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Plato, despair!Quote:
Originally Posted by Stolly
We prove by norms
How numbers bear
Empiric forms,
How random wrong
Will average right
If time be long
And errors slight;
Error is boundless.
Nor hope nor doubt,
Though both be groundless,
Will average out.
another random poem nicked off the internet.
indeed!Quote:
Originally Posted by Derby Tup
still listening to simon armitage's voice on bbc 4...i find it altogether soothing...
anyway...here is a poem
After Apple-Picking
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.
ps i enjoyed x runner and stolly's tooing and frooing
Aye lass, it takes me back to Dufton.Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
He has a great turn of phrase and a dry sense of humour.
i am feeling the need for another fell poet do.....badly !Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry H Howgill
perhaps on the anniversary of the thread starting!
Trapped
don't undress my love
you might find a mannequin:
don't undress the mannequin
you might find
my love.
Charles Bukowski
All this Simon Armitage outdoors stuff and freckle's apple picking has made me look for something rural to post :)
Sonnet 81
HE may be envied, who with tranquil breast
Can wander in the wild and woodland scene,
When Summer's glowing hands have newly drest
The shadowy forests and the copses green;
Who, unpursued by care, can pass his hours
Where briony and woodbine fringe the trees,
On thymy banks reposing, while the bees
Murmur "their fairy tunes in praise of flowers;"
Or on the rock with ivy clad, and fern
That overhangs the ozier-whispering bed
Of some clear current, bid his wishes turn
From this bad world; and by calm reason led,
Knows, in refined retirement to possess
By friendship hallow'd - rural happiness.
Charlotte Smith
utterly sublime! is it just me or is this a bit sensous ol alf, with its references to the "whispering bed" and "tranquil breasts"....aye, its probably just me like :w00t:Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
51.
Today unsuspectingly
I stumbled upon an old race number
Deep in the cavity of last year’s handbag...
In the dried up lipstick and billion receipts
Ah yes, number 51,
I remember you.
A by accident,
A for the very first.
A walk in the rain, not the best race preparation
A whole lot of fear and history in the making
and the ending and the creating.
Number 51,
the random embodiment of
Inevitability, rain, cold, the hills and
You.
Excellent freckle :cool:Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
To an athlete dying young
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.
Alfred Edward Housman
I sat watching Out of Africa with Stef this afternoon and this is featured in the film. It's the first time I've seen it since its release in 1985 and it was much better than I remembered :)