Yeats and HardyOriginally Posted by freckle
Good choices freckle! I hadn't realised Donovan had used these lines in a song.
Yeats and Hardy
That's a big space Alf, was something supposed to go in there!?Yeats and Hardy
There was an embedded video in it Stevie. It might not have had time to load while you were viewing it?
Lovely stuff! I can recommend the cd 'Now and in Time to Be' which is a compilation of different singers and bands who have used Yeats's poems in their songs. My favourites are Sinead Lohan singing 'The Fish' and the Waterboy's 'Stolen Child'.
Happy Birthday to our very own Old Whippet!! Hope you have a lovely day.
Been thinking about dogs and their incredible sense of smell and hearing and I found this:
What The Dog Perhaps Hears
by Lisel Mueller
If an inaudible whistle
blown between our lips
can send him home to us,
then silence is perhaps
the sound of spiders breathing
and roots mining the earth;
it may be asparagus heaving,
headfirst, into the light
and the long brown sound
of cracked cups, when it happens.
We would like to ask the dog
if there is a continuous whir
because the child in the house
keeps growing, if the snake
really stretches full length
without a click and the sun
breaks through clouds without
a decibel of effort,
whether in autumn, when the trees
dry up their wells, there isn't a shudder
too high for us to hear.
What is it like up there
above the shut-off level
of our simple ears?
For us there was no birth cry,
the newborn bird is suddenly here,
the egg broken, the nest alive,
and we heard nothing when the world changed.
On the theme of Yeats, this has been posted a few times and its probably become a bit overexposed but I still think it is moving and beautiful:
He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven
by William Butler Yeats
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Well as Hes has paved the way for a W. B. Yeats repeat night I will just repost one of my all time favourites.
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
W.B. Yeats
That is a lovely poem. It really gets you thinking. I wonder how much we can not see and hear due to our human limitations of the senses.Happy Birthday to our very own Old Whippet!! Hope you have a lovely day.
Been thinking about dogs and their incredible sense of smell and hearing and I found this:
What The Dog Perhaps Hears
by Lisel Mueller
If an inaudible whistle
blown between our lips
can send him home to us,
then silence is perhaps
the sound of spiders breathing
and roots mining the earth;
it may be asparagus heaving,
headfirst, into the light
and the long brown sound
of cracked cups, when it happens.
We would like to ask the dog
if there is a continuous whir
because the child in the house
keeps growing, if the snake
really stretches full length
without a click and the sun
breaks through clouds without
a decibel of effort,
whether in autumn, when the trees
dry up their wells, there isn't a shudder
too high for us to hear.
What is it like up there
above the shut-off level
of our simple ears?
For us there was no birth cry,
the newborn bird is suddenly here,
the egg broken, the nest alive,
and we heard nothing when the world changed.
Barkley.
Wandering lost through the Tennessee night,
The sound of trees flow my gentle breeze,
Once more atop a briar filled peak waiting for the light,
Sun up over mountain ridge puts my mind at ease.
I find my true self within this Southern proving ground,
The peaks and blackberry thorn sleep deprived demon pouring scorn,
Snow and rain hit me hard knock me down upon this rock strewn mound,
A new me was discovered today thank you Barkley i am reborn.
The Worker's Song by Dropkick Murphys.
Yeh, this one's for the workers who toil night and day
By hand and by brain to earn your pay
Who for centuries long past for no more than your bread
Have bled for your countries and counted your dead
In the factories and mills, in the shipyards and mines
We've often been told to keep up with the times
For our skills are not needed, they've streamlined the job
And with sliderule and stopwatch our pride they have robbed
We're the first ones to starve, we're the first ones to die
The first ones in line for that pie-in-the-sky
And we're always the last when the cream is shared out
For the worker is working when the fat cat's about
And when the sky darkens and the prospect is war
Who's given a gun and then pushed to the fore
And expected to die for the land of our birth
Though we've never owned one lousy handful of earth?
All of these things the worker has done
From tilling the fields to carrying the gun
We've been yoked to the plough since time first began
And always expected to carry the can
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