Well, my lord, this is really something! Welcome back Hes, I enjoyed your haiku very much. Sounds like you have your work cut out for you now! Good luck with the exhibition :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
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Well, my lord, this is really something! Welcome back Hes, I enjoyed your haiku very much. Sounds like you have your work cut out for you now! Good luck with the exhibition :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
Aw thanks Alf this brought a smile to my face when I watched this morning eating my brekkie...the little un seems fine now thank you just a minor scrape but one that required stitches of a sort! Some fine choices by you and the tupster nice to see the thread lively :-)
Here is a poem to warm yourself before another day of hill running in Scotland (by Robert Bird):
Scotch Porridge
Ower Scotland's corn the laverocks whustle,
Amang the rigs the corncraiks rustle,
Frae gowden taps the millstanes jostle
And hoop wi' health,
Auld Scotland's cog o' grit an' gristle -
A nation's wealth.
Ye wha wad ken life's pleasures sweet,
Wad haud the doctor in the street,
Wad mak' the tichtest twa en's meet
Whan scant o' siller,
Taste parritch fine! and thy glad feet
Will chase the miller.
In boilin' water, salted weel,
'Tween fingers rins the ruchsome meal,
While the brisk spurtle gars them wheel
In jaups an' rings -
Ae guid half-hour, syne bowls may reel
Wi' food for kings.
Nae butter, syrup, sugar brown,
For him wha sups, shall creesh thy crown,
But milk alane, maun isle thee roun',
Till thou dost soom,
Then a' man needs is ae lang spoon
And elbow room.
Gie France her puddocks and ragouts,
Gie England puddings, beefs, and stews,
Gie Ireland taties, shamrocks, soos,
And land sae bogie,
True Scotsmen still will scaud their mou's
Ower Scotland's cogie.
Puir parritch! here thou'rt scant respeckit,
For frizzled fare, thou'rt aft negleckit;
But Grecian Sparta sune was wreckit
'Mang drinkin' horns,
And Scotia's thristle may be sneckit
Whan thee she scorns.
But, mark the Scot ayont the sea
Welcome his meal, wi' dewy e'e,
He gars the first made parritch flee
Frae oot the dish,
While, that his pock ne'er toom may be,
Is a' his wish.
Proud Scotland's sons, o' hill and glen,
Ha'e round the world frae en' tae en'
Wi' doughty deeds o' tongue and pen,
Coal, steam, and steel -
O! what has made those mighty men,
But Scotland's meal?
On Bannockburn, and freedom's day,
When Britons met in war's array,
E'en though the Northmen knelt to say
Their creed or carritch,
What made the differ' in that fray
Was Scotland's parritch.
For makin' flesh and buildin' banes,
There ne'er was siccan food for weans,
It knits their muscles steeve as stanes,
And teuch as brasses;
Fills hooses fu' o' boys wi' brains,
And rosy lassies.
My blessing on the dusty miller
Wha gi'es me gowden health for siller!
My blessing on each honest tiller,
Wha breaks the clod,
And gars green corn, Death's foe and killer,
Spring frae the sod!
That is a really interesting choice X Runner....nice one !
I can't cut and paste this poem...but it is well worth the click...
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetrya...o?poemId=12415
Listening to raised voices
What my parents never realized
Was, that every night
When I had “gone to bed”
I would listen at the top of the stairs
To the raised voices about nothing
And everything.
I didn’t know it then,
but they were sounds
Of relentless emptiness,
of a couple trapped by decency,
economy and “Keeping Up Appearances”.
Of not knowing what was possible
Or daring to dream.
How arrogant to think
That the timeless part of my brain
Populated by these figures of the past
Would not re-enact
A version of their puppet show
And lead to a similar fate
Only this time
By virtue of luck, love
and a generational shift
The strings have been cut.
There will be the sting of separation
but not...
Listening to raised voices.
Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
Very good poem again freckle :cool:
Cotton Grass
Simon Armitage
Hand-maiden, humble courtiers,
yes-men in silver wigs,
they stoop at the path's edge,
bend low to the emperor's feet,
to the military parade
of boots and sticks.
Then its back to work,
to the acid acres,
to wade barefoot through
water logged peat,
trawling the mist,
carding the air
for threads of sheep wool
snagged on the breeze,
letting time blaze through their
ageless hair like the wind.
according to the Sunday Times News Review this poem was composed by Simon whilst walking the Pennine way. (21st August 10)
For those of you with easy access to the lakes and an interest in poetry...
poetry reading this tuesday and list of events...
http://www.wordsworth.org.uk/events/...asp?pageid=316
Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
Hand-maiden, humble courtiers, ? No surely not :wink::)
The Sea-Limits
Consider the sea's listless chime:
Time's self it is, made audible,--
The murmur of the earth's own shell.
Secret continuance sublime
Is the sea's end: our sight may pass
No furlong farther. Since time was,
This sound hath told the lapse of time.
No quiet, which is death's,--it hath
The mournfulness of ancient life,
Enduring always at dull strife.
As the world's heart of rest and wrath,
Its painful pulse is in the sands.
Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
Grey and not known, along its path.
Listen alone beside the sea,
Listen alone among the woods;
Those voices of twin solitudes
Shall have one sound alike to thee:
Hark where the murmurs of thronged men
Surge and sink back and surge again,--
Still the one voice of wave and tree.
Gather a shell from the strown beach
And listen at its lips: they sigh
The same desire and mystery,
The echo of the whole sea's speech
And all mankind is thus at heart
Not anything but what thou art:
And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
I found a reference to a TV series 'Desperate Romantics' covering the lives of Rossetti (as an artist) and the other pre-Raphaelites which was on last year and passed me right by at the time but I managed to find an episode the other day and it looks quite good so I will try and find the rest of the episodes now.
"Hand-maiden, humble courtiers, ? No surely not :wink::)"
I hear what you are saying and don't think it hadn't crossed my mind Alf! .....nice sea poem there :wink:
Time
‘Established’ is a good word, much used in garden books,
‘The plant, when established’ . . .
Oh, become established quickly, quickly, garden
For I am fugitive, I am very fugitive – – –
Those that come after me will gather these roses,
And watch, as I do now, the white wisteria
Burst, in the sunshine, from its pale green sheath.
Planned. Planted. Established. Then neglected,
Till at last the loiterer by the gate will wonder
At the old, old cottage, the old wooden cottage,
And say ‘One might build here, the view is glorious;
This must have been a pretty garden once.’
Ursula Bethell
Welcome to the thread Einar...this is a beautiful choice I found it quite poignant....so many poems on here seem to touch on the issue of time and mortality....good stuff!Quote:
Originally Posted by Einar
having left my mobile phone at home in my haste to leave the house this morning i must confess i feel a tad lost!
another sea poem...
LOST AT SEA
by: Danske Dandridge (1854-1914)
http://www.poetry-archive.com/a_pic.gifH, many a time I have wept by night,
I have moaned with the moaning sea,
When the dear lost eyes of my dead delight
Looked out of her depths on me.
And many a time when the sea was calm,
And the moon was lying there,
I have caught the gleam of a snowy arm,
And the glimmer of flowing hair.
But I would I had died when the ship went down
That was bringing my love to me,
When my hope, and my heart, and my all went down
To the heart of the heaving sea.
How she moans all night for the cruel deed;
She moans, for she cannot rest;
And she cradles my bride with the brown sea-weed
In the swell of her troubled breast.
How she sucks my life with her sobbing breath,
How she draws me with her spell,
Till I know that at last I shall sink in death
Where the coiled sea-serpents dwell.
Then my spirit will haste to her resting-place,
As she lies on the wreck-strewn floor;
I will shelter my love in a close embrace
Till the sea shall be no more.
Thank you Freckle. I may not be a frequent visitor, but there are some really great and moving poems on this site so if I come across any I really like I'll post them.
Sounds like an excellent plan Einar :) i look forward to more as and when :wink:Quote:
Originally Posted by Einar
A Dreaming Week
Carol Ann Duffy
Not tonight, I'm dreaming
in the heart of the honeyed dark
in a boat of a bed in the attic room
in the house on the edge of the park
where the wind in the big old trees
creaks like an ark.
Not tomorrow, I'm dreaming
till dusk turns into dawn-dust,must,
most, moot, moon, mown, down-
with my hand on an open unread book,
a bird that's never flown...distantly
the birdsong of the telephone.
Not the following evening, I'm dreaming
in the monocle of the moon,
a sleeping S on the page of a bed
in the tome of a dim room, the rain
on the roof, rhyming there,
like the typed words of a poem.
Not the night after that, I'm dreaming
till the stars are blue in the face
printing the news of their old light
with the ink of space,
yards and yards of black silk night
to cover my sleeping face.
Not the next evening, I'm dreaming
in the crook of midnight's arm
like a lover held by another
safe from harm, like a child
stilled by a mother, soft and warm,
twelve golden faraway bells for a charm.
Not that night either, I'm dreaming
till the tides have come and gone
sighing over the frowning sand,
the whale's lonely song
scored on wave after wave of water
all the wet night long.
Not the last evening, I'm dreaming
under the stuttering clock,
under the covers, under closed eyes,
all colours fading to black,
the last of daylight hurrying
for a date with the glamorous dark.
Speak of the North! A Lonely Moor
Speak of the North! A lonely moor
Silent and dark and tractless swells,
The waves of some wild streamlet pour
Hurriedly through its ferny dells.
Profoundly still the twilight air,
Lifeless the landscape; so we deem
Till like a phantom gliding near
A stag bends down to drink the stream.
And far away a mountain zone,
A cold, white waste of snow-drifts lies,
And one star, large and soft and lone,
Silently lights the unclouded skies
Charlotte Bronte
Woke up this morning feeling home-sick :o
High waving heather 'neath stormy blasts bending
High waving heather 'neath stormy blasts bending,
Midnight and moonlight and bright shining stars,
Darkness and glory rejoicingly blending,
Earth rising to heaven and heaven descending,
Man's spirit away from its drear dungeon sending,
Bursting the fetters and breaking the bars.
All down the mountain sides wild forests lending
One mighty voice to the life-giving wind,
Rivers their banks in their jubilee rending,
Fast through the valleys a reckless course wending,
Wider and deeper their waters extending,
Leaving a desolate desert behind.
Shining and lowering and swelling and dying,
Changing forever from midnight to noon;
Roaring like thunder, like soft music sighing,
Shadows on shadows advancing and flying,
Lighning-bright flashes the deep gloom defying,
Coming as swiftly and fading as soon
Emily Bronte
Thanks for posting that freckle. I will post a Duffy poem myself, a favourite poem of mine which was written fairly recently. It is a war poem in reverse, if only! :cool:Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
Last Post
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin
that moment shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud . . .
but you get up, amazed, watch bled bad blood
run upwards from the slime into its wounds;
see lines and lines of British boys rewind
back to their trenches, kiss the photographs from home —
mothers, sweethearts, sisters, younger brothers
not entering the story now
to die and die and die.
Dulce — No — Decorum — No — Pro patria mori.
You walk away.
You walk away; drop your gun (fixed bayonet)
like all your mates do too —
Harry, Tommy, Wilfred, Edward, Bert —
and light a cigarette.
There’s coffee in the square,
warm French bread
and all those thousands dead
are shaking dried mud from their hair
and queuing up for home. Freshly alive,
a lad plays Tipperary to the crowd, released
from History; the glistening, healthy horses fit for heroes, kings.
You lean against a wall,
your several million lives still possible
and crammed with love, work, children, talent, English beer, good food.
You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile.
If poetry could truly tell it backwards,
then it would
Carol Ann Duffy
Quote:
Originally Posted by Derby Tup
Two good selections there DT and were very evocative, you could almost smell the heather, hear the running water and feel the wind which probably doesn't help your homesickness!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
That's helped my home-sickness come on a treat Alf :p
All wonderful stuff on the last page. On the subject of time, I hope this makes you smile - by Piet Hein, a Great Dane who thought about time a lot.
Timing Toast
There's an art of knowing when.
Never try to guess.
Toast until it smokes and then
Twenty seconds less.
I like this Einar :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Einar
Thanks DT, more of Hein's nuggets of wisdom to follow then. Some of your recent posts have given me great pleasure too, and that goes for a lot of the choices on this thread.
This made me sad. Its quite beautiful but also rather apt as I have a lovely little garden that I just haven't had time to care for properly and season by season I watch it become wilder. The herbs are looking good though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Einar
I really enjoyed your choices DT. I hope you are home again soon.
Here is another moorland poem by the Scottish poet William Renton:
Mountain Twilight
The hills slipped over each on each
Till all their changing shadows died.
Now in the open skyward reach
The lights grow solemn side by side.
While of these hills the westermost
Rears high his majesty of coast
In shifting waste of dim-blue brine
And fading olive hyaline;
Till all the distance overflows,
The green in watchet and the blue
In purple. Now they fuse and close -
A darkling violet, fringed anew
With light that on the mountains soar,
A dusky flame on tranquil shores;
Kindling the summits as they grow
In audience to the skies that call,
Ineffable in rest and all
The pathos of the afterglow.
September
The golden-rod is yellow;
The corn is turning brown;
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down.
The gentian's bluest fringes
Are curling in the sun;
In dusty pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun.
The sedges flaunt their harvest,
In every meadow nook;
And asters by the brook-side
Make asters in the brook,
From dewy lanes at morning
The grapes' sweet odors rise;
At noon the roads all flutter
With yellow butterflies.
By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer's best of weather,
And autumn's best of cheer.
But none of all this beauty
Which floods the earth and air
Is unto me the secret
Which makes September fair.
'T is a thing which I remember;
To name it thrills me yet:
One day of one September
I never can forget.
Helen Hunt Jackson
Lament
no more the curlew's bubbling cry
long since flown west
and summer passed by
rain tears are wept
by the moorland sky
as the heather fades
and the flowers die
oh what will become
of you and I?
Great poem MG. September, best month of the year cos me birthday's in it:thumbup:
Lovely stuff Mountain Goatess, and very appropriate for today.
Here's another old (but very sad) poem with a moorland connection, from Gaelic folklore.
The Hare
Whoever reads my testimonial,
I was unquestionably virtuous,
Without gloom or servility
In my nature.
I would not eat rank grass,
What was food for my kind
Was the fine herbs
Of the moorlands.
My cap, though it be reddish,
Was beloved by ladies,
And my haunch, though cold,
By gentlemen.
'Tis a sad tale to tell
That I am tonight laid low
And that my brain-pan
Is being mangled,
After they had removed my coat
Right down to my paws,
And roasted my carcass
On embers.
Not thus was I at
The Martinmas season
Frisking and sporting
Mid the rough hills.
Without thought at that time
That the villain would come
With his gin to ensnare me
In the gloaming.
I was at home on the heaths
Where my father and ancestors
Were sportive, merry
And spirited;
Nibbling the blades of grass
On rounded slopes and moors,
Though I fell into the snare
Which was grievous for me.
Alexander Carmichael
Now that's very good Hes :cool:Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mountain Goatess
good selection MG. I came across an old post of yours the other day.
http://forum.fellrunner.org.uk/showt...dle#post293678
Great poem :cool:
Thanks Alf...shame it's not my own work! I do love the candle poem too :thumbup:Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
Cheers Alf! Am in a wistful kind of mood.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
Ha ha. I like that Einar. Wise words.Quote:
Originally Posted by Einar
Lovely poem Hes. It was a gorgeous day today, but autumn is on the way.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
this is gorgeous Hes...hope you are well, feels like we haven't caught up in yonks!Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
Some great choices on here over the past 24 hours I can barely keep up!...personally I love september and autumn although I can appreciate it has a rather melancholy tone.
Hi HHH, it was beautiful today but I can feel the autumn melancholy creeping in!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry H Howgill