Today's poet

[Mossdog]

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

BY DYLAN THOMAS

[Mossdog]

A Dream within a Dream
by Edgar Allen Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet, if Hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it, therefore, the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

[Mossdog]

The More Loving One

by W. H. Auden


Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

[Alf]

Blimey! Hide all the sharp implements. Gulp

Mrs Alf spends a lot of time in the water...either the swimming pool or the bath....hmmmmmm?

[Alf]

A Greeting

GOOD morning, Life--and all
Things glad and beautiful.
My pockets nothing hold,
But he that owns the gold,
The Sun, is my great friend--
His spending has no end.
Hail to the morning sky,
Which bright clouds measure high;
Hail to you birds whose throats
Would number leaves by notes;
Hail to you shady bowers,
And you green field of flowers.
Hail to you women fair,
That make a show so rare
In cloth as white as milk--
Be't calico or silk:
Good morning, Life--and all
Things glad and beautiful.

W.H. Davies

Now that's more like it

Yes, very positive that one Mossy

[Alf]

The Birds of the Air

I'm vague about their names –

laziness, yes, but also a wish
to keep them free. Isn't it enough
to foul their brooks and fields
and flay the high trees with our floodlights

without this last assault of language?
I limit myself
to the one thing I know:
that they are light

(the word splits on a prism,
revealing them luminous, weightless
and all tones between).

I learnt this as a child
in the little yard behind the chapel
where I would be sent with the leftover bread.
When I stepped out from the cool, screened interior

they were waiting in the sunshine.
They glittered in the branches
while I crumbled the host and scattered it
among the weeds and broken paving.

Jean Sprackland

[Alf]

The Healers

When they say, If there are any doctors aboard,
would they make themselves known, I remember when my then
husband would rise, and I would get to be
the one he rose from beside. They say now
that it does not work, unless you are equal.
And after those first thirty years,
I was not the one he wanted to rise from
or return to - not I but she who would also
rise, when such were needed. Now I see them,
lifting, side by side, on wide,
medical, wading-bird wings - like storks with the
doctor bags of like-loves-like
dangling from their beaks. Oh well. It was the way
it was, he did not feel happy when words
were called for, and I stood.

Sharon Olds

[Hes]

Brilliant! I'm guessing that is from Stag's Leap'? I nearly bought that recently but then decided on something less sad.

The Healers

When they say, If there are any doctors aboard,
would they make themselves known, I remember when my then
husband would rise, and I would get to be
the one he rose from beside. They say now
that it does not work, unless you are equal.
And after those first thirty years,
I was not the one he wanted to rise from
or return to - not I but she who would also
rise, when such were needed. Now I see them,
lifting, side by side, on wide,
medical, wading-bird wings - like storks with the
doctor bags of like-loves-like
dangling from their beaks. Oh well. It was the way
it was, he did not feel happy when words
were called for, and I stood.

Sharon Olds

[Hes]

Ooooh, have you checked out the back of the wardrobe for unusual looking furry jackets?

Mrs Alf spends a lot of time in the water...either the swimming pool or the bath....hmmmmmm?

[Alf]

The Poetry thread - far from the madding crowd

I was out running at lunch time in the hills and the sun shone and the sky was blue and part way round my route I passed half a dozen Hawthorn trees in full bloom.

On a Hawthorn Tree

OH ! come to see me, when the soft warm May
Bids all my boughs their gay embroidery wear,

In my bright season's transitory day,
While my sweet perfume loads the enamour'd
air.

Oh ! come to see me, when the sky is blue,
And backs my spangles with an azure ground,

While the thick ivy bosses clust'ring through,
See their dark tufts with silvery circlets crown'd.

Then be the Spring in all its pomp array'd,
The lilac's blossom, the laburnum's blaze,

Nature hath rear'd beyond this hawthorn glade
No fairer altar to her Maker's praise.

George W.F. Howard