h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Man was not form'd to live alone:
I'll be that light, unmeaning thing
That smiles with all, and weeps with none.

One Struggle More and I am Free - Lord Byron

Make new friends, but keep the old;
Those are silver, these are gold.
New-made friendships, like new wine,
Age will mellow and refine.
Friendships that have stood the test -
Time and change - are surely best;
Brow may wrinkle, hair grow gray,
Friendship never knows decay.
For 'mid old friends, tried and true,
Once more we our youth renew.
But old friends, alas! may die,
New friends must their place supply.
Cherish friendship in your breast -
New is good, but old is best;
Make new friends, but keep the old;
Those are silver, these are gold.

(Joseph Parry, New Friends and Old Friends)

On silver necklaces they strung
The flowering stars, on crowns they hung
The dragon-fire, in twisted wire


[J. R. R. Tolkien, Far Over the Misty Mountains]

In the spring time, the spring time,
the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding a ding,
Sweet lovers love the spring.

Shakespeare: It Was a Lover and His Lass]

But one man does not sing. I notice him
As my song takes me with the others.


[Peter Redgrove.]

{Jab, since you just used a song there:
I take it songs are allowed if their tunes
have been lost in the mists of time? }

Oops! I'm sorry, I made a mistake there, Snails. Better if we keep songs out of it, even Shakespearean ones, I think. I even remember the tune it's usually sung to!

Jab

[I'll just carry on from where we are]

I Sing the Body electric;
The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.

[Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass - I Sing the Body Electric]

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.



[Allen Ginsberg: Howl]

At that hour when all things have repose,
o lonely watcher of the skys,
do you hear the night wind and the sighs
of harps playing into love to unclose
the pale gates of sunrise

James Joyce.

Waking at four to the soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now

[Philip Larkin: Aubade]

One moment in Annihilation's waste,
One moment of the Well of Life to taste--
The Stars are setting and the Caravan
Starts for the Dawn of Nothing--Oh, make haste!


[Omar Khayyam, trans, Edward Fitzgerald: Rubaiyat.]

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.


John McCrae: In Flanders Fields]

How do you pace the day's motions
When twilight's gone
(Your better life in ashes
Under the trees)?


[Orig: How.)

No stars in this black sky, no moon to speak of, no name
or number to the hour, no skelf of light. I let in air.
The garden’s sudden scent’s an open grave.

[Carol Ann Duffy: Over]

On the subject of "hopelessness"

Wonderful World?

I see people hate,
Racism too,
People locked up
For what they could do

And I think to Myself
'What a WONDERFUL world'

(Orig.)

Note: For unliterate people like me, could people please post the subjects of their poems, as it isn't clear to me what exactly the subject/s are. This save a lot of problems with mny frequent un-linear postings, and may be helpful to others who join.

Thanks.

{Subject: from hopelessness to hope.}


I thank heaven someone's crazy
enough to give me a daisy.


[e. e. cummings.]

Nick - I don't think you need it, as your contribution was OK. But I'm willing to try your idea out, to give the gist of my thoughts when linking. Let me know how it goes - Nick or anyone else. One possible trouble is that poems aren't necessarily about one thing only, of course, and you're at liberty to take any aspect yourself, not just the one indicated, (see 257).

This thread doesn't belong just to me, of course, it belongs to all of us.

Jab