What is poetry?
- Thread starter Agent327
- Start date
I am unfamiliar with Pessoa's prose, so I cannot really comment on that. (I have read some of Borges' fantastic prose, but still prefer his poems.)
Corrected; thanks. (As for translating: I enjoy making translations; for these I consulted a Dutch bilingual selection of Pessoa's poems. But thanks for the offer.)
And Mar Português is a perfect example of the musical quality of the Portuguese language; the poem itself is quite songlike. So, thanks again.
Corrected; thanks. (As for translating: I enjoy making translations; for these I consulted a Dutch bilingual selection of Pessoa's poems. But thanks for the offer.)
And Mar Português is a perfect example of the musical quality of the Portuguese language; the poem itself is quite songlike. So, thanks again.
Japanrocks12
tired of being a man
Here's a long, deep, and exquisite poem by Wallace Stevens, entitled "Sunday Morning"
Sunday Morning
Wallace Stevens
I
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkness among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.
II
Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.
III
Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind.
He moved among us, as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
With heaven, brought such requital to desire
The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.
IV
She says, ``I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?''
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evenings, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.
V
She says, ``But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss.''
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.
VI
Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set the pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.
VII
Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feet shall manifest.
VIII
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, ``The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.''
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or an old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.
Sunday Morning
Wallace Stevens
I
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkness among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.
II
Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.
III
Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind.
He moved among us, as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
With heaven, brought such requital to desire
The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.
IV
She says, ``I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?''
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evenings, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.
V
She says, ``But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss.''
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.
VI
Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set the pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.
VII
Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feet shall manifest.
VIII
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, ``The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.''
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or an old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.
Abaddon
Deity
Faff.
I don't like them or respect them.
Call them short stories.
I significantly dislike the ones that fit odd rhythm and don't make enough sense.
I don't like them or respect them.
Call them short stories.
I significantly dislike the ones that fit odd rhythm and don't make enough sense.
Very nice one.
BTW, are you actually in Duino or is it only a reference to Rilke's Duineser Elegien?
Another excursion:
Walking and falling
I wanted you. And I was looking for you.
But I couldn't find you.
I wanted you. And I was looking for you all day.
But I couldn't find you. I couldn't find you.
You're walking. And you don't always realize it,
but you're always falling.
With each step, you fall forward slightly.
and then catch yourself from falling.
Over and over, you're falling.
And then catching yourself from falling.
And this is how
you can be walking and falling
at the same
time.
Laurie Anderson (from United States I-IV)
Next up: Vergil revisited.
Walking and falling
I wanted you. And I was looking for you.
But I couldn't find you.
I wanted you. And I was looking for you all day.
But I couldn't find you. I couldn't find you.
You're walking. And you don't always realize it,
but you're always falling.
With each step, you fall forward slightly.
and then catch yourself from falling.
Over and over, you're falling.
And then catching yourself from falling.
And this is how
you can be walking and falling
at the same
time.
Laurie Anderson (from United States I-IV)
Next up: Vergil revisited.
And another:
Sailing To Byzantium
I
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
III
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
IV
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
William Butler Yeats (1865—1939), from The Tower (1928)
Source: http://poetry.org/ (which has a database of 670 poets, most with multiple poems present).
Sailing To Byzantium
I
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
III
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
IV
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
William Butler Yeats (1865—1939), from The Tower (1928)
Source: http://poetry.org/ (which has a database of 670 poets, most with multiple poems present).
Famed Uruguayan writer Benedetti dies at 88
By RAUL GARCES 7 hours ago
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) Mario Benedetti, a prolific Uruguayan writer whose novels and poems reflect the idiosyncrasies of Montevideo's middle class and a social commitment forged by years in exile from a military dictatorship, died Sunday, his secretary said. He was 88.
Benedetti died at his home in Uruguay's capital, Montevideo, personal secretary Ariel Silva said. He had suffered from respiratory and intestinal problems for more than a year, and had been released from a hospital on May 6.
Called "Don Mario" by his friends, the mustachioed author penned more than 60 novels, poems, short stories and plays, winning honors including Bulgaria's Jristo Borev award for poetry and essays in 1985, and Amnesty International's Golden Flame in 1986. In 1999 he won the Queen Sofia prize for Iberoamerican poetry.
His writings on love, politics and life in Uruguay's capital were turned into popular songs and a movie, and his readings in his homeland attracted sold-out crowds.
"I don't think we should be talking of a loss, because he will be with us forever," Culture Minister Maria Simon told local media on Sunday.
Benedetti's 1960 novel "The Truce" was translated into 19 languages and along with "Thank You for the Fire" (1965), heralded his inclusion in the Latin American literary boom in the 1960s along with Colombia's Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Peru's Mario Vargas Llosa and Mexico's Carlos Fuentes.
While Benedetti was renowned throughout Latin America, he never attained the other authors' popularity in the English-speaking world.
Benedetti leaned to the political left and firmly defended the Cuban revolution to the end of his life. In 2006, he joined other Latin American leftist authors in a call for Puerto Rican independence.
The son of Italian immigrants, Benedetti was born on Sept. 14, 1920, in the city of Paso de los Toros. In 1973 he joined thousands of other Uruguayans fleeing the nation's military dictatorship, spending 12 years in exile in Havana, Madrid, Lima and Buenos Aires.
"I think the only positive thing that came from Uruguay's dictatorship was the spread of Montevideo natives around the world, and I continued writing about them from my various places of exile," he once said.
Later in life, Benedetti would eat lunch most days at a restaurant a few feet (meters) from his house in Montevideo along with his brother Raul and Avila, his secretary. Strangers would approach the author at this table and often ask for his autograph.
"Whether or not you liked his books, he was an admirable person who fought for his ideas and kept writing to the end," said his habitual waiter, Miguel Braga.
Among his other major works were "Wind from Exile," "Montevideans" and his essay "The Latin American Writer and the Possible Revolution."
In 1959, Benedetti traveled to the United States despite concerns by authorities about his ties to a leftist newspaper. He recalled that he had to sign a pledge not to assassinate the U.S. president.
Politically active, he was a leader of the March 26 Independence Movement, which joined the Broad Front leftist coalition that took power in Uruguay in 2005.
A widower, Benedetti left behind no wife or children.
Associated Press writer Alfonso Castiglia contributed to this report from Montevideo.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gfsYLd36bqRMg-SS0Fa8edUBZvsAD988ANIG0
By RAUL GARCES 7 hours ago
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) Mario Benedetti, a prolific Uruguayan writer whose novels and poems reflect the idiosyncrasies of Montevideo's middle class and a social commitment forged by years in exile from a military dictatorship, died Sunday, his secretary said. He was 88.
Benedetti died at his home in Uruguay's capital, Montevideo, personal secretary Ariel Silva said. He had suffered from respiratory and intestinal problems for more than a year, and had been released from a hospital on May 6.
Called "Don Mario" by his friends, the mustachioed author penned more than 60 novels, poems, short stories and plays, winning honors including Bulgaria's Jristo Borev award for poetry and essays in 1985, and Amnesty International's Golden Flame in 1986. In 1999 he won the Queen Sofia prize for Iberoamerican poetry.
His writings on love, politics and life in Uruguay's capital were turned into popular songs and a movie, and his readings in his homeland attracted sold-out crowds.
"I don't think we should be talking of a loss, because he will be with us forever," Culture Minister Maria Simon told local media on Sunday.
Benedetti's 1960 novel "The Truce" was translated into 19 languages and along with "Thank You for the Fire" (1965), heralded his inclusion in the Latin American literary boom in the 1960s along with Colombia's Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Peru's Mario Vargas Llosa and Mexico's Carlos Fuentes.
While Benedetti was renowned throughout Latin America, he never attained the other authors' popularity in the English-speaking world.
Benedetti leaned to the political left and firmly defended the Cuban revolution to the end of his life. In 2006, he joined other Latin American leftist authors in a call for Puerto Rican independence.
The son of Italian immigrants, Benedetti was born on Sept. 14, 1920, in the city of Paso de los Toros. In 1973 he joined thousands of other Uruguayans fleeing the nation's military dictatorship, spending 12 years in exile in Havana, Madrid, Lima and Buenos Aires.
"I think the only positive thing that came from Uruguay's dictatorship was the spread of Montevideo natives around the world, and I continued writing about them from my various places of exile," he once said.
Later in life, Benedetti would eat lunch most days at a restaurant a few feet (meters) from his house in Montevideo along with his brother Raul and Avila, his secretary. Strangers would approach the author at this table and often ask for his autograph.
"Whether or not you liked his books, he was an admirable person who fought for his ideas and kept writing to the end," said his habitual waiter, Miguel Braga.
Among his other major works were "Wind from Exile," "Montevideans" and his essay "The Latin American Writer and the Possible Revolution."
In 1959, Benedetti traveled to the United States despite concerns by authorities about his ties to a leftist newspaper. He recalled that he had to sign a pledge not to assassinate the U.S. president.
Politically active, he was a leader of the March 26 Independence Movement, which joined the Broad Front leftist coalition that took power in Uruguay in 2005.
A widower, Benedetti left behind no wife or children.
Associated Press writer Alfonso Castiglia contributed to this report from Montevideo.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gfsYLd36bqRMg-SS0Fa8edUBZvsAD988ANIG0
Zenon_pt
Civing on the real world
Haikai's?
Are there any that you recommend?
I'm trying to make a 7 part text about seven sins. (there's a site of the luso-writeres, they are trying to create a antology about it).
Are there any that you recommend?
I'm trying to make a 7 part text about seven sins. (there's a site of the luso-writeres, they are trying to create a antology about it).
My attempt at translating the greatest poetry ever, Vergil Aeneid VI:
Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera,
credo equidem, vivos ducent de marmore voltus,
orabunt causas melius, caelique meatus
describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent:
tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento;
hae tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem,
parcere subiectis, et debellare superbos.'
Some will draw breath from bronze,
so I believe, or make marble faces come alive;
still others will plead their cases better,
map out the sky and the paths of the stars:
You will rule these people, Roman, and this is your art:
to bring peace, to have mercy on the meek, and destroy the mighty in war.
Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera,
credo equidem, vivos ducent de marmore voltus,
orabunt causas melius, caelique meatus
describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent:
tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento;
hae tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem,
parcere subiectis, et debellare superbos.'
Some will draw breath from bronze,
so I believe, or make marble faces come alive;
still others will plead their cases better,
map out the sky and the paths of the stars:
You will rule these people, Roman, and this is your art:
to bring peace, to have mercy on the meek, and destroy the mighty in war.
Not half bad, if I may say so. (Although alii can also be translated with others, as it is opposed to tu: "Others may... You..., Roman, ...", or: "While others... You..., Roman, ..." But that is a minor comment.)
Some classical haiku masters were:
Buson http://www.poemhunter.com/yosa-buson/
Basho http://carlsensei.com/classical/index.php/author/view/1
Issa http://haikuguy.com/issa/
Modern haiku writers range from the famous (Jorge Luis Borges wrote a dozen or so) to the amateur, which is appropriate as the poetic form started out as a sort of leisurely exercise originally. Haiku societies exit in various countries, and Wikipedia links to several modern haiku writers, Japanese and non-Japanese: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku
The nowadays ususal from (of 3 lines of 5, 7, 5 syllables, in translation) was not in use originally, as the haiku derives from an older form known as hokku, the opening stanza of a longer poem.
Some classical haiku masters were:
Buson http://www.poemhunter.com/yosa-buson/
Basho http://carlsensei.com/classical/index.php/author/view/1
Issa http://haikuguy.com/issa/
Modern haiku writers range from the famous (Jorge Luis Borges wrote a dozen or so) to the amateur, which is appropriate as the poetic form started out as a sort of leisurely exercise originally. Haiku societies exit in various countries, and Wikipedia links to several modern haiku writers, Japanese and non-Japanese: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku
The nowadays ususal from (of 3 lines of 5, 7, 5 syllables, in translation) was not in use originally, as the haiku derives from an older form known as hokku, the opening stanza of a longer poem.
Zenon_pt
Civing on the real world
thanks i going to see it.
cristina2009
Chieftain
- Joined
- May 25, 2009
- Messages
- 10
Poetry is a lot of things to a lot of people. One of the most definable characteristics of the poetic form is economy of language. Poets are miserly and unrelentingly critical in the way they dole out words to a page. Carefully selecting words for conciseness and clarity is standard, even for writers of prose, but poets go well beyond this, considering a word's emotive qualities, its musical value, its spacing, and yes, even its spacial relationship to the page. The poet, through innovation in both word choice and form, seemingly rends significance from thin air.
After a bit of a silence two sonnets by two English poets, the first a novelist who also wrote poetry during most of his life, the second a so-called War Poet...
Embarcation
Southampton Docks: October 1899
Here, where Vespasian's legions struck the sands,
And Cendric with the Saxons entered in,
And Henry's army lept afloat to win
Convincing triumphs over neighboring lands,
Vaster battalions press for further strands,
To argue in the selfsame bloody mode
Which this late age of thought, and pact, and code,
Still fails to mend.--Now deckward tramp the bands,
Yellow as autumn leaves, alive as spring;
And as each host draws out upon the sea
Beyond which lies the tragical To-be,
None dubious of the cause, none murmuring,
Wives, sisters, parents, wave white hands and smile,
As if they knew not that they weep the while.
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
The Soldier
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)
(Sources: www.poemhunter.com; www.poets.org)
Also, BBC2 has a morning programme entitled Powerful Texts, which treats poems through the ages, viewing and delivering them from different perspectives.
Embarcation
Southampton Docks: October 1899
Here, where Vespasian's legions struck the sands,
And Cendric with the Saxons entered in,
And Henry's army lept afloat to win
Convincing triumphs over neighboring lands,
Vaster battalions press for further strands,
To argue in the selfsame bloody mode
Which this late age of thought, and pact, and code,
Still fails to mend.--Now deckward tramp the bands,
Yellow as autumn leaves, alive as spring;
And as each host draws out upon the sea
Beyond which lies the tragical To-be,
None dubious of the cause, none murmuring,
Wives, sisters, parents, wave white hands and smile,
As if they knew not that they weep the while.
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
The Soldier
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)
(Sources: www.poemhunter.com; www.poets.org)
Also, BBC2 has a morning programme entitled Powerful Texts, which treats poems through the ages, viewing and delivering them from different perspectives.
Brooke has lots of good stuff.
They say Achilles in the darkness stirred...
And Priam and his fifty sons
Wake all amazed and hear the guns,
And shake for Troy again.
He wrote that right before he died, after getting sick right before the Gallipoli landings.
They say Achilles in the darkness stirred...
And Priam and his fifty sons
Wake all amazed and hear the guns,
And shake for Troy again.
He wrote that right before he died, after getting sick right before the Gallipoli landings.
Indeed, I may delve a little deeper into the War Poets, as therein lies some very powerful imagery. Thomas Hardy, mostly known as a writer of such novels as Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess of the D'Urbervilles, turned to publishing poetry in later life.
Interesting programme, BTW, last evening on BB2, on the history of the UK Poet Laureate: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00kk49c
Also, a result of an initiative by the previous poet laureate: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/home.do (with poets reading their work plus further links)
Also, a result of an initiative by the previous poet laureate: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/home.do (with poets reading their work plus further links)
Nothing gold can stay
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Trainers all turn grey
(after Robert Frost's 'Nothing gold can stay')
You buy your trainers new.
They cost a bob or two.
At first they're clean and white,
the laces thick and tight.
Then thet must touch the ground -
(you have to walk around).
You learn to your dismay
trainers all turn grey.
Sophie Hannah
A pastiche, obviously. And many a reader, I fear, may prefer the second to the first even. A pity, that.
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Trainers all turn grey
(after Robert Frost's 'Nothing gold can stay')
You buy your trainers new.
They cost a bob or two.
At first they're clean and white,
the laces thick and tight.
Then thet must touch the ground -
(you have to walk around).
You learn to your dismay
trainers all turn grey.
Sophie Hannah
A pastiche, obviously. And many a reader, I fear, may prefer the second to the first even. A pity, that.
