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  • #46
    I love Yeats as well. The Song of wandering Aengus.

    I went out to the hazel wood,
    Because a fire was in my head,
    And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
    And hooked a berry to a thread;
    And when white moths were on the wing,
    And moth-like stars were flickering out,
    I dropped the berry in a stream
    And caught a little silver trout.

    When I had laid it on the floor
    I went to blow the fire aflame,
    But something rustled on the floor,
    And some one called me by my name:
    It had become a glimmering girl
    With apple blossom in her hair
    Who called me by my name and ran
    And faded through the brightening air.

    Though I am old with wandering
    Through hollow lads 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.

    Comment


    • #47
      Originally posted by svs View Post
      I love Yeats as well. .
      yep
      In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

      Leibniz

      Comment


      • #48
        Reminds me of the Sergeant Major of a WW2 training unit who having assembled the recruits told them that they were going to get a lecture from the Education officer about Keats - though he doubted if any of them even knew what a keat was!:))
        Semper in excretum. Solum profunda variat.

        Comment


        • #49
          The Wish


          I shed my tears; my tears – my consolation;
          And I am silent; my murmur is dead,
          My soul, sunk in a depression’s shade,
          Hides in its depths the bitter exultation.
          I don’t deplore my passing dream of life --
          Vanish in dark, the empty apparition!
          I care only for my love’s infliction,
          And let me die, but only die in love!

          ALEKSANDR PUSHKIN
          (Born 1799, Died 1837)

          (Translations from Russian)



          Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, September, 1999
          Edited by Dmitry Karshtedt, December, 1999


          "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

          I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

          HAKUNA MATATA

          Comment


          • #50
            Murder murder murder

            Kill kill kill

            Take nuts and screws

            Out of ferris wheels

            Comment


            • #51
              Originally posted by Ray View Post
              The Wish


              I shed my tears; my tears – my consolation;
              And I am silent; my murmur is dead,
              My soul, sunk in a depression’s shade,
              Hides in its depths the bitter exultation.
              I don’t deplore my passing dream of life --
              Vanish in dark, the empty apparition!
              I care only for my love’s infliction,
              And let me die, but only die in love!

              ALEKSANDR PUSHKIN
              (Born 1799, Died 1837)

              (Translations from Russian)



              Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, September, 1999
              Edited by Dmitry Karshtedt, December, 1999
              I learned this one by heart in my don't-forget-your-Russian-language class when I was 12. Beautiful poem indeed, sir!

              Comment


              • #52
                Originally posted by svs View Post
                I love Yeats as well. The Song of wandering Aengus.

                I went out to the hazel wood,
                Because a fire was in my head,
                And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
                And hooked a berry to a thread;
                And when white moths were on the wing,
                And moth-like stars were flickering out,
                I dropped the berry in a stream
                And caught a little silver trout.

                When I had laid it on the floor
                I went to blow the fire aflame,
                But something rustled on the floor,
                And some one called me by my name:
                It had become a glimmering girl
                With apple blossom in her hair
                Who called me by my name and ran
                And faded through the brightening air.

                Though I am old with wandering
                Through hollow lads 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.
                I do like that one alot - also, An Irish airman forsees his death is beautiful:

                I know that I shall meet my fate
                Somewhere among the clouds above;
                Those that I fight I do not hate,
                Those that I guard I do not love;
                My country is Kiltartan Cross,
                My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
                No likely end could bring them loss
                Or leave them happier than before.
                Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
                Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
                A lonely impulse of delight
                Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
                I balanced all, brought all to mind,
                The years to come seemed waste of breath,
                A waste of breath the years behind
                In balance with this life, this death.
                Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
                - John Stuart Mill.

                Comment


                • #53
                  Originally posted by crooks View Post
                  I do like that one alot - also, An Irish airman forsees his death is beautiful:

                  I know that I shall meet my fate
                  Somewhere among the clouds above;
                  Those that I fight I do not hate,
                  Those that I guard I do not love;
                  My country is Kiltartan Cross,
                  My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
                  No likely end could bring them loss
                  Or leave them happier than before.
                  Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
                  Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
                  A lonely impulse of delight
                  Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
                  I balanced all, brought all to mind,
                  The years to come seemed waste of breath,
                  A waste of breath the years behind
                  In balance with this life, this death.
                  Yeats is the greatest. Amazing how many wonderful poets in the English language have been produced by the Celts. I like Dylan Thomas also.


                  Elegy


                  Too proud to die; broken and blind he died
                  The darkest way, and did not turn away,
                  A cold kind man brave in his narrow pride

                  On that darkest day, Oh, forever may
                  He lie lightly, at last, on the last, crossed
                  Hill, under the grass, in love, and there grow

                  Young among the long flocks, and never lie lost
                  Or still all the numberless days of his death, though
                  Above all he longed for his mother's breast

                  Which was rest and dust, and in the kind ground
                  The darkest justice of death, blind and unblessed.
                  Let him find no rest but be fathered and found,

                  I prayed in the crouching room, by his blind bed,
                  In the muted house, one minute before
                  Noon, and night, and light. the rivers of the dead

                  Veined his poor hand I held, and I saw
                  Through his unseeing eyes to the roots of the sea.
                  (An old tormented man three-quarters blind,

                  I am not too proud to cry that He and he
                  Will never never go out of my mind.
                  All his bones crying, and poor in all but pain,

                  Being innocent, he dreaded that he died
                  Hating his God, but what he was was plain:
                  An old kind man brave in his burning pride.

                  The sticks of the house were his; his books he owned.
                  Even as a baby he had never cried;
                  Nor did he now, save to his secret wound.

                  Out of his eyes I saw the last light glide.
                  Here among the liught of the lording sky
                  An old man is with me where I go

                  Walking in the meadows of his son's eye
                  On whom a world of ills came down like snow.
                  He cried as he died, fearing at last the spheres'

                  Last sound, the world going out without a breath:
                  Too proud to cry, too frail to check the tears,
                  And caught between two nights, blindness and death.

                  O deepest wound of all that he should die
                  On that darkest day. oh, he could hide
                  The tears out of his eyes, too proud to cry.

                  Until I die he will not leave my side.)

                  Comment


                  • #54
                    Originally posted by svs View Post
                    Yeats is the greatest. Amazing how many wonderful poets in the English language have been produced by the Celts. I like Dylan Thomas also.
                    Me too - I'm not sure what it is about we Celts, but regardless of which nation we're from there seems to be a very deep sense of spirituality (not necissarily of a religious nature), it's rooted in us, an expression almost unique to us - it's perhaps the greatest legacy our forbears left us.

                    There's another poet I think is amazing, and I'm not sure if you've heard of him but by god can he write:

                    His name's Derek Mahon, a Protestant Irishman from Belfast, his poetry is deeply moving, and highlights the qualities I said above.
                    My Personal Favourite of his is called A Disused Shed in County Wexford.

                    Now you kind of need to be Irish to understand the full background, but I find it simply awesome, put simply it tells the struggles of a crop of mushrooms in the mentioned disused shed, fighting for sunlight, and through it survival:

                    Even now there are places where a thought might grow —
                    Peruvian mines, worked out and abandoned
                    To a slow clock of condensation,
                    An echo trapped forever, and a flutter
                    Of wildflowers in the lift-shaft,
                    Indian compounds where the wind dances
                    And a door bangs with diminished confidence,
                    Lime crevices behind rippling rainbarrels,
                    Dog corners for bone burials;
                    And a disused shed in Co. Wexford,

                    Deep in the grounds of a burnt-out hotel,
                    Among the bathtubs and the washbasins
                    A thousand mushrooms crowd to a keyhole.
                    This is the one star in their firmament
                    Or frames a star within a star.
                    What should they do there but desire?
                    So many days beyond the rhododendrons
                    With the world waltzing in its bowl of cloud,
                    They have learnt patience and silence
                    Listening to the rooks querulous in the high wood.

                    They have been waiting for us in a foetor
                    Of vegetable sweat since civil war days,
                    Since the gravel-crunching, interminable departure
                    of the expropriated mycologist.
                    He never came back, and light since then
                    Is a keyhole rusting gently after rain.
                    Spiders have spun, flies dusted to mildew
                    And once a day, perhaps, they have heard something —
                    A trickle of masonry, a shout from the blue
                    Or a lorry changing gear at the end of the lane.

                    There have been deaths, the pale flesh flaking
                    Into the earth that nourished it;
                    And nightmares, born of these and the grim
                    Dominion of stale air and rank moisture.
                    Those nearest the door growing strong —
                    'Elbow room! Elbow room!'
                    The rest, dim in a twilight of crumbling
                    Utensils and broken flower-pots, groaning
                    For their deliverance, have been so long
                    Expectant that there is left only the posture.

                    A half century, without visitors, in the dark —
                    Poor preparation for the cracking lock
                    And creak of hinges. Magi, moonmen,
                    Powdery prisoners of the old regime,
                    Web-throated, stalked like triffids, racked by drought
                    And insomnia, only the ghost of a scream
                    At the flashbulb firing squad we wake them with
                    Shows there is life yet in their feverish forms.
                    Grown beyond nature now, soft food for worms,
                    They lift frail heads in gravity and good faith.

                    They are begging us, you see, in their wordless way,
                    To do something, to speak on their behalf
                    Or at least not to close the door again.
                    Lost people of Treblinka and Pompeii!
                    'Save us, save us,' they seem to say,
                    'Let the god not abandon us
                    Who have come so far in darkness and in pain.
                    We too had our lives to live.
                    You with your light meter and relaxed itinerary,
                    Let not our naive labours have been in vain!'
                    Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
                    - John Stuart Mill.

                    Comment


                    • #55
                      The road not taken

                      Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
                      And sorry I could not travel both
                      And be one traveler, long I stood
                      And looked down one as far as I could
                      To where it bent in the undergrowth;


                      Then took the other, as just as fair,
                      And having perhaps the better claim,
                      Because it was grassy and wanted wear
                      Though as for that the passing there
                      Had worn them really about the same,


                      And both that morning equally lay
                      In leaves no step had trodden black.
                      Oh, I kept the first for another day!
                      Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
                      I doubted if I should ever come back.


                      I shall be telling this with a sigh
                      Somewhere ages and ages hence:
                      Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
                      I took the one less traveled by,
                      And that has made all the difference.


                      - Robert Frost



                      Art of Poetry, The


                      To gaze at a river made of time and water
                      And remember Time is another river.
                      To know we stray like a river
                      and our faces vanish like water.

                      To feel that waking is another dream
                      that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
                      we fear in our bones is the death
                      that every night we call a dream.

                      To see in every day and year a symbol
                      of all the days of man and his years,
                      and convert the outrage of the years
                      into a music, a sound, and a symbol.

                      To see in death a dream, in the sunset
                      a golden sadness--such is poetry,
                      humble and immortal, poetry,
                      returning, like dawn and the sunset.

                      Sometimes at evening there's a face
                      that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
                      Art must be that sort of mirror,
                      disclosing to each of us his face.

                      They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,
                      wept with love on seeing Ithaca,
                      humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,
                      a green eternity, not wonders.

                      Art is endless like a river flowing,
                      passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
                      inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
                      and yet another, like the river flowing.

                      Jorge Luis Borges
                      He conquers who endures - Persius

                      Comment


                      • #56
                        We've had some good verse here.:)
                        Perhaps it's time to momentarily lower the standard.

                        Rock of Ages
                        Cleft for me

                        Let me hide
                        Myself in thee.

                        When the bombers
                        Thunder past

                        Shelter me
                        from burn and blast

                        And though I know
                        All men are brothers

                        Let the fallout
                        Fall on others.

                        Mad magazine, many years ago.
                        Semper in excretum. Solum profunda variat.

                        Comment


                        • #57
                          In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
                          A stately pleasure-dome decree:
                          Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
                          Through caverns measureless to man
                          Down to a sunless sea.

                          So twice five miles of fertile ground
                          With walls and towers were girdled round:
                          And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
                          Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
                          And here were forests ancient as the hills,
                          Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

                          But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
                          Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
                          A savage place! as holy and enchanted
                          As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
                          By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
                          And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
                          As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
                          A mighty fountain momently was forced:
                          Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
                          Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
                          Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
                          And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
                          It flung up momently the sacred river.
                          Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
                          Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
                          Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
                          And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
                          And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
                          Ancestral voices prophesying war!

                          The shadow of the dome of pleasure
                          Floated midway on the waves;
                          Where was heard the mingled measure
                          From the fountain and the caves.
                          It was a miracle of rare device,
                          A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

                          A damsel with a dulcimer
                          In a vision once I saw:
                          It was an Abyssinian maid,
                          And on her dulcimer she played,
                          Singing of Mount Abora.
                          Could I revive within me
                          Her symphony and song,
                          To such a deep delight 'twould win me
                          That with music loud and long
                          I would build that dome in air,
                          That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
                          And all who heard should see them there,
                          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.

                          -Samuel Taylor Coleridge
                          For Gallifrey! For Victory! For the end of time itself!!

                          Comment


                          • #58
                            Originally posted by chankya View Post
                            "If" by Rudyard Kipling.
                            Tis makes two of us, chankya!
                            If you know the enemy and yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. - Sun Tzu

                            Comment


                            • #59
                              Favorite Poems and poets

                              What are your favorites?

                              Kipling,

                              "What are the bugles blowin' for?" said Files-on-Parade.
                              "To turn you out, to turn you out", the Colour-Sergeant said.
                              "What makes you look so white, so white?" said Files-on-Parade.
                              "I'm dreadin' what I've got to watch", the Colour-Sergeant said.
                              For they're hangin' Danny Deever, you can hear the Dead March play,
                              The regiment's in 'ollow square -- they're hangin' him to-day;
                              They've taken of his buttons off an' cut his stripes away,
                              An' they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.


                              Owen,

                              DULCE ET DECORUM EST1

                              Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
                              Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
                              Till on the haunting flares2 we turned our backs
                              And towards our distant rest3 began to trudge.
                              Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
                              But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
                              Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots4
                              Of tired, outstripped5 Five-Nines6 that dropped behind.

                              Gas!7 Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
                              Fitting the clumsy helmets8 just in time;
                              But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
                              And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime9 . . .
                              Dim, through the misty panes10 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,11 choking, drowning.

                              If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
                              Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
                              And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
                              His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
                              If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
                              Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
                              Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud12
                              Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
                              My friend, you would not tell with such high zest13
                              To children ardent14 for some desperate glory,
                              The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
                              Pro patria mori.15

                              Comment


                              • #60
                                Considering what is happening worldwide i have been thinking of this a lot..

                                Turning and turning in the widening gyre
                                The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
                                Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
                                Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
                                The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
                                The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
                                The best lack all conviction, while the worst
                                Are full of passionate intensity.
                                Surely some revelation is at hand;
                                Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
                                The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
                                When a vast image out of "Spiritus Mundi"
                                Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
                                A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
                                A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
                                Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
                                Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
                                The darkness drops again; but now I know
                                That twenty centuries of stony sleep
                                Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
                                And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
                                Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
                                For Gallifrey! For Victory! For the end of time itself!!

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