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[Sam Flynn]

A Puddle

I've measured it
From side to side;
'Tis five feet long
And three feet wide.


(By the young William Wordsworth - or so I'm told.)

[The Grave Maurice]

Unlike H. Rumpole, I never much cared for Wordsworth. But I do enjoy some of the work of his buddy, Coleridge. I often find myself walking along and saying, in my head, his poem that begins:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree,
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man,
Down, to a sunless sea.

[Jane Welland]

Doctor Bell

Doctor Bell
Fell down the well
And broke his collarbone
Doctors should attend the sick
And leave the well alone.

Anon.


Sorry - couldn't resist!

Jane x

[Limehouse]

Preludes

I

The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimneypots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.

II

The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.

With the other masquerades
That times resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.

III

You tossed a blanket from the bed
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed's edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.

IV

His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o'clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.

I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

T S Eliot

[Jane Welland]

We Have Been Here Before

WE HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE
Morris Bishop (1893-1973)


I think I remember this moorland,
The tower on the top of the tor;
I feel in the distance another existence:
I think I have been here before.

And I think you were sitting beside me,
In a fold in the face of the fell,
For Time at its work'll go round in a circle,
And what is befalling, befell.

"I have been here before!" I asserted,
In a nook on a neck of the Nile.
I once in a crisis was punished by Isis,
And you smiled. I remember your smile.

I had the same sense of persistence
On the site of the seat of the Sioux;
I heard in the teepee the sound of a sleepy
Pleistocene grunt. It was you.

The past made a promise, before it
Began to begin to begone.
This limited gamut brings you again. Damn it,
How long has this got to go on?

[Natalie Severn]

What a pleasure this thread is to read .......

We"ll go no more a-roving

So,we"ll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath
And the soul wears out the Breast,
And the heart must pause to breath
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we"ll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.

Lord Byron

[Robert]

A song lyric rather than a poem, but no worse for that :

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/jethrotull/flyingdutchman.html

[Natalie Severn]

Loved it Robert!Quite moving too.

btw there is a programme on More 4 tonight[now] about Alan Bennet"s take on WH Auden....


When You Are Old

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

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

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

William Butler Yeats

[Limehouse]

I love that poem Norma - I learned it in fourth form and return to it often.

May I share one of my own poems about my battle with depression which is so much worse in the winter?

The experience of SADness

Winter is the smell of graves
lingering around the glistening, dripping trees.
Snow is the cold, marble face of death.
Fog is the dark anguish
that wraps itself around you.
Christmas glitter is the laughing, mocking clown
grotesque as the nightmares
that rob you of sleep.
Winter is the black cloak thrown over your head
to smother the sunshine in your soul.

Spring is the birth waters of new hope and new life,
its labour is fruitful and nurturing.
Spring is the thawing of cold fear,
an adagio hum that rises to a melodious chorus.

Summer is a face unfrozen,
a soaring sun breaking into a smile.
Summer is fragrant joy,
a soothing, lullaby-ocean
lapping the shores of your senses.

But at the edges of summer
stands a demon with flapping wings,
waiting to ride across the sun
and snuff out its warm glory.

At the edges of summer floats a tormentor,
whispering about the dark clouds of winter
gathering on the horizon.

J S Lambert

[Natalie Severn]

Powerful stuff Julie and beautiful imagery.
Thankyou for sharing it.
Norma
x

[Robert]

Hi Julie

That is very good indeed.

[Celesta]

Here's a two for one:


The Mystery

Your eyes drink of me,
Love makes them shine,
Your eyes that lean
So close to mine.

We have long been lovers,
We know the range
Of each other's moods
And how they change;

But when we look
At each other so
Then we feel
How little we know;

The spirit eludes us,
Timid and free—
Can I ever know you
Or you know me?

Sara Teasdale



On Moonlit Heath and Lonesome Bank


On moonlit heath and lonesome bank
The sheep beside me graze;
And yon the gallows used to clank
Fast by the four cross ways.

A careless shepherd once would keep
The flocks by moonlight there,
And high amongst the glimmering sheep
The dead man stood on air.

They hang us now in Shrewsbury jail:
The whistles blow forlorn,
And trains all night groan on the rail
To men that die at morn.

There sleeps in Shrewsbury jail to-night,
Or wakes, as may betide,
A better lad, if things went right,
Than most that sleep outside.

And naked to the hangman's noose
The morning clocks will ring
A neck God made for other use
Than strangling in a string.

And sharp the link of life will snap,
And dead on air will stand
Heels that held up as straight a chap
As treads upon the land.

So here I'll watch the night and wait
To see the morning shine,
When he will hear the stroke of eight
And not the stroke of nine;

And wish my friend as sound a sleep
As lads' I did not know,
That shepherded the moonlit sheep
A hundred years ago.

A.E. Housman

[Limehouse]

Two very good ones Celesta.

Thanks for your kind comments Norma and Robert. I have always written poetry and have often been urged to find a publisher - but I only write about two per year!

I very much like T S Eliot - especially The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock. It is much too long to post here but I have provided a link. If you click on the following page you will also find Portrait of a Lady. They are a bit tortured but they illustrate so well the social contraints of the time - for both men and women.

http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Julie ,Robert,All,
Andy and I had one of the most wonderful experiences of our life last Christmas.We went to hear Fiona Shaw giving her marvellous interpretation of "The Wasteland" at Wilton"s Music Hall in the East End.Unforgettable!

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks Celesta.I loved both .The Shrewsbury Jail one is very moving.
Yes,wasn"t Julie"s poem brilliant?