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#189887 03/12/10 11:40 PM
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Hi...haven't been around these parts in awhile. But in days of yore we used to get some pretty good poetry threads going from time to time where folks posted some of their favorite poems, or whatever happened to catch their fancy at the time as per emotional or seasonal relevance. So I had a hankerin' to kick one off again...and with hope lookin' towards Spring after too many blizzards I'd like to start it off with one of my all-time favorite works (note: Hyla is a breed of frog that inhabited the brook):

HYLA BROOK

by Robert Frost

BY June our brook’s run out of song and speed.
Sought for much after that, it will be found
Either to have gone groping underground
(And taken with it all the Hyla breed
That shouted in the mist a month ago,
Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)—
Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed,
Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent
Even against the way its waters went.
Its bed is left a faded paper sheet
Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat—
A brook to none but who remember long.
This as it will be seen is other far
Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song.
We love the things we love for what they are.

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Hello,
We've had too many blizzards here too: 100 days of continual
snow, so I appreciated your poem contribution. Thanks.


----please, draw me a sheep----
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A Ceremonie in Glocester
Robert Herrick

Ile to thee a simnell bring,
'Gainst thou go'st a mothering;
Si that, when she blesseth thee,
Half that blessing thou'lt give me.

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From: Words on the window-pane
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Spring

SOFT-LITTERED is the new-year's lambing-fold
And in the hollowed haystack at its side
The shepherd lies o'nights now, wakeful-eyed
At the ewes' travailing call through dark and cold
The young rooks cheep 'mid the thick caw o'the old:
And near unpeopled stream-sides, on the ground,
By her spring-cry the moorhen's nest is found,
Where the drained flood-lands flaunt their marigold.

Chill are the gusts to which the pastures cower,
And chill the current where the young reeds stand
As green and close as the young wheat on land:
Yet there the cuckoo and the cuckoo-flower
Plight to the heart Spring's perfect imminent hour
Whose breath shall soothe you like your dear one's hand.

@Father Steve, I wish I understood the second line of your poem and simnell is a sort of fruitbread special for Easter?

BranShea #189950 03/15/10 02:21 AM
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I took gost thout mothering to mean when you go looking for your mother...
In the above poem 'plight' is used as a verb?

Avy #189953 03/15/10 02:56 AM
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as in (the idiomatic) plight (one's) troth.

tsuwm #189956 03/15/10 04:02 AM
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Originally Posted By: tsuwm
as in (the idiomatic) plight (one's) troth.

Tsorry tsu - I did not understand this. ETA: Okay now I do. I just looked up the dictionary.

Last edited by Avy; 03/15/10 04:57 AM.
Avy #189959 03/15/10 10:09 AM
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From OE plihtan, 'to imperil, compromise'.

Faldage #189960 03/15/10 10:12 AM
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Okay now I don't understand it all over again. The dictionary says plight as a verb means to pledge... and risk and danger. I think in poem it means pledge.

Last edited by Avy; 03/15/10 10:16 AM.
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I see it now I think, Father Steve.
Someone gives a simnell to another one to take it to a or maybe their mother. And asks for a half of the blessing she will give.

Never heard of Robert Herrick before, but I found some more in an anthology I have. Nice poem called: To Daffodils.

@Avvy. In the Rossetti poem plight means promise, not compromise.

Anyone else for poems related to lent/spring that are to your liking and might please others?

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