
Some share that night. But they know love grows colder,
Grows false and dull, that was sweet lies at most.
Astonishment is no more in hand or shoulder,
But darkens, and dies out from kiss to kiss.
All this is love; and all love is but this.

On a Fine Morning
Thomas Hardy

Whence comes Solace?--Not from seeing
What is doing, suffering, being,
Not from noting Life's conditions,
Nor from heeding Time's monitions;
But in cleaving to the Dream,
And in gazing at the gleam
Whereby gray things golden seem.

Thus do I this heyday, holding
Shadows but as lights unfolding,
As no specious show this moment
With its iris-hued embowment;
But as nothing other than
Part of a benignant plan;
Proof that earth was made for man.

An Elegy on a Favourite Cat
Ann Francis (1738-1800)

When cats like him submit to fate,
And seek the Stygian strand,
In silent woe and mimic state
Should mourn the feline band.

For me–full oft at eventide,
Enrapt in thought profound,
I hear his solemn footsteps glide,
And startle at the sound!

Oft as the murmuring gale draws near
(To fancy’s rule consigned),
His tuneful purr salutes my ear,
Soft-floating on the wind.

Among the aerial train, perchance,
My Bully now resides,
Or with the nymphs leads up the dance–
Or skims the argent tides.

Ye rapid Muses, haste away,
His wandering shade attend,
Hunt him through bush and fallow grey,
And up the hill ascend;

O’er russet heath extend your view,
And through th’ embrowning wood;
On the brisk gale his form pursue,
Or trace him o’er the flood:

If he a lucid Sylph should fly,
With various hues bedight,
The Muse’s keen pervading eye
Shall catch the streaming light…

Hebridean holiday

The Commando Monument, dedicated to the men of the original British Commando Forces raised during WW11 overlooking their training ground in Scotland. It faces the Ben Nevis mountain range.

 

Oh Why?
Walter de la Mare

Oh, why make such ado -
This fretful care and trouble?
The sun in noonday's blue
Pours radiance on earth's bubble.
What though the heart-strings crack,
And sorrow bid thee languish,
Dew falls; the night comes back;
Sleep, and forget thine anguish.
Oh, why in shadow haunt?
Shines not the evening flower?
Hark, how the sweet birds chaunt,
The lovely light their bower.
Water her music makes,
Lulling even these to slumber;
And only dead of darkness wakes
Stars without number.

 

Sacrifice: 53,573 members of Bomber Command were killed during the Second World War

 

 

 

Lie in the Dark and Listen
Noel Coward

Lie in the dark and listen
 It’s clear tonight so they’re flying high
 Hundreds of them, thousands perhaps
 Riding the icy, moonlit sky
 Men, machinery, bombs and maps
 Altimeters and guns and charts
 Coffee, sandwiches, fleece-lined boots
 Bones and muscles and minds and hearts
 English saplings with English roots
 Deep in the earth they’ve left below
 Lie in the dark and let them go
 Lie in the dark and listen.

Lie in the dark and listen
 They’re going over in waves and waves
 High above villages, hills and streams
 Country churches and little graves
 And little citizens’ worried dreams
 Very soon they’ll have reached the sea
 And far below them will lie the bays
 And cliffs and sands where they used to be
 Taken for summer holidays
 Lie in the dark and let them go
 Theirs is a world we’ll never know
 Lie in the dark and listen.

Lie in the dark and listen
 City magnates and steel contractors
 Factory workers and politicians
 Soft hysterical little actors
 Ballet dancers, reserved musicians
 Safe in your warm civilian beds
 Count your profits and count your sheep
 Life is passing over your heads
 Just turn over and try to sleep
 Lie in the dark and let them go
 There’s one debt you’ll forever owe
 Lie in the dark and listen.

Not all things go wrong...
Felix Dennis

Not all things go wrong, and knowing
This, be wary of despair,
As you go through hell — keep going,
Make no brave oasis there.

Through the shadowlands of grieving,
Past the giants, Doubt and Fear,
Heartsick, stunned, and half believing —
Heed no whisper in your ear.

Not all things go wrong — and after
Winter’s famine comes the spring,
Kindness, beauty, children’s laughter —
Joy is ever on the wing.

Bringing this back...

A Woman's Last Word 
Robert Browning

Let's contend no more, Love,
Strive nor weep:
All be as before, Love,
---Only sleep!

What so wild as words are?
I and thou
In debate, as birds are,
Hawk on bough!

See the creature stalking
While we speak!
Hush and hide the talking,
Cheek on cheek!

What so false as truth is,
False to thee?
Where the serpent's tooth is
Shun the tree---

Where the apple reddens
Never pry---
Lest we lose our Edens,
Eve and I.

Be a god and hold me
With a charm!
Be a man and fold me
With thine arm!

Teach me, only teach, Love
As I ought
I will speak thy speech, Love,
Think thy thought---

Meet, if thou require it,
Both demands,
Laying flesh and spirit
In thy hands.

That shall be to-morrow
Not to-night:
I must bury sorrow
Out of sight:

---Must a little weep, Love,
(Foolish me!)
And so fall asleep, Love,
Loved by thee.

London Tom-Cat
Michael Hamburger

Look at the gentle savage, monstrous gentleman
With jungles in his heart, yet metropolitan
As we shall never be; who- while his human hosts,
Afraid of their own past and it's primaeval ghosts,
Pile up great walls for comfort - walks coquettishly
Through their elaborate cares, sure of himself and free
To be like them, domesticated, or aloof!
A dandy in the room, a demon on the roof,
He's delicately tough, endearingly reserved,
Adaptable, fastidious, rope-and-fibre-nerved.
Now an accomplished Yogi good at sitting still
He ponders ancient mysteries on the window-sill,
Now stretches, bares his claws and saunters off to find
the thrills of love and hunting, cunningly combined.
Acrobat, diplomat, and simple tabby cat,
He conjures tangled forests in a furnished flat.

For my Mum, who died yesterday, with all my love x

 

 

Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep

Mary Elizabeth Frye

 

Do not stand at my grave and weep,

I am not there; I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow,

I am the diamond glints on snow,

I am the sun on ripened grain,

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning’s hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circling flight.

I am the soft starlight at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,

I am not there; I did not die.

In Memoriam Private D Sutherland
killed in action in the German trench May 16th 1916
and the others who died
Ewart A Mackintosh

So you were David's father,
And he was your only son,
And the new-cut peats are rotting
And the work is left undone,
Because of an old man weeping,
Just an old man in pain,
For David, his son David,
That will not come again.  

Oh, the letters he wrote you
And I can see them still,
Not a word of the fighting
But just the sheep on the hill
And how you should get the crops in
Ere the year got stormier,
And the Bosches have got his body,
And I was his officer.  

You were only David's father,
But I had fifty sons
When we went up in the evening
Under the arch of the guns,
And we came back at twilight-
O God! I heard them call
To me for help and pity
That could not help at all.  

Oh, never will I forget you,
My men that trusted me,
More my sons than your fathers',
For they could only see
The little helpless babies
And the young men in their pride.
They could not see you dying,
And hold you when you died.  

Happy and young and gallant,
They saw their first-born go,
But not the strong limbs broken
And the beautiful men brought low,
The piteous writhing bodies,
They screamed 'Don't leave me, sir"
For they were only your fathers
But I was your officer.

For Tracey,

I Am
John Clare

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.

Temperament
Lucius Valerius Martialis (40-104 A.D.)

In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow,
Thou'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow,
Hast so much wit and mirth and spleen about thee,
There is no living with thee nor without thee.

There Will Come Soft Rains...
Sara Teasdale

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows calling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild-plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Let Us Drink
Alcæus (610BC)

Why wait we for the torches' lights?
Now let us drink, while day invites,
In mighty flagons hither bring
The deep red blood of many a vine,
That we may largely quaff, and sing
The praises of the god of wine,
The son of Jove and Semele,
Who gave the jocund wine to be
A sweet oblivion to our woes.
Fill, fill the goblet, one and two;
Let every brimmer, as it flows,
In sportive chase the last pursue.

Spring
Giovanni Battista Guarini
1537 - 1611

O Spring, thou youthful beauty of the year,
Mother of flowers, bringer of warbling choirs,
Of all sweet new green things and new desires,
Thou, Spring, returnest; but, alas! with thee
No more return to me
The calm and happy days these eyes were used to see.
Thou, thou returnest, thou,
But with these returns now
Naught else but dread remembrance of the pleasure
I took in my lost treasure.
Thou still, thou still, art the same blithe, sweet thing
Thou ever wast, O Spring;
But I, in whose weak orbs these tears arise,
Am what I was no more, dear to another's eyes.

Snowing
Walter De La Mare

Snowing; snowing;
Oh, between earth and sky
A wintry wind is blowing,
Scattering with it's sigh
Petals from trees of silver that shine
Like invisible glass, when the moon
In the void of night on high
Paces her orchards divine.

Snowing; snowing;
Ah me, how still, and how fair
The air with flakes interflowing,
The fields crystal and bare,
When the brawling brooks are dumb
And the parched trees matted with frost,
And the birds in this wilderness stare
 Dazzled and numb!

Snowing... snowing... snowing:
Moments of time through space
Into hours, centuries growing,
Till the world's marred lovely face,
Wearied of change and chance,
Radiant in innocence dream -
Lulled by an infinite grace
To rest in eternal trance.

Dunkirk
Robert Nathan

Will came back from school that day,
And he had little to say.
But he stood a long time looking down
To where the gray-green Channel water
Slapped at the foot of the little town,
And to where his boat, the Sarah P,
Bobbed at the tide on an even keel,
With her one old sail, patched at the leech,
Furled like a slattern down at heel.

He stood for a while above the beach
He saw how the wind and current caught her;
He looked a long time out to sea.
There was steady wind, and the sky was pale,
And a daze in the east that looked like smoke.

Will went back to the house to dress.
He was half way through, when his sister Bess
Who was near fourteen, and younger than he
By just two years, came home from play.
She asked him, "Where are you going, Will?"
He said, "For a good long sail."
"Can I come along?"
"No, Bess," he spoke.
"I may be gone for a night and a day."
Bess looked at him. She kept very still.
She had heard the news of the Flanders rout,
How the English were trapped above Dunkirk,
And the fleet had gone to get them out
But everyone thought that it wouldn't work.
There was too much fear, there was too much doubt.

She looked at him, and he looked at her.
They were English children, born and bred.
He frowned her down, but she wouldn't stir.
She shook her proud young head.
You'll need a crew, she said.

They raised the sail on the Sarah p,
Like a penoncel on a young knight's lance,
And headed the Sarah out to sea,
To bring their soldiers home from France.

There was no command, there was no set plan,
But six hundred boats went out with them
On the gray-green waters, sailing fast,
River excursion and fisherman,
Tug and schooner and racing M,
And the little boats came following last.
From every harbor and town they went
Who had sailed their craft in the sun and rain,
From the South Downs, from the cliffs of Kent,
From the village street, from the country lane.

There are twenty miles of rolling sea
From coast to coast, by the seagull's flight,
But the tides were fair and the wind was free,
And they raised Dunkirk by fall of night.

They raised Dunkirk with its harbor torn
By the blasted stern and the sunken prow;
They had reached for fun on an English tide,
They were English children bred and born,
And whether they lived, or whether they died,
They raced for England now.

Bess was as white as the Sarah's sail,
She set her teeth and smiled at Will.
He held his course for the smoky veil
Where the harbor narrowed thin and long.
The British ships were firing strong.

He took the Sarah into his hands,
He drove her in through fire and death
To the wet men waiting on the sands.
He got his load and he got his breath,
And she came about, and the wind fought her.

He shut his eyes and he tried to pray.
He saw his England were she lay,
The wind's green home, the sea's proud daughter,
Still in the moonlight, dreaming deep,
The English cliffs and the English loam
 He had fourteen men to get away,
And the moon was clear, and the night like day
For planes to see where the white sails creep
Over the black water.

He closed his eyes and prayed for her;
He prayed to the men who had made her great,
Who had built her land of forest and park,
Who had made the seas an English lake;
He prayed for a fog to bring the dark;
He prayed to get home for England's sake.
And the fog came down on the rolling sea,
And covered the ships with English mist.
The diving planes were baffled and blind.

For Nelson was there in the Victory,
With his one good eye, and his sullen twist,
And guns were out on The Golden Hind,
Their shot flashed over the Sarah P.
He could hear them cheer as he came about.

By burning wharves, by battered slips,
Galleon, frigate, and brigantine,
The old dead Captains fought their ships,
And the great dead Admirals led the line.
it was England's night, it was England's sea.

The fog rolled over the harbor key.
Bess held to the stays, and conned him out.
And all through the dark, while the Sarah's wake
Hissed behind him, and vanished in foam,
There at his side sat Francis Drake,
And held him true, and steered him home.

I WISH!

Poetry
Pablo Neruda

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.      

Purple
Wilfred Owen

Vividly gloomy, with bright darkling glows
Of nebulae and warm, night-shimmering shores!
Stain of full fruits, wines, passions, and the cores
Of all quick hearts! Yet from its deeps there blows
Aroma and romance of violets;
Softness of far land, hazed; pacific lift
Of smoke through quiet trees; and that wild drift
Of smoulder when the flare of evening sets.

Solemn, columnar, thunder-throning cloud
Wears it so stately that therein the King
Stands before men, and lies in death's hand, proud.
Purest, it is the diamond dawn of spring;
And yet the veil of Venus, whose rose skin,
Mauve-marbled, purples Eros' mouth for sacred sin.

Bringing this one back...

Fears and Scruples (incomplete)
Robert Browning

Here’s my case. Of old I used to love him,
This same unseen friend, before I knew:
Dream there was none like him, none above him,—
Wake to hope and trust my dream was true.

Loved I not his letters full of beauty?
Not his actions famous far and wide?
Absent, he would know I vowed him duty;
Present, he would find me at his side.

Pleasant fancy! for I had but letters,
Only knew of actions by hearsay:
He himself was busied with my betters;
What of that? My turn must come some day.

Somebody's Mother
Mary Dow Brine

The woman was old and ragged and grey
    And bent with the chill of the Winter's day.
    The street was wet with a recent snow
    And the woman's feet were aged and slow.
    She stood at the crossing and waited long,
    Alone, uncared for, amid the throng
    Of human beings who passed her by
    Nor heeded the glance of her anxious eyes.
    Down the street, with laughter and shout,
    Glad in the freedom of "school let out,"
    Came the boys like a flock of sheep,
    Hailing the snow piled white and deep.
    Past the woman so old and gray
    Hastened the children on their way.
    Nor offered a helping hand to her -
    So meek, so timid, afraid to stir
    Lest the carriage wheels or the horses' feet
    Should crowd her down in the slippery street.
    At last came one of the merry troop,
    The gayest laddie of all the group;
    He paused beside her and whispered low,
    "I'll help you cross, if you wish to go."
    Her aged hand on his strong young arm
    She placed, and so, without hurt or harm,
    He guided the trembling feet along,
    Proud that his own were firm and strong.
    Then back again to his friends he went,
    His young heart happy and well content.
    "She's somebody's mother, boys, you know,
    For all she's aged and poor and slow,
    "And I hope some fellow will lend a hand
    To help my mother, you understand,
    "If ever she's poor and old and gray,
    When her own dear boy is far away."
   
And "somebody's mother" bowed low her head
    In her home that night, and the prayer she said
    Was "God be kind to the noble boy,
    Who is somebody's son, and pride and joy!"

Lie in the Dark and Listen
Noel Coward

Lie in the dark and listen,
It's clear tonight so they're flying high
Hundreds of them, thousands perhaps,
Riding the icy, moonlight sky.
Men, materials, bombs and maps
Altimeters and guns and charts
Coffee, sandwiches, fleece-lined boots
Bones and muscles and minds and hearts
English saplings with English roots
Deep in the earth they've left below
Lie in the dark and let them go
Lie in the dark and listen.

Lie in the dark and listen
They're going over in waves and waves
High above villages, hills and streams
Country churches and little graves
And little citizen's worried dreams.
Very soon they'll have reached the sea
And far below them will lie the bays
And coves and sands where they used to be
Taken for summer holidays.
Lie in the dark and let them go
Lie in the dark and listen.

Lie in the dark and listen
City magnates and steel contractors,
Factory workers and politicians
Soft hysterical little actors Ballet dancers,
'reserved' musicians,
Safe in your warm civilian beds
Count your profits and count your sheep
Life is flying above your heads
Just turn over and try to sleep.
Lie in the dark and let them go
Theirs is a world you'll never know
Lie in the dark and listen.

Third Day of the Third Month, Rain: Written to Dispel My Depression
Yang Wan-Li 1127-1206

I go out the door; but I can't go back now,
so I borrow someone's bamboo hat to wear for a while.
Spring has tinted ten thousand leaves, and I didn't even know;
the clouds have taken a thousand mountains and swept them away.

I look for flowers in the village
but they hide from me on purpose;
and even when I find them, they only sadden me.
It would be better to lie down
and listen to the rain
in the spring mountains -
a quick downpour. then a few scattered drops.

As spring dies, the scenes grow more beautiful:
the poet will remember them for the rest of his life.
Level fields overflowing with green -
wheat in every village;
soft waters reflecting red -
flowers on every bank.

It Will Not Change
Sarah Teasdale

It will not change now
After so many years;
Life has not broken it
With parting or tears;
Death will not alter it,
It will live on
In all my songs for you
When I am gone.      

The Licorice Fields of Pontefract
John Betjeman

In the licorice fields at Pontefract
My love and I did meet
And many a burdened licorice bush
Was blooming round our feet;
Red hair she had and golden skin,
Her sulky lips were shaped for sin,
Her sturdy legs were flannel-slack'd
The strongest legs in Pontefract.

The light and dangling licorice flowers
Gave off the sweetest smells;
From various black Victorian towers
The Sunday evening bells
Came pealing over dales and hills
And tanneries and silent mills
And lowly streets where country stops
And little shuttered corner shops.

She cast her blazing eyes on me
And plucked a licorice leaf;
I was her captive slave and she
My red-haired robber chief.
Oh love! for love I could not speak,
It left me winded, wilting, weak,
And held in brown arms strong and bare
And wound with flaming ropes of hair.





 

 

The Voice

Thomas Hardy

 

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,

Saying that now you are not as you were

When you had changed from the one who was all to me,

But as at first, when our day was fair.

 

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,

Standing as when I drew near to the town

Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,

Even to the original air-blue gown!

 

Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness

Travelling across the wet mead to me here,

You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,

Heard no more again far or near?

 

Thus I; faltering forward,

Leaves around me falling,

Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,

And the woman calling.

 

Time Does Not Bring Relief
Edna St. Vincent Millay

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
   Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
   I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
   And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
   But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide

There are a hundred places where I fear
   To go,—so with his memory they brim
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
   And so stand stricken, so remembering him!

 

Absence

William Shakespeare

Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love that in your will,
Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.

Ranting Muses
Felix Dennis

We grow impatient waiting on your pleasure,
Why then affect surprise when we have flown?
A muse is not some slut to take at leisure:
You either come when called - or sleep alone.

Of Mercy and Kindness
Felix Dennis

Formal mercy clothes itself in duty,
Obnoxious to the ear and to the heart,
While kindness is itself a form of beauty,
And all its artists masters of their art.

 

Two very different poems from this Australian poet.

 

Beauty of the World

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 to their hearts in pain

Over and over again.

The terror of Beauty is this:

That something may find the abyss,

Some fact of 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!

 

Languid upon their slopes of silvery death

Dead giants sway to the noon breezes' breath;

How these things torture the soul!

Moonlight that loiters on a mossy bole;

Sunglow that makes a pillow of a stone;

The drifts of forest light;

Trees in a stormy night;

Bush echoes; ocean's unresolving tone;

Or groups of falling chords melting to one;

The softness of a kookaburra's crown

The wind puts softly up and softly down;

His eyes of love that almost humanly speak

Peering in softness o'er that murderous beak!

 

Gardens will blossom forever, breaking the spirit,

All your endeavour be guerdonless, trammelled with dross;

Vain the accomplishing ardours the races inherit

Till true men open their mouths, confessing their loss.

Beauty strides like a warrior, tortures the passions,

Troubles the soul with its mountainous loveliness;

Vain what we yearn toward, vain all the deft hand fashions,

Till, turning toward the ranges, men confess

That they shall trouble overmuch

For things they'll never touch;

That forests they move among

Shall always elude their yearning

And all their passion be as the returning

Silence when the thrush has sung.

 

When, folded on gully and crown,

The west light spreads the shadows down

And daylight dies on unapproachable hills,

The breathing silence storms us, the heart fills,

We're sated with sublimity...

But, having tramped those tracks and crossed those rills

Nearing their slopes, the mountains cease to be.

 

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.

 

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

 Nursery Rhyme

Frank Wilmot

One year, two year, three year, four,
Comes a khaki gentleman knocking at the door.
"Any little boys at home, send them out to me
To train them and brain them in battles yet to be."

When a little boy is born feed him, train him so.
Put him in a cattle pen and wait for him to grow.
When he's nice and plump and dear, and sensible and sweet,
Throw him in the trenches for the great grey rats to eat.
Toss him in the cannon's mouth, cannons fancy best
Tender little boys' flesh that's easy to digest.

Mother rears her family on two pounds ten a week.
Teaches them to wash themselves, teaches them to speak.
Rears them with a heart's love, rears them to be men.
Grinds her fingers to the bone, and then... what then?

But parents who must rear the boys the cannons love to slay,
Also pay for cannons that blow other boys away.
Parsons tell them that their sons have just been blown to bits.
Patriotic parents must all laugh like fits.

Rear the boys for honest men and send them out to die!
Where's the coward father who would dare raise a cry?
Any gentleman's aware folk rear their children for
Blunderers and plunderers to mangle in a war!

Five year, six year, seven year, eight.
"Hurry up you little chaps, the captain's at the gate!"

Happy Valentine's Day!

 

After Love
Sarah Teasdale

There is no magic any more,
We meet as other people do,
You work no miracle for me
Nor I for you.

You were the wind and I the sea --
There is no splendor any more,
I have grown listless as the pool
Beside the shore.

But though the pool is safe from storm
And from the tide has found surcease,
It grows more bitter than the sea,
For all its peace.      

Tigers
Felix Dennis

When men apply to rise to fame
And test the sun with candle flame,
The spur that sets all such apart
Are tigers tearing at their heart.

Love and hate are but the fees
Such tigers gift their enemies,
Neglectful of the famished rage
That paces in a sunless cage.

If we could learn what love is for
And love ourselves a little more,
What gentler lives might tigers live:
Ourselves it is we must forgive.

 

 

Chatsworth - Autumn 2012 with Lynn