Crikey AlfQuote:
Originally Posted by Alf
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Crikey AlfQuote:
Originally Posted by Alf
This was an old favourite when I was a young lad:
Vitai Lampada
There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night --
Ten to make and the match to win --
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"
The sand of the desert is sodden red, --
Red with the wreck of a square that broke; --
The Gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England's far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of schoolboy rallies the ranks,
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"
This is the word that year by year
While in her place the School is set
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind --
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"
Sir Henry Newbolt
But this one is now my favourite war poem and the only thing the 2 have in common is a Latin title.
Dulce et Decorum est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned out backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Wilfred Owen
Excellent choice Alf. Still remember my school teacher reciting that to us about 40 years ago. Brilliant, and it's always been my favourite war poem too.
I'll second that. Great poem. All the more thought-provoking as the 11th nears.
Wow...that took my breath away. What a beautiful poem, so full of hope too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
I have been preoccupied lately with one thing and another and a little weary with a pending house move but I have enjoyed dipping in and out of the thread to find some lovely choices. Alf your last two war poem choices have been great. Here is one from hardy...
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.
all which isn't singing is mere talking
all which isn't singing is mere talking
and all talking's talking to oneself
(whether that oneself be sought or seeking
master or disciple sheep or wolf)
gush to it as diety or devil
-toss in sobs and reasons threats and smiles
name it cruel fair or blessed evil-
it is you (ne i)nobody else
drive dumb mankind dizzy with haranguing
-you are deafened every mother's son-
all is merely talk which isn't singing
and all talking's to oneself alone
but the very song of(as mountains
feel and lovers)singing is silence
e.e. cummings
er...i'll be quiet then :o....nice choice mossyQuote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
I enjoyed that one freckle. Are you moving far ?Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
Nice selection Mossy :cool:Quote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
"MCMXIV"
Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;
And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day;
And the countryside not caring
The place-names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheats' restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;
Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word--the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.
Philip Larkin
Philip Larkin... another of my favourite poets. Nice to start the day with one of his poems. Good choice Alf!
just around the corner...but miles away :closed:Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
here is a poem from a 2ww poet...quite stunning i think
How To Kill
Keith Douglas
Under the parabola of a ball,
a child turning into a man,
I looked into the air too long.
The ball fell in my hand,
it sang in the closed fist: Open Open
Behold a gift designed to kill.
Now in my dial of glass appears
the soldier who is going to die.
He smiles, and moves about in ways
his mother knows, habits of his.
The wires touch his face: I cry NOW.
Death, like a familiar, hears
And look, has made a man of dust
of a man of flesh. This sorcery I do.
Being damned, I am amused
to see the centre of love diffused
and the wave of love travel into vacancy.
How easy it is to make a ghost.
The weightless mosquito touches
her tiny shadow on the stone,
and with how like, how infinite
a lightness, man and shadow meet.
They fuse.
A shadow is a man
when the mosquito death approaches
I heard a really interesting fact on radio 5 yesterday (on the Richard Bacon show) that there were more soldiers committed suicide in the years following the falklands war than had actually died in combat, a very sad fact and food for thought.
I found this; thought you might like it :)
Souls And Rain-Drops by Sidney Lanier
Light rain-drops fall and wrinkle the sea,
Then vanish, and die utterly.
One would not know that rain-drops fell
If the round sea-wrinkles did not tell.
So souls come down and wrinkle life
And vanish in the flesh-sea strife.
One might not know that souls had place
Were't not for the wrinkles in life's face.
In Flanders Field
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
John McCrae
That's really lovely Stef xQuote:
Originally Posted by Stef F
Special
Birthday wishes
For the Mountain Goatess
Forty days passed to make her vet
God bless
Awwwww bless you Stef :love:Quote:
Originally Posted by Stef F
The Faulty Bagnose:p
Softly, softly, treads the Mungle
Thinner thorn behaviour street.
Whorg canteel whorth bee asbin?
Cam we so all complete,
With all our faulty bagnose?
The Mungle family pilgriffs far awoy
Religeorge too thee worled.
Sam fells on the waysock-side
And somforbe on a gurled,
With all her faulty bagnose!
Our bungle speaks tonife at eight
He tell us wop to doo
And bless us cotten sods again
Oamnipple to our jew
(With all their faulty bagnose).
Bless our gurlished wramfeed
Me cursed cafe kname
And bless thee loaf he eating
With he golden teeth aflame
Give us OUR faulty bagnose!
Good Mungle blaith our meathalls
Woof mebble morn so green the wheel
Staggaboon undie some grapeload
To get a little feel
of my own faulty bagnose.
Is not OUR faulty bagnose now
Full lust and dirty hand
Whitehall the treble Mungle speak
We might as wealth be the band
Including your faulty bagnose
Give us thisbe our daily tit
Good Mungle on yer travelled
A goat of many coloureds
Wiberneath all beneath unravelled
And not so MUCH OF YER FAULTY BAGNOSE!
(by John Lennon):w00t:
In my sky at twilight
In my sky at twilight you are like a cloud
and your form and colour are the way I love them.
You are mine, mine, woman with sweet lips
and in your life my infinite dreams live.
The lamp of my soul dyes your feet,
the sour wine is sweeter on your lips,
oh reaper of my evening song,
how solitary dreams believe you to be mine!
You are mine, mine, I go shouting it to the afternoon's
wind, and the wind hauls on my widowed voice.
Huntress of the depth of my eyes, your plunder
stills your nocturnal regard as though it were water.
You are taken in the net of my music, my love,
and my nets of music are wide as the sky.
My soul is born on the shore of your eyes of mourning.
In your eyes of mourning the land of dreams begin.
Pablo Neruda
That is an excellent poem. Good choice Stef http://i592.photobucket.com/albums/t...ebit/Cool2.gifQuote:
Originally Posted by Stef F
It wouldn't be Armistice day without that poem MG http://i592.photobucket.com/albums/t...ebit/Cool2.gifQuote:
Originally Posted by Mountain Goatess
The lads in their hundreds (from A Shropshire Lad)
THE LADS in their hundreds to Ludlow come in for the fair,
There’s men from the barn and the forge and the mill and the fold,
The lads for the girls and the lads for the liquor are there,
And there with the rest are the lads that will never be old.
There’s chaps from the town and the field and the till and the cart,
And many to count are the stalwart, and many the brave,
And many the handsome of face and the handsome of heart,
And few that will carry their looks or their truth to the grave.
I wish one could know them, I wish there were tokens to tell
The fortunate fellows that now you can never discern;
And then one could talk with them friendly and wish them farewell
And watch them depart on the way that they will not return.
But now you may stare as you like and there’s nothing to scan;
And brushing your elbow unguessed-at and not to be told
They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man,
The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.
A.E. Housman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4kPNyQc5Ro
Food for thought.
Philosophy is wonderful,
Or maybe it is not,
Cogito ergo sum,
What i think is not a lot,
My examined life full of strife,
When Socrates passes my lips,
Philosophy makes me hungry,
I'll have a Plato chips.
Leonidas.
Eleventh Hour?
Time
pause, reflect,
Thoughts
friends, foe?
War
pain ,hurt,
Dark
cold suffering.
Remember
brother, son.
Poppies
red, white?
Peace
one day.
NB.
A really lovely, original piece of work here Nee Bother...I really like the way you have constructed it, it took my back to my drive into work this morning and the eeriness of the two minute silence on the radioQuote:
Originally Posted by Nee Bother
Nice one Matt, clever play on words!Quote:
Originally Posted by Leonidas
Thank you, I was quite moved this morning at work in a busy builders merchant when everyone suddenly went quiet for a couple of minutes, then, without any comments we all started chuntering away again as though nothing had happened....strange!!Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
i know...strange yet somehow reassuringQuote:
Originally Posted by Nee Bother
Battlefield Poet: Keith Douglas on now BBC 4
Wilfrid Owen 22:00
Simon Armitage 23:00
:cool:
thanks alf....will try and catch it at some juncture if not now then on i player...
At Daybreak
Wilfred Owen
I LISTEN for him through the rain,
And in the dusk of starless hours
I know that he will come again;
Loth was he ever to forsake me:
He comes with glimmering of flowers
And stir of music to awake me.
Spirit of purity, he stands
As once he lived in charm and grace:
I may not hold him with my hands,
Nor bid him stay to heal my sorrow;
Only his fair, unshadowed face
Abides with me until to-morrow.
Glad I logged on. Have just set it to record. Thanks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
caught a brief glimpse...looked v good and hope to get back to it. very humbling and poignant story about keith douglas, such a talent and amazing that he wrote such quality poetry in his early twenties but then he appears to have been an extraordinary man livng in extraordinary times....Quote:
Originally Posted by L.F.F.
Simplify me when I'm Dead
Remember me when I am dead
and simplify me when I'm dead.
As the processes of earth
strip off the colour and the skin
take the brown hair and blue eye
and leave me simpler than at birth
when hairless I came howling in
as the moon came in the cold sky.
Of my skeleton perhaps
so stripped, a learned man will say
'He was of such a type and intelligence,' no more.
Thus when in a year collapse
particular memories, you may
deduce, from the long pain I bore
the opinions I held, who was my foe
and what I left, even my appearance
but incidents will be no guide.
Time's wrong-way telescope will show
a minute man ten years hence
and by distance simplified.
Through that lens see if I seem
substance or nothing: of the world
deserving mention or charitable oblivion
not by momentary spleen
or love into decision hurled
leisurely arrive at an opinion.
Remember me when I am dead
and simplify me when I'm dead.
Keith Douglas
A Friday poem for Friday. I hope your Friday is more cheerful than this.
Friday Night At The Royal Station Hotel
Light spreads darkly downwards from the high
Clusters of lights over empty chairs
That face each other, coloured differently.
Through open doors, the dining-room declares
A larger loneliness of knives and glass
And silence laid like carpet. A porter reads
An unsold evening paper. Hours pass,
And all the salesmen have gone back to Leeds,
Leaving full ashtrays in the Conference Room.
In shoeless corridors, the lights burn. How
Isolated, like a fort, it is -
The headed paper, made for writing home
(If home existed) letters of exile: Now
Night comes on. Waves fold behind villages.
Philip Larkin
Quote:
Originally Posted by L.F.F.
Good choice L.F.F. that certainly paints a picture of emptiness and loneliness.
I didn't know as much about Keith Douglas as I did about Wilfred Owen but I have tended to read more about the WW1 poets anyway. Having said that I didn't know about Siegfried Sassoon helping Owen with his poetry when they were at the hospital together. The insight into the way the poems developed by both poets was excellent though and we are lucky to still have their notebooks. :cool:Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
Simon Armitage does get some great gigs though doesn't he :D A trip round the Greek Islands in the wake of Odysseus :cool:
I know I must admit that thought occurred to me too...ah, its a hard life being a top notch poet!Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
BETWEEN GOING AND COMING...
Between going and staying
the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can’t be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.
I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.
The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.
Octavio Paz
Ooooooo this is nice, I do like a bit of OP! ....hope you had a lovely birthday MG.....xQuote:
Originally Posted by Mountain Goatess