Your Favourite Poem

[summerisle]

Dreams by Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

 

[summerisle]

 

[Donald Twain]

For Beatrice ..

o every captive soul and gentle heart,
Into whose sight the present song shall come,
Praying their thoughts on what it may portend,
Health in the name of Love, their sovereign lord.
A third part of the hours had almost past
Which show in brightest lustre every star,
When suddenly before me Love appeared,
Whose essence to remember gives me horror.
Joyful Love seem'd, holding within his hand
My heart, and in his arms enfolded lay
Madonna sleeping, in a mantle wrapt.
Then waking her, he with this burning heart
Courteously fed her, and in fear she ate.
That done, I saw him go his way in tears.

 

[summerisle]

For Beatrice ..

o every captive soul and gentle heart,
Into whose sight the present song shall come,
Praying their thoughts on what it may portend,
Health in the name of Love, their sovereign lord.
A third part of the hours had almost past
Which show in brightest lustre every star,
When suddenly before me Love appeared,
Whose essence to remember gives me horror.
Joyful Love seem'd, holding within his hand
My heart, and in his arms enfolded lay
Madonna sleeping, in a mantle wrapt.
Then waking her, he with this burning heart
Courteously fed her, and in fear she ate.
That done, I saw him go his way in tears.

Who wrote this ?

 

[Chewbacca]

I wish I were a glow worm
A glow worm's never glum
For how can you be grumpy
When the sun shines out your bum

 

[summerisle]

I wish I were a glow worm
A glow worm's never glum
For how can you be grumpy
When the sun shines out your bum

Pithy

 

[Old Blue 2]

High Flight
Pilot Officer John Gillespie McGee jr.
Killed in flying accident on 11th December 1941, aged 19

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
– Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

 

[Old Blue 2]

Another deeply moving poem by a combatant

The Dug-Out
Siegfried Sassoon
July 1918

Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled,
And one arm bent across your sullen, cold,
Exhausted face? It hurts my heart to watch you,
Deep-shadow'd from the candle's guttering gold;
And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder;
Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head...
You are too young to fall asleep forever;
And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.

 

[Donald Twain]

Who wrote this ?

Dante Alighieri . It's from 'La Vita Nuova.

 

[summerisle]

Dante Alighieri . It's from 'La Vita Nuova.

* Google's Wikipedia and gets lost in courtly love. Bit like @davek and Martinez.

 

[summerisle]

The Winters Spring by John Clare.

I love winter, bar the nippiness of the weather ; this expresses it wonderfully.

The winter comes; I walk alone,
I want no bird to sing;
To those who keep their hearts their own
The winter is the spring.
No flowers to please–no bees to hum–
The coming spring’s already come.
I never want the Christmas rose
To come before its time;
The seasons, each as God bestows,
Are simple and sublime.
I love to see the snowstorm hing;
‘Tis but the winter garb of spring.
I never want the grass to bloom:
The snowstorm’s best in white.
I love to see the tempest come
And love its piercing light.
The dazzled eyes that love to cling
O’er snow-white meadows sees the spring.
I love the snow, the crumpling snow
That hangs on everything,
It covers everything below
Like white dove’s brooding wing,
A landscape to the aching sight,
A vast expanse of dazzling light.
It is the foliage of the woods
That winters bring–the dress,
White Easter of the year in bud,
That makes the winter Spring.
The frost and snow his posies bring,
Nature’s white spurts of the spring.

A discussion chaired by Melvyn Bragg about John Clare on the Iplayer. A nature/landscape working class poet who ended his days in a lunatic asylum - a warning to us all.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08cstfr

 

[tadao]

 

[Donald Twain]

The Winters Spring by John Clare.

I love winter, bar the nippiness of the weather ; this expresses it wonderfully.

The winter comes; I walk alone,
I want no bird to sing;
To those who keep their hearts their own
The winter is the spring.
No flowers to please–no bees to hum–
The coming spring’s already come.
I never want the Christmas rose
To come before its time;
The seasons, each as God bestows,
Are simple and sublime.
I love to see the snowstorm hing;
‘Tis but the winter garb of spring.
I never want the grass to bloom:
The snowstorm’s best in white.
I love to see the tempest come
And love its piercing light.
The dazzled eyes that love to cling
O’er snow-white meadows sees the spring.
I love the snow, the crumpling snow
That hangs on everything,
It covers everything below
Like white dove’s brooding wing,
A landscape to the aching sight,
A vast expanse of dazzling light.
It is the foliage of the woods
That winters bring–the dress,
White Easter of the year in bud,
That makes the winter Spring.
The frost and snow his posies bring,
Nature’s white spurts of the spring.

A discussion chaired by Melvyn Bragg about John Clare on the Iplayer. A nature/landscape working class poet who ended his days in a lunatic asylum - a warning to us all.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08cstfr

splendid, raises glass .

 

[Donald Twain]

Owen and Beethoven . Fantastic

 

[summerisle]

splendid, raises glass .

Before being committed.