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Snoring is bearable so long as it is of the rhythmic kind that doesn't make you jump out of your skin and it is better if you are so tired that you can't help but sleep blissfully, snoring or not...not sure how you could get so tired? Maybe from a nice long run eh?;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Whippet
Interesting encounter with some swans earlier. Hes you've given us crows and blackbirds.
The Swan
This laboring through what is still undone,
as though, legs bound, we hobbled along the way,
is like the akward walking of the swan.
And dying-to let go, no longer feel
the solid ground we stand on every day-
is like anxious letting himself fall
into waters, which receive him gently
and which, as though with reverence and joy,
draw back past him in streams on either side;
while, infinitely silent and aware,
in his full majesty and ever more
indifferent, he condescends to glide.
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
Rainer Maria Rilke
..
What a great choice OW. I was just about to post a poem called animal love which was rather passionate but now I think I should post another bird one.Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Whippet
A long run is surely the only answer - both the snorer and the snoree would be oblivious!Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
I notice the McMaster dealt with the situation creatively.
Ha ha...well, you have to distract yourself somehow I guess and it saves arguing about sleeping in the spare room!Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Whippet
With a very tenuous link...here is a bird poem I like a lot and it is apt because I am off to do some work for a friend of mine who lives in an old mill which has a resident kingfisher nearby. It is brilliant to sit looking down on it whilst it fishes.
Kingfisher
That kingfisher jewelling upstream
seems to leave a streak of itself
in the bright air. The trees
are all the better for its passing.
It's not a mineral eater, though it looks it.
It doesn't nip nicks out of the edges
of rainbows. - It dives
into the burly water, then, perched
on a Japanese bough, gulps
into its own incandescence
a wisp of minnow, a warrior stickleback.
- Or it vanishes into its burrow, resplendent
Samurai, returning home
to his stinking slum.
Norman MacCaig
Now...It's a poorly kept secret that I have fondness for bird life. I like this a lot - waxing lyrical about the stunning colours of the kingfisher and bringing us down to earth with a bit of a reality check and mention of the rancid nesting place.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
It's bedtime for me, and this is a bird / bedtime classic from young Johnny Keats.
Ode To A Nightingale
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,---
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
O for a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;
Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new love pine at them beyond tomorrow.
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Clustered around by all her starry fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
Darkling I listen; and for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain---
To thy high requiem become a sod
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:---do I wake or sleep?
John Keats
Night night Fell Poets.
Thnaks for that, I do love Keats...reminds me of my sixteen year old self (not my favourite time of my life) learning The Eve of St Agnes and Ode to Autumn.
Night OW sleep well.
The Wild Swans at Coole
W B Yeats
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.
The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
I go to this window
e e cummings
i go to this window
just as day dissolves
when it is twilight(andlooking up in fear
i see the new moonthinner than a hair)
making me feel
how myself has been coarse and dull
compared with you,
silently who are
and cling to my mind always
But now she sharpens and becomes crisper
until i smile with knowing-and all aboutherself
the sprouting largest final air
plungesinward with hurled
downward thousands of enormous dreams
Thanks for that. I don't stay up late enough to catch all the offerings at the time they are posted :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Whippet
I was listening to Radio 4 on the way back from work yesterday and they were talking about the nightingale. In the 1st World War apparently in the trenches they could hear the nightingale song and it was often the last thing a lot of them heard before they had to go over the top :(