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

Well, in the absence of Magwitch, I'll deputise. This author was well-known as a brilliant short-story writer, but he thought of himself first and foremost as a poet. The usual, please:

It's August and I have not
Read a book in six months
except something called The Retreat from Moscow
by Caulaincourt
Nevertheless, I am happy
Riding in a car with my brother
and drinking from a pint of Old Crow.
We do not have any place in mind to go,
we are just driving.
If I closed my eyes for a minute
I would be lost, yet
I could gladly lie down and sleep forever
beside this road
My brother nudges me.
Any minute now, something will happen.

Sorry for my absence, Jabs - been rather distracted of late.

The last is by Raymond Carver, Drinking While Driving.

Mine would have been this one. It's quite long so I'll just give you the first three stanzas:

When mid-autumn's moan shook the night-time,
And sedges were horny,
And summer's green wonderwork faltered
On leaze and in lane,

I fared Yell'ham-Firs way, where dimly
Came wheeling around me
Those phantoms obscure and insistent
That shadows unchain.

Till airs from the needle-thicks brought me
A low lamentation,
As 'twere of a tree-god disheartened,
Perplexed, or in pain.

"The Mother Mourns," by Thomas Hardy

[I'll be back in a few minutes with the next poem]

This is one of my favorite whimsical poems:

The man at the wheel was taught to feel
Contempt for the wildest blow.
And it often appeared when the weather had cleared
That he'd been in his bunk below.

The boatswain's mate was very sedate,
Yet fond of amusement too;
And he played hopscotch with the starboard watch
While the captain tickled the crew.

And the gunner we had was apparently mad
For he stood on the cannon's tail,
And fired salutes in the captain's boots
In the teeth of a booming gale.

A good one, Paul. Very reminiscent of Lewis Carrol, as was the intention, but actually the work of Charles Edward Carryl, and entitled The Walloping Window Blind.

Here's something rather weird, also based on Lewis Carroll. It's by an internet poet and seems to be a work in progress.

He thought he saw as he awoke,
That ‘Justice’ rhymed with ‘fair’
he looked again and found it was
a wish beyond repair,
“I ran, I rack, must soon”, he said,
“leave budget cupboards bare.”

He thought he saw the government
‘transparency’ uphold
he looked again and found it was
but wishful-thinking old,
“Where burning Bush would Rove”, he said,
“checks, balance, are left cold.”

He thought he saw society
free from injustice, fights,
he looked again and found it was
a vetoed Bill of Rights,
“Are global warming themes”, he said,
“hot air, conditioned nights? ”

He thought he saw that plain goodwill
would solve all woes world wide
he looked again and found it was
repeatedly denied,
“Some governments, alas! ” he said,
“the ‘Truth’ just over-ride.”

Dunno, I'm afraid, WFAT, and I couldn't find it either. Could you give us the answer - maybe with a link - and pose another one, since none of us seem to know?





Jabs

My apologies, Jabs, I didn't realise that would be so difficult to Google. Just tried to do so myself and it took three or four attempts before I got a hit. Anyway, it's by someone called Jonathan Robin, whom I came across on PoemHunter.com, where he has hundreds of pieces posted, many of which are parodies. That one goes by the title of Carrolling II: it seems to have been revised a number of times and I'm not sure there is a definitive version. Here's a link http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/carrolling-ii-parody-lewis-carroll-the-mad-gardener-s-song/

(Now there's an intersting idea - poets showing their workings.)

Here's something less obscure and more conventional. Wikipedia describes it as "a marvel of economy"

One ship drives East,
And another drives West,
With the self-same winds that blow;
Tis the set of the sails,
And not the gales,
Which tells us the way to go.

Like the winds of the sea
Are the ways of fate,
As we voyage along through life;
Tis the set of the soul
That decides its goal,
And not the calm or the strife.

That's by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, American 19th c., who wrote the well-known line: "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone". The title's the same as the first line.

Try this one. The first two lines are well-known, especially the second. Some may be surprised that he wrote such brilliant rhyming verse::

Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.

Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.

Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense;
To seize and clutch and penetrate;
Expert beyond experience,

He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.

You're right, Jabs (your right jabs?) the first two lines are all I recognised - used to have a friend who quoted them often. It's 'Whispers of Immortality' by T S Eliot.

I was under the impression that piece by Wilcox was called 'The Winds of Fate'.

Here's something very English (and mid 20th century'ish):-

Think of what our Nation stands for,
Books from Boots' and country lanes,
Free speech, free passes, class distinction,
Democracy and proper drains.
Lord, put beneath Thy special care
One-eighty-nine Cadogan Square.

Although dear Lord I am a sinner,
I have done no major crime;
Now I'll come to Evening Service
Whensoever I have the time.
So, Lord, reserve for me a crown,
And do not let my shares go down.

That poem is "In Westminster Abbey," by John Betjeman.

The next poem is:

Songs! Visions of my homeland,
come with strains of childhood,
Come with tunes we sang in school days
and with songs from mother's heart;
Way down east in a village by the sea,
stands an old, red farm house
that watches o'er the lea;
All that is best in me,
lying deep in memory,
draws my heart where I would be,
nearer to thee.
Ev'ry Sunday morning,
when the chores were almost done,
from that little parlor
sounds the old melodeon,
"Nearer my God to Thee, nearer to Thee,"
With those strains a stronger hope
comes nearer to me.

[Technically, these are the lyrics to a song. Apparently the composer wrote his own lyrics. I think that it works as poetry.]

[Re. the Wilcox, WFAT - I stand corrected. My source had the first line as the title.]

Jabs

Lots of song work as poetry, I think. That one was "Down East" by Charles Ives.

I imagine everyone will know this:-

I am! yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes;
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.

I know it well, WFAT. Written in the County Lunatic Asylum, Northampton, by John Clare. It was a real pleasure not to have to look it up. With some trepidation I think it has no title, apart from the first line - although it is often shortened to 'I Am'. I think it's marvellous.

This may not require a search, either:

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,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear,
burning their money in wastebaskets and listening
to the Terror through the wall,

That's "Howl," by Allen Ginsberg. An iconic poem if there ever was one.

Next poem:

A stranger, schooled to gentle arts,
He stept before the curious throng;
His path into our waiting hearts
Already paved by song.

Full well we knew his choristers,
Whose plaintive voices haunt our rest,
Those sable-vested harbingers
Of melancholy guest.

We smiled on him for love of these,
With eyes that swift grew dim to scan
Beneath the veil of courteous ease
The faith-forsaken man.

To his wan gaze the weary shows
And fashions of our vain estate,
Our shallow pain and false repose,
Our barren love and hate,

Are shadows in a land of graves,
Where creeds, the bubbles of a dream,
Flash each and fade, like melting waves
Upon a moonlight stream.

Yet loyal to his own despair,
Erect beneath a darkened sky,
He deems the austerest truth more fair
Than any gracious lie;

And stands, heroic, patient, sage,
With hopeless hands that bind the sheaf,
Claiming God's work with His wage,
The bard of unbelief.

[The poet is well-known to every American for a poem that was set to music. This is not that poem, but I chose it because the event that it describes took place in Boston...]

The faith-forsaken man indeed. It's ‘Matthew Arnold On hearing him read his Poems in Boston’, by Katherine Lee Bates, author of America the Beautiful - from sea to shining sea.

This one was written after the Peterloo Massacre, 1819 - the cavalry were called in to charge into a crowd of many thousands, gathered in Manchester (at St. Peter's Field - hence Peterloo) to demand the reform of Parliament, and the vote. Many defenceless people were cut down and/or trampled to death.

This is the last verse, but it's a famous passage often quoted :

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few.

That's from Shelley's 'The Masque of Anarchy', Jabs. I can't think why you didn't quote in full.

Shelley also wrote a somewhat shorter poem - a sonnet - called 'Ozymandias'. Here's another sonnet which was originally published with the same name. Who wrote it and what was it retitled?

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand." The City's gone,
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

Where is evryboddie?

Well, I thought that was nice and intriguing, WFAT

It was written by Shelley's friend, Horace Smith, hardly a name to conjure with. He later changed the title from Ozymandias to the resplendent -

On A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below.

Next. This is the whole poem:

Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I'll draw a sketch of thee,
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B?

Spike Milligan (I love him) I don't think it has a title...

Rather a long one tonight, but rather excellent too.


In these rapid, restless shadows,
Once I walked at eventide,
When a gentle, silent maiden,
Walked in beauty at my side.
She alone there walked beside me
All in beauty, like a bride.

Pallidly the moon was shining
On the dewy meadows nigh;
On the silvery, silent rivers,
On the mountains far and high,--
On the ocean's star-lit waters,
Where the winds a-weary die.

Slowly, silently we wandered
From the open cottage door,
Underneath the elm's long branches
To the pavement bending o'er;
Underneath the mossy willow
And the dying sycamore.

With the myriad stars in beauty
All bedight, the heavens were seen,
Radiant hopes were bright around me,
Like the light of stars serene;
Like the mellow midnight splendor
Of the Night's irradiate queen.

Audibly the elm-leaves whispered
Peaceful, pleasant melodies,
Like the distant murmured music
Of unquiet, lovely seas;
While the winds were hushed in slumber
In the fragrant flowers and trees.

Wondrous and unwonted beauty
Still adorning all did seem,
While I told my love in fables
'Neath the willows by the stream;
Would the heart have kept unspoken
Love that was its rarest dream!

Instantly away we wandered
In the shadowy twilight tide,
She, the silent, scornful maiden,
Walking calmly at my side,
With a step serene and stately,
All in beauty, all in pride.

Vacantly I walked beside her.
On the earth mine eyes were cast;
Swift and keen there came unto me
Bitter memories of the past--
On me, like the rain in Autumn
On the dead leaves, cold and fast.

Underneath the elms we parted,
By the lowly cottage door;
One brief word alone was uttered--
Never on our lips before;
And away I walked forlornly,
Broken-hearted evermore.

Slowly, silently I loitered,
Homeward, in the night, alone;
Sudden anguish bound my spirit,
That my youth had never known;
Wild unrest, like that which cometh
When the Night's first dream hath flown.

Now, to me the elm-leaves whisper
Mad, discordant melodies,
And keen melodies like shadows
Haunt the moaning willow trees,
And the sycamores with laughter
Mock me in the nightly breeze.

Sad and pale the Autumn moonlight
Through the sighing foliage streams;
And each morning, midnight shadow,
Shadow of my sorrow seems;
Strive, O heart, forget thine idol!
And, O soul, forget thy dreams!

"The Village street," by Edgar Allan Poe.

Here's an amusing poem by a contemporary of Poe:

At the meal we sit together:
Salve tibi! I must hear 10
Wise talk of the kind of weather, 10
Sort of season, time of year:
Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely
Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt:
What's the Latin name for "parsley"?
What's the Greek name for Swine's Snout?