Your Favourite Poem

[BigBlueConk]

Remembered this from my school days.

A muvver was barfin her baby one night
The youngest of ten, a tiny young mite.
The muvver was poor and the baby was fin,
Only a skeleton covered in skin.
The muvver turned round for the soap on the rack,
She was but a moment but when she turned back-
The baby was GORN!
In anguish she cried
"Oh where is my baby?"
An angel replied....

"Your baby has gone down the plug 'ole
Your baby has fell down the plug.
The poor little fing was so skinny and fin
He orta bin barfed in a jug.
Your baby is perfectly happy
And he won't need a barf anymore.
Your baby has gone down the plug 'ole
Not lost, but gone before.

(I suspect cockerknee parents.)

 

[summerisle]

Rather apt, I thought.

The Haunted Palace : Edgar Allan Poe

In the greenest of our valleys
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace—
Radiant palace—reared its head.
In the monarch Thought’s dominion,
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair!

Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow
(This—all this—was in the olden
Time long ago)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A wingèd odor went away.

Wanderers in that happy valley,
Through two luminous windows, saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute’s well-tunèd law,
Round about a throne where, sitting,
Porphyrogene!
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.

And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch’s high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn!—for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.

And travellers, now, within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh—but smile no more.

 

[summerisle]

Propaganda film scripted by Dylan Thomas.

 

[summerisle]

 

[summerisle]

Rudyard Kipling on the death of his son.


My Boy Jack.

“Have you news of my boy Jack? ”
Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

“Has any one else had word of him?”
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind—
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

BACKGROUND TO THE POEM
Kipling’s son Jack was killed on the Western Front in September 1915. He had only been in France for three weeks and because of his very poor eyesight had initially been rejected by the army. It was only because of the intervention of his influential and famous father that he was subsequently accepted in to the Irish Guards regiment.

Kipling never wrote directly about the loss of his son but ‘My Boy Jack’ is clearly a thinly disguised poem about mourning and regret and also the importance of sacrifice. The father of a sailor asks for news of his son who has seemingly been lost at sea. The answers he receives suggest that there is no hope his son will ever return. The only comfort he can take from the tragedy is that his son, ‘…didn’t shame his kind’ and the responder to his questions insists that the father can, ‘hold your head up all the more’ because he gave his son to the wind and the tide. The restraint and simplicity of the verses seem to heighten the sadness and poignancy of the work. Elements of detachment and understatement do not detract from the emotional power of the poem.

Also :
My son was killed laughing at some jest, I would I knew
What if was, and it might serve me in a time, when jests are few.

 

[summerisle]

The Tummy Beast by Roald Dahl.

One afternoon I said to mummy,
“Who is this person in my tummy?
“Who must be small and very thin
“Or how could he have gotten in?”
My mother said from where she sat,
“It isn’t nice to talk like that.”
“It’s true!” I cried. “I swear it, mummy!
“There is a person in my tummy!
“He talks to me at night in bed,
“He’s always asking to be fed,
“Throughout the day, he screams at me,
“Demanding sugar buns for tea.
“He tells me it is not a sin
“To go and raid the biscuit tin.
“I know quite well it’s awfully wrong
“To guzzle food the whole day long,
“But really I can’t help it, mummy,
“Not with this person in my tummy.”
“You horrid child!” my mother cried.
“Admit it right away, you’ve lied!”
“You’re simply trying to produce
“A silly asinine excuse!
“You are the greedy guzzling brat!
“And that is why you’re always fat!”
I tried once more, “Believe me, mummy,
“There is a person in my tummy.”
“I’ve had enough!” my mother said,
“You’d better go at once to bed!”
Just then, a nicely timed event
Delivered me from punishment.
Deep in my tummy something stirred,
And then an awful noise was heard,
A snorting grumbling grunting sound
That made my tummy jump around.
My darling mother nearly died,
“My goodness, what was that?” she cried.
At once the tummy voice came through,
It shouted, “Hey there! Listen you!
“I’m getting hungry! I want eats!
“I want lots of chocs and sweets!
“Get me half a pound of nuts!
“Look snappy or I’ll twist your guts!”
“That’s him!” I cried. “He’s in my tummy!
“So now do you believe me, mummy?”

But mummy answered nothing more,
For she had fainted on the floor.

 

[summerisle]

The Cold Earth Slept Below
By
Percy Byshee Shelley.

The cold earth slept below;
Above the cold sky shone;
And all around,
With a chilling sound,
From caves of ice and fields of snow
The breath of night like death did flow
Beneath the sinking moon.

The wintry hedge was black;
The green grass was not seen;
The birds did rest
On the bare thorn’s breast,
Whose roots, beside the pathway track,
Had bound their folds o’er many a crack
Which the frost had made between.

Thine eyes glow’d in the glare
Of the moon’s dying light;
As a fen-fire’s beam
On a sluggish stream
Gleams dimly—so the moon shone there,
And it yellow’d the strings of thy tangled hair,
That shook in the wind of night.

The moon made thy lips pale, beloved;
The wind made thy bosom chill;
The night did shed
On thy dear head
Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
Might visit thee at will.

 

[summerisle]

To Enjoy The Time - Robert Herrick.

While fates permits us, let's be merry;
Pass all we must the fateful ferry;
And this our life, too, whirls away,
With the rotation of the day.

 

[summerisle]

Thinks of Bramley Moore.

 

[summerisle]

The Instinct of Hope - John Clare


Is there another world for this frail dust
To warm with life and be itself again?
Something about me daily speaks there must,
And why should instinct nourish hopes in vain?
’Tis nature’s prophesy that such will be,
And everything seems struggling to explain
The close sealed volume of its mystery.
Time wandering onward keeps its usual pace
As seeming anxious of eternity,
To meet that calm and find a resting place.
E’en the small violet feels a future power
And waits each year renewing blooms to bring,
And surely man is no inferior flower
To die unworthy of a second spring?

 

[upthetoffees]

Song of Myself - Walt Whitman; Particularly verse 52:

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

 

[summerisle]

In honour of a seventeenth century London brothel, by an 'admirer'.

 

[verreauxi]

A Dream of Honey
MATTHEW SWEENEY (2001)

I dreamed that bees were extinct,
had been for decades, and honey
was a fabled memory, except for jars
hoarded by ancient, wealthy gourmets.
Honey was still on the shelves, of course –
that’s what they’d named the sweet concoction
chemists had arrived at, and it sold well,
not just to those who knew no better,
and the day was coming fast when no one
alive would be able to taste the difference.

Then one Friday morning in Riga
a peasant woman arrived by horse and cart
at the old Zeppelin Hangars market
and set up her stall with jars of honey
flavoured by the various flowers. Around her
sellers of the new honey gawped, then sniffed
as she screwed the lids off, then glared
as her jars were snapped up in minutes,
and she climbed on her cart again
and let the horse take her away.

In the dream, e-mails sped everywhere
about this resurrection of honey,
and supermarket-suppliers scoured Latvia,
knocking on every door, sending helicopters
low over houses, looking for beehives,
but after a month they gave it up,
and the woman never appeared again
though rumours of her honey-selling
came over the border from Russia
and continued beyond the dream.

 

[Kurt.]

I watched the England game tonight
I thought that I may cry
But my tears turned from pain to joy
....thankyou Mr Januzaj

 

[summerisle]

A cheery poem for Autumn.

Rainer Maria Milke

Autumnal Day


Lord! It is time. So great was Summer's glow:
Thy shadows lay upon the dials' faces
And o'er wide spaces let thy tempests blow.

Command to ripen the last fruits of thine,
Give to them two more burning days and press
The last sweetness into the heavy wine.

He who has now no house will ne'er build one,
Who is alone will now remain alone;
He will awake, will read, will letters write
Through the long day and in the lonely night;
And restless, solitary, he will rove
Where the leaves rustle, wind-blown, in the grove.