What a wonderful thread this is - many thanks to Rod for disinterring it. And especial thanks to Bridget for her truly lovely poem, and to Jackie for reminding me of the "Little cat feet". I am impressed by the memories of those who have not had to refer to their books, and have loved most of the selections, whether memorised or not. My own memorisation only runs to parts of poems - like great chunks of "Horatio", by Macaulay, which is one of my all time favourites.
But the poetry that comes most easily to my mind is always Omar Kayyam (I think that Avy might agree with me on this!)
It contains a great deal of wisdom, of a rather fatalistic sort, for sure, but nevertheless he has always struck a chord in me.
Two quatrains, in particular, are never far from me, as they more or less sum up my own philosophy of life.

"Dreaming, as Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky,
Methought I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry,
'Awake, my little ones and Drink
Before Life's Liquor in the Cup runs dry' "

and:

"Come fill the Cup! And into the Fire of Spring,
Your winter Garment of Repentance fling.
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter. And the Bird is on the Wing!"

Yes, Rhu-- I too know more chunks than whole poems-- the last 30 lines or so of Amy Lowell's Patterns and most but not all of Oh Captian, Oh captain, Or The Highwayman, or from early childhood-- RLS--Childrens garden of verse--My Shadow.

I think is sad that children are not required to memorize poetry anymore.. (many don't even get much exposure to poetry in primary school.) I found as child that poetry always had "interesing, odd words"-- From My Shadow I rememeber errant-- as well as wonderful ideas..
Christina Rosetti-- had such wonderful poems.. and Robert Frost.

age 13, I was rewarded for a very minor good deed-- (visiting the sick) by being taken to a book store and told "Select anything you'd like" , and that's how i got my first poetry book (it was a paperback, {a Louis Untermeyer Anthology} I expect i could have gotten a hard cover book-- but I didn't think i deserved more-- at the time even a paperback book was to big bucks for me- and the "sick" I visited was a friend hospitalized after a car accident!)

>But the poetry that comes most easily to my mind is always Omar Kayyam (I think that Avy might agree with me on this!)

Yes Rhub. I love the Rubaiyat because it has all richness of the east which I miss so much in English poetry. And somehow the Rubaiyat translates well or maybe it is Fitzgerald's talent.

From amongst the huge emerald peacock feathers I have in my copy of the Rubaiyat from MANY favourites, I choose this one :

Ah love! could thou and I with fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits - and then
Re-mould it to our Heart's desire!

Pellegrinaggio

In agguato
in queste budella
di macerie
ore e ore
ho strascicato
la mia carcassa
usata dal fango
come una suola
o come un seme
di spinalba

Ungaretti
uomo di pena
ti basta un'illusione
per farti coraggio

Un riflettore
di l�E
mette un mare
nella nebbia

Ungaretti (thinking of emanuela)

another from the Rubaiyat:

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, A Loaf of Bread-and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness-
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

chronist

Mist edged its way across the knoll,
Whilst sunlight rose below.
Atop horizon's velvet prop,
She cast her stifled glow.

The time is seven, clear and true,
Yet my temper is not so,
I tried the tonics, weak and strong,
That I might allay my woe.

Now I set myself down, slotting in,
Beside this fleeting morn,
Each time mixed up throughout my games,
No different now this dawn.

Impatient perhaps zealous,
For I wasn't sure which one,
I traced footsteps in sodden shoes
back from where I'd come

Amidst heavy heart and broadening sky,
Feet shuffled down lush lines,
Glancing up, I saw a second path,
Which intertwined with mine.

Veering right along the hillside's face,
the helix brought me back;
to where I'd stood just prior to
my solemn homeward track

Shimmering on that lone hill
in her true and rightful place,
Stood she in all her splendour true,
With a ruddy, beaming face

The sun akin, aptly lit the mount
Now ablaze with promise, ..fate
Falling to my knees in bliss,
I pledged to her my faith.

I have heard, and I forget where, that Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubiyat is not very accurate and that several of the better known passages were ones he completely made up. Can anyone confirm/refute this?

Bingley

> ...he completely made up

Is it not the case with many translations Bingley, particularly in poetry? The vast majority of the content often reflects the translators understanding of what he read, his spin on it, so to speak. It's like trying to look out onto a landscape through a stained-glass window: the general form can be discerned but nothing is as crisp and clear. Nevertheless my grandfather cherished the Fitzgerald Rubiyat regardless of whether the original text was just(!) a catalyst for his own creation.

Yes, Bingley, there is a lot of truth in what you have asked. The first quatrain, in particualr, ("Awake, for Morning into the bowl of night / Has cast the Stone that puts the stars to flight / and Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught / The Sultan's turret in a Noose of Light." {5th edn}{{EDIT: what AM I thinking about!! that is the 1st edition!}}) bears but a passing echo of some of the sentiments expressed by the Tentmaker. There is a vast difference in the words used to express the Dawning of the Day between the one I've quoted, which is his 1st edition, to the version he uses in the 5th edition, itself not at all the same as the 2nd edition!! Every quatrain is Fitzgerald's interpretation rather than his translation, of the original. This is shown, to some extent by the changes he makes to some of the quatrains from one edition to the next. (The absolutely top-famous quatrain about the book of verse, the loaf of bread, the flask of wine, and thou beside me in the wilderness, is a classic example of this - LIU!)
But I think - as BY has already suggested, that the strength of Fitzgeralds work lies in his capture of the spirit of Khayyam (Khayyam himself would, doubtless, have said it was the wine, not the spirit )

And to Avy, I will heartily agree that his chosen quatrain is also a firm favourite of mine - it was just, I think, that the previous postings had suggested the other two more strongly in my mind. And "The moving Finger writes ... " has been so overused - - -. (But is still a powerful piece of imagery, hey?)

Of the whole variety of poetry I love, the ones I can return to most naturally again and again (apart from Shakespeare) are the Romantics, tho� not particularly Wordsworse. Keats� To Autumn sticks in my mind:

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 days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells�.

And bel, specially for you I could recite La Belle Dame sans Merci

I met a lady in the meads
Full beautiful, a faery's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean, and sing
A faery's song�


Rime of the Ancient Mariner has certain stanzas that stick but I stumble over most of it however many times I go back:

With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe,
And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
Then southward aye we fled�


Also a vivid favourite is Sam T�s Frost at Midnight

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud--and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings, save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed, so calm! - that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! The thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not�


Of all those I mumble to myself (and others, if they are too slow to join the other wedding guests!) the absolute old favourite is the strange and evocative magic of Kubla Khan

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery�..

Perhaps this has something of the spirit you and Rhu were talking about, Avy?

Oh, maverick! Kubla Kahn is nearly my favorite!
William Blake's intro. to Songs of Innocence is first, though: it just rings with joy!

Introduction

Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:

``Pipe a song about a Lamb!''
So I piped with merry chear.
``Piper, pipe that song again;''
So I piped: he wept to hear.

``Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy chear:''
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.

``Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book, that all may read.''
So he vanish'd from my sight,
And I pluck'd a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,
And I stain'd the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs,
Every child may joy to hear.

Oh, maverick! Kubla Kahn is nearly my favorite!

Ditto, though for me, first place would be almost anything by Emily Dickinson


MUCH madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
�T is the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur,�you �re straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.

While hunting for another of my all-time favourites, Shelley's Ozymandias,

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.


I stumbled across this,
http://www.wmich.edu/english/tchg/lit/pms/ozymand-rival.html

Methinks that even I could do a better job of naming a sonnet!

It appears that Horace Smith was wordy rather than witty.

Max, you're right. A better title may have been

"A futile attempt at writing a poem which will make others think that I am on the same intellectual plane as P.B Shelley any day of the week."

I think that mine is much pithier and to the point than his.

We could have a competition coming up with better titles to Smith's poem than Smith managed!

>Perhaps this has something of the spirit you and Rhu were talking about, Avy?
Actually Mav "Old Khayyam's" spirit (correct me if I am wrong, Rhub) is the serious other-worldly question of death and life and the contrasting quirky solution he has to it. "There is no lasting meaning to death and life anyway so just enjoy yourself with wine, woman(man), and song"

But regarding "the strange and evocative magic of Kubla Khan" Yes you are right! I won't say that there is no 'richness of the east' in English poetry. There is Kubla Khan and there is also Abhou Ben Adhem and others.

These are a few from a collection of his verses that describe Khayyam in a potter's shop, when the pots start speaking to him:
And strange to tell, among the Earthen Lot
Some could articulate, while others not:
A suddenly one more impatient cried -
Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?

Then said another - 'Surely not in vain
My substance from common Earth was Ta'en,
That He who subtly wrought me into Shape
Should stamp me back to common Earth again.'

None answer'd this; but after Silence spake
A vessel of a more ungainly Make:
'They sneer at me for leaning all awry;
What! Did the Hand then of the Potter shake?'

Then said another with a long-drawn Sigh,
'My Clay with long oblivion is gone dry:
But, fill me with the old familiar juice,
Methinks I might recover by-and-bye!'

Cheers!

fill me with the old familiar juice...

Thanks, Avy, that made me both chuckle and ponder on reflection. I guess that's what you mean.

I hope this will not put a damper to the this bright and sunny thread...


When You Are Old

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep:

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountain overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.


A free adaptation by William Butler Yeats of a Pierre Ronsard poem.

chronist

I had thoughts of showing all six here, but together is not how she wrote them only how I set them to music, so you'll have to wait 'til I get recordings made for Max's site...

Message For Me

The sound
of the sad soughing
of pines and birches,
as the wild winds
of winter
flail the high branches,
has a message for me:
Man is not alone
to suffer
the fate of age;
all nature, in due season,
reaches the wintertime of life,
in the same
relentless way.

Marie Engebretson-Jackson

(sorry, no rhyming)

fill me with the old familiar juice...

Thanks, Avy, that made me both chuckle and ponder on reflection.
Oh, mav--does that mean what I think it does? In water?
(pond water?) Which is the true, and which the (slightly) altered one? Or is neither neither, but each a separate entity, the truth according to itself?

This is a wonderful thread and thank you whoever resurrected it. (And a special congrats to William for daring to post. Beautiful!)
I'd forgotten just how much I liked Baudelaire - only glad to get back to him when I have learned a little more about poetry and can appreciate the cleverness of some of the stuff he does. Look at the form and the way the lines repeat! As for the rest of it - wow!

Not strictly relevant, but one of my most treasured possessions is a book my grandmother gave me. It's a simple black-bound book, but through her life she used to write in it poems and extracts from books that particularly struck her. A very personal anthology. She gave it to me when I was at university, with blank pages still in the back, and since then I've carried on, writing in poems and passages that strike me. I hope that one day I too will have someone to pass the book on to. And I recommend that anyone who loves words considers keeping a book like this. It's the nearest I think she could have got to letting me into her soul. I get all soggy thinking about it even now, years later.

Bridget>>>>
Not strictly relevant, but one of my most treasured possessions is a book my grandmother gave me. It's a simple black-bound book, but through her life she used to write in it poems and extracts from books that particularly struck her. A very personal anthology. She gave it to me when I was at university, with blank pages still in the back, and since then I've carried on, writing in poems and passages that strike me. I hope that one day I too will have someone to pass the book on to. And I recommend that anyone who loves words considers keeping a book like this.

I wish that children in school, the minute they learn how to write, should be encouraged to keep a journal or a notebook, every year that they are in school. They should be allowed ample time to write in this journal everyday. observations, snippets of poetry, descriptions, etc. I know that some dedicated English or writing teachers do this, but not every one.



chronist

As my contribution to this delightfully meandering thread, here is a cri-de-coeur on behalf of our inarticulate arboreal friends against the insensitivity of poets, or at least those (unlike myself) who publish in traditional media.

Notably, this little sonnet is a double acrostic, with the first and last letters of each line spelling out the first, while preserving rhyme and metre. If you think such a contrivance is easy to assemble, I invite you to try one yourself.

Acrostics on paper

A cross sticks on paper; trees weep
Convinced that no man heeds their plea
Red cedars, bereaved, cannot sleep
Ovid gulps down his minestrone
Sequoias, sequestered, afar
Shed tears from their loftiest height
Stenographers swill at the bar
Trees moan to the moon, bark stark white
Ionesco, egged on by their roe,
Chews sturgeons entire, and whole cows!
Keening cries of the weeping willow
Stab silence and dead souls arouse
Our poets enjoy jours de soupe �
Night�s falling, limbs tremble, leaves droop.

Rusty

"Old Khayyam's" spirit (correct me if I am wrong, Rhub) is the serious other-worldly question of death and life and the contrasting quirky solution he has to it. "There is no lasting meaning to death and life anyway so just enjoy yourself with wine, woman(man), and song"


I wouldn't dream of correcting you, Avy. not when you have captured the essence of Kayyam's philosphy of life (and death.)in far better words than I could manage. He shows himself as essentially a fatalist, especaially in those quatrains - of which there are many - concerning the Potter and the Pots.

BTW, Kayyam's continual references to wine are, from my point of view as a social historian, very interesting as a documentary indication that Islam did not start off with a total ban on alcohol. It is analagous with the Methodists, over here, who did not really adopt temperance until the 1830s, well after the death of Wesley, their founder. Does anyone know when and why Islam adopted their opposition to "the grape?"

More Poems!
Please.

Yeats on Ronsard
Pierre de Ronsard is one of my favorites. To see where Yeats was coming from, the following from the Sonnets pour H�l�ne:

Quand vous serez bien vielle, au soir, � la chandelle,
Assise aupr�s du feu, d�vidant et filant,
Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous �merveillant:
�Ronsard me c�l�brait du temps que j'�tais belle.�

Lors vous n'aurez servante oyant telle nouvelle,
D�j� sous le labeur � demi sommeillant,
Qui au bruit de Ronsard ne s'aille r�veillant,
B�nissant votre nom de louange immortelle.

Je serai sous le terre, et fant�me sans os,
Par les ombres myrteux je prendrai mon repos;
Vous serez au foyer une vieille accroupie,

Regrettant mon amour et votre fier d�dain.
Vivez, si m'en croyez, n'attendez � demain;
Cueillez d�s aujourd'hui les roses de la vie.

When you are very old, by candle glow,
Beside the fire where you spin and skein,
You'll sing my songs, and murmur once again,
"I was admired by Ronsard long ago."

And then your servant, sleepy now and slow
With labour, when she hears that soft refrain,
Will wake to recognise my deathless strain
On praise of beauty that I used to know.

My body will be underground, and I
A boneless wraith; and this will be your fate,
A bent old crone, remembering with a sigh
My love and your contempt for it -- too late!

Then live, believe me, live without delay;
Gather the roses of your life today.

translation by Reine Errington

This was a common theme with poets of the time. Compare with Marvell's advice to the virgins, "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may".


Someone wanted more poems. One of my favorites, which includes two expressions which nearly everyone will recognise, is Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard which is too long to quote here, but you can see it at http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/gray4.html

Can anyone call from memory the poem from which came the lines :
"From dust thou art, to dust returneth was not written of the soul." ?

Life is real! life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
A Psalm of Life -- Longfellow

Thank you Tsuwm! I'd corrupted it over time ... happy to have it, and have it right.
You're a gem.
wow

High Flight
John Gillespie Magee Jr.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings,
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For a bio of the author, just 19 when he died in WWII. Google --High Flight"+poem ---for several interesting sites some with photos.

Bobyoungbalt:

What do you think about this:
http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/Strasse/9282/sonnet.htm Do you think it works?

I have been brought up as a child listening to the poetic form of a Ghazal and the way this person has used it is not very effective at all (read "Murder!").

Also which in your opinion is the best form of the sonnet?

Bobyoungbalt....
Yeats on Ronsard
Pierre de Ronsard is one of my favorites. To see where Yeats was coming from, the following from the Sonnets pour H�l�ne

You are so considerate to provide the translation.
There is a dash of playfulness in the Ronsard that somehow tempers the aching regret.

chronist

In reply to:

---

Does anyone know when and why Islam adopted their opposition to "the grape?"

---

Some Muslims here in Indonesia interpret the prohibition as being against getting drunk rather than alcohol per se. Perhaps they're right and that was the original intent, and then just to make sure people didn't get drunk others tightened the prohibition up a bit.

Bingley

>Pierre de Ronsard is one of my favorites. To see where Yeats was coming from, the following from the
> Sonnets pour H�l�ne
>You are so considerate to provide the translation.
>There is a dash of playfulness in the Ronsard that somehow tempers the aching regret.
I have never known Ronsard. Okay .. off on the search to know another poet.
>"I was admired by Ronsard long ago."
He uses his signature - known as "Maqta" and very common in Arabic and Urdu poetry

High Flight
Thank you, dear wow, for this beautiful contribution. I've never heard of the poem or the author up to now.

Sonnets
Avy, I like the site you posted. It gives a good account of the Italian forms and the Shakesperian forms. You will have noted that the Milton sonnet quoted there is in the form ABBA(bis)CDECDE, which is somewhat unusual. The New Collossus which I quoted earlier in this thread has the form ABBA(bis)CDCDCD. John Donne, in the Holy Sonnets, used the form ABBA(bis)CDCDEE, which became a very common form. There is also the form ABAB(bis) with most of the aforementioned arrangements for the sestet. As to my preference, while I enjoy all types of sonnets, I think the Donne form the most interesting; it never gives the sing-song sound you get with some of the others.

I was also interested in the description of the ghazal, which I read about in a most interesting book set in India at the time of the partition, when it was still possible for Moslems and Hindus to be friends and share an evening of listening to ghazals being sung.

I think it is time for a new thread, so I am starting one on Sonnets etc. and will begin with one of the prototypes by Petrarch. I hope you will contribute some ghazals with some notes on their structure etc., since you don't like the notes given in the url.

A city different
Than Carl Sandburg's
Rises to meet the hot sky
as I politely ask pardon
for interposing myself
between two identical-looking men
screaming at each other
in a plate-glass window.
The queens are holding court
in Boys Town.
The poverty claims another victim
in Cabrini Green.
Multifarious mundane cruelties unfold
with corporate efficiency
in the suburbs.
Bienvenidos a Little Village!
where every day
more and more
es el dia de los muertos
Brought by hard-eyed men
Tattooed teardrops fall
from eye to hand,
marking them in their sorrow, these
sons and grandsons
of the first generation
who came here
and discovered:
The skyline markers of Wright
of Mies van der Rohe,
are monuments
to an America
you must crane your necks
and peer northward to see.

If that's your own work, my dear Kit, congratulations. I enjoyed it very much. It reminds me of Ferlinghetti, one of my favorite poets, so you can take kudos for being compared to him.

Very nice, thanks for sharing that! Now, am I jealous of your skill, or do I envy it?

slovovoi

A city different.......

I must add my praise and applaud the difficult work of creating your very own art. Congratulations!



chronist

Very good, Slovovoi ... you are accomplished.

Slovovoi,
Every time I come to this thread I reread your work, and enjoy it more each time! And that's more of a compliment than you may realize: I don't like depressing things, as a rule.
Namaste.

slipped the surly bonds of Earth . . . and touched the face of God.

The immortal words used by Ronald Reagan after the horrible explosion of the Challenger.

"High Flight" by John G. Magee is well known among members of the US military, especially and naturally, the U.S. Air Force.

I had it printed on the back of my late husband's Memorial Card. He was a in USAF. On the front was his picture and dates/places of birth and death with my and sons' names.
I mailed the cards to far-flung friends when I could no longer repeat or write the news another time.
Is this a practice of Memorial Cards used in other places?
What poem would you want on your card?

Tsuwm, A great idea to start this thread. Perhaps you might consider "#2" as this is getting rather long?

Oh, where do I start!! Y'all have reminded me of things I've forgot and things I never knew.

One of my favs is Masefield's Cargoes, simply for what it taught me about sound in poetry:

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds
Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road rail, pig lead,
Firewood, ironware, and cheap tin trays.


-- John Masefield

Here's one of my favorites ("Hyla" is a breed of frog that inhabits the brook); I especially love the poignant last line:

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 sleighbells 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 it's 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.

By the way, you lovers of verse might well enjoy a great site I frequent: <eMule.com> The Poetry Archives
They have over 3,500 classic poems archived (mid-20th Century and back), and an interesting and lively discussion forum. So click on over and maybe I'll meet you there!

wow requests: tsuwm, A great idea to start this thread. Perhaps you might consider "#2" as this is getting rather long?

wow, BobYB has done this for us. See Sonnets etc right down thar

Ah-HA!
Hasn't been good last couple of days ... my computer DIED and I am at a cybercafe with all the town's computer junkies ... I needed a FIX. (Confirmation that this place is an addiction.) Computer Magic Man comes Wednesday ... Will I survive? Will $$$ hold out?
Hold good thoughts. Do not expect any answers to Email for a few days.
Thank you for allowing me to post this...
wow

I do not like this thread to break yet so here is another sublime rhyme.


Hymn to Intellectual Beauty
(An excerpt)

The awful shadow of some unseen power
Floats though unseen among us--visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower--
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening--
Like clouds in starlight widely spread--
Like memory of music fled--
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.

Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate
With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
Of human thought or form--where art thou gone?
Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?
Ask why the sunlight not forever
weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river,
Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,
Why fear and dream and death and birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth
Such gloom--why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope?

Percy Bysshe Shelley

chronist