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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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On a similar theme to the above, but longer and I like it better. It has humour, particularly in the comparisons with other villages. Please make allowances for the time when it was written - some of the sentiments could, otherwise, offend.
The little piece of Greek in the 34th line has not come out correctly - unfortunate because I hoped someone could translate it for me.
Rupert Brooke
The Old Vicarage, Grantchester (Café des Westens, Berlin, May 1912)
Just now the lilac is in bloom, All before my little room; And in my flower-beds, I think, Smile the carnation and the pink; And down the borders, well I know, The poppy and the pansy blow . . . Oh! there the chestnuts, summer through, Beside the river make for you A tunnel of green gloom, and sleep Deeply above; and green and deep The stream mysterious glides beneath, Green as a dream and deep as death. -- Oh, damn! I know it! and I know How the May fields all golden show, And when the day is young and sweet, Gild gloriously the bare feet That run to bathe . . .
Du lieber Gott!
Here am I, sweating, sick, and hot, And there the shadowed waters fresh Lean up to embrace the naked flesh. Temperamentvoll German Jews Drink beer around; - and there the dews Are soft beneath a morn of gold. Here tulips bloom as they are told; Unkempt about those hedges blows An English unofficial rose; And there the unregulated sun Slopes down to rest when day is done, And wakes a vague unpunctual star, A slippered Hesper; and there are Meads towards Haslingfield and Coton Where das Betreten's not verboten.
¦Å¦É¦È¦Å ¦Ã¦Å¦Í¦Ï¦É¦Ì¦Ç¦Í. . . would I were In Grantchester, in Grantchester!-- Some, it may be, can get in touch With Nature there, or Earth, or such. And clever modern men have seen A Faun a-peeping through the green, And felt the Classics were not dead, To glimpse a Naiad's reedy head, Or hear the Goat-foot piping low: . . . But these are things I do not know. I only know that you may lie Day long and watch the Cambridge sky, And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass, Hear the cool lapse of hours pass, Until the centuries blend and blur In Grantchester, in Grantchester. . . . Still in the dawnlit waters cool His ghostly Lordship swims his pool, And tries the strokes, essays the tricks, Long learnt on Hellespont, or Styx. Dan Chaucer hears his river still Chatter beneath a phantom mill. Tennyson notes, with studious eye, How Cambridge waters hurry by . . . And in that garden, black and white, Creep whispers through the grass all night; And spectral dance, before the dawn, A hundred Vicars down the lawn; Curates, long dust, will come and go On lissom, clerical, printless toe; And oft between the boughs is seen The sly shade of a Rural Dean . . . Till, at a shiver in the skies, Vanishing with Satanic cries, The prim ecclesiastic rout Leaves but a startled sleeper-out, Grey heavens, the first bird's drowsy calls, The falling house that never falls. . . . . . . . . .
God! I will pack, and take a train, And get me to England once again! For England's the one land, I know, Where men with Splendid Hearts may go; And Cambridgeshire, of all England, The shire for Men who Understand; And of that district I prefer The lovely hamlet Grantchester. For Cambridge people rarely smile, Being urban, squat, and packed with guile; And Royston men in the far South Are black and fierce and strange of mouth; At Over they fling oaths at one, And worse than oaths at Trumpington, And Ditton girls are mean and dirty, And there's none in Harston under thirty, And folks in Shelford and those parts Have twisted lips and twisted hearts, And Barton men make Cockney rhymes, And Coton's full of nameless crimes, And things are done you'd not believe At Madingley on Christmas Eve. Strong men have run for miles and miles, When one from Cherry Hinton smiles; Strong men have blanched, and shot their wives, Rather than send them to St. Ives; Strong men have cried like babes, bydam, To hear what happened at Babraham. But Grantchester! ah, Grantchester! There's peace and holy quiet there, Great clouds along pacific skies, And men and women with straight eyes, Lithe children lovelier than a dream, A bosky wood, a slumbrous stream, And little kindly winds that creep Round twilight corners, half asleep. In Grantchester their skins are white; They bathe by day, they bathe by night; The women there do all they ought; The men observe the Rules of Thought. They love the Good; they worship Truth; They laugh uproariously in youth; (And when they get to feeling old, They up and shoot themselves, I'm told) . . .
Ah God! to see the branches stir Across the moon at Grantchester! To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten Unforgettable, unforgotten River-smell, and hear the breeze Sobbing in the little trees. Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand Still guardians of that holy land? The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream, The yet unacademic stream? Is dawn a secret shy and cold Anadyomene, silver-gold? And sunset still a golden sea From Haslingfield to Madingley? And after, ere the night is born, Do hares come out about the corn? Oh, is the water sweet and cool, Gentle and brown, above the pool? And laughs the immortal river still Under the mill, under the mill? Say, is there Beauty yet to find? And Certainty? and Quiet kind? Deep meadows yet, for to forget The lies, and truths, and pain? . . . oh! yet Stands the Church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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ei'/qe genoi/mhn is how it appears in Bibliomania, dxb (I have his Collected Poems bookmarked). Something tells me that's not going to help much, though... This poem is an example of why, despite falling in love with the man, he is far from my favorite poet. Nonetheless, this is the poem that more or less launched his reputation from "trying" into "hey, he is a poet worth noticing". Neither he nor his peers considered The Soldier (1914) his best work, but it opens with the lines for which he is most famous: "If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England."
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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he is far from my favorite poet
Well, I must agree that I tend to pick bits that I like out of this poem and really fail to see the rest of it! But it does labour the point, it is overly sentimental and he can't decide whether he is aiming at comedy or pathos; perhaps that makes it bathos, (qv in another thread).
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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How about this piece:
Sweet April showers Do spring May flowers.
Thomas Tusser: A Hundred Good Points of Husbandry (1557)
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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'My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.' Song of Solomon 2:10-13 http://aol.bartleby.com/108/22/1.html#1Henry Purcell added wonderfully beautiful music to these already-musical words. I listen to his setting more than once every springtime.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Here Comes The Sun (George Harrison)
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun And I say it's all right Little darlin' it's been a long cold lonely winter Little darlin' it feels like years since it's been here Here comes the sun, here comes the sun And I say it's all right Little darlin' the smiles returning to their faces Little darlin' it seems like years since it's been here Here comes the sun, here comes the sun And I say it's all right Sun, sun, sun, here it comes Sun, sun, sun, here it comes Sun, sun, sun, here it comes Sun, sun, sun, here it comes Sun, sun, sun, here it comes Little darlin' I feel the ice is slowly meltin' Little darlin' it seems like years since it's been clear Here come the sun, here comes the sun And I say it's all right Here come the sun, here comes the sun It's all right, it's all right
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addict
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addict
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Oh NO! Consuelo, you have given me a BAD case of the earworm!! What a wonderful song!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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In reply to:
ei'/qe genoi/mhn is how it appears in Bibliomania, dxb (I have his Collected Poems bookmarked).
It's the Greek for what follows: Would I were. Probably a quotation but I don't know where from.
Bingley
Bingley
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Thanks for that Bingley, its answered a long standing niggle at the back of my mind.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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To a Louse HA! whaur ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie? Your impudence protects you sairly; I canna say but ye strunt rarely, Owre gauze and lace; Tho’, faith! I fear ye dine but sparely 5 On sic a place. Ye ugly, creepin, blastit wonner, Detested, shunn’d by saunt an’ sinner, How daur ye set your fit upon her— Sae fine a lady? 10 Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner On some poor body. Swith! in some beggar’s haffet squattle; There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle, Wi’ ither kindred, jumping cattle, 15 In shoals and nations; Whaur horn nor bane ne’er daur unsettle Your thick plantations. Now haud you there, ye’re out o’ sight, Below the fatt’rels, snug and tight; 20 Na, faith ye yet! ye’ll no be right, Till ye’ve got on it— The verra tapmost, tow’rin height O’ Miss’ bonnet. My sooth! right bauld ye set your nose out, 25 As plump an’ grey as ony groset: O for some rank, mercurial rozet, Or fell, red smeddum, I’d gie you sic a hearty dose o’t, Wad dress your droddum. 30 I wad na been surpris’d to spy You on an auld wife’s flainen toy; Or aiblins some bit dubbie boy, On’s wyliecoat; But Miss’ fine Lunardi! fye! 35 How daur ye do’t? O Jeany, dinna toss your head, An’ set your beauties a’ abread! Ye little ken what cursed speed The blastie’s makin: 40 Thae winks an’ finger-ends, I dread, Are notice takin. O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae mony a blunder free us, 45 An’ foolish notion: What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us, An’ ev’n devotion!
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