Re: poetry thread

[eddie]

Let's not forget:

le vice Anglais

[Guest]

Let's not forget:

le vice Anglais

...what's that?

[eddie]

^

Buggery, I believe.

Or flagellation

Or possibly both.

Clearly the Frogs are still sore at the remark (wrongly) attributed to the Duke of Wellington that "The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton".

[Guest]

...but some aren't so bad...Spanish eyes (sigh)

[Guest]

...the luck of the Irish
...the white-man's burden
...an Indian giver

[Guest]

Rave On, John Donne
by Van Morrison

Rave on john donne, rave on thy holy fool
Down through the weeks of ages
In the moss borne dark dank pools

Rave on, down through the industrial revolution
Empiricism, atomic and nuclear age
Rave on down through time and space down through the corridors
Rave on words on printed page

Rave on, you left us infinity
And well pressed pages torn to fade
Drive on with wild abandon
Uptempo, frenzied heels

Rave on, walt whitman, nose down in wet grass
Rave on fill the senses
On nature’s bright green shady path

Rave on omar khayyam, rave on kahlil gibran
Oh, what sweet wine we drinketh
The celebration will be held
We will partake the wine and break the holy bread

Rave on let a man come out of ireland
Rave on on mr. yeats,
Rave on down through the holy rosey cross
Rave on down through theosophy, and the golden dawn
Rave on through the writing of "a vision"
Rave on, rave on, rave on, rave on, rave on, rave on

Rave on john donne, rave on thy holy fool
Down through the weeks of ages
In the moss borne dark dank pools

Rave on, down though the industrial revolution
Empiricism, atomic and nuclear age
Rave on words on printed page

[Guest]

THE SUN RISING.
by John Donne

BUSY old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run ?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices ;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams so reverend, and strong
Why shouldst thou think ?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long.
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and to-morrow late tell me,
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, "All here in one bed lay."

She's all states, and all princes I ;
Nothing else is ;
Princes do but play us ; compared to this,
All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world's contracted thus ;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere ;
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.

[Guest]

THE STOLEN CHILD
by W.B. Yeats

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake

There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake

The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid our faery vats

Full of berries
And the reddest stolen cherries.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters of the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping than he can understand.

[eddie]

john donne...walt whitman...omar khayyam... kahlil gibran...mr. yeats...

Much as I like Van, his lyrics do sometimes tend to stray into the realm of the undergraduate reading list. Good example here.

[LaRue]

The best known poem of the first world war by Wilfred Owen:

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest 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 hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

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 lime9 . . .
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.

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 cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

8 October 1917 - March, 1918

DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by Horace). The words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of the First World War. They mean "It is sweet and right." The full saying ends the poem: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is a wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country

I really like this poem. At the war museum in Ypres there's this part where you go into a pitch black room and a recording of someone reading this is blaring out. Then, at an apropriate point these great big columns of green liquid light up and bubble fervently. In the columns are a few gasmasks, and it's incredibly eerie and creepy because the masks look kind of like people, and the atmosphere...goodness it was quite a spectacle.

[Guest]

john donne...walt whitman...omar khayyam... kahlil gibran...mr. yeats...

Much as I like Van, his lyrics do sometimes tend to stray into the realm of the undergraduate reading list. Good example here.

...but he's raving, eddie

[Guest]

DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by Horace). The words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of the First World War. They mean "It is sweet and right." The full saying ends the poem: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is a wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country

I really like this poem. At the war museum in Ypres there's this part where you go into a pitch black room and a recording of someone reading this is blaring out. Then, at an apropriate point these great big columns of green liquid light up and bubble fervently. In the columns are a few gasmasks, and it's incredibly eerie and creepy because the masks look kind of like people, and the atmosphere...goodness it was quite a spectacle.

...Owen was killed one week before WW1 finished.


First World War gas victims lining up at a treatment station

...it's hard to find modern poems about the glory of war.

[eddie]

...but he's raving, eddie

He's cleaning windows, too, when he's reading:

Kerouac's Dharma Bums and On the Road

[eddie]

RENEGADE PRIEST SEEKS TREACHEROUS YOUNG WITCH (*)

(* Ad spotted in the Personal column of the London listings magazine Time Out c 1979 referencing a line from Bob Dylan's Changing of the Guard)

Tip toe-er
Ballet pointer
Jaw dropper
Shape shifter
Caul wearer
Wart charmer
Cobweb spinner
Sun bather
Changeling stealer
Phrase hurler
Mirror cracker
Gryffindorer
Sign scryer
Sky walker
Ticket puncher
Arsenal mugger
Swine preserver
Tomato purer
Groat counter
Quiche Lorrainer
Apple scrumper
Quorn hunter
Egg scrambler
HP saucer
Shark befriender
Sleep disturber
Nose twitcher
Cupid gooser
Periwinkler
Hair slider
Dietrich mover
Hufflepuffer
Back turner
Getawayer
Luciferens


by Eddie

[Guest]

...but he's raving, eddie

He's cleaning windows, too, when he's reading:
Kerouac's Dharma Bums and On the Road

...point taken eddie.

Mind you, lots of artists reference other artists or songs.
Lynyrd Skynyrd sings 'Well, I hope Neil Young will remember / A Southern man don't need him around anyhow'.
Joni Mitchell even busts out a few bars of 'Unchained Melody' in 'Chinese Cafe'.

...but yes, Van's a big name-dropper.

[Guest]

David Bowie: Song for Bob Dylan

Oh, hear this Robert Zimmerman I wrote a song for you
About a strange young man called Dylan
With a voice like sand and glue
Some words of truthful vengeance they could pin us to the floor
Brought a few more people on and put the fear in a whole lot more

Highlands, by Bob Dylan

I'm listening to Neil Young, I gotta turn up the sound
Someone's always yellin' "Turn it down"
Feel like I'm driftin', driftin' from scene to scene
I'm wonderin' what in the devil could it all possibly mean

[eddie]

I'm wonderin' what in the devil could it all possibly mean

No, come on Moony, what did you REALLY think of my love poem?

I need to know because I'm thinking of actually presenting it to the fair maid in question.

Do you think this would be a REALLY bad idea?

[Guest]

RENEGADE PRIEST SEEKS TREACHEROUS YOUNG WITCH (*)

(* Ad spotted in the Personal column of the London listings magazine Time Out c 1979 referencing a line from Bob Dylan's Changing of the Guard)

Tip toe-er
Ballet pointer
Jaw dropper
Shape shifter
Caul wearer
Wart charmer
Cobweb spinner
Sun bather
Changeling stealer
Phrase hurler
Mirror cracker
Gryffindorer
Sign scryer
Sky walker
Ticket puncher
Arsenal mugger
Swine preserver
Tomato purer
Groat counter
Quiche Lorrainer
Apple scrumper
Quorn hunter
Egg scrambler
HP saucer
Shark befriender
Sleep disturber
Nose twitcher
Cupid gooser
Periwinkler
Hair slider
Dietrich mover
Hufflepuffer
Back turner
Getawayer
Luciferens


by Eddie

...eddie...I totally missed the 'by Eddie' at the tail of the post...it's very dada ...did you really write it ?

[Guest]

...yes, I see that you wrote it...the witch will love it.

[eddie]

...yes, I see that you wrote it...the witch will love it.

Thanks, Moony. I'll present it to her, then.

Did I really write it? Yes, of course. As a shaman (semi-retired), I have powers unknown to you decadent gringos.

[Nah Ville Sky Chick]

RENEGADE PRIEST SEEKS TREACHEROUS YOUNG WITCH (*)

(* Ad spotted in the Personal column of the London listings magazine Time Out c 1979 referencing a line from Bob Dylan's Changing of the Guard)

Tip toe-er
Ballet pointer
Jaw dropper
Shape shifter
Caul wearer
Wart charmer
Cobweb spinner
Sun bather
Changeling stealer
Phrase hurler
Mirror cracker
Gryffindorer
Sign scryer
Sky walker
Ticket puncher
Arsenal mugger
Swine preserver
Tomato purer
Groat counter
Quiche Lorrainer
Apple scrumper
Quorn hunter
Egg scrambler
HP saucer
Shark befriender
Sleep disturber
Nose twitcher
Cupid gooser
Periwinkler
Hair slider
Dietrich mover
Hufflepuffer
Back turner
Getawayer
Luciferens


by Eddie

I would be very happy to have that poem presented to me. I didn't understand some of it, but, I guess I would get it if I knew the person concerned.

[Guest]

RENEGADE PRIEST SEEKS TREACHEROUS YOUNG WITCH
Arsenal mugger
Quiche Lorrainer
Quorn hunter

...righto then:

now eddie, you've mentioned she's a vegetarian, which Quorn (meat free, soy free food) hunter bears out. Quiche Lorraine is made with bacon...did she make that for you? Is that how she put a spell on you and stole your weapons?

[eddie]

Quiche Lorraine is made with bacon

Oh dear. Surely there must be a vegetarian equivalent? Don't say I'll have to edit! Nice vowel sounds in "Quiche Lorraine, and I'd be sorry to lose them.

[Guest]

Quiche Lorraine is made with bacon

Oh dear. Surely there must be a vegetarian equivalent? Don't say I'll have to edit! Nice vowel sounds in "Quiche Lorraine, and I'd be sorry to lose them.

...leave it, I'd say. I like the image of a vegetarian cooking bacon...it's so obviously for someone else...a little selfless domesticity can be an appealing trait in a witch (Samantha is more enticing than Endora).

...and pay me no mind, it's all subjective...Arsenal mugger could just as easily be an avid football fan as a weapons thief.
It's just that the poet is under her spell, and some notion of his being seduced by a via a bacon pie sprang to mind...

[Guest]

it is possible to make it without bacon.

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