Today's poet

[freckle]

I've taken tomorrow off to fully prepare myself for Saturday's rowing and running extravaganza. Tebay is purely the warm up to the main event of the day.

Love the Clare as ever.

Yes well I am rather looking forward to having "fresher" legs than my other team mates......that means they will only be ten paces ahead as opposed to 25!!!!!

can't wait to catch up! :-)

[Harry H Howgill]

Yes well I am rather looking forward to having "fresher" legs than my other team mates......that means they will only be ten paces ahead as opposed to 25!!!!!

can't wait to catch up! :-)

I'm looking forward to the free beer at the finish. Did I tell you about that? Just let him drive you home.

[freckle]

I'm looking forward to the free beer at the finish. Did I tell you about that? Just let him drive you home.

You just made my day cos guess what?.............i ain't driving!!!! (not with my navigational skills! we would end up in preston!)

[Old Whippet]

Post Indifference

I think my posts are dying on their arse
Knowingly the forum applies the coup de grace
Of just ignoring them and taking a bypass

The message?
Shut the f**k up smart arse

Just read this....
rhyming arse with grace (as in coup de grace) ....reminds me of the friendly banter between my northern daughters, who correctly pronounce bAth and their southern cousins who foolishly say bARth.
As you see, no post dies on its arse on the poetry thread. Welcome aboard!

[Alf]

Summer
John Clare

Come we to the summer, to the summer we will come,
For the woods are full of bluebells and the hedges full of bloom,
And the crow is on the oak a-building of her nest,
And love is burning diamonds in my true lover’s breast;
She sits beneath the whitethorn a-plaiting of her hair,
And I will to my true lover with a fond request repair;
I will look upon her face, I will in her beauty rest,
And lay my aching weariness upon her lovely breast.

The clock-a-clay is creeping on the open bloom of May,
The merry bee is trampling the pinky threads all day,
And the chaffinch it is brooding on its grey mossy nest
In the whitethorn bush where I will lean upon my lover’s breast;
I’ll lean upon her breast and I’ll whisper in her ear
That I cannot get a wink o’sleep for thinking of my dear;
I hunger at my meat and I daily fade away
Like the hedge rose that is broken in the heat of the day.

Excellent choice freckle

[Alf]

This is one of my favourite John Clare poems. (though not a very summery sonnet )

Emmonsail's Heath in Winter

I love to see the old heath's withered brake
Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling,
While the old heron from the lonely lake
Starts slow and flaps its melancholy wing,
An oddling crow in idle motion swing
On the half-rotten ash-tree's topmost twig,
Beside whose trunk the gypsy makes his bed.
Up flies the bouncing woodcock from the brig
Where a black quagmire quakes beneath the tread;
The fieldfares chatter in the whistling thorn
And for the haw round fields and closen rove,
And coy bumbarrels, twenty in a drove,
Flit down the hedgerows in the frozen plain
And hang on little twigs and start again.

John Clare

[Alf]

I can't remember if any Tony Harrison stuff has been posted but here is a goodun from him about his father.

Marked with D.

When the chilled dough of his flesh went in an oven
not unlike those he fuelled all his life,
I thought of his cataracts ablaze with Heaven
and radiant with the sight of his dead wife,
light streaming from his mouth to shape her name,
'not Florence and not Flo but always Florrie.'
I thought how his cold tongue burst into flame
but only literally, which makes me sorry,
sorry for his sake there's no Heaven to reach.
I get it all from Earth my daily bread
but he hungered for release from mortal speech
that kept him down, the tongue that weighed like lead.
The baker's man that no one will see rise
and England made to feel like some dull oaf
is smoke, enough to sting one person's eyes
and ash (not unlike flour) for one small loaf.

Tony Harrison

[Harry H Howgill]

Had to look up what a bumbarrel was. And now I know!

This is one of my favourite John Clare poems. (though not a very summery sonnet )

Emmonsail's Heath in Winter

I love to see the old heath's withered brake
Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling,
While the old heron from the lonely lake
Starts slow and flaps its melancholy wing,
An oddling crow in idle motion swing
On the half-rotten ash-tree's topmost twig,
Beside whose trunk the gypsy makes his bed.
Up flies the bouncing woodcock from the brig
Where a black quagmire quakes beneath the tread;
The fieldfares chatter in the whistling thorn
And for the haw round fields and closen rove,
And coy bumbarrels, twenty in a drove,
Flit down the hedgerows in the frozen plain
And hang on little twigs and start again.

John Clare

[Alf]

Had to look up what a bumbarrel was. And now I know!

I will give everyone else a clue Harry (not that i knew what one was the first time I read it )

[freckle]

I can't remember if any Tony Harrison stuff has been posted but here is a goodun from him about his father.

Marked with D.

When the chilled dough of his flesh went in an oven
not unlike those he fuelled all his life,
I thought of his cataracts ablaze with Heaven
and radiant with the sight of his dead wife,
light streaming from his mouth to shape her name,
'not Florence and not Flo but always Florrie.'
I thought how his cold tongue burst into flame
but only literally, which makes me sorry,
sorry for his sake there's no Heaven to reach.
I get it all from Earth my daily bread
but he hungered for release from mortal speech
that kept him down, the tongue that weighed like lead.
The baker's man that no one will see rise
and England made to feel like some dull oaf
is smoke, enough to sting one person's eyes
and ash (not unlike flour) for one small loaf.

Tony Harrison

I love this Alf ......lovely :-)