Thread: Poetic association game Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
Here's how it works:

You post 1-4 lines of a poem (not your own work, by an established poet) and the next person posts 1-4 lines of another poem that contains a keyword from your quote. The person after them then picks a different keyword out of the last post and posts their quote. Etc. Simples!

It might also be helpful to attribute it so that people can look it up if they want – some fragments of poetry can make you want to read more.

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May you be led on all your walks
By an unidentified bird
Flitting ahead, at least one branch

(Gwyneth Lewis, "Small Brown Job" )

[ETA Link, DT, VW Host]

[ 10. August 2014, 16:21: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
Will this do?

With oh such peculiar branching and over-reaching of wire
Trolley-bus standards pick their threads from the London sky
Diminishing up the perspective, Highbury-bound retire ...

(John Betjeman, "St Saviour's, Aberdeen Park")

[ETA Link, DT, VW Host]

[ 10. August 2014, 16:15: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
Thy famous Maire*, by pryncely governaunce,
With sword of justice thee ruleth prudently.
No Lord of Parys, Venyce, or Floraunce
In dignitye or honour goeth to hym nigh.
He is exampler, loode-ster, and guye;
Principall patrone and rose orygynalle,
Above all Maires as maister most worthy:
London, thou art the flour of Cities all.

William Dunbar In Honour of the City of London **

*Dunbar obviously gifted with a prophetic vision of Boris Johnson
**It would be good if posters could link to a full text, for those who'd like to read the whole thing.
 

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Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
But the snaw it stopped the herdin' an' the winter brocht him dool,
When in spite o' hacks an' chilblains he was shod again for school:
He couldna sough the catechis nor pipe the rule o' three,
He was keepit in an' lickit when the ither loons got free:
But he aften played the truant - 'twas the only thing he played,
For the maister brunt the whistle that the wee herd made!

Charles Murray's The Whistle
 

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Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard

[ 29. July 2014, 11:12: Message edited by: Ariel ]
 

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

"Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold Wiki annotated version
 

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Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
I have a lovely poem which includes night-wind but can't find the full text online. It's about two women enjoying a romantic / sexual tryst.

Instead, I offer;

When Henry, with his Latest Breath
Cried "Oh, my friends, be warned by me.
That Breakfast, Dinner, Lunch and Tea
Are all the human frame requires..."
With that, the Wretched Child expires.


Henry King by Hilaire Belloc.
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil's foot.

John Donne Song
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
Alack, alack, is it not like that I,
So early waking, what with loathsome smells,
And shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad:
O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Environed with all these hideous fears?

From Juliet's final speech, Shakespeare,
Romeo and Juliet IV.iii.
 

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Posted by agingjb (# 16555) on :
 
What is this that roareth thus?
Can it be a Motor Bus?
Yes, the smell and hideous hum
Indicat Motorem Bum!

(MOTOR BUS by: A.D. Godley)

[ETA Link, DT, VW Host]

[ 10. August 2014, 16:23: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by Chesterbelloc (# 3128) on :
 
Let all things travel faster
Where motor car is master
Till only Speed remains.

[John Betjeman, Inexpensive Progress ]
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
'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.

From "Ozymandias" - Shelley. (But I think you guessed).

[ 29. July 2014, 14:59: Message edited by: Baptist Trainfan ]
 

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Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman's Woe!

Longfellow's The Wreck of the Hesperus
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
Don't anyone dare post "In the bleak midwinter". I can't stand it!

[ 29. July 2014, 16:08: Message edited by: Baptist Trainfan ]
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
Got it!

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.

"The Journey of the Magi" - T S Eliot (I remembered it from school!)

[ 29. July 2014, 16:11: Message edited by: Baptist Trainfan ]
 

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Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :
 
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.

So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.

Longfellow's translation of opening lines, Dante's Inferno
 

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Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
O Caledonia! stern and wild
Meet nurse for a poetic child.

Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel
 

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Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :
 
For even daughters of the swan can share
Something of every paddler’s heritage —
And had that colour upon cheek or hair,
And thereupon my heart is driven wild:
She stands before me as a living child.

from Yeats' Among School Children
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
As from the house your mother sees
You playing round the garden trees,
So you may see, if you will look
Through the windows of this book,
Another child, far, far away,
And in another garden, play.

To Any Reader: R L Stevenson
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
Oops. Oh well, choice of two for the next poster.
 

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Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
(Firenze)

She waits for each and other,
She waits for all men born;
Forgets the earth her mother
The life of fruits and corn

...

(Gwai)

From too much love of living
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be

both from Swinburne's The Garden of Proserpine
 

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Posted by the famous rachel (# 1258) on :
 
Strike, churl; hurl, cheerless wind, then; heltering hail
May’s beauty massacre and wispèd wild clouds grow
Out on the giant air; tell Summer No,
Bid joy back, have at the harvest, keep Hope pale.

Gerard Manley-Hopkins
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.

Shaespeare (As You Like It).
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
Lay the proud Usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty’s in every blow!
Let us Do—or Die!

Burns: Scots Wha Hae
 

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Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

John Donne
 

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Posted by the famous rachel (# 1258) on :
 
Let me die a youngman's death
not a free from sin tiptoe in
candle wax and waning death
not a curtains drawn by angels borne
'what a nice way to go' death

Roger McGough
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
The curtains now are drawn,
And the spindrift strikes the glass,
Blown up the jagged pass
By the surly salt sou’-west,
And the sneering glare is gone
Behind the yonder crest,
While she sings to me.


Thomas Hardy.
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

G K Chesterton: Lepanto
 

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Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Jane Kenyon: Let Evening Come
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
In politics there’s room for jest;
With frequent gibes are speeches met,
And measures which are of the best
Are themes for caustic humor yet.
E’en though the pulpiteer we fret
With sundry quiddities we fling,
We pray you never to forget
That cricket is a serious thing.


Edward George Dyson (1865-1931).
 

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Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
[I know this doesn't actually contain the word 'cricket', but it's surely got to be ...]

There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night --
Ten to make and the match to win --
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.

Newbolt: Vitai Lampada
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
Not to mention-

For the field is full of shades as I near the shadowy coast,
And a ghostly batsman plays to the bowling of a ghost

Francis Thompson At Lord's

[ 31. July 2014, 20:51: Message edited by: Firenze ]
 

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Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
Colonel Fazackerly Butterworth Toast,
Rented a castle complete with a ghost,
But someone or other forgot to declare
To Colonel Fazack that the spectre was there.

Charles Causley
 

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Posted by Yangtze (# 4965) on :
 
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.

Thomas Hardy The Darkling Thrush

[ 31. July 2014, 23:36: Message edited by: Yangtze ]
 

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Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :
 
"The sun's rims dips; the stars rush out:
At one stride comes the dark;
With far-heard whisper o'er the sea,
Off shot the spectre-bark."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Ancient Mariner" whisper

[ETA Link, DT, VW Host]

[ 10. August 2014, 16:27: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
"His form had yet not lost
All her original brightness, nor appeared
Less than Archangel ruined, and th' excess
Of glory obscured: as when the sun new-risen
Looks through the horizontal misty air
Shorn of his beams, or, from behind the moon,
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs".

John Milton, "Paradise Lost", book 1.

[ETA Link, DT, VW Host]

[ 10. August 2014, 16:33: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
Jamat, it is for each poster to choose a link word from the preceding quote.

Firenze
8th Day Host
 

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Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :
 
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's Changing course untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest,
Nor shall death brag thou wandrest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest;

Shakespeare, Sonnet 18

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[ 10. August 2014, 16:34: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by agingjb (# 16555) on :
 
There is a Canon which confines
A Rhymed Octosyllabic Curse
If written in Iambic Verse
To fifty lines.

(Lines to a Don, G.K.Chesterton)

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[ 10. August 2014, 16:36: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by agingjb (# 16555) on :
 
(and of course it was by Hilaire Belloc, and about Chesterton.)
 

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Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
But oh! more horrible than that
Is the curse in a dead man's eye!
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Coleridge
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
The blessed damozel lean’d out
From the gold bar of Heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters still’d at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were seven.

D G Rossetti The Blessed Damozel
 

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Posted by Robert Armin (# 182) on :
 
I HAVE desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.

Double reference; this is Heaven Haven by GM Hopkins
 

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Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :
 
You left North Haven, anchored in its rock,
afloat in mystic blue...And now--you've left
for good. You can't derange, or rearrange,
your poems again. (But the sparrows can their song.)
The words won't change again. Sad friend, you cannot change.

from North Haven by Elizabeth Bishop. Love the poem though I'm not sure that stanza stands as well alone.
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
Low-anchored cloud,
Newfoundland air,
Fountain-head and source of rivers,
Dew-cloth, dream-drapery,
And napkin spread by fays ...

"Low-anchored cloud" by Henry David Thoreau.
 

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Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

P.B. Shelley - Ode to a Skylark.
 

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Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :
 
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

The Tyger by William Blake
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

G M Hopkins God's Grandeur
 

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Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :
 
This city now doth like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning, silent, bare;
Ships towers, domes theatres and temples rise;
Open unto the fields and to the skies;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Wordsworth, 'Composed On Westminster Bridge'

[ETA Link, DT, VW Host]

[ 10. August 2014, 16:30: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail;
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

Byron's The Destruction of Sennacherib
 

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Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :
 
Alone the very word is like a bell
Which tolls me back from thee to my sole self
Although the fancy cannot work so well
As she was wont to do deceiving elf

Keats, 'Ode to a Nightingale'

[ETA Link, DT, VW Host]

[ 10. August 2014, 16:55: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by the famous rachel (# 1258) on :
 
His bucko mate, GRUMBUSKIN, long since had disappeared,
For to the Bell at Hampton he had gone to wet his beard;
And his bosun, TUMBLEBRUTUS, he too had stol'n away -
In the yard behind the Lion he was prowling for his prey.


Growltiger by T.S. Eliot.
(Not sure the version in the link is pukka. Don't have my copy to hand and can't check).
 

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Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :
 
Last line of Keats above should read famed to do. Apologies.
 

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Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
I've heard them lilting at our ewe-milking,
Lasses a-lilting before dawn o' day;
But now they are moaning on ilka green loaning:
The flowers of the forest are a' wede away.

Jane or Jean Elliot's Flowers of the Forest
 

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Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :
 
Sunset and evening star
And one clear call for me
And may their be no Moaning of the bar
When I put out to sea.

Tennyson. 'Crossing The Bar'

[ETA Link, DT, VW Host]

[ 10. August 2014, 16:57: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;

John Masefield Sea Fever
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.


William Wordsworth.

Inevitably. But not my kind of poetry at all!
 

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Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
Well, the inevitable follow up to that is "Lake Isle of Innisfree" but instead I'm going to go for:

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May"
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."

The Cremation of Sam McGee by the incomparable Robert Service.
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
They're changing the guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
We saw a guard in a sentry bix.
"One of the sergeants looks after their socks",
Says Alice.

A A Milne Buckingham Palace
 

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Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
The twilight swallows the thicket,
The starlight reveals the ridge.
The whistle shrills to the picket —
We are changing guard on the bridge.

Kipling, Bridge Guard in the Karroo

(Not the best verse of what is otherwise an atmospheric poem, but it fits the game.)

[ 02. August 2014, 10:42: Message edited by: Ariel ]
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
I hope we're allowed plurals ...

There's a whisper down the line at 11.39
When the Night Mail's ready to depart,
Saying 'Skimble where is Skimble has he gone to hunt the thimble?
We must find him or the train can't start.'
All the guards and all the porters and the stationmaster's daughters
They are searching high and low,
Saying 'Skimble where is Skimble for unless he's very nimble
Then the Night Mail just can't go.'

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats - T.S. Eliot
 

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Posted by Starbug (# 15917) on :
 
Every night and every morn,
Some to misery are born;
Every morn and every night,
Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight;
Some are born to endless night.

Auguries of Innocent by William Blake
 

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Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
A SWEET disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:—
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distractión,—

Robert Herrick
 

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Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :
 
As flies to Wanton boys
Are we to the Gods
They kill us for their sport...
How should this be?
Bad is the trade that must play fool to sorrow.
King Lear Act 4 Shakespeare

[ETA Link, DT, VW Host]

[ 10. August 2014, 17:00: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :
 
The fool said to the animals:
"You are merely my chattels,
With one lesson to learn-
That what happens to you is not your concern
But mine; for a just God
Has set you on earth for my profit."

Frances Bellerby
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
The garlands wither on your brow:
Then boast no more your mighty deeds;
Upon Death's purple altar now
See where the victor-victim bleeds.
Your heads must come
To the cold tomb:
Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust.

J Shirley Death the Leveller
 

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Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
Tempted to go back to Shelley's Ozymandias again, but instead here's this:

O, withered is the garland of the war,
The soldier’s pole is fallen; young boys and girls
Are level now with men; the odds is gone,
And there is nothing left remarkable
Beneath the visiting moon!

Shakespeare. Anthony and Cleopatra IV xv

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[ 10. August 2014, 17:09: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :
 
From Where have all the flowers gone ?

Where have all the husbands gone, long time passing?
Where have all the husbands gone, long time ago?
Where have all the husbands gone?
Gone for soldiers everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Pete Seeger, derived from traditional cossack folksong.

[ETA Link]

[ 10. August 2014, 17:16: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :
 
Yet ev'n these bones, from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Elergy in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray.

[ETA Links, DT, VW Host]

[ 10. August 2014, 17:14: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :
 
It doesn't pay to quote from memory does it?

Forlorn the very word (Ode to Nightingale above)
I know..I know..!
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
Said Mr. Smith, “I really cannot
Tell you, Dr. Jones—
The most peculiar pain I’m in—
I think it’s in my bones.”

Said Dr. Jones, “Oh, Mr. Smith,
That’s nothing. Without doubt
We have a simple cure for that;
It is to take them out.”

Walter de la Mare.
 

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Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :
 
The stars are not wanted now put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up all the wood.
For Nothing now can ever come to any good.

WH Auden. 'Stop All The Clocks'

[ETA Link, DT, VW Host]

[ 10. August 2014, 17:11: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Wm Blake
The Tyger
 

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Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
And the headsman broke down
In a blaze of tears, in that light
Of the thin, long human frame
Upside down in its own strange joy,
And, if some other one had not told him,
Would have cut off the feet

Instead of the head

Jmaes.L.Dickey: The Performance
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forest of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

William Blake.
 

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
Half the night I watched the Heavens
Fizz like '81 champagne --
Fly to sixes and to sevens,
Wheel and thunder back again;
And when all was peace and order
Save one planet nailed askew,
Much I wept because my warder
Would not let me sit it true.

Kipling "La Nuit Blanche"
La Nuit Blanche

[ 04. August 2014, 14:07: Message edited by: Penny S ]
 

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Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
If only you would come and dare the crystal
Rampart of the rain and the bottomless moat of thunder,
If only now you would come I should be happy
Now if now only.

Louis MacNeice, June Thunder
 

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Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :
 
A thousand policemen directing the traffic
Cannot tell you why you come or where you go
A colony of cavies or a horde of active marmots
Build better than they that build without the Lord

T.S. Eliot Chorus from 'The Rock'


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[ 10. August 2014, 16:53: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;

Wm Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet
 

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Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :
 
When they reached the mountain summit, even Clancy took a pull
It well might make the boldest hold their breath,
The wild hops scrub grew thickly, and the hidden ground was full, of wombat holes, and any slip was Death
But the man from snowy river let the pony have his head,
And he swung his stock whip round and gave a cheer,
And he raced him down the mountain like a torrent down it's bed,
While the others stood and watched in very fear.

A. B. Paterson. "The Man From Snowy River"

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[ 10. August 2014, 16:51: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
Is there a power that can sustain and cheer
The captive chieftain, by a tyrant's doom,
Forced to descend into his destined tomb--
A dungeon dark! where he must waste the year,
And lie cut off from all his heart holds dear ...

William Wordsworth.
 

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Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
Epitaph on a Tyrant

When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

W.H.Auden

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[ 10. August 2014, 16:47: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :
 
My true love hath my heart and I have his
By just exchange one for the other given.
I hold his dear, mine, he cannot miss
There never was a better bargain driven.

Sir Philip Sydney

Sorry - X-posted

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[ 10. August 2014, 16:43: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
and naked children
screaming in the liquid sun,
their highlights polished to perfection,
flashing light,
as the blessing sings
over their small bones

Imtiaz Dharker
 

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Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
“My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
“Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
“What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
“I never know what you are thinking. Think.”

I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.

T.S. Eliot. The Wasteland: II. A Game of Chess
 

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Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
We have stood through the naked night to watch
The silent wheels that raised the dead ;
We have gone before to raise the latch,
And lay the pillow beneath their head.

Joe Corrie Miners' Wives
 

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Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
to dull North Circular roar

muffling muffling
his crumpled pillow waves
island man heaves himself

Another London day

Grace Nicholls Island Man

[ 06. August 2014, 16:05: Message edited by: Curiosity killed ... ]
 

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Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
... .... ....but evermore
Most weary seem'd the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then some one said, "We will return no more";
And all at once they sang, "Our island home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam."

Tennyson: The Lotos-eaters
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
IT'S forth across the roaring foam, and on towards the west,
It's many a lonely league from home, o'er many a mountain crest,
From where the dogs of Scotland call the sheep around the fold,
To where the flags are flying beside the Gates of Gold.


Robert Louis Steenson. Ghastly, but Alex Salmond might like it.
 

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Posted by Cottontail (# 12234) on :
 
O young Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;
And save his good broadsword he weapons had none,
He rode all unarm’d, and he rode all alone.
So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,
There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.

- Sir Walter Scott

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[ 10. August 2014, 16:41: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
But trample! trample! came their steeds,
And I saw their wolfs’ eyes burn;
I felt like a royal hart at bay,
And made me ready to turn.

Walter Thornbury: The Cavalier's Escape
 

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Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :
 
If I may be permitted to return to Coleridge, albeit for a different poem:

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
 

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Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :
 
(Forgot to bold the word "eyes," sorry!)
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
O Thou dread Pow'r, who reign'st above!
I know Thou wilt me hear;
When for this scene of peace and love,
I make this pray'r sincere.


Robert Burns.
 

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
Trackway and Camp and City lost,
Salt Marsh where now is corn-
Old Wars, old Peace , old Arts that cease,
And so was England born.

She is not any common Earth,
Water or wood or air,
But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye,
Where you and I will fare.

Puck's Song, Kipling
 

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Posted by Gildas (# 525) on :
 
Arthur, Elaine, Mordred; they are all gone
Among the raftered galleries of bone.
By the long barrows of Logres they are made one,
And over their city stands the pinnacled corn.

Geoffrey Hill - Merlin
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
The river in January is fast and high.
You and I
are off to the Barrows.
Gathering police-horses twitch and fret
at the Tron end of London Road and Gallowgate.

Liz Lochhead The Bargain
 

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Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :
 
January brings the snow
Makes our feet and fingers glow.

Flanders and Swann. Flanders wrote the words, Swann the music

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[ 10. August 2014, 16:39: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
Who will remember your fingers?
Their winged life? They flew
With the light in your look.
At the piano, stomping out hits from their forties,

Fingers Ted Hughes -
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
In the little southern parlor of the house you may have seen
With the gambrel-roof, and the gable looking westward to the green,
At the side toward the sunset, with the window on its right,
Stood the London-made piano I am dreaming of to-night!

Oliver Wendell Holmes
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
Drake he's in his hammock an' a thousand miles away,
(Capten, art tha sleepin' there below?)
Slung atween the round shot in Nombre Dios Bay,
An' dreamin' arl the time O' Plymouth Hoe.

Sir Henry Newbolt Drake's Drum
 

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Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes,
For they in thee a thousand errors note;
But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,
Who in despite of view is pleased to dote

Shakespeare: Sonnet 141
 

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Posted by Mamacita (# 3659) on :
 
shunning the sudden moonbeam's treacherous snare
she sought the harbouring dark,and(catching up
her delicate silk)all white,with shining feet,
went forth into the dew:right wildly beat
her heart at every kiss of daisy-cup,
and from her cheek the beauteous colour went
with every bough that reverently bent
to touch the yellow wonder of her hair.

e.e. cummings, of Nicolette
 

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Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :
 
............though my soul more Bent
To serve therewith my maker and present
My true account lest he returning chide
Doth God exact day labour light denied?
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: God doth not
need
Either man's work or his own gifts:

John Milton 'On His Blindness'

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[ 10. August 2014, 17:18: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
.. She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief.

Wm Shakespeare
Twelth Night
 

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Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
I saw wherein the shroud did lurk
A curious frame of Nature's work;
A floweret crush'd in the bud
A nameless piece of Babyhood,
Was in her cradle-coffin lying;
Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying.

Lamb's On an Infant Dying as soon as Born.
 

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Posted by Mamacita (# 3659) on :
 
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas, Do not go gentle into that good night
 

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Posted by Cottontail (# 12234) on :
 
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, alas, forever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.

Robert Burns, Ae Fond Kiss

[ 11. August 2014, 08:06: Message edited by: Cottontail ]
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
Yet we, the bond slaves of our day,
Whom dirt and danger press--
Co-heirs of insolence, delay,
And leagued unfaithfulness--
Such is our need must seek indeed
And, having found, engage
The men who merely do the work
For which they draw the wage.


Rudyard Kipling.
 

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Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :
 
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be
sad

Remember Christina Rosetti

(Edited to fix code)

[ 11. August 2014, 09:38: Message edited by: Firenze ]
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
Err ... you seem to have missed out a couple of poems, there's no "sad" in them to follow on from! Suggest you have another go!
 

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Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
Or we could assume that Jamat's highlighted word was "yet."
 

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Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
I remember I remember,
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn.


I Remember, I Remember - Thomas Hood
 

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Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

Ted Hughes, The Thought-Fox

[ 11. August 2014, 09:41: Message edited by: Ariel ]
 

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Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
I submit this is still poetry, tho' not laid out in lines ... And anyway, Ariel had said 'starless', who could think go anything else?

It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and- rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.

Dylan Thomas. Under Milkwood
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
It has to be read by Richard Burton ...

This leads inexorably to:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Dylan Thomas (again).
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
BT - you haven't emboldened a link word to the previous quote (same author doesn't count).

Firenze
8th Day Host

[ 11. August 2014, 16:21: Message edited by: Firenze ]
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
Whoops - the word is night .
 

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Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song
After great cathedral gong...

Yeats's wonderful poem, Byzantium

[ 11. August 2014, 18:10: Message edited by: Ariel ]
 

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Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :
 
No memory of having starred
Atones for later disregard
Or keeps the end from being hard.

Better to go down dignified
With boughten friendship at your side
Than none at all. Provide, provide!

From Provide, Provide by Robert Frost

[Crossposted with Ariel, pick whichever you wish. I love how different the poems are though they are both excellent.]

[ 11. August 2014, 18:11: Message edited by: Gwai ]
 

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Posted by Mamacita (# 3659) on :
 
Humanity I love you because
when you're hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you're flush pride keeps
you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own home
Humanity I love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down
on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

e e cummings
 

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Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
Mair nonsense has been uttered in his name
Than in ony's barrin liberty and Christ.
If this keeps spreedin as the drink declines.
Syne turns to tea, wae's me for the Zeitgeist!

Hugh McDiarmid's A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle

(Claim to fame - I've shaken hands with someone who shook hands with McDiarmid!)
 

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Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain?… oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?

Rupert Brooke's The Old Vicarage, Grantchester
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap
Honey of generation had betrayed,
And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape
As recollection or the drug decide,
Would think her Son, did she but see that shape
With sixty or more winters on its head,
A compensation for the pang of his birth,
Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?

WB Yeats Among Schoolchildren
 

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Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
And lately, by the Tavern Door agape,
Came shining through the Dusk an Angel Shape
Bearing a Vessel on his Shoulder; and
He bid me taste of it; and 'twas - the Grape!

Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat.

[ 13. August 2014, 11:40: Message edited by: Ariel ]
 

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Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
Lord, the light of your love is shining

Sorry, that's a song...

Our grapes fresh from the vine,
Pomegranates full and fine,
Dates and sharp bullaces,
Rare pears and greengages,
Damsons and bilberries,
Taste them and try.

Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
But in the Wine-presses the human grapes sing not nor dance:
They howl and writhe in shoals of torment, in fierce flames consuming,
In chains of iron and in dungeons circled with ceaseless fires,
In pits and dens and shades of death, in shapes of torment and woe.

William Blake - I thought I'd cheer you all up.
 

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Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
They will trample our gardens to mire, they will bury our city in fire;
Our women await their desire, our children the clang of the chain.
Our grave-eyed judges and lords they will bind by the neck with cords,
And harry with whips and swords till they perish of shame or pain,
And the great lapis lazuli dome where the gods of our race had a home
Will break like a wave from the foam, and shred into fiery rain.

Flecker's Pillage.
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
I seem to have started a trend ...
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.

Wm Shakespeare Twelth Night.
 

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Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
O western wind, when wilt thou blow
That the small rain down can rain?
Christ, that my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again!

Anon, 1500s. I first saw this in a Tube carriage, as one of the "Poems on the Underground."

[ 13. August 2014, 13:10: Message edited by: Ariel ]
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
So when the Sun in bed,
Curtain'd with cloudy red,
Pillows his chin upon an Orient wave.
The flocking shadows pale
Troop to th' infernall jail,
Each fetter'd Ghost slips to his severall grave,
And the yellow-skirted Fayes
Fly after the Night-steeds, leaving their Moon-lov'd maze.

Milton
Nativity Ode
 

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Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
BUSY old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run ?

The sun rising John Donne
 

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Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :
 
Sunset and evening star
And one clear call for me!
And may the be no moaning of the bar
When I put out to sea.


Alfred Lord Tennyson Crossing the bar
 

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western star s, until I die.

Ulysses Alfred Lord Tennyson

Seems to be a repeating imagery. Him and Tolkien.
 

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Posted by Cottontail (# 12234) on :
 
And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes –
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands –
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

Louis McNeice,
Snow
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
Could you hurt me, sweet lips, though I hurt you?
Men touch them, and change in a trice
The lilies and languours of virtue
For the raptures and roses of vice;

Swinburne Dolores
 

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Posted by Mamacita (# 3659) on :
 
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

W. B. Yeats, The Song of Wandering Aengus
 

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Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :
 
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney sweepers, come to dust.


Shakespeare - Cymberline

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[ 15. August 2014, 09:01: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
"What of vile dust?" The preacher said.
Methought the whole world woke.
The dead stone lived beneath my foot,
And my whole body spoke.

GK Chesterton In Praise of Dust
 

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Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :
 
Please remember to provide links.

Doublethink
Verseworks Host

[ 15. August 2014, 09:02: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

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Posted by the famous rachel (# 1258) on :
 
And when they were dead,
The robins so red,
Brought strawberry leaves
And over them spread
And all the day long,
On the branches did throng,
They mournfully whistled,
And this was their song:

Poor babes in the wood!
Poor babes in the wood!
Oh! Don't you remember
Those babes in the wood?

Traditional - apparently

My son loves this poem... I'm not sure why!
 

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Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
...
A dog starv’d at his master’s gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.

William Blake Auguries of Innocence

(I cut out the bit about a dove house 'filled with doves and pigeons' because I thought those birds were free to come and go. )
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
Wondrous is this wall-stead, wasted by fate.
Battlements broken, giant’s work shattered.
Roofs are in ruin, towers destroyed,
Broken the barred gate, rime on the plaster

From the Anglo-Saxon* The Ruin

*Wrætlic is þes wealstan, wyrde gebræcon;
burgstede burston, brosnað enta geweorc.
Hrofas sind gehrorene, hreorge torras,
hrungeat berofen, hrim on lime
 

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Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :
 
Behold! a giant am I!
Aloft here in my tower,
With my granite jaws I devour
The maize, and the wheat, and the rye,
And grind them into flour.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Windmill
 

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Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."

Browning, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.
 

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Posted by the famous rachel (# 1258) on :
 
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

Sorry - more Longfellow

(and Paul Revere didn't really make the famous ride, apparently).
 

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Posted by Mamacita (# 3659) on :
 
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

[Sorry, change of tense.]

Tennyson, Charge of the Light Brigade
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

John Donne
Holy Sonnets
 

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Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

John Donne No man is an island
 

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Posted by the famous rachel (# 1258) on :
 
What means this metal in windy belfries hung
When guns are all our need? Dissolve these bells
Whose tones are tuned for peace: with martial tongue
Let them cry doom and storm the sun with shells.

Siegfried Sassoon
 

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Posted by Cottontail (# 12234) on :
 
We are they who come faster than fate: we are they who ride early or late:
We storm at your ivory gate: Pale Kings of the Sunset, beware!
Not on silk nor in samet we lie, not in curtained solemnity die
Among women who chatter and cry, and children who mumble a prayer.
But we sleep by the ropes of the camp, and we rise with a shout, and we tramp
With the sun or the moon for a lamp, and the spray of the wind in our hair.

James Elroy Flecker, The War Song of the Saracens
 

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Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle,
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:

Robert Louis Stevenson From a Railway Carriage
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
Warlocks and witches in a dance;
Nae cotillion brent-new frae France,
But hornpipes, jigs strathspeys, and reels,
Put life and mettle in their heels.
A winnock-bunker in the east,
There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast;
A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large,
To gie them music was his charge:
He scre'd the pipes and gart them skirl,
Till roof and rafters a' did dirl.--

Robert Burns Tam o' Shanter
 

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Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

Keats: Ode to a Nightingale
 

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
By the craggy hill-side,
Through the mosses bare
They have planted thorn trees
For pleasure here and there.
Is any man so daring
To dig up one in spite,
He shall find the thornies set
In his bed at night.

The Fairy Folk William Allingham
 

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Posted by the famous rachel (# 1258) on :
 
Where are you going to, little brown mouse?
Come and have tea in my treetop house.
It's frightfully nice of you owl, but no -
I'm going to have tea with a gruffalo

Julia Dondaldson

OK - a bit of a stretch, but I've been trying to get the Gruffalo in for ages!
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.

Edward Lear The Owl and the Pussycat
 

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Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

More Lear, this time The Jumblies
 

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Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :
 
Deep in the sunsearched growths the dragon-fly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky: -
So this winged hour is dropt to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
When twofold silence was the song of love.

Silent Noon by Christina Rossetti
 

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Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :
 
Who is the third who walks always beside you
When I count there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
But who is that on the other side of you?

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of material lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the Violet air

The Waste Land T S Eliot
 

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Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring 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.

Owen: Dulce et Decorum est
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.

Shakespeare Macbeth
 

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
"Madam, you see before you stand,
Heigh-ho! never be still!
The Old Original Favourite Grand
Grasshopper's Green Herbarian Band,
And the tune we play is Rilloby-rilloby,
Madam, the tune is Rilloby-rill."

Henry Newbolt, away from the Empire.
Rilloby-Rill
 

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Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
When the mob came and got her and dragged her from the jail, madam
They strung her upon the old willow across the way
And the moment before she died
She lifted up her lovely head and cried, madam
Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today

Cole Porter: Miss Otis Regrets

I'm not apologising for the fact that this is technically a lyric: 'tis poetic IMHO.
 

---

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
Now I feel just as sure as I'm sure that my name
Isn't Willow, titwillow, titwillow
That 'twas blighted affection that made him exclaim
"Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow"
And if you remain callous and obdurate, I
Shall perish as he did, and you will know why
Though I probably shall not exclaim as I die
"Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow"

W S Gilbert The Mikado
 

---

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :
 
The poor soul sat singing by a sycamore tree.
Sing all a green willow:
Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee,
Sing willow, willow, willow:
The fresh streams ran by her, and murmur'd her moans;
Sing willow, willow, willow;
Her salt tears fell from her, and soften'd the stones;

Shakespeare: Otello

(Crosspost)

[ 18. August 2014, 21:02: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
 

---

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :
 
The clear-eyed, callous stars look down
On darkened field and lighted town,
Slow moving through unmeasured space,
Or set in their appointed place,

The Callous Stars, Dylan Thomas
 

---

Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :
 
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

She walks in Beauty Byron
 

---

Posted by Cottontail (# 12234) on :
 
Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I’ll not look for wine.

Ben Jonson, Song: To Celia
 

---

Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.


John Betjeman again.
 

---

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clement's.

You owe me five farthings,
Say the bells of St. Martin's.

When will you pay me?
Say the bells of Old Bailey.

Anon Oranges and Lemons
 

---

Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
On Martinmas eve the dogs did bark,
And I opened the window to see,
When every maiden went by with her spark
But neer a one came to me.
And O dear what will become of me?
And O dear what shall I do,
When nobody whispers to marry me--
Nobody cometh to woo?

John Clare.
 

---

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
Vital spark of heavenly flame,
Quit, O quit this mortal frame!
Trembling, hoping, lingering flying,
O the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life.

Alexander Pope
 

---

Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
With trembling fingers did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth;
A rainy cloud possess'd the earth,
And sadly fell our Christmas-eve.

Tennyson: In Memoriam XXX

[ 19. August 2014, 12:27: Message edited by: QLib ]
 

---

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
Jenny made her mind up when she was three
She herself was going to trim the Christmas tree
Christmas Eve she lit the candles, tossed the tapers away
Little Jenny was an orphan on Christmas day

Ira Gershwin
 

---

Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :
 
Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have missed me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kissed me.

Leigh Hunt
 

---

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky.

T.S. Eliot - Journey of the Magi
 

---

Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
Ice in the trees.
Three Queens at the Palace gates,
dressed in furs, accented;
their several sweating panting beasts,
laden for a long, hard trek.

Carol Ann Duffy: Queen Herod (Sorry, no link)
 

---

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
"Yet Cloe sure was form'd without a spot---
Nature in her then err'd not, but forgot.
"With ev'ry pleasing, ev'ry prudent part,
"Say, what can Cloe want?---she wants a Heart.
She speaks, behaves, and acts just as she ought;
But never, never, reach'd one gen'rous Thought.
Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour,
Content to dwell in Decencies for ever.
So very reasonable, so unmov'd,
As never yet to love, or to be lov'd.
She, while her Lover pants upon her breast,
Can mark the figures on an Indian chest;
And when she sees her Friend in deep despair,
Observes how much a Chintz exceeds Mohair.

Alexander Pope Epistle to a Lady
 

---

Posted by Cottontail (# 12234) on :
 
Such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?— too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

Robert Browning, My Last Duchess
 

---

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
Cancer has killed him. Heart is killing her.
The trees are down. An Odeon flashes fire
Where stood their villa by the murmuring fir
When ” they would for their children’s good conspire. ”
Of their loves and hopes on hurrying feet
Thou art the worn memorial, Baker Street.
John Betjeman, Baker Street Station Buffet
 

---

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
From Brig o' Dread when thou may'st pass,
To Purgatory fire thou com'st at last;
If ever thou gavest meat or drink,
The fire sall never make thee shrink;
If meat or drink thou ne'er gav'st nane,
The fire will burn thee to the bare bane;

Anon Lyke Wake Dirge
 

---

Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
We could nor laugh nor wail;
Through utter drought all dumb we stood!
I bit my arm, I suck'd the blood,
And cried, A sail! a sail!

Coleridge: Rime of the Ancient Mariner
 

---

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking,

Sea Fever John Masefield
 

---

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
When you are old and grey 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;

WB Yeats When you are old
 

---

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
Today I am going to kill something. Anything.
I have had enough of being ignored and today
I am going to play God. It is an ordinary day,
a sort of grey with boredom stirring in the streets.

Education for Leisure Carol Duffy
 

---

Posted by the famous rachel (# 1258) on :
 
Once more the maiden's eyelid flickers.
She draws the pistol from her knickers.
Once more she hits the vital spot,
And kills him with a single shot.

Roald Dahl

[ 23. August 2014, 19:23: Message edited by: the famous rachel ]
 

---

Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
I syng of a mayden
Þat is makeles,
kyng of alle kynges
to here sone che ches
Anon

Translation:
I sing of a maiden
That is matchless,
King of all kings
For her son she chose.
 

---

Posted by Cottontail (# 12234) on :
 
"O where ha you been, Lord Randal, my son?
And where ha you been, my handsome young man?”
“I ha been at the greenwood; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I’m wearied wi hunting, and fain wad lie down."

Anonymous, Lord Randall
 

---

Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :
 
On my Bed night after night I sought him
Whom my soul loves;
I sought him but did not find him.
'I must arise now and go about the city;
In the streets and in the squares
I must seek him whom my soul loves.'
I sought him but did not find him.

Song of Songs 3:1,2(NASB)
 

---

Posted by Mamacita (# 3659) on :
 
with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

W. S Merwin, Thanks
 

---

Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.


Stevie Smith.

[ 24. August 2014, 07:33: Message edited by: Baptist Trainfan ]
 

---

Posted by Cottontail (# 12234) on :
 
But the swagman, he up and he jumped in the water-hole,
Drowning himself by the Coolabah tree;
And his ghost may be heard as it sings in the Billabong,
"Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?"

Andrew Barton, Waltzing Matilda
 

---

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
Matilda told such Dreadful Lies,
It made one Gasp and Stretch one's Eyes;
Her Aunt, who, from her Earliest Youth,
Had kept a Strict Regard for Truth,
Attempted to Believe Matilda:
The effort very nearly killed her,

Hilaire Belloc Matilda
 

---

Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :
 
To the heart of youth the world is a highwayside.
Passing for ever, he fares; and on either hand,
Deep in the gardens golden pavilions hide,
Nestle in orchard bloom, and far on the level land
Call him with lighted lamp in the eventide.


Robert Louis Stevenson

[ 24. August 2014, 13:34: Message edited by: jacobsen ]
 

---

Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
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.

Coleridge: Kubla Khan
 

---

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.

Anne Hathaway - Carol Duffy
 

---

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

Tennyson The Princess
 

---

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old,
But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.
These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,
That men call age; and those who would have been,
Their sons, they gave, their immortality.

The Dead, Rupert Brooke
 

---

Posted by Cottontail (# 12234) on :
 
Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard.
He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred.
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman
 

---

Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller's call.

Walter de la Mare: The Listeners
 

---

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils.

Wordsworth Daffodils
 

---

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
INTO my heart on air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

AE Houseman A Shropshire Lad
 

---

Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
Oh not in me your Saviour dwells
You ancient, rich St. Giles's bells.
Illuminated missals - spires -
Wide screens and decorated quires -
All these I loved, and on my knees
I thanked myself for knowing these
And watched the morning sunlight pass
Through richly stained Victorian glass
And in the colour-shafted air
I, kneeling, thought the Lord was there.
Now, lying in the gathering mist
I know that Lord did not exist ...

John Betjeman, "Before the anaethetic; or a real fright".
 

---

Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
Banquo:
... ....This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven’s breath
Smells wooingly here. No jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendant bed and procreant cradle.
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed,
The air is delicate.

Shakespeare: Macbeth I vi
 

---

Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :
 
Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again. And then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.

Shakespeare - The Tempest - Act 3 scene 2
 

---

Posted by the famous rachel (# 1258) on :
 
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.

Mary Frye apparently. This one is well established in recent UK folk memory, and I didn't know that the author had been established until I looked it up on Wikipedia just now...
 

---

Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
It is indeed ... personally I can't stand it!

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stainèd
With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit
Beneath my shady roof; there thou may'st rest,
And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe,
And all the daughters of the year shall dance!
Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.

William Blake.

[ 26. August 2014, 11:01: Message edited by: Baptist Trainfan ]
 

---

Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
When for the thorns with which I long, too long,
With many a piercing wound,
My Saviour’s head have crowned,
I seek with garlands to redress that wrong:
Through every garden, every mead,
I gather flowers (my fruits are only flowers),
Dismantling all the fragrant towers
That once adorned my shepherdess’s head.

Marvell: The Coronet
 

---

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Thro' the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four grey walls, and four grey towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.

Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott
 

---

Posted by Mamacita (# 3659) on :
 
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
As ice-storms do. 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-colored
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.

Robert Frost, Birches
 

---

Posted by the famous rachel (# 1258) on :
 
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Christina Rossetti
 

---

Posted by Cottontail (# 12234) on :
 
Gold is for the mistress -- silver for the maid --
Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade."
"Good!" said the Baron, sitting in his hall,
"But Iron — Cold Iron — is master of them all."

Rudyard Kipling, Cold Iron
 

---

Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O stay and hear! your true-love's coming
That can sing both high and low;
Trip no further, pretty sweeting,
Journey's end in lovers' meeting--
Every wise man's son doth know.

William Shakespeare.
 

---

Posted by EloiseA (# 18029) on :
 
I syng of a mayden

þat is makeles,

kyng of alle kynges

to here sone che ches.


[I sing of a maiden
That is matchless,
King of all kings
For her son she chose.]


Middle English carol on the Annunciation
 

---

Posted by Mamacita (# 3659) on :
 
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

E. A. Robinson, Richard Cory
 

---

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal face.
Young beauties force our love, and that's a rape,
This doth but counsel, yet you cannot scape.
If 'twere a shame to love, here 'twere no shame;
Affection here takes reverence's name.
Were her first years the golden age? That's true,
But now she's gold oft tried and ever new.

John Donne
Elegy IX
 

---

Posted by Cottontail (# 12234) on :
 
The hapless nymph with wonder saw;
A whisker first and then a claw,
With many an ardent wish,
She stretched in vain to reach the prize.
What female heart can gold despise?
What cat’s averse to fish?


Thomas Gray, Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Bowl of Goldfish
 

---

Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
The Gods of the earth and sea
Sought thro’ Nature to find this tree;
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the Human brain.

Blake: The Human Abstract from 'Songs of Experiene'
 

---

Posted by Mamacita (# 3659) on :
 
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking

John Masefield, Sea Fever
 

---

Posted by Cottontail (# 12234) on :
 
so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.


William Carlos Williams, The Red Wheelbarrow
 

---

Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.


Edward Thomas.
 

---

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;
The world's whole sap is sunk;
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed's feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr'd; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compar'd with me, who am their epitaph.

John Donne
Nocturnal upon St Lucy's Day
 

---

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
I TRAVELL'D among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.

'Tis past, that melancholy dream!
Nor will I quit thy shore
A second time; for still I seem
To love thee more and more.

Among the mountains did I feel
The joy of my desire;
And she I cherish'd turn'd her wheel
Beside an English fire.

Thy mornings show'd, thy nights conceal'd,
The bowers where Lucy play'd;
And thine too is the last green field
That Lucy's eyes survey'd.

Wordsworth
 

---

Posted by EloiseA (# 18029) on :
 
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.



Ode on Melancholy by John Keats
 

---

Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:
The fire-fly wakens: waken thou with me.

Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.

Tennyson: Now sleeps the crimson petal
 

---

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
When I am gone, dream me some happiness ;
Nor let thy looks our long-hid love confess ;
Nor praise, nor dispraise me, nor bless nor curse
Openly love's force, nor in bed fright thy nurse
With midnight's startings, crying out, O ! O !
Nurse, O ! my love is slain ; I saw him go
O'er the white Alps alone ; I saw him, I,
Assail'd, fight, taken, stabb'd, bleed, fall, and die.

John Donne Elegy 17
 

---

Posted by EloiseA (# 18029) on :
 
I don't know how to get my links in red?


How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls

But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse


William Blake London
 

---

Posted by Cottontail (# 12234) on :
 
The bells would ring to call her
In valleys miles away:
‘Come all to church, good people;
Good people, come and pray.’
But here my love would stay.

A.E.Housman, A Shropshire Lad XXI: In Summertime on Bredon
 

---

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by EloiseA:
I don't know how to get my links in red

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