Great things happen when men and mountains meet,
That is not done by jostling in the street.
Read it in a book once, not sure where its comes from.
Printable View
Great things happen when men and mountains meet,
That is not done by jostling in the street.
Read it in a book once, not sure where its comes from.
good evening!Quote:
Originally Posted by merrylegs
some very good stuff on here today....
think that qoute is william blake but not sure where from exactly :)
Good evening!
Enjoying this thread:cool:
The bit where she writes:Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
reminded me of the last lines of Henry Reed "Judging Distances".Quote:
Mid sea, a month our of range
of the wireless;
on my way to you. Floating
between landfalls,
between one hemisphere and another.
Between the words
"wife" and "widow."
Kenneth Ormiston:)Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
i can't keep my eyes open for much longer, here is my final offering for the night, one of my favourite poems which many of you will be familiar with I am sure...looking forward to what tomorrow's thread brings....
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
e e cummings
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closesand opens;
only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
night all
it was lovely :)Quote:
Originally Posted by XRunner
Bobert certainly liked it, but he seems to have gone?Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
eh? :confused:Quote:
Originally Posted by sheep
He's someone else now.;):DQuote:
Originally Posted by sheep
waaaaaaaaaat?Quote:
Originally Posted by Al Fowler
misery...put me out of!
Quote:
Originally Posted by sheep
I really enjoyed this poem. I'd never come across it before. Thanks for that!
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
e e cummings
Totally gorgeous. I am loving this thread. Looking forward to tomorrow and will post another favourite (when I've got my printing done and after Harriers).
Silly PoemSpike Milligan
Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I'll draw a sketch of thee,
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B?
Boom...boom!
J M Edmunds
When you go home, tell them of us and say,
For their tommow we gave our today.
I seem to have missed out on this thread :( But here is where my signature comes from:
"A lonely stone
Afloat in the stone heavings of emptiness
Keeps telling her tale. Foxes killed her.
You take the coins out of the hollow in the top of it.
Put your own in. Foxes killed her here.
Why just here? Why not five yards that way?
A squared column, planted by careful labour.
Sun cannot ease it, though the moors grow warm.
Foxes killed her, and her milk spilled.
Or they did not. And it did not. Maybe
Farmers brought their milk this far, and cottegers
From the top of Luddenden valley left cash
In the stones crown, probably in vinegar,
And the farmers left their change. Relic of The Plague.
Churn-milk jamb. And Joan did not come trudging
Through the long swoon of moorland
With her sodden feet, nipped face.
Neither snow nor foxes made her lie down
While they did whatever they wanted.
The negative of the skylines is blank.
Only a word wrenched. Then the pain came,
And her mouth opened.
And now all of us,
Even this stone, have to be memorials
Of her futile stumblings and screams
And awful death".
Churn-Milk Joan
By Ted Hughes
For the uninitiated, Churn Milk Joan is a boundary stone above Mytholmroyd in the Calder Valley, close to Crow Hill. When I stood by it I could just reach to the coins in the cup at the top - I knew the folklore but for some reason I never expected to find any there. It was a nice surprise to find some and be able to swap for a couple of my own.
Freckle I love that alternative creation tale from Crow by Hughes!
Welcome to a great thread Stevie! Ted Hughes' poetry is so visceral and earthy, brilliant.
This made me laugh and is from Carol Anne Duffy's 'The World's Wife Series' (it is also short which is good as I'm supposed to be working)
Mrs Darwin
7 April 1852
Went to the Zoo.
I said to Him -
Something about that Chimpanzee over there
reminds me of you.
Churn-Milk Joan
By Ted Hughes
Stevie - an early favourite poem of mine this one. I came across it in "Remains Of Elmet" a collaboration between Ted Hughes and Fay Godwin, b&w photographer. And of course, the Calderdale Way relays cut right across the stone. Really good to re-read it today. Thank you!
I read this out in the church at my baby's christening a few weeks ago....
If I could speak here's what I would say
Happy in your arms I want to stay
I am your gift and you are mine too
Let love bond together both me and you.
Lets enjoy this time right here right now
Don't let a schedule furrow your brow
Right now is the time for me to hold
When you're less busy I'll be too old.
Snuggle me tenderley close to your chest
It is here next to you I am at my best
Your rhythmic breathing and beating heart
Contentment and comfort to me impart.
To see you smell you, assured by your voice
All wonderfully simple yet help me rejoice
A cuddle a kiss, some playful fun and frolic
Can banish a mood and prevent nasty colic.
Hold me hug me please show me your day
You'll be sharing your love in a marvellous way
My learning is best when perched at your side
With arms as my classroom and you as my guide.
Please hold me up high so I might see
All the many wonders surrounding me
With time spent close as you socialise
My mind expands and clearly I vocalise.
When you work, walk or take a short trip
With me safely balanced upon your hip
My muscle tone and self esteem are greater
I'll be walking much sooner rather than later.
When we are in touch it reduces our stress
We are happiest then and worry much less
Safe in your arms dispels all my fears
My beaming smiles replace anxious tears.
To dream of our future is significant too
And I know a career is important to you
When I am older then we'll join the race
We'll be much more able to keep up the pace.
Right now what I know as certain and right
Is that you are the sun, the source of my light
I don't need many things expensive or new
What I need is your time, your love and you.
xxx
Right now what I know as certain and right
Is that you are the sun, the source of my light
I don't need many things expensive or new
What I need is your time, your love and you.
xxx[/QUOTE]
dear mountain goatess...this is so lovely i came close to blubbing at this last paragraph.....
loved everyone's stuff today...keep it coming :)
Here's another one that resonates well with fell running -especially verse 2
Sylvia Plath - Wuthering Heights
The horizons ring me like faggots,
Tilted and disparate, and always unstable.
Touched by a match, they might warm me,
And their fine lines singe
The air to orange
Before the distances they pin evaporate,
Weighting the pale sky with a soldier color.
But they only dissolve and dissolve
Like a series of promises, as I step forward.
There is no life higher than the grasstops
Or the hearts of sheep, and the wind
Pours by like destiny, bending
Everything in one direction.
I can feel it trying
To funnel my heat away.
If I pay the roots of the heather
Too close attention, they will invite me
To whiten my bones among them.
The sheep know where they are,
Browsing in their dirty wool-clouds,
Gray as the weather.
The black slots of their pupils take me in.
It is like being mailed into space,
A thin, silly message.
They stand about in grandmotherly disguise,
All wig curls and yellow teeth
And hard, marbly baas.
I come to wheel ruts, and water
Limpid as the solitudes
That flee through my fingers.
Hollow doorsteps go from grass to grass;
Lintel and sill have unhinged themselves.
Of people and the air only
Remembers a few odd syllables.
It rehearses them moaningly:
Black stone, black stone.
The sky leans on me, me, the one upright
Among all horizontals.
The grass is beating its head distractedly.
It is too delicate
For a life in such company;
Darkness terrifies it.
Now, in valleys narrow
And black as purses, the house lights
Gleam like small change.
dear mountain goatess...this is so lovely i came close to blubbing at this last paragraph.....Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
loved everyone's stuff today...keep it coming :)[/QUOTE]
I know...it gets my bottom lip quivering every time! ha
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
thank you :)
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away
(Percy Bysshe) Shelley
Fantastic! (though nothing to do with fell running...)
Pleasure :)Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
this one isn't to do with fell running but i love it nevertheless.....gets me everytime....
The threadby Don Peterson
Jamie made his landing in the world
so hard he ploughed straight back into the earth.
They caught him by the thread of his one breath
and pulled him up. They don't know how it held.
And so today I thank what higher will
brought us to here, to you and me and Russ,
the great twin-engined swaying wingspan of us
roaring down the back of Kirrie Hill
and your two-year-old lungs somehow out-revving
every engine in the universe.
All that trouble just to turn up dead
was all I thought that long week. Now the thread
is holding all of us: look at our tiny house,
son, the white dot of your mother waving.
:)
It is about the traumatic birth of his son and so much more...i love that last line....
When travelling from Bradford,
To Bristol Templemeads.
You don't have to change yourunderpants,
But you have to change at Leeds.
John Hegley beats Wordsworth any day of the week!
tee hee!Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry H Howgill
There are a few books about the poetry of athletics:
"Running in Literature" by Roger Robinson ( 2003) is the best general book that contains a number of poems about athletics. There are many other books containing individual poems.
Quote:
1993 A Time To Reflect(Travis, Peter)
1987 Sporting Literature. An Anthology (Scannell, Vernon; Editor)
1986 One Track Mind. A Runner's Primer Of Poetry (Obeng, Ernest)
1982 Pindar. The Odes (Penguin Classics) (Bowra, C M)
1979 Athletics Is My Joy, My One And Only Love And Other Poems (Johnson, Derek J N)
1977 Run to Reality (Eischens, Roger R; Greist, John H and McInvaille, Tom)
1973 Poems Of a Long Distance Runner (Spino, Mike)
1970 Cotswold Games, Annalia Dubrensia (Vyvyan, E R Editor)
1965 Sprints And Distance. Sports In Poetry And The Poetry Of Sports (Morrison, Lillian)
1964 Pindar (Bowra, C A)
1937 Track And Field (Bostelmann, Carl John)
1930 Anthology Of Sporting Verse (Osborn, E B)
1912 Vergil's Athletic Sports. Selected from Vergil's Aeneid (Winbolt, S E Editor)
1905 The Athlete's Garland (Rice, Grantland)
1903 The Olympic And Pythian Odes Of Pindar (Dole, Nathan Haskell)
1896 A Shropshire Lad. To An Athlete Dying Young (Poem XIX) (Housman, Alfred Edward)
1888 Atalanta's Race And Other Tales from The Earthly Paradise by (William Morris Adams, Oscar Fay and Rolfe,
William J Editors)
1883 Pindar's Nemean And Isthmian Odes (Fennell, C A M (Editor)
1879 Dramatic Idylls (1st Series. Includes The poem "Pheidippides") (Browning, Robert)
1775 Six Olympic Odes Of Pindar, etc. (Pye, Henry James)
1748 Pastorals, Epistles, Odes, And Other Original Poems (Philips, Ambrose)
1740 Hobbinol Or The Rural Games. A Burlesque Poem In Blank Verse (Somerville, William)
1713 Olympic Odes Of Pindar (Sternhold and Hopkins)
Pure Peace Music
Li Po
The mist is deep, the waters are broad;
Tidings and letters have no way to reach him.
Only in the azure sky there is the moon beyond the clouds,
Minded to shine on the love lorn pair so far apart.
All day things remind me and wound my heart;
My sad eyebrows are like a lock that's hard to open.
Night after night I ever keep for him the half of my quilt
In expectation of his spirit-coming back to me in a dream.
old chinese poem (T'ang dynasty)
Wow X runner! thanks for this! you need to open a library :DQuote:
Originally Posted by XRunner
ps i would love to hear some of your favourites.....
All the birds have flown up and gone
A lonely cloud floats leisurely by
We never tire of looking at each other
Only the mountain and I.
I really really love this short poem by Goethe. I have refrained from posting it, as I only know it in German and don't want to seem pretentious... I choose it at school to learn by heart and read in front of the class, we all had to do one in German lessons... I have never forgotten it...
Apologies for the lack of umlauts and stuff... don't know how to do them on here?
Wanderers Nachtlied... Goethe
Uber all Gipfeln ist ruh
In alle Wipfeln spurest du
kaum einen hauch
die Vogelein schweigen im Walde,
warte nur
bald ruhest du auch.
In EnglishQuote:
Originally Posted by Hanneke
Or even traditional ChineseQuote:
Over all the hilltops is calm.
in all the treetops
you feel hardly a breath of air.
The little birds fall silent in the woods.
Just wait... soon you'll also be at rest.
Quote:
在所有小山頂是鎮靜的
在所有樹梢 您幾乎不感覺空氣呼吸
小的鳥秋天沈默在森林
等待…很快是休息
isn't it beautiful?....thank you for posting it han :)Quote:
Originally Posted by XRunner
.......traditional chinese........:-)
Thanks for that XR :)
Now, another poem that is close to my heart is one by our local poet Owen Sheers... It describes a local hill here, the 'Skirrid' or St Michaels Mount. It is set a little away from the first hills of the Black Mountains and has the remnants of a chapel on top of it. It makes for a good, easy run through some forest then up it's spine... with a brief rest at the chapel ruins to take in the views accross to the Black Mountains and Brecon Beacons beyond, before turning back and flying down...
Skirrid Fawr
Just like the farmer who once came to scoop
handfuls of soil from her holy scar,
so I am still drawn to her back for the answers
to every question I have ever known,
To the sentence of her slopes,
the blunt wind glancing from her withers,
to the split view she reveals
with every step along her broken spine.
This edge of her cleft palate,
part hill, part field,
rising from low mist, a lonely hulk
adrift through Wales.
Her east-west flanks, one dark, one sunlit,
her vernacular of borders.
Her weight, the unspoken words
of an unlearned tongue.
My poetry thread didn't last as long as this one.
Aw...and i think it was good :)Quote:
Originally Posted by XRunner
Good morning all....
Helvellyn
Sir Walter Scott
I climd'd the dark brow of mighty Helvellyn,
Lakes and mountains beneath me gleam'd misty and wide;
All was still, save by fits, when the eagle was yelling,
And starting around me the echoes replied.
On the right, Striden-edge round the Red-tarn was bending
And Catchedicam its left verge was defending,
One huge nameless rock in the front was ascending,
When I mark'd the sad spot where the wanderer had died.
Dark green was that spot 'mid the brown mountain heather,
Where the Pilgrim of Nature lay stretch'd in decay,
Like the corpse of an outcast abandon'd to weather,
Till the mountain winds wasted the tenantless clay.
Nor yet quite deserted, though lonely extended,
For, faithful in death, his mute favourite attended,
The much-loved remains of her master defended,
And chased the hill-fox and raven away.
How long didst thou think that his silence was slumber?
When the wind waved his garment, how oft didst thou start?
How many long days and long weeks didst thou number,
Ere he faded before thee, the friend of thy heart?
And, oh, was it meet, that - no requiem read o'er him -
No mother to weep, and no friend to deplore him,
And thou, little guardian, alone stretch'd before him -
Unhonour'd the Pilgrim from life should depart?
When a Prince to the fate of the Peasant has yielded,
The tapestry waves dark round the rim-lighted hall;
With scutcheons of silver the coffin is shielded,
And pages stand mute by the canopied pall:
Through the court, at deep midnight, the torches are gleaming;
In proudly-arch'd chapel the banners are beaming,
Far adown the long aisle sacred music is streaming,
Lamenting a Chief of the people should fall.
But meeter for thee, gentle lover of nature,
To lay down thy head like the meek mountain lamb,
When, wilder'd, he drops from some huge cliff in stature,
And draws his last sob by the side of his dam.
And more stately thy couch by the desert lake lying,
Thy obsequies sung by the grave plover flying,
With one faithful friend but to witness thy dying,
In the arms of Helvellyn and Catchedicam.