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Posts: 2,636
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636 |
I Hold Your Hand In Mine
I hold your hand in mine, dear,
I press it to my lips.
I take a healthy bite
From your dainty fingertips.
My joy would be complete, dear,
If you were only here,
But still I keep your hand
As a precious souvenir.
The night you died I cut it off,
I really don't know why.
For now each time I kiss it
I get bloodstains on my tie.
I'm sorry now I killed you,
For our love was something fine,
And till they come to get me
I shall hold your hand in mine.
-Tom Lehrer
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Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636 |
Meet Me In The Indian Summer
(Van Morrison)
Well don't you know
How much I love you
Don't you know
How much I care
It's beyond my comprehension
'Cos I love you on the square
It's not bound by any definition
It isn't written in the stars
It's not limited like Saturn
Isn't ruled by Mercury or Mars
Oh won't you meet me
In the Indian summer
Where we'll go walking
Down by the weeping willow tree
Won't you meet me
In the Indian summer
We'll go walking to eternity
It's not modelled by convention
It isn't worshipped like the sun
It's not likened unto any other
And it will never come undone
Well don't you know
That my world is so lonely
Just like a freight train in the dawn
That's why I need to
Have and hold you
Just to keep me from going wrong
Oh won't you meet me
In the Indian summer
We'll go walking
By the weeping willow tree
Won't you meet me Lord
In the Indian summer
We'll go walking to eternity
Won't you meet me
In the Indian summer
Well before
Those chilly winds do blow
Won't you meet me
In the Indian summer
Take me way back
To what I know
Oh won't you meet me
In the Indian summer
We'll go walking
By the weeping willow tree
Oh won't you meet me
In the Indian summer
We'll go walking to eternity
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Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636 |
"Listen! The wind is rising,
and the air is wild with leaves,
We have had our summer evenings,
Now for October eves!
-- Autumn (Resignation) by Humbert Wolfe, 1926
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189
Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189 |
(even numbered lines are indented 3 spaces, 2, 4, etc.)
THE AUTUMN
By: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Go, sit upon the lofty hill,
And turn your eyes around,
Where waving woods and waters wild
Do hymn an autumn sound.
The summer sun is faint on them --
The summer flowers depart --
Sit still -- as all transform'd to stone,
Except your musing heart.
How there you sat in summer-time,
May yet be in your mind;
And how you heard the green woods sing
Beneath the freshening wind.
Though the same wind now blows around,
You would its blast recall;
For every breath that stirs the trees,
Doth cause a leaf to fall.
Oh! like that wind, is all the mirth
That flesh and dust impart:
We cannot bear its visitings,
When change is on the heart.
Gay words and jests may make us smile,
When Sorrow is asleep;
But other things must make us smile,
When Sorrow bids us weep!
The dearest hands that clasp our hands, --
Their presence may be o'er;
The dearest voice that meets our ear,
That tone may come no more!
Youth fades; and then, the joys of youth,
Which once refresh'd our mind,
Shall come -- as, on those sighing woods,
The chilling autumn wind.
Hear not the wind -- view not the woods;
Look out o'er vale and hill-
In spring, the sky encircled them --
The sky is round them still.
Come autumn's scathe -- come winter's cold --
Come change -- and human fate!
Whatever prospect Heaven doth bound,
Can ne'er be desolate.
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189
Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189 |
(in memory of "Shellie", my 11 year old Sheltie who died suddenly Wednesday, interred today...with my heartfelt thanks to Jackie for these):
THE BEST PLACE TO BURY A DOG
"There is one best place to bury a dog.
"If you bury him in this spot, he will
come to you when you call - come to you
over the grim, dim frontier of death,
and down the well-remembered path,
and to your side again.
"And though you call a dozen living
dogs to heel, they shall not growl at
him, nor resent his coming,
for he belongs there.
"People may scoff at you, who see
no lightest blade of grass bent by his
footfall, who hear no whimper, people
who may never really have had a dog.
Smile at them, for you shall know
something that is hidden from them,
and which is well worth the knowing.
"The one best place to bury a good
dog is in the heart of his master."
--- Ben Hur Lampman ---
from the Portland Oregonian Sept. 11, 1925
[AKA "If A Dog Be Well Remembered"]
[AKA "Where TO Bury A Dog"]
*****************************************
ROOM IN YOUR HEART
Sorrow fills a barren space;
you close your eyes and see my face
and think of times I made you laugh,
the love we shared, the bond we had,
the special way I needed you -
the friendship shared by just we two.
The day's too quiet, the world seems older,
the wind blows now a little colder.
You gaze into the empty air
and look for me, but I'm not there -
I'm in heaven and I watch you,
and I see the world around you too.
I see little souls wearing fur,
souls who bark and souls who purr
born unwanted and unloved -
I see all this and more above -
I watch them suffer, I see them cry,
I see them lost, I watch them die.
I see unwanted thousands born -
and when they die, nobody mourns.
These little souls wearing fur
(Some who bark and some who purr)
are castaways who - unlike me -
will never know love or security.
A few short months they starve and roam,
Or caged in shelters - nobody takes home.
They're special too (furballs of pleasure),
filled with love and each one, a treasure.
My pain and suffering came to an end,
so don't cry for me, my person, my friend.
But think of the living -
those souls with fur
(some who bark and some who purr) -
And though our bond can't be broken apart,
make room for another in your home and
your heart.
--- Caro Schubert-James ---
amethyst@nc5.infi.net
alt.support.grief.pet-loss
http://www-hsc.usc.edu/~rneville/saveapet.html
**************************************************
EPITAPH TO A DOG
Near this spot
Are deposited the Remains
Of one
Who Possessed Beauty
Without Vanity,
Strength without Insolence,
Courage without Ferocity,
And all the Virtues of Man
Without his Vices.
This Praise, which would be unmeaning flattery
If inscribed over Human Ashes,
Is but a just tribute to the
Memory of
"Boatswain," a Dog
Who was born at Newfoundland,
May, 1803,
And died at Newstead Abbey
Nov. 18, 1808.
When some proud son of man returns to earth,
Unknown to glory, but upheld by birth,
The sculptor's art exhausts the pomp of woe,
And storied urns record who rests below.
When all is done, upon the tomb is seen,
Not what he was, but what he should have been.
But the poor dog, in life the firmest friend,
The first to welcome, foremost to defend,
Whose honest heart is still his master's own,
Who labors, fights, lives, breathes for him alone,
Unhonored falls, unnoticed all his worth,
Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth--
While man, vain insect! hopes to be forgiven,
And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven.
Oh man! thou feeble tenant of an hour,
Debased by slavery, or corrupt by power--
Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust,
Degraded mass of animated dust!
Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat,
Thy smiles hypocrisy, thy words deceit!
By nature vile, ennobled but by name,
Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame.
Ye, who perchance behold this simple urn,
Pass on--it honors none you wish to mourn.
To mark a friend's remains these stones arise;
I never knew but one--and here he lies.
Lord Byron
Inscription on the monument of his
Newfoundland dog, 1808
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Posts: 1,289
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
Beautiful, Won. Thank you for these contributions. And please accept my condolences; I know what grief you must feel. Our boxer, Beau, will soon be 12 -- a great age for a boxer, and I dread losing him.
Regarding the notion that animals have no souls and no place in Heaven, C.S. Lewis remarked that we really do not know that animals, or at least the higher ones like simians and the ones we make pets of, have no souls. Indeed, he thought it more likely that they do and that they might have as good a chance of going to heaven as we do. And he also thought that maybe one of the responsibilities of humans was to make our animals more like us.
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Posts: 1,346
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 1,346 |
he also thought that maybe one of the responsibilities of humans was to make our animals more like us
Hmmm. Many of us would do better to learn from "our" animals.
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
Just came across this one by an author not everyone realizes was a poet.
The wind, I hear it sighing
With Autumn's saddest sound;
Withered leaves as thick are lying
As spring-flowers on the ground.
This dark night has won me
To wander far away;
Old feelings gather fast upon me
Like vultures round their prey.
Kind were they once, and cherished,
But cold and cheerless now;
I would their lingering shades had perished
When their light left my brow.
'Tis like old age pretending
The softness of a child,
My altered, hardened spirit bending
To meet their fancies wild.
Yet could I with past pleasures
Past woe's oblivion buy,
That by the death of my dearest treasures
My deadliest pains might die,
O then another daybreak
Might haply dawn above,
Another summer gild my cheek,
My soul, another love.
-- Emily Bronte, The Wind, I Hear It Sighing
P.S.
I don't know what y'all think, but now that I've read over this, I'm sorry I posted it. I think that's one of the worst pieces of poetry I've read in a good while.
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 1,055
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 1,055 |
of autumn
a sonted watch
of leaf unlocked
seems morescore years
since such a foiled scene unfolded
extra-hemispherical,
interequatorial,
cheating paid back in full
leaves hover about
rolling, meandering,
cushioned in
ordered visible sinuosity
some kind of, um,
plain matter of fact existence made visible.
most leaves flit by though -
thin drawn out swirls
or tight-crimped screws unperceived
so now caught up
dressed down
something other than just leaf is shed:
light, tears, blood...
is all motion in general,
the flow of the world's character
borne of infinite quiescence?
all is motion in general,
the flow of the world its character
and yet it is borne of infinite quiescence.
all acoiled round
frizzly crepe sound
waging through another autumn
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296 |
Hi, BoYB:
I'm glad you posted the poem. The subject is certainly a valid one--and the emotional state one that probably visits people when they've given up their best dreams. It's harsh; it's cold; it's bitter. And it anticipates the cruelty of April, doesn't it? Even though overly dramatic in stroke with a couple of the images--the old feelings as vultures, for instance--it's still good in showing that state of mind in which the review of something lost once considered valuable can cause so much anguish and bitterness.
I'd give this one a "B."
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