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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: The Very Much Shorter Oxford Book of English Verse
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
I mean, have you seen some poems? They go on for pages. As a service to the culture hungry, but time starved, this thread aims to provide Famous Poems in digested form.
To Daffodils: Wordsworth
I took a walk and saw some daffs.
Was like a poem, ready penned.
Now, when life's that bit short on laffs
I find they cheer me up no end.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Smudgie
Ship's Barnacle
# 2716
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Posted
The Highwayman - Alfred Noyes
The highwayman and Bess, his love,
betrayed by ostler, Tim,
both died by gunshot. Now they're ghosts.
But Tim... what became of him?
[ 25. July 2014, 09:23: Message edited by: Smudgie ]
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Miss you, Erin.
Posts: 14382 | From: Under the duvet | Registered: Apr 2002
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
In the final year of the Trojan war
Achilles, piqued, would fight no more
So Hector smashed the Greeks on shore
Then killed Patroclus: spilled his gore
This roused our man- ‘Revenge!’ he swore
And popped a cap in the ass of Hector
(and with the loss of Pat he felt so sore
that he messed with the corpse to even the score)
And what came next you’ll know, of course-
They smashed up Troy with a hollow horse
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
A sailor shot an albatross
A foolish avicide
It brought a curse upon his ship
And all his shipmates died
He wished that he could die as well
But that was not to be
The Lord had different plans for this
Poor wretch upon the sea
So now he's cursed to tell his tale
In every port and street
To teach God's word of love for all
The creatures that we meet
So if you see an albatross
Just stop and have a think
Of "water water everywhere,
But not a drop to drink"!
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
In the final year of the Trojan war
Achilles, piqued, would fight no more
So Hector smashed the Greeks on shore
Then killed Patroclus: spilled his gore
This roused our man- ‘Revenge!’ he swore
And popped a cap in the ass of Hector
(and with the loss of Pat he felt so sore
that he messed with the corpse to even the score)
And what came next you’ll know, of course-
They smashed up Troy with a hollow horse
![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
(now do the Odyssey ![[Biased]](wink.gif) )
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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agingjb
Shipmate
# 16555
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Posted
Arjuna paused before the battle
To ask if men should die like cattle.
Lord Krishna told him: "It's all right
A warrior's Dharma is to fight."
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Refraction Villanelles
Posts: 464 | From: Southern England | Registered: Jul 2011
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Thyme
Shipmate
# 12360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by agingjb:
Arjuna paused before the battle
To ask if men should die like cattle.
Lord Krishna told him: "It's all right
A warrior's Dharma is to fight."
"LIKE!"
(I like them all but this one especially)
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The Church in its own bubble has become, at best the guardian of the value system of the nation’s grandparents, and at worst a den of religious anoraks defined by defensiveness, esoteric logic and discrimination. Bishop of Buckingham's blog
Posts: 600 | From: Cloud Cuckoo Land | Registered: Feb 2007
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
Today sitting out upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't all there.
He fixed me with a glittering eye
And bored me with an attempt to try
To tell me how he once shot a bird
And got into a mess. Word after word -
I yawned, "No more! Enough! I'm dreading
This going on - I'm late for a wedding."
I grew ruder, sniggered, and groaned
But to no avail and on he droned.
I wandered off, left the rest unheard
Muttered irritably, "What a nerd."
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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agingjb
Shipmate
# 16555
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Posted
Mr Chapman "loud and bold":
Made Homer rock like Krakatoa
And now I've found his "realms of gold".
I feel like Herschel or Balboa.
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Refraction Villanelles
Posts: 464 | From: Southern England | Registered: Jul 2011
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Ariston
Insane Unicorn
# 10894
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Posted
Went for a walk one midlife day
It seemed as if I'd lost my way
Met up with Virgil, trusty guide
I'd pass through Hell at his side
"Look there, Dante, on your left
Is one who is of God bereft
And, going down, look to the right
Another without His holy light
Think of God's justice, beyond reason
Not bound to any mortal season
Now see the three, in mouth of one
Frozen there, 'till time is done
Now let us leave this hateful place
And see again the stars in space"
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“Therefore, let it be explained that nowhere are the proprieties quite so strictly enforced as in men’s colleges that invite young women guests, especially over-night visitors in the fraternity houses.” Emily Post, 1937.
Posts: 6849 | From: The People's Republic of Balcones | Registered: Jan 2006
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
April is the cruellest month.
The chair I sat in, like a burnished throne,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
Was in rats' alley, where the dead men lost their bones.
And I, Tiresias, have foresuffered all.
There is no hot water, said Sweeney. What shall we do?
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala
Woo hoo hoo
Hoo hoo hee.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Robert Armin
All licens'd fool
# 182
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Posted
The devil fell
And Adam rose.
Then came Eve
And caused our woes.
(With apologies for the sexism.)
[ 25. July 2014, 22:59: Message edited by: Robert Armin ]
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Keeping fit was an obsession with Fr Moity .... He did chin ups in the vestry, calisthenics in the pulpit, and had developed a series of Tai-Chi exercises to correspond with ritual movements of the Mass. The Antipope Robert Rankin
Posts: 8927 | From: In the pack | Registered: May 2001
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Smudgie
Ship's Barnacle
# 2716
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Posted
From a Railway Carriage: R L Stevenson
Train fast.
Things passed.
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Miss you, Erin.
Posts: 14382 | From: Under the duvet | Registered: Apr 2002
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
Season of mists
Fruitful harvest days
O fleeting beauty of nature.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Callan
Shipmate
# 525
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Posted
Beowulf fought Grendel, and rendered him quite armless.
And then killed Grendel's mother; a woman fierce and charmless.
The land was free and happy; brave Beowulf was king.
But alas it ended badly when a dragon lost his bling.
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 9757 | From: Citizen of the World | Registered: Jun 2001
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Robert Armin
All licens'd fool
# 182
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Posted
Wordsworth loved his early years;
His poetry bores me to tears.
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Keeping fit was an obsession with Fr Moity .... He did chin ups in the vestry, calisthenics in the pulpit, and had developed a series of Tai-Chi exercises to correspond with ritual movements of the Mass. The Antipope Robert Rankin
Posts: 8927 | From: In the pack | Registered: May 2001
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Yeats: Sailing to Byzantium
No fun being old
Just turn me to gold.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Ariston
Insane Unicorn
# 10894
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Posted
It snowed one day
I took a ride
The woods looked great
But I went on.
I took a walk
Fork in the road
I went one way
Everything changed.
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“Therefore, let it be explained that nowhere are the proprieties quite so strictly enforced as in men’s colleges that invite young women guests, especially over-night visitors in the fraternity houses.” Emily Post, 1937.
Posts: 6849 | From: The People's Republic of Balcones | Registered: Jan 2006
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Chaucer: the Miller's Tale
As part of the farce
You get to coo and bill -
But don't leave your arse
On the window sill.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
John Keats: La Belle Dame Sans Merci
Alfresco sex
Can lead to a hex.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
Thinking of the Waste Land, has anyone not come across these by Wendy Cope?
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Thinking of the Waste Land, has anyone not come across these by Wendy Cope?
H.P. Lovecraft wrote wrote a parody of The Waste Land, shortly after it was published.
Lovecraft copies few of Eliot's actual words and images, but rather focusses on spoofing what he evidently regarded as the pretentious and long-winded spirit of the original poem.
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Starbug
Shipmate
# 15917
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Posted
The Lady of Shalott
She lay in the boat and floated downstream;
The mirror was broken - the end of a dream.
Singing the things that she never could say,
When he finally found her, she'd passed away.
A good thing, really, she didn't find out
Her imaginary lover was a selfish lout.
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“Oh the pointing again. They're screwdrivers! What are you going to do? Assemble a cabinet at them?” ― The Day of the Doctor
Posts: 1189 | From: West of the New Forest | Registered: Sep 2010
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
quote:
H.P. Lovecraft wrote wrote a parody of The Waste Land, shortly after it was published.
Mention of Lovecraft and parody brought to mind this - The Call of Cthulu, by Dr Seuss.
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
Posts: 1596 | Registered: Oct 2010
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
That is fantastic.
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
For Eliot parodies, I always liked Chard Whitlow best.
The best parody in English considered purely as a parody, though I think Lear's The Dong with the Luminous Nose manages to send up Edgar Allan Poe and also be a better serious Poe poem than any that Poe wrote himself at the same time.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
This graveyard's getting a bit too dark
Lots of bodies in this dead-people park
No idea who any of them were
Not really bothered and don't much care.
Had fun reading the better tombstones
Some terrible rhymes, so lots of groans -
Wait. Stands the church clock at three past ten?
Right, time to shove off to home again.
Elegy, not written by Gray.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Burns: To a Louse
The louse was big,
The louse was fat,
The louse was on
A wumman's hat.
That's the story -
Here's the sermon:
Folk will always
Clock your vermin.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Robert Armin
All licens'd fool
# 182
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Posted
Had we but world enough and time,
But yet we don't, it's such a crime.
So darling, pull your knickers down,
I want to screw you while in town.
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Keeping fit was an obsession with Fr Moity .... He did chin ups in the vestry, calisthenics in the pulpit, and had developed a series of Tai-Chi exercises to correspond with ritual movements of the Mass. The Antipope Robert Rankin
Posts: 8927 | From: In the pack | Registered: May 2001
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.
Hardly a man's alive, ye ken,
Who remembers that poem from start to end...
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Vulpior
Foxier than Thou
# 12744
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Posted
A man on a horse in a wood
Arrived as he promised he should.
He called from outside
But no-one replied.
They listened; just ghosts in the hood.
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I've started blogging. I don't promise you'll find anything to interest you at uncleconrad
Posts: 946 | From: Mount Fairy, NSW | Registered: Jun 2007
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
Dirck sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and me;
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
We went through the night and we went through the day
Gallopy gallopy the whole bloomin' way!
And all I remember is friends flocking round
As I sat with my head 'twixt my knees on the ground
Asking what happened and they told me and said
"Why didn't you just email or phone us instead?"
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Heavenly Anarchist
Shipmate
# 13313
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
Had we but world enough and time,
But yet we don't, it's such a crime.
So darling, pull your knickers down,
I want to screw you while in town.
This made me laugh out loud ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.' Douglas Adams
Dog Activity Monitor
My shop
Posts: 2831 | From: Trumpington | Registered: Jan 2008
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QLib
Bad Example
# 43
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Posted
Nightingales sang in a wood:
Jolly good.
People who think they're sad
Must be mad.
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Tradition is the handing down of the flame, not the worship of the ashes Gustav Mahler.
Posts: 8913 | From: Page 28 | Registered: May 2001
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Starbug
Shipmate
# 15917
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Posted
Water, water, everywhere -
It makes me so damn cross;
If I can't find a drink, I'll shoot
That bloody albatross.
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“Oh the pointing again. They're screwdrivers! What are you going to do? Assemble a cabinet at them?” ― The Day of the Doctor
Posts: 1189 | From: West of the New Forest | Registered: Sep 2010
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
Walt Whitman: Song Of Myself
You name it, I am it.
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Sumer is ycumen in:
Lewd sing cuckoo!
And every other friggin' bird out there, stuffing the eaves with nests and making out in the street.
[ 30. July 2014, 23:13: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Welease Woderwick
Sister Incubus Nightmare
# 10424
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Posted
Should you ask whence these stories
Whence these legends and traditions
About some young Red Indian princeling
[Native American, First Nations people]
That go on for days, weeks, months, years
As he meets young Minniehaha
And their trials underwent together
[All in trochaic tetrameter]
Before she dies like an operatic heroine
Before his conversion in the last pages
To the God of the white colonists.
The End
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I give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.
Fancy a break in South India?
Accessible Homestay Guesthouse in Central Kerala, contact me for details
What part of Matt. 7:1 don't you understand?
Posts: 48139 | From: 1st on the right, straight on 'til morning | Registered: Sep 2005
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Birkir kills Fafnir.
'Revenge!' The women cry.
Eldur kills Gunnar.
'Your turn to die!'
Goti kills Hafnar.
'Blood must blood supply!'
Himar kills Jorvi
And before the gore is dry
Knut kills Lars
'Revenge!' The women cry.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
Odysseus, king of Ithaca,
Went off to fight some war
Left his wife and son at home
As he had done before.
War won, he made for Ithaca
But took a scenic route
Stopped off at several islands
And plundered them for loot.
Odysseus, king of Ithaca,
Embarked on a ten-year cruise
Stopped off at yet more islands
For feasting, fun and booze.
Sometimes he thought of Ithaca
On one night of food and wine
He looked around in the morning
And found all his crew were swine.
Odysseus, king of Ithaca
Got back home in the end
Found his wife a-marrying a man
He once had called his friend.
Should he stay in Ithaca?
Ten full years had now passed...
The Trojan War had come and gone –
Well, he was home at last.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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QLib
Bad Example
# 43
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Posted
Pious Aeneas fled far his home
Loved Dido; left her. Founded Rome.
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Tradition is the handing down of the flame, not the worship of the ashes Gustav Mahler.
Posts: 8913 | From: Page 28 | Registered: May 2001
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
I don't know what version
You drew on to write.
But you cast an aspersion
That isn't quite right.
Not according to Homer,
The first to compose
The tale of that roamer,
No slight did expose.
I have an attachment to the honour of she whose name I bear.
The Returns explored a variety of themes.
Remarriage 1.
Clytemnestra took an axe
and gave Cassandra twenty whacks.
And when she saw what she had done,
gave Agamemnon twenty one.
Remarriage 2.
Diomedes in coming home
Found his wife was "moving on"
So he moved on, not quite to Rome,
Thinking he was better gone.
Remarriage 3.
Didn't happen. How much more do I have to unpick this plot?
[ 31. July 2014, 19:50: Message edited by: Penny S ]
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Robert Armin
All licens'd fool
# 182
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Posted
Beowulf once went off roaming,
Found a monster in the gloaming;
Knocked him off, then killed his mum,
But by a dragon he got done.
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Keeping fit was an obsession with Fr Moity .... He did chin ups in the vestry, calisthenics in the pulpit, and had developed a series of Tai-Chi exercises to correspond with ritual movements of the Mass. The Antipope Robert Rankin
Posts: 8927 | From: In the pack | Registered: May 2001
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
'Bella's taken up with a common chap'
'Is that so? We can't have that!'
'Larry, old boy, we have a mood
To take a ride in a deep dark wood'
'Isa dear, what have you got
Buried in that basil pot?'
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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jacobsen
seeker
# 14998
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Posted
Lady in tower
Trapped in her bower
Sees a knight,
Gorgeous wight.
From mirror turns
At once learns
That death is nigh.
With one sigh
She kicks the bucket.
As she saw,
So she must suck it.
She's not large
So in a barge
Downstream floats
Among the boats.
Knight's regretful
But forgetful
And as we've seen
Lays a queen.
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But God, holding a candle, looks for all who wander, all who search. - Shifra Alon
Beauty fades, dumb is forever-Judge Judy
The man who made time, made plenty.
Posts: 8040 | From: Æbleskiver country | Registered: Aug 2009
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