Today's poet

[Alf]

Love Is Not All

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

[Harry H Howgill]

We surely must get a mention in the book, and hopefully a poem too! I don't think we quite realised at the time just how worried he was that day. That's great! Happy memories!

He just mentioned us on Ramblings! He said he nearly gave up on Cross Fell and had to be rescued by fell runners. Woohooo....surely poem material?

[Harry H Howgill]

It is almost as if you were there!

Like it.

At the end
of a long day
walking a leg
of the Pennine Way
I met a dog
who had just
started his own leg
Go away!

Alf Armitage

[Harry H Howgill]

Love Is Not All

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Me neither!

[Hes]

That's great Alf! Really made me laugh.

At the end
of a long day
walking a leg
of the Pennine Way
I met a dog
who had just
started his own leg
Go away!

Alf Armitage

[Old Whippet]

Poor Floyd

http://forum.fellrunner.org.uk/album...achmentid=3427

He has scaled the heights of England. Is he called Floyd the Mountain Climber? No!
He fetches sticks for the fire. Is he called Floyd the Wood Gatherer? No!
He guards the house against intruders. Is he called Floyd the Guard Dog? No!
Yet he shags just one poet........

At the end
of a long day
walking a leg
of the Pennine Way
I met a dog
who had just
started his own leg
Go away!

Alf Armitage

[Sunbeam Alpine]

Good day - I've been 'away' for a while and will need to catch up.

Meantime - I saw this from Virgil (not the Thunderbirds puppet) which I quite liked :

Trees

Now firstly trees have birth in many ways:
For some by man unasked grow up apace
Quite wilfully, and overrun the plains
And winding rivers: willows hoary-leaved,
Poplars, lithe osiers and the supple broom.
But others rise from fallen seed: such are
The lofty chestnut and Jove's forest-king,
The aesculus, and oak of voice divine
To men of Hellas. Others from the root
Throw out a lavish undergrowth, as elms
And cherries; even the Parnassian bay
Rears her small head from deep maternal shade.
These early methods Nature gave; by these
Each bosk and shrub and holy wood grows green.

Others experience's course has found.
This nurseryman will plant a row of shoots
Torn from the weeping parent-stem; while that
Will bury logs or sharpened poles or stakes
Twice-cleft; some trees await the living arch
Of boughs depressed into their mother's soil;
Others demand no root: their severed tops
Are rendered to the earth and sprout anew.
Nay, e'en from fragments of the olive-trunk,
Dry timber, roots will peep; and oft we see
Tree mimic tree with debtless borrowings:
Pears change their face and grafted apples bear,
And plum-trees blush with stony cornel fruit.

Virgil

[Harry H Howgill]

If ever I need a new forum name it is going to be "Floyd the Wood Gatherer"

Poor Floyd

http://forum.fellrunner.org.uk/album...achmentid=3427

He has scaled the heights of England. Is he called Floyd the Mountain Climber? No!
He fetches sticks for the fire. Is he called Floyd the Wood Gatherer? No!
He guards the house against intruders. Is he called Floyd the Guard Dog? No!
Yet he shags just one poet........

[Alf]

If ever I need a new forum name it is going to be "Floyd the Wood Gatherer"

...or "Floyd the shinbone shuffler"

[Alf]

I've lived to bury my desires
and see my dreams corrode with rust
now all that's left are fruitless fires
that burn my empty heart to dust.

Struck by the clouds of cruel fate
My crown of Summer bloom is sere
Alone and sad, I watch and wait
And wonder if the end is near.

As conquered by the last cold air
When Winter whistles in the wind
Alone upon a branch that's bare
A trembling leaf is left behind.

Alexander Pushkin