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

That's "Leisure" by William Henry Davies

I'll be back soon with another poem .

[When I was a sophomore in high school, I thought that this poem was beautiful enough to recite as my entry in the school's recitation contest]

him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart;--
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around--
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air--
Comes a still voice--Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourish'd thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings,
The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribb'd and ancient as the sun,--the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods; rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, pour'd round all,
Old Ocean's grey and melancholy waste,--
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.--Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound
Save his own dashings--yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest: and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favourite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men,
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man--
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side
By those who in their turn shall follow them.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged by his dungeon; but, sustain'd and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams

Nice and easy, yet satisfying and fulfilling: Leisure, by W.H.Davies.

This (whole) poem may not be so easy, but the first four words especially are startling, albeit something I'm sure we all feel at times, though it soon turns into a contemplation, the difficulty of which, the struggle of which, is reflected in the many awkwardnesses and enjambments:


I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond
all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless
wolf under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse
that feels a flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician--
nor is it valid
to discriminate against "business documents and

school-books"; all these phenomena are important. One must make
a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
"literalists of
the imagination"--above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them,"
shall we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry.



Poet and title please.

Ooh, two for the price of one.

Yours, Paul, was 'Thanatopsis' by William Cullen Bryant. I could have read that at my aunt's funeral - except those crematorium slots are only about 20 minutes. I think I would probably have dried up, anyway.

The bonus one from Jabs was a version of Marianne Moore's 'Poetry', towards which, it seems, she was a trifle ambivalent. Given your liking for minimalist poetry, Jabs, you might prefer the three line version.

Apologies if I've posted this before - I'm starting to lose track.

A dream lies dead here. May you softly go
Before this place, and turn away your eyes,
Nor seek to know the look of that which dies
Importuning Life for life. Walk not in woe,
But, for a little, let your step be slow.
And, of your mercy, be not sweetly wise
With words of hope and Spring and tenderer skies.
A dream lies dead; and this all mourners know:

Whenever one drifted petal leaves the tree-
Though white of bloom as it had been before
And proudly waitful of fecundity-
One little loveliness can be no more;
And so must Beauty bow her imperfect head
Because a dream has joined the wistful dead!

Go on paul. I mistakenly crashed into your turn, after all.

Jab

"A Dream lies dead," by Dorothy Parker

Here's the next poem:

Airy, Fairy Lilian,
Flitting, fairy Lilian,
When I ask her if she love me,
Claps her tiny hands above me,
Laughing all she can;
She 'll not tell me if she love me,
Cruel little Lilian.

That's from 'Lilian' by Alfred Lord Tennyson. It seems a bit odd, but maybe that's me.

The sin was mine; I did not understand.
So now is music prisoned in her cave,
Save where some ebbing desultory wave
Frets with its restless whirls this meagre strand.
And in the withered hollow of this land
Hath Summer dug herself so deep a grave,
That hardly can the leaden willow crave
One silver blossom from keen Winter's hand.

But who is this who cometh by the shore?
(Nay, love, look up and wonder!) Who is this
Who cometh in dyed garments from the South?
It is thy new-found Lord, and he shall kiss
The yet unravished roses of thy mouth,
And I shall weep and worship, as before.

The Tennyson is from his juvenalia, published when he was 21, WFAT.

paul - yours is from The New Remorse, sent to Lord Alfred Douglas from Reading Gaol by its author, Oscar Wilde.

Now try this excerpt(some words blanked out by me):


Far from crazy pavements -
the taste of silver spoons
A clinical arrangement
on a dirty afternoon
Where the fecal germs of Mr Freud
are rendered obsolete
The legal term is null and void
In the case of x

In the cheap seats where murder breeds
Somebody is out of breath
Sleep is a luxury they don't need
- a sneak preview of death
Belladonna is your flower
Manslaughter your meat
Spend a year in a couple of hours
On the edge of x

Where the action isn't
That's where it is
State your position
Vacancies exist
In an X-certificate exercise
Ex-servicemen excrete
Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies
In a box on x

Name of poet, title of poem please.

"Beaslet Street," by John Cooper Clarke.

[I wonder if he knew Sweeney Todd ]

Sorry, that was supposed to be Beasley, not Beaslet .

Here's the next poem. The poet was born a few miles where I live. Just don't ask me to explain how the poem relates to Sahespeare, though it supposedly does.

White
Godiva, I unpeel ----
Dead hands, dead stringencies.

And now I
Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.
The child's cry

Melts in the wall.
And I
Am the arrow,

The dew that flies,
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red

Eye, the cauldron of morning

The poem is Ariel by Sylvia Plath. Ariel was a spirit of the air, a character in Shakespeare's The Tempest. It was also the name of her horse.

Next, a very popular poem about a railway stop, with key words expunged:


Yes, I remember x --
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was x -- only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

That's 'Adlestrop' by Edward Thomas, Jabs.

Here's something that might be taken for a pair of early limericks.

Jone is a wench that's painted;
Jone is a girl that's tainted;
Yet Jone she goes
Like one of those
Whom purity had sainted.

Jane is a girl that's pretty;
Jane is a wench that's witty;
Yet who would think,
Her breath does stink,
As so it doth? that's pity.

It's Upon Jone and Jane by Robert Herrick. Quite touching, really.

AND NOW for mine. The whole desperately sad poem.:
(Author and what passes for a title please)


I sat belonely down a tree,
humbled fat and small.
A little lady sing to me
I couldn't see at all.

I'm looking up and at the sky,
to find such wondrous voice.
Puzzly, puzzle, wonder why,
I hear but I have no choice.

'Speak up, come forth, you ravel me',
I potty menthol shout.
'I know you hiddy by this tree'.
But still she won't come out.

Such sofly singing lulled me sleep,
an hour or two or so
I wakened slow and took a peep
and still no lady show.

Then suddy on a little twig
I thought I see a sight,
A tiny little tiny pig,
that sing with all its might

'I thought you were a lady',
I giggle,-well I may,
To my surprise the lady,
got up-and flew away.

Well, we certainly seem to run the whole gamut here. That was "I sat Belonely" by John Lennon, taken from "In His Own Write", a book I haven't read. I think perhaps I'll stick with listening to the songs.

And now for something completely different.

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my good is but vain hope of gain;
The day is past, and yet I saw no sun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

My tale was heard and yet it was not told,
My fruit is fallen, and yet my leaves are green,
My youth is spent and yet I am not old,
I saw the world and yet I was not seen;
My thread is cut and yet it is not spun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

I sought my death and found it in my womb,
I looked for life and saw it was a shade,
I trod the earth and knew it was my tomb,
And now I die, and now I was but made;
My glass is full, and now my glass is run,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

There's more than one version of this - and more than one title - and its authorship has been disputed, so a variety of answers may be acceptable.

That seems to be "Tichborne's Elegy" by Chidiock Tichborne, who was condemned for his part in the "Babington Plot," which aimed to assassinate Queen Elizabeth the First and replace her with Mary Queen of Scots.

Here's the next poem, and it's an easy one:

A knight there was, and that a worthy man,
That from the time that he first began
To ride out, he loved chivalry,
Truth and honor, freedom and courtesy.

Full worthy was he in his lord's war,
And thereto had he ridden, no man far
As well in Christendom as in heathenness
And ever honored for all his worthiness.

[There's more to this part of the poem, but the original is in an older version of English
than I have the expertise to transliterate.... I'm going to leave it at that, because all of you
will guess what it si immediately, and we will all go on to the next poems anyway. Besides, I'm too
lazy to do any more right now. ]

It's the introduction to the Knight, at The Tabard Inn, where the Canterbury Tales pilgrims were gathering - according to Chaucer at any rate.

A knyght ther was, and that a worthy man,
That fro the tyme that he first bigan
To riden out, he loved chivalrie,
Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie.
Ful worthy was he in his lordes werre,
And therto hadde he riden, no man ferre,
As wel in cristendom as in hethenesse,
And evere honoured for his worthynes

Do I get an extra point for this?

Now this:


I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.


[HOW TIMES CHANGE! This vision of Heaven now looks like a picture of Hell.]

You get extra points, Jab. The kind of points that I have access to are worth nothing, though.