Poetry

[widebody911]

Originally posted by rrpjr
The Cremation of Sam McGee
--- Robert Service 1874 - 1958

I used to have that memorized.

[widebody911]

Mary had a little lamb
It's fleece was crimson red
The reason for this color scheme
was the pickaxe in it's head

[widebody911]

Mary had a little pig,
she kept it fat and plastered;
and when the price of pork went up,
she shot the little bastard.

[widebody911]

Mary had a little lamb,
it disappeared one day
It shuffled off this mortal coil
as chinese takeaway.

[widebody911]

Mary had a little lamb,
She also had a duck.
She put them on the rocking chair
To see if they would get along

[widebody911]

Mary had a little lamb
Her daddy shot it dead
And now it goes to school with her
Between two hunks of bread.

[widebody911]

Mary had a little lamb
You've heard this one before.
But did you know she passed her plate
and had a little more?

[genrex]

Great poetry is really cool.


I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
in summers that have been;

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall never see.

For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago,
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.

- JRR Tolkien

___


There is an inner center in all of us
Where truth abides in fullness, and around
Wall upon wall the gross flesh hems in
The perfect clear perception which is truth.
A baffling carnal mesh makes all error,
And to know rather consists in finding out a way
For the imprisoned splendour to escape
Than in achieving entry for a light
Supposed to be without.

- Browning, “Paracelsus”

___


A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.
If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!
If only I yield myself and am borrowed by the wind
That courses through the chaos of the world
Like an exquisite chisel, driven by invisible blows.
I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,
Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.

- DH Lawrence

___


Proud man, dressed in brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep.

- Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”

___


And I will go away. And the birds will remain singing.
And my orchard will remain, with its white well.
All the afternoons the sky will be blue and placid,
and they will touch, as they are touching now,
the bells of the bell tower.

The town will become every year new,
and I will be far from the different Sundays
and the siestas in the corner of my flowery orchard,
my spirit of today will be mistaken, nostalgic...

I will go away, and be another one
without home and green trees,
without blue and placid sky...
And the birds will remain singing.

- Juan Ramon Jimenez

[Steve Carlton]

somewhere i have never travelled

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands


e. e. cummings

[austin552]

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.
Edgar Allen Poe

[YTNUKLR]

--It seems a day
(I speak of one from many singled out)
One of those heavenly days that cannot die;
When, in the eagerness of boyish hope,
I left our cottage-threshold, sallying forth
With a huge wallet o'er my shoulders slung,
A nutting-crook in hand; and turned my steps
Tow'rd some far-distant wood, a Figure quaint,
Tricked out in proud disguise of cast-off weeds
Which for that service had been husbanded,
By exhortation of my frugal Dame--
Motley accoutrement, of power to smile
At thorns, and brakes, and brambles,--and, in truth,
More ragged than need was! O'er pathless rocks,
Through beds of matted fern, and tangled thickets,
Forcing my way, I came to one dear nook
Unvisited, where not a broken bough
Drooped with its withered leaves, ungracious sign
Of devastation; but the hazels rose
Tall and erect, with tempting clusters hung,
A virgin scene!--A little while I stood,
Breathing with such suppression of the heart
As joy delights in; and, with wise restraint
Voluptuous, fearless of a rival, eyed
The banquet;--or beneath the trees I sate
Among the flowers, and with the flowers I played;
A temper known to those, who, after long
And weary expectation, have been blest
With sudden happiness beyond all hope.
Perhaps it was a bower beneath whose leaves
The violets of five seasons re-appear
And fade, unseen by any human eye;
Where fairy water-breaks do murmur on
For ever; and I saw the sparkling foam,
And--with my cheek on one of those green stones
That, fleeced with moss, under the shady trees,
Lay round me, scattered like a flock of sheep--
I heard the murmur and the murmuring sound,
In that sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay
Tribute to ease; and, of its joy secure,
The heart luxuriates with indifferent things,
Wasting its kindliness on stocks and stones,
And on the vacant air.

Then up I rose,
And dragged to earth both branch and bough, with crash
And merciless ravage: and the shady nook
Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower,
Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up
Their quiet being: and, unless I now
Confound my present feelings with the past;
Ere from the mutilated bower I turned
Exulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings,
I felt a sense of pain when I beheld
The silent trees, and saw the intruding sky--
Then, dearest Maiden, move along these shades
In gentleness of heart; with gentle hand
Touch--for there is a spirit in the woods.

--"Nutting," by William Wordsworth, a Romantic poet

[928ram]

There once was a girl from Nantucket....