It's been a while since we've had a good ol' thread of poems. Well, here's one to share our favorite poems, beautiful, inspirational, meaningful or even humorous words that you love.
I'll start off with a couple that are rather apt for us.
The Road Not Taken Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
The Retreat Henry Vaughan
Happy those early days! when I Shined in my angel-infancy. Before I understood this place Appointed for my second race, Or taught my soul to fancy ought But a white, celestial thought, When yet I had not walked above A mile or two, from my first love, And looking back (at that short space) Could see a glimpse of his bright face; When on some gilded cloud or flower My gazing soul would dwell an hour, And in those weaker glories spy Some shadows of eternity; Before I taught my tongue to wound My conscience with a sinful sound, Or had the black art to dispense A sev'ral sin to ev'ry sense, But felt through all this fleshly dress Bright shoots of everlastingness. O, how I long to travel back And tread again that ancient track! That I might once more reach that plain, Where first I left my glorious train; From whence th' inlightened spirit sees That shady city in palm trees; But (ah!) my soul with too much stay Is drunk, and staggers in the way. Some men a forward motion love, But I by backward steps would move And when this dust falls to the urn In that state I came, return.
Dear JazzO: since I lack the talent for making worthwhile comments on poetry, forgive me for asking if the word "ought" would not more properly be "aught". My dictionary does give "ought" as a variant, but I doubt many people would recognize that.
Or taught my soul to fancy ought But a white, celestial thought,
Wordwind, that Shaker tune is in our hymnal as "Lord of the Dance", with different words. ==========================================================
Here's a poem I found on Bibliomania. I think it's neat, how the meaning of the old words can be determined, though the spellings are so different. In this site, you can run your cursor over the footnote number, and a little box with the meaning comes up right there. (Sheyne means bright.)
Anonymous. XV-XVI Century
15th Cent.
25 May in the Green-Wood
IN somer when the shawes be sheyne,1 And leves be large and long, Hit is full merry in feyre foreste To here the foulys song.
To se the dere draw to the dale And leve the hilles hee, And shadow him in the leves grene Under the green-wode tree.
Hit befell on Whitsontide Early in a May mornyng, The Sonne up faire can shyne, And the briddis mery can syng.
‘This is a mery mornyng,’ said Litulle Johne, ‘Be Hym that dyed on tre; A more mery man than I am one Lyves not in Christiantàe.
‘Pluk up thi hert, my dere mayster,’ Litulle Johne can say, ‘And thynk hit is a fulle fayre tyme In a mornynge of May.’
Here's one of my favorites which, to me at least, displays most if not all of the adjectives which Jazzo used in his heading. Being in stark modern style, if now somewhat dated language and references (50's), it's a contrast to Jackie's ancient poem. The author termed this an "oral message"; along with 6 other works written at the same time, it was intended to be recited to a jazz accompaniment. It's especially appropriate now that the infamous holiday season is almost upon us (in another 10 years or so, merchants will be pushing Christmas merchandise the day after Michaelmas).
CHRIST CLIMBED DOWN
Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where there were no rootless Christmas trees hung with candycanes and breakable stars
Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where there were no gilded Christmas trees and to tinsel Christmas trees and no tinfoil Christmas trees and no pink plastic Christmas trees and no gold Christmas trees and no black Christmas trees and no powderblue Christmas trees hung with electric candles and encircled by tin electric trains and clever cornball relatives
Christ climed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where no intrepid Bible salesmen covered the territory in two-tone cadillacs and where no Sears Roebuck creches complete wih plastic babe in manger arrived by parcel post the babe by special delivery and where no televised Wise Men praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey
Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where no fat handshaking stranger in a red flanned suit and a fake white beard went around passing himself off as some sort of North Pole saint crossing the desert to Bethlehem Pennsylvania in a Volkswagon sled drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer with German names and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts from Saks Fifth Avenue for everybody's imagined Christ child
Christ climed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where no Bing Crosby carollers groaned of a tight Christmas and where no Radio City angels iceskated wingless thru a winter wonderland into a jinglebell heaven daily at 8:30 with Midnight Mass matinees
Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and softly stole away into some anonymous Mary's womb again where in the darkest night of everybody's anonymous soul He awaits again an unimaginable and impossibly Immaculate Reconception the very craziest of Second Comings
-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Oral Messages from A Coney Island of the Mind
Here’s an old favourite that I always love, and most especially at this time of year as late sunshine plays across the autumnal reds and golden browns of country landscapes: John Keats, of course, the cockney sparrow ;)
To Autumn
1 Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm summer days will never cease, For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
2 Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep, Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
3 Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,-- While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
I love the way he builds a rich pattern of imagery in the first stanza, redolent of burgeoning fruit and a full harvest – then moves on via the extraordinary personification of the season in the second, through to the images of incipient death in the last. There is an elegiac build, both sweet and sad. The overall rhythm contributes an extraordinary and careful accumulation of sensuous effect, almost like leaves settling in gentle layers under the yielding trees.
In a letter dated Tuesday 21 September 1819, Keats wrote this to his friend John Reynolds, which seems to date the poem as written on Sunday 19th – I think he was staying in Winchester at this point in his life, just returned from the Isle of Wight:
“… How beautiful the season is now – How fine the air. A temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weather – Dian skies – I never lik’d stubble fields so much as now - Aye better than the chilly green of the spring. Somehow a stubble plain looks warm – in the same way that some pictures look warm – This struck me so much in my Sunday’s walk that I composed upon it. I hope you are better employed than in gaping after weather. I have been at different times so happy as not to know what weather it was…”
mmm, thanks for the reminder that not *all the world is looking forward to a season of mess and smelly foolishness, Max! I like your selected poem.
Dian as a contraction of Diana, the huntress
Yes, that was my take - as in the myth about her being seen bathing... so a kind of extended metaphor for his remark about "chaste", which I think is also punning on 'chased' and perhaps 'chasseur', hence his words "without joking..."!
tongue move around like it would while eating the fruit
mm, I think you may have got something with that idea - the combination of complex mouth movements created by a wide range of consonants and open vowels does seem to suggest a full-mouthed chewing. When you try reading it aloud, there are some really tongue-tangling combinations (mists and mellow fruitfulness) that seem to be quite deliberate slowing effects, building a calm rhythm that suggests the sense of fruition and completion.
An offering from one of my favorite poets, perhaps even more timely now. I especially love the final two lines:
FOR THE ONE WHO WOULD TAKE MAN'S LIFE IN HIS HANDS
by Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966)
Tiger Christ unsheathed his sword, Threw it down, became a lamb. Swift spat upon the species, but Took two women to his heart. Samson who was strong as death Paid his strength to kiss a slut. Othello that stiff warrior Was broken by a woman's heart. Troy burned for a sea-tax, also for Possession of a charming whore. What do all examples show? What must the finished murderer know?
You cannot sit on bayonets, Nor can you eat among the dead. When all are killed, you are alone, A vacuum comes where hate has fed. Murder's fruit is silent stone, The gun increases poverty. With what do these examples shine? The soldier turned to girls and wine. Love is the tact of every good, The only warmth, the only peace.
"What have I said?" asked Socrates, "Affirmed extremes, cried yes and no, Taken all parts, denied myself, Praised the caress, extolled the blow, Soldier and lover quite deranged Until their motions are exchanged. --What do all examples show? What can any actor know? The contradiction in every act, The infinite task of the human heart."
(c) 1954 by Delmore Schwartz
"A vacuum comes where hate has fed." rings increasingly poignant for me, especially in light of current events.
I thought this might be appropriate,with it being remembrance sunday on the 11th
DUCE ET DECORUM EST
bent double, like old beggars under sacks knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind; Drunk with fatigue;deaf even to the hoots Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone was still crying out and stumbling And floundering like a man in fire or lime.- Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon we threw him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devils sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer , bitter as the cud Of vile , incurable sores on innocent tongues, - My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori
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 the 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 save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, With many recognitions dim and faint, And somewhat of a sad perplexity, 60 The picture of the mind revives again: While here I stand, not only with the sense Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts That in this moment there is life and food For future years. And so I dare to hope, Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first I came among these hills; when like a roe I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, Wherever nature led: more like a man 70 Flying from something that he dreads, than one Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days, And their glad animal movements all gone by) To me was all in all.--I cannot paint What then I was. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite; a feeling and a love, 80 That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.--That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts Have followed; for such loss, I would believe, Abundant recompence. For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes 90 The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels 100 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognise In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 110 Of all my moral being.
I posted this poem in the Spanish only version some time ago. I learned it by heart because the first time I ever heard it said was at the circle up North by a guy who mangled the Spanish so badly that I just had to tell him so. His reaction?"You learn the Spanish, then, and we'll say it together." By the time I got it learned, he had moved to California and we have never, in 15 years, said this poem together. I still remember it in hopes...(I just can't remember the dang title!)
Tu vientre sabe mas Que tu cabeza Pero no tanto Como tus musclos Esa Es la fuerza bella Negra De tu cuerpo desnudo Signo de selva El tuyo Con tus collares rojos Tus brazeletes de oro curvo Y ese caiman Nadando en el Zambeze De tus ojos. -Nicolas Guiellen
Your belly knows more Than your head But not as much As your thighs That Is the beautiful black force Of your naked body Sign of the jungle Yours With your red necklaces Your curved bracelets of gold And that alligator Swimming in the Zambeze Of your eyes.
Duncan Large, in anticipation of Remembrance Day, posted Wilfred Owens' best-known poem.
Today is Nov. 11, Armistice Day, as older USns call it. So herewith the quintessential WWI poem and another one, more controversial, from the same era.
In Flanders Fields (1915)
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders fields.
-- John McCrae
Recessional
God of our fathers, known of old -- Lord of our far-flung battle-line -- Beneath whose awful Hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine -- Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget, lest we forget!
The tumult and the shouting dies -- The captains and the kings depart -- Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of Hosts be with us yet, Lest we forget, lest we forget!
Far-call'd our navies melt away -- On dune and headland sinks the fire -- Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget, lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe -- Such boasting as the Gentiles use Or lesser breeds without the Law -- Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget, lest we forget!
For heathen heart that puts her trust In reeking tube and iron shard -- All valiant dust that builds on dust, And guarding calls not Thee to guard -- For frantic boast and foolish word, Have Mercy on Thy People, Lord!
When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy's been swinging them. But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay. Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning After a rain. They click upon themselves As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed So low for long, they never right themselves: You may see their trunks arching in the woods Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground, Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. But I was going to say when Truth broke in With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm, I should prefer to have some boy bend them As he went out and in to fetch the cows-- Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, Whose only play was what he found himself, Summer or winter, and could play alone. One by one he subdued his father's trees By riding them down over and over again Until he took the stiffness out of them, And not one but hung limp, not one was left For him to conquer. He learned all there was To learn about not launching out too soon And so not carrying the tree away Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise To the top branches, climbing carefully With the same pains you use to fill a cup Up to the brim, and even above the brim. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be. It's when I'm weary of considerations, And life is too much like a pathless wood Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs Broken across it, and one eye is weeping >From a twig's having lashed across it open. I'd like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return. Earth's the right place for love: I don't know where it's likely to go better. I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
*Note from WW: Not that I'm wishing an ice storm on anyone, but, if all are safe, ice storms are lovely.
Max, I think much of poetry has to do with turning the flame down, as Hemingway said, to the point just before it flashes out. He was writing about prose. Sylvia Plath said it just as well, and I paraphrase roughly: "Prose is an open hand; poetry is a closed fist." The enemy is death, so to wave a cape before its nose, most particularly in autumn and winter, is a daring feat. And in that daunting challenge probably lies much of the fascination. Sam Clemens wrote that the best way to defeat the devil is to laugh at him; poets prance around him.
These pools that, though in forests, still reflect The total sky almost without defect, And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver, Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone, And yet not out by any brook or river, But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.
These trees that have it in their pent-up buds To darken nature and be summer woods-- Let them think twice before they use their powers To blot out and drink up and sweep away These flowery waters and these watery flowers From snow that melted only yesterday.
She sang beyond the genius of the sea. The water never formed to mind or voice, Like a body wholly body, fluttering Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry, That was not ours although we understood, Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.
The sea was not a mask. No more was she. The song and water were not medleyed sound Even if what she sang was what she heard, Since what she sang was uttered word by word. It may be that in all her phrases stirred The grinding water and the gasping wind; But it was she and not the sea we heard.
For she was the maker of the song she sang. The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea Was merely a place by which she walked to sing. Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew It was the spirit that we sought and knew That we should ask this often as she sang.
If it was only the dark voice of the sea That rose, or even colored by many waves; If it was only the outer voice of sky And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled, However clear, it would have been deep air, The heaving speech of air, a summer sound Repeated in a summer without end And sound alone. But it was more than that, More even than her voice, and ours, among The meaningless plungings of water and the wind, Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres Of sky and sea. It was her voice that made The sky acutest at its vanishing. She measured to the hour its solitude. She was the single artificer of the world In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea, Whatever self it had, became the self That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we, As we beheld her striding there alone, Knew that there was never a world for her Except the one she sang and, singing, made.
Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know, Why, when the singing ended and we turned Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights, The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there, As the night descended, tilting in the air, Mastered the night and portioned out the sea, Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles, Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.
Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon, The maker's rage to order words of sea Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred, And of ourselves and our origins, In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.
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I like your selected poem.
