Ahhhhhhhhhh....I want one :( But will have to wait until life is a bit steadier alas.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
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Ahhhhhhhhhh....I want one :( But will have to wait until life is a bit steadier alas.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
Hi stranger. Yes, Cohen has always conjured up lugubrious booze-ladened late nights for me, but perhaps that's my ignorance of his fuller oeuvre. Can see a spell of Youtube listening beckoning. I do like some of the above lines tho.
After Apple-Picking
By Robert Frost
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.
Poppies on the Wheat
Along Ancona's hills the shimmering heat,
A tropic tide of air with ebb and flow
Bathes all the fields of wheat until they glow
Like flashing seas of green, which toss and beat
Around the vines. The poppies lithe and fleet
Seem running, fiery torchmen, to and fro
To mark the shore.
The farmer does not know
That they are there. He walks with heavy feet,
Counting the bread and wine by autumn's gain,
But I,—I smile to think that days remain
Perhaps to me in which, though bread be sweet
No more, and red wine warm my blood in vain,
I shall be glad remembering how the fleet,
Lithe poppies ran like torchmen with the wheat.
Helen Hunt Jackson
The Lonely Farmer
Poor hill farmer astray in the grass;
There came a movement and he looked up, but
All that he saw was the wind pass.
There was a sound of voice on the air.
But where, where? It was only the glib stream talking
Softly to itself. And once when he was walking
Along a lane in spring he was deceived
By a shrill; whistle coming through the leaves;
Wait a minute, wait a minute-four swift notes;
He turned, and it was nothing, only a Thrush
In the thorn bushes easing its throat.
He swore at himself for paying heed,
The poor hill farmer, so often again
Stopping, staring, listening, in vain,
His ear betrayed by the heart's need.
R.S. Thomas
I was descending from Ingleborough towards Whernside the other evening and there was a group of swifts circling the rock face below.
soaring below me
as if holding their breaths
the swifts are silent
I'm used to the screaming, it was quite eerie.
I have heard that Stolly can get a bit excitable at times :rolleyes::DQuote:
Originally Posted by Hes
Birding at the Dairy
We're searching
for the single
yellow-headed
blackbird
we've heard
commingles
with thousands
of starlings
and brown-headed
cowbirds,
when the many-
headed body
arises
and undulates,
a sudden congress
of wings
in a maneuvering
wave that veers
and wheels, a fleet
and schooling swarm
in synchronous alarm,
a bloom radiating
in ribbons, in sheets,
in waterfall,
a murmuration
of birds
that turns
liquid in air,
that whooshes
like waves
on the shore,
or the breath
of a great
seething prayer.
Sidney Wade
:thumbup: that made me laugh out loud!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
I really love this Alf. It's always good to come here and find something that I've not read before and there are some beautifully evocative lines in it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf