The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. — Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
William Wordsworth
Since Nov. 11 is close, I like this one:
Dulce et Decorum Est
(Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918)
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned out 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 gas-shells dropping softly 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 lime.--
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
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.
Thanks to Bowmann:
Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse
They f--- you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were f---ed up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
Putrefaction
of late i've had this thought
that this country has gone backwards
4 or 5 decades and that all the social advancement
the good feeling of person toward person
has been washed away
and replaced by the same
old bigotries we have
more than ever
the selfish wants of power
the disregard for the weak
the old
the impoverished
the helpless
we are replacing
want with war
salvation with slavery
we have wasted the gains
we have become rapidly
less
we have our Bomb
it is our fear
our damnation
and our shame.
now.
something so sad
has hold of us
that the breath leaves
and we can't even cry.
-Bukowski
Originally posted by MimorWould you know when this was written?
[b]Putrefaction
of late i've had this thought
that this country has gone backwards
4 or 5 decades and that all the social advancement
the good feeling of person toward person
has been washed away
and replaced by the same
old bigotries we have
more than ever
the selfish wants of power
the disregard for the weak
the old
the impoverished
the he ...[text shortened]...
something so sad
has hold of us
that the breath leaves
and we can't even cry.
-Bukowski[/b]
While not short, this is the finest poem ever written:
Very Like a Whale
One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by the authors of simile and
metaphor.
Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,
Can't seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have to
go out of their way to say that it is like something else.
What does it mean when we are told
That that Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?
In the first place, George Gordon Byron had enough experience
To know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lot of
Assyrians.
However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and
thus hinder longevity.
We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.
Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were
gleaming in purple and gold,
Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a
wold on the fold?
In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy
there are great many things.
But I don't imagine that among them there is a wolf with purple
and gold cohorts or purple and gold anythings.
No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian was
actually like a wolf I must have some kind of proof;
Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big red
mouth and big white teeth and did he say Woof Woof?
Frankly I think it is very unlikely, and all you were entitled to say,
at the very most,
Was that the Assyrian cohorts came down like a lot of Assyrian
cohorts about to destroy the Hebrew host.
But that wasn't fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he
had to invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolate them,
With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers
to people they say Oh yes, they're the ones that a lot of
wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them.
That's the kind of thing that's being done all the time by poets,
from Homer to Tennyson;
They're always comparing ladies to lilies and veal to venison,
And they always say things like that the snow is a white blanket
after a winter storm.
Oh it is, is it, all right then, you sleep under a six-inch blanket of
snow and I'll sleep under a half-inch blanket of unpoetical
blanket material and we'll see which one keeps warm,
And after that maybe you'll begin to comprehend dimly
What I mean by too much metaphor and simile.
-- Ogden Nash
Letty's Globe.
When Letty had scarce pass'd her third glad year,
And her young, artless words began to flow,
One day we gave the child a colour'd sphere
Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know,
By tint and outline, all its sea and land.
She patted all the world; old empires peep'd
Between her baby fingers; her soft hand
Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leap'd,
And laugh'd and prattled in her world-wide bliss!
But when we turn'd her sweet unlearned eye
On our own isle, she rais'd a joyous cry,
"Oh! yes, I see it! Letty's home is there!"
And, while she hid all England with a kiss,
Bright over Europe fell her golden hair!
Charles Tennyson Turner (1808-79)
Originally posted by darvlaydammnit..... Got there first, saw the thread title thought it'd be a good one....
Thanks to Bowmann:
Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse
They f--- you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were f---ed up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's thr ...[text shortened]... epens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
When I wake up with him beside me and a gentle "good morning".
His Voice moves me.
No matter how he speaks to me.
His voice soothes me.
In my darkest moment of my life.
His voice lights my way.
His touch brings me sunshine on the most cloudest of days.
With him, there's no fear, the gentle touch of his hand calms them away.
His words of advice always sinks deep within my heart.
I long for his caress to be held in his arms as if he could not ever let me go.
To feel his heartbeat in rhythm with mine.
When I look at him deep into his eyes, his eyes speak to me, without him uttering a single word.
His kiss warms me on the coldest nights.
His
Voice
Moves
Me
By Lisa LaVella Tison-Wilson
dedicated to ( YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!)
Yep I wrote this one