Today's poet

[Alf]

High waving heather 'neath stormy blasts bending

High waving heather 'neath stormy blasts bending,
Midnight and moonlight and bright shining stars,
Darkness and glory rejoicingly blending,
Earth rising to heaven and heaven descending,
Man's spirit away from its drear dungeon sending,
Bursting the fetters and breaking the bars.

All down the mountain sides wild forests lending
One mighty voice to the life-giving wind,
Rivers their banks in their jubilee rending,
Fast through the valleys a reckless course wending,
Wider and deeper their waters extending,
Leaving a desolate desert behind.

Shining and lowering and swelling and dying,
Changing forever from midnight to noon;
Roaring like thunder, like soft music sighing,
Shadows on shadows advancing and flying,
Lighning-bright flashes the deep gloom defying,
Coming as swiftly and fading as soon

Emily Bronte

Two good selections there DT and were very evocative, you could almost smell the heather, hear the running water and feel the wind which probably doesn't help your homesickness!

[Derby Tup]

....you could almost smell the heather, hear the running water and feel the wind which probably doesn't help your homesickness....

That's helped my home-sickness come on a treat Alf

[Einar]

All wonderful stuff on the last page. On the subject of time, I hope this makes you smile - by Piet Hein, a Great Dane who thought about time a lot.

Timing Toast

There's an art of knowing when.
Never try to guess.
Toast until it smokes and then
Twenty seconds less.

[Derby Tup]

All wonderful stuff on the last page. On the subject of time, I hope this makes you smile - by Piet Hein, a Great Dane who thought about time a lot.

Timing Toast

There's an art of knowing when.
Never try to guess.
Toast until it smokes and then
Twenty seconds less.

I like this Einar

[Einar]

Thanks DT, more of Hein's nuggets of wisdom to follow then. Some of your recent posts have given me great pleasure too, and that goes for a lot of the choices on this thread.

[Hes]

This made me sad. Its quite beautiful but also rather apt as I have a lovely little garden that I just haven't had time to care for properly and season by season I watch it become wilder. The herbs are looking good though.

Time

‘Established’ is a good word, much used in garden books,
‘The plant, when established’ . . .
Oh, become established quickly, quickly, garden
For I am fugitive, I am very fugitive – – –

Those that come after me will gather these roses,
And watch, as I do now, the white wisteria
Burst, in the sunshine, from its pale green sheath.

Planned. Planted. Established. Then neglected,
Till at last the loiterer by the gate will wonder
At the old, old cottage, the old wooden cottage,
And say ‘One might build here, the view is glorious;
This must have been a pretty garden once.’

Ursula Bethell

[Hes]

I really enjoyed your choices DT. I hope you are home again soon.

[XRunner]

Here is another moorland poem by the Scottish poet William Renton:

Mountain Twilight

The hills slipped over each on each
Till all their changing shadows died.
Now in the open skyward reach
The lights grow solemn side by side.
While of these hills the westermost
Rears high his majesty of coast
In shifting waste of dim-blue brine
And fading olive hyaline;
Till all the distance overflows,
The green in watchet and the blue
In purple. Now they fuse and close -
A darkling violet, fringed anew
With light that on the mountains soar,
A dusky flame on tranquil shores;
Kindling the summits as they grow
In audience to the skies that call,
Ineffable in rest and all
The pathos of the afterglow.

[Mountain Goatess]

September

The golden-rod is yellow;
The corn is turning brown;
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down.

The gentian's bluest fringes
Are curling in the sun;
In dusty pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun.

The sedges flaunt their harvest,
In every meadow nook;
And asters by the brook-side
Make asters in the brook,

From dewy lanes at morning
The grapes' sweet odors rise;
At noon the roads all flutter
With yellow butterflies.

By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer's best of weather,
And autumn's best of cheer.

But none of all this beauty
Which floods the earth and air
Is unto me the secret
Which makes September fair.

'T is a thing which I remember;
To name it thrills me yet:
One day of one September
I never can forget.

Helen Hunt Jackson

[Hes]

Lament

no more the curlew's bubbling cry
long since flown west
and summer passed by
rain tears are wept
by the moorland sky
as the heather fades
and the flowers die
oh what will become
of you and I?