Today's poet

[Alf]

You don’t need sight, you need vision

By day I work hard and have disappointing conversations with the bank.
But by night, my friend, well I am rich beyond my wildest dreams!
Barefoot running, escaping wild eyed cows, nettle stings
Home made stuffed mushrooms, Pink Floyd and the affection of three hounds.
Oh and things I can’t mention right here.
“So you see”, she said, the other voice in my head
You don’t need sight, you need vision.

That was very good freckle

The Garden

MY heart is a garden tired with autumn,
Heaped with bending asters and dahlias heavy and dark,
In the hazy sunshine, the garden remembers April,
The drench of rains and a snow-drop quick and clear as a spark;
Daffodils blowing in the cold wind of morning,
And golden tulips, goblets holding the rain—
The garden will be hushed with snow, forgotten soon, forgotten—
After the stillness, will spring come again?

Sara Teasdale

[Sunbeam Alpine]

Good afternoon !
Some interesting stuff since my last visit. Kathleen Jamie is a very fine prose writer.

But back to the age of austerity and the Victorians. Seems Radio 3 in their Essay at 11 pm this week are running a Tennyson week ( a writer that does creep in to the Forum now and again).
This is the 'Kraken' - which was featured on Tuesday night.Coincidentally while I was tucking into my smoked mackerel salad last night there was a quesion on the Kraken on 'Mastermind'. Seems the mythical sea monster is a creation of a Norwegian cleric from the 17th Century - religion and myths have always combined quite nicely !

Here goes :

Kraken

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

[Alf]

The River Duddon (After-thought)

I thought of thee, my partner and my guide,
As being pass'd away.—Vain sympathies!
For, backward, Duddon! as I cast my eyes,
I see what was, and is, and will abide;
Still glides the Stream, and shall for ever glide;
The Form remains, the Function never dies;
While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,
We Men, who in our morn of youth defied
The elements, must vanish;—be it so!
Enough, if something from our hands have power
To live, and act, and serve the future hour;
And if, as toward the silent tomb we go,
Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower,
We feel that we are greater than we know.

William Wordsworth

[freckle]

Some very wonderful poems over the past couple ofdays posted by Alf and Sunbeam, my favourite lines are:

MY heart is a garden tired with autumn

His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep

Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower,
We feel that we are greater than we know.

very uplifting stuff!
x

[freckle]

well, a very good evening to you all...

I have just started two weeks annual leave and barring the small matter of a 2,500 word article I haven't really brought any work home so the world's my oyster i reckon!

anyhoo...ever stole anything?

from Michael
Simon Armitage
"Seeing Stars"

So George has this theory: the first thing we ever steal,
when we are young, is a symbol of what we become later
in life, when we grow up. Example: when he was nine
George stile a Mont Blanc fountain pen from a fancy
gift shop in a hotel lobby- now he's an award winning
novelist. We test the theory around the table and it seems
to add up. Clint stole a bottle of cooking sherry, now
he owns a tapas bar. Kirsty's an investment banker and
she stole money from her mother's purse. Tod took a
Curly Wurly and he's morbidly obese. Claude says he
never stole anything in his whole life, and he's an actor
i.e.unemployed. Derek says "But wait a second, I stole
a blue Smurf on a polythene parachute." And Kirsty says,
"So what more proof do we need, Derek?"

[Harry H Howgill]

Enjoy your hols Freckle. I hope you have a good break.

The first thing I remember stealing was a penny sweet. I told the bloke I had ten in the bag, but there was 11. Call the cops! It was from a running club tuck shop, so what does that say about me? :-)

well, a very good evening to you all...

I have just started two weeks annual leave and barring the small matter of a 2,500 word article I haven't really brought any work home so the world's my oyster i reckon!

anyhoo...ever stole anything?

from Michael
Simon Armitage
"Seeing Stars"

So George has this theory: the first thing we ever steal,
when we are young, is a symbol of what we become later
in life, when we grow up. Example: when he was nine
George stile a Mont Blanc fountain pen from a fancy
gift shop in a hotel lobby- now he's an award winning
novelist. We test the theory around the table and it seems
to add up. Clint stole a bottle of cooking sherry, now
he owns a tapas bar. Kirsty's an investment banker and
she stole money from her mother's purse. Tod took a
Curly Wurly and he's morbidly obese. Claude says he
never stole anything in his whole life, and he's an actor
i.e.unemployed. Derek says "But wait a second, I stole
a blue Smurf on a polythene parachute." And Kirsty says,
"So what more proof do we need, Derek?"

[freckle]

Enjoy your hols Freckle. I hope you have a good break.

The first thing I remember stealing was a penny sweet. I told the bloke I had ten in the bag, but there was 11. Call the cops! It was from a running club tuck shop, so what does that say about me? :-)

Aw how sweet I can just imagine it..obviously you needed that extra sweet for all those wins you gonna have! )

[Alf]

The morn is up again, the dewy morn,
With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom,
Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn
And living as if earth contained no tomb
And glowing into day: we may resume
The march of our existence:

Lord Byron (from Childe Harold)

Enjoy your hols freckle and anyone else who is off too

I am off up Borrowdale today for the weekend and it looks like the camping may be a bit damp I will leave you with a few stanzas from "Resolution and Independence"


I
There was a roaring in the wind all night;
The rain came heavily and fell in floods;
But now the sun is rising calm and bright;
The birds are singing in the distant woods;
Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods;
The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters;
And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.

II

All things that love the sun are out of doors;
The sky rejoices in the morning's birth;
The grass is bright with rain-drops;--on the moors
The hare is running races in her mirth;
And with her feet she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun,
Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.

III

I was a Traveller then upon the moor,
I saw the hare that raced about with joy;
I heard the woods and distant waters roar;
Or heard them not, as happy as a boy:
The pleasant season did my heart employ:
My old remembrances went from me wholly;
And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy.

William Wordsworth

[freckle]

The morn is up again, the dewy morn,
With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom,
Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn
And living as if earth contained no tomb
And glowing into day: we may resume
The march of our existence:

Lord Byron (from Childe Harold)

Enjoy your hols freckle and anyone else who is off too

I am off up Borrowdale today for the weekend and it looks like the camping may be a bit damp I will leave you with a few stanzas from "Resolution and Independence"


I
There was a roaring in the wind all night;
The rain came heavily and fell in floods;
But now the sun is rising calm and bright;
The birds are singing in the distant woods;
Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods;
The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters;
And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.

II

All things that love the sun are out of doors;
The sky rejoices in the morning's birth;
The grass is bright with rain-drops;--on the moors
The hare is running races in her mirth;
And with her feet she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun,
Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.

III

I was a Traveller then upon the moor,
I saw the hare that raced about with joy;
I heard the woods and distant waters roar;
Or heard them not, as happy as a boy:
The pleasant season did my heart employ:
My old remembrances went from me wholly;
And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy.

William Wordsworth

beautiful Alf...I hope you "enjoy" borrowdale! best of luck to all of you racing at borrowdale this weekend, I hope the weather improves a little for you...anyhow I couldn't contemplate such a monster so RESPECT!!!!!! :0) x

[freckle]

evening....its quiet on here tonight are you all camping?

The Summer Day

Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?