From Robert Blake's Proverbs of Hell:

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.

True as true can be, Faldage. On and off I see this tree or that.

From Raymond Chandler's 'Pickup on Noon Street':

"He put his gun downn, started to reach for the money. His fist doubled, swept upward casually. His elbow went up with the punch, the fist turned, landed almost delicately on the angle of Waltz's jaw."

To me Chandler still is the coolest Detective story writer of all I know.

Poignant lyics from the greatest harmonica player since the Southland gave birth to the blues - the great but late - Sonny boy Williamson.

You whoop her when she need it
The Judge will not let you explain
Yes, whoop her when she need it
The Judge...will not, let you explain

Because he believes in justice
And a woman, is the glory of a man.

All My Love in Vain
Chess Records (1953)

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.

I saw the sad, shy horses walking home in the sodium light,
two priests and a farrier, October geese and a cold winter's night.

The River Flows

I will hear that play;
For never anything can be amiss,
When simpleness and duty tender it.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V, scene i

'Tis better to be silent and thought a fool,
than to speak and remove all doubt" - Mark Twain

'Talking of patriotism, what humbug it is; it is a word which always commemorates a robbery. There isn't a foot of land in the world which doesn't represent the ousting and re-ousting of a long line of succesive owners.' - Mark Twain

The Dish of Fruit

The table describes
nothing: four legs, by which
it becomes a table. Four lines
by which it becomes a quatrain,

the poem that lifts the dish
of fruit , if we say it is like
a table - how will it describe
the contents of a poem?

William Carlos Williams 1883-1963

"Pauca sed matura," Carl Friedrich Gauss.
("Few, but ripe.")

--------------------------------------------

And here, again from Willie Yeats, is the most powerful, frightening, (prophetic?) image in all Christendom...


Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

_______________________________________W.B.Yeats - The Second Coming

Here is a nifty if cutesy poem by ee cummings that I fancy tonight, BranShe...

maggie and milly and molly and may

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

____________________________ee cummings

By Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Yon rising Moon that looks for us again--
How oft hereafter will she wax and wane;
How oft hereafter rising look for us
Through this same Garden--and for one in vain!


And when like her, oh Saki, you shall pass
Among the Guests Star-scatter'd on the Grass,
And in your joyous errand reach the spot
Where we made One--turn down an empty Glass!

______________________________________The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
_______________________________________ Edward Fitzgerald

re: maggie and milly and molly and may

say, that is a nice one! thanks for posting that.

We are soldiers in the night
sword in hand, we seek the light
Stay by me the end is near
there is nothing more to fear

From: Soldiers in the night By: Walter Rossi



Whenever I hear this song, I find it extremely melancholic. It brings to mind, not just the horrors of war - that moment before the final push when you know that most of your brothers will not survive the fray - but also that moment in the night, when your loved-one is failing after a long fight, the end is near and you know it's time for them to go, and all you can do is be there so they are not alone.

The best lines of Edgar Allan Poe

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 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?
_________________________A Dream Within a Dream

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow-
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be-
This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
"If you seek for Eldorado."
___________________________Eldorado

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule-
From a wild clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE- out of TIME.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the tears that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters- lone and dead,-
Their still waters- still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.
__________________________Dreamland


Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly-
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!
_______________________The Conqueror Worm


[And say, Bel and BranShe, in Poe's day he was highly regarded in France; moreso than in the United States. It was said that the French translations of THE BELLS and THE RAVEN were vastly superior to the English originals by Poe.

How could this be? Poe's genius is predicated on the poetic union of meter, sense, and rhyme. Were the French translations acts of genius by the translators as well?

Well? Curious minds want to know.]

A PERFECT POEM
The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door-
Only this, and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;- vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow- sorrow for the lost Lenore-
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore-
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me- filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door-
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;-
This it is, and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you"- here I opened wide the door;-
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering,
fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
[is I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!"-
Merely this, and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice:
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore-
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;-
'Tis the wind and nothing more."

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and
flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed
he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door-
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door-
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no
craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore-
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning- little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door-
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore."

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered- not a feather then he fluttered-
Till I scarcely more than muttered, "other friends have flown
before-
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."
Then the bird said, "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore-
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of 'Never- nevermore'."

But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and
door;
Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore-
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking "Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee- by these angels he
hath sent thee
Respite- respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!- prophet still, if bird or
devil!-
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted-
On this home by horror haunted- tell me truly, I implore-
Is there- is there balm in Gilead?- tell me- tell me, I implore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil- prophet still, if bird or
devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us- by that God we both adore-
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore-
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend," I shrieked,
upstarting-
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!- quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my
door!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the
floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted- nevermore!

NEVERMORE

I think that I shall never see,
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, unless the Billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all!
--Ogden Nash

I think that I shall never hear
a poem as lovely as a beer..
Poems are made by fools I fear
but only Schlitz can make a beer
- Mad Magazine

I think that I shall never speak
as if a poet were a geek
it's only ignorance I fear
of what we could be speaking here


- yet hold no grudge against a beer

"...nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands"

e e cummings

"...:The third miracle made red and green
:The fourth miracle made God duck
:A torpedoed cathedral sinks rapidly into the earth..."

from Musrum by Eric Thacker and Anthony Earnshaw.

cheer

the sunshine warrior

And say, Bel and BranShe, in Poe's day he was highly regarded in France; moreso than in the United States. It was said that the French translations of THE BELLS and THE RAVEN were vastly superior to the English originals by Poe.

How could this be? Poe's genius is predicated on the poetic union of meter, sense, and rhyme. Were the French translations acts of genius by the translators as well?

Well? Curious minds want to know.]

Paul Verlaine, one of the Poe admiring ' Poètes Maudites' (cursed poets) titled one of his poems "Never More". Nevermore from the Raven split into two words. But clearly
under the infuence of Poe.

There may be several reasons why E.A.Poe has been mostly ignored in his own country. One : he lived and worked in France and England and died young.
Two: : his political and moral ideas may have been offensive to the still young American nation. The idea of a Monarchy in those days may not yet have been as far fetched as it is today.
Three he was proud and poor. ( A more elaborate answer can be found at Miscellany)

(POLONIUS: My lord, I will use them according to their desert.)

HAMLET: God's bodikin, man, much better. Use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity: the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.

Hamlet, Act II, scene ii

Just heard this song on Sirius "country favorites" radio.
Must have missed it the first time around.
No matter, I will now add it to my list of favorite country songlines.

As sung by Garth Brooks...

Hello operator, trace this call and send a taxi
I'm somewhere drinking but I'm not drinking alone
I've been beside myself ever since she's been gone.

How curious, i never thought of poe not being respected in US. He lived various places here, one was the then town of Fordham, (now a neighborhood in the Bronx)

the cottage he rented when he lived there still stands, it was moved a few hundred yards, and a park created around it (poe park) when i was a teen, the apartment building we lived in had a plaque on it, about poe (the apartment building occupied the original location of Poe's cottage.

(Bob Young who used to post here, lives in baltimore, close to St Elizabeth's hospital, (where there is plaque noting Poe died there, and Richmond Va has a professional sport team (football?) called The Raven's (named in part to commemorate Poe.) He might not have been appreciated in his own time, but his short stories are part of most HS reading lists and his poems are regularly included in anthologoies.

not just the raven, but annabelle lee, and for helen, (that i can think of off the top of my head!)

simon and garfunkle set annebelle lee to music (and included it on one of their early ablums, too)

Dear Helen, that is really nice news to wake up to. I knew less about his life in America . And I love to know he did one one for you special and a sportsclub named after him.
And that little park. Nice to know you live where he lived! l'll go through my old records to see if I can find that song. And through his American past! Thanks a big lot!!!
Thank God the bath has an overflow protection or else the hallway would have been flooded by now.;-)

Thank God the bath has an overflow protection or else the hallway would have been flooded by now.;-)

I didn't realize, Branny, that you had apparently thought Poe still wasn't appreciated here. (Isn't it so often true, though, that people aren't, at the time? Think of Beethoven and van Gogh.) But Poe had sure made it to fame by the time MY lifetime began. We studied him in school, and even today quotes from his works are used in everyday society.

If you re-read the second part of the blue text 6 posts back you can clearly see that I'm talking about the past. I had no way of knowing about the present. The information I got from Wikipedia told nothing about that. I'm glad history absolved his darker side and recognized his merits.Thanks.
I'm glad to know that now.

and tell how, Jackietjie did the white turn to blue?

I really don't like the French translation of The Raven - Le Corbeau.

As is often the case with translations, the French versions are much longer than the English. There is no rythm to the thing and the sentences are too heavy.

BelMarduk

At last I had the time to put one next ot the other. You are right The rythm and rhyme of the English are completely gone. The impact it made must have come from the contents because even in prose, the French of Baudelaire is beautiful. In his own work he had a section of:
"Little poems in prose"

On the link from French Google you'll find the Baudelaire translation next to the one done by Stéphane Mallarmé

It is interesting. Mallarmé has obviously made an attempt to compress and improve the first one. Yet the contents of the narrative looses in gloom and atmosphere compared to Baudelaire's. Who, alas cannot hold the flowing English rythm even without the rhyme.
(of course I feel better, now that I know that even great poets have to bow to the untransmittable .) Nice meeting you.


http://pages.globetrotter.net/pcbcr/corbeau.html
--

Thank you BranShe.

For years I've searched for Baudelaire's transalation of Poe's The Raven in order to understand how a translation could become so popular in France. Thank you. Since I can't read French I had the computer machine Systran translate Baudelaire's translation back into English.

Well, except for the part about giving head, and gently striking somebody with a door, I still can't see why the French translation became so popular.


THE RAVEN BY BAUDELAIRE (RE-TRANSLATED)

"Once, over lugubrious midnight, while I meditated,
weak and tired, on many invaluable and curious volume
of forgotten doctrines, while I gave head,
almost made sleepy, suddenly it was done one tapotement, like
gently striking somebody, knocking on the door of my
room. “It is some visitor, - I murmured, - who strike
with the door of my room; it is only that and nothing more.”

Oh, that's funny! To see a rhymed poem be translated throught French into English prose.That's really funny.
He became so popular because he fitted just fine into that group of poets called "the cursed poets". They were all poets who were attracted by the the dark side of life. The fin de siècle , the end of the century 'Spleen' '-- 'Weltschmerz
Poems called The Unreparable, Dance Macabre,The Lithanies of Satan.
As some of those poets mastered English quite well, they could read him and take him in as a kindred soul?;)It was a steady group in spite of differences. Edgar Degas, the impressionist painter of the ballet dancers, made a group portrait of them.They loved Poe's sense of the gloomy ,the macabre.They did hashish,opium etc. Romantisism , Weltschmerz.
Poems about poison and demons.Les Poètes Maudites were en vogue in the avant garde combined with the impressionists and symbolists.
(hope this answer will do).?

They loved Poe's sense of the gloomy ,the macabre.They did hashish,opium etc. Romantisism , Weltschmerz.

Funny, eh, how each generation has their groups - the 60's had their beatniks, the 70's their hippies, the 80 their punks and so on.

Here's one from the fifties...

Mash --> Someone to Love --> then select...

Please Send Me Someone To Love

Heaven speaking, to all mankind
I just want some, peace of mind
But if it's not, asking too much
Please send me someone to love

Just because, I'm in misery
I don't beg for, no sympathy
But if its not, asking too much
Please send me someone to love

I lay awake nights and count the world's troubles
And my answer is always the same.
Unless man puts an end

To his terrible sin
Hate will put the world, in a flame
What a shame.

Just because, I'm in misery
I don't beg for, no sympathy
But if its not, asking too much
Please send me someone to love.

Someone to love.
_________________ - Percy Mayfield - 1950


__________ HAPPY VALENTINE MANKIND

You live and learn, or you don't live long.

- Robert Heinlein.

Thanks, nightotter, Heinlein did have some zingers.

I like...

I never learned from a man who agreed with me.

___________________________________________Robert A. Heinlein

Indeed he did Milum. One last one from me in this thread...

Always a more beautiful answer that asks a more beautiful question.

- e.e Cummings.

Maybe I shouldn't. Oh well, what the hell, it's Valentine Day in the States. A poem by ee cummings...

the boys i mean are not refined

just kidding. I mean...

since feeling is first

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

Looks like one worth resurrecting for the reason given in the last line above...

My favourite 'of the moment' is

"When all is said and done, more is said than done"

I think it's by the prolific Anon

> "When all is said and done, more is said than done"

Nice to revisit this thread that obviously ended on a Valentine's day.

Mine for now is a phrase of many words:

"We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre; rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision."

C.S. Lewis