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

"She walks in beauty like the night" is by Lord Byron.

Your turn paul

Gizza poem paulie

Coming right up.

Oh piddle, I was just about to post this in your absence:



There are many who say that a dog has its day,
And a cat has a number of lives;
There are others who think that a lobster is pink,
And that bees never work in their hives.
There are fewer, of course, who insist that a horse
Has a horn and two humps on its head,
And a fellow who jests that a mare can build nests
Is as rare as a donkey that's red.
Yet in spite of all this, I have moments of bliss,
For I cherish a passion for bones,
And though doubtful of biscuit, I'm willing to risk it,
And I love to chase rabbits and stones.
But my greatest delight is to take a good bite
At a calf that is plump and delicious;
And if I indulge in a bite at a bulge,
Let's hope you won't think me too vicious.

Next poem [which was originally in French, so this is a translation...]:

Under Mirabeau Bridge the river slips away
And lovers
Must I be reminded
Joy came always after pain



The night is a clock chiming
The days go by not I



We're face to face and hand in hand
While under the bridges
Of embrace expire
Eternal tired tidal eyes



The night is a clock chiming
The days go by not I



Love elapses like the river
Love goes by
Poor life is indolent
And expectation always violent



The night is a clock chiming
The days go by not I



The days and equally the weeks elapse
The past remains the past
Love remains lost
Under Mirabeau Bridge the river slips away



The night is a clock chiming
The days go by not I

Guillaume Apollinaire - Mirabeau Bridge


Mine still stands, possibly.

Yours is Tghe Song of the Mischievous Dog by Dylan Thomas, Mag.It's simple on the surface, but I can't say I understand it, unless it's just meant to be nonsense.

This is far from nonsense, (extract).


I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to 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,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
-- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused -- nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear -- no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

Mag, that's The Song of the Mischievous Dog by Dylan Thomas. Some clever word play, especially when you consider that he wrote it, apparently, at the age of 11. Now that's what you call juvenilia.

A much better answer than mine, WFAT, but there's still mine to reveal.

Jabs

Wow, that's 3 of the last 4 authors I've guessed - way above my average. That last one of yours, Jabs, was 'Aubade' by Philip Larkin. I've seen it quoted on an MB thread quite recently - maybe even this one?

For anyone who's confused, which includes me, the last poem I quoted from was 'The City of Dreadful Night' by James Thomson.

Here's the next:-


All suddenly the wind comes soft,
And Spring is here again;
And the hawthorn quickens with buds of green,
And my heart with buds of pain.
My heart all Winter lay so numb,
The earth so dead and frore,
That I never thought the Spring would come,
Or my heart wake any more.
But Winter's broken and earth has woken,
And the small birds cry again;
And the hawthorn hedge puts forth its buds,
And my heart puts forth its pain.

That's "Song," by Rupert Brooke, a young poet whose life was cut tragically short by his participation in the First World War.

Next poem, also a translation [tr. Walter Meyer]

A violet stood upon the lea,
Hunched o'er in anonymity;
So amiable a violet!
Along there came a young shepherdess
Light paced, full of contentedness
Along, along,
The lea, and sang her song.

Ah!" thinks the violet, "were I just
The fairest flower in the dust
For just a little while yet,
Until that darling seizes me
And to her bosom squeezes me!
For just, for just
A quarter hour long!"

Ah! And alas! There came the maid
And no heed to the violet paid,
Crushed the poor little violet.
It sank and died, yet filled with pride:
And though I die, I shall have died
Through her, through her,
And at her feet have died."

[For what it's worth, in the original German, this poem was beautifully set by Mozart, and I treasure the memory of a recording of it, sung by Elisabeth Schwartzkopf.]

Das Veilchen - The Violet, by Faust.

I hope this one is acceptable, in terms of language. Actually, the poet uses the language legitimately, partly to shock, partly to mean something, not just casual-crudely.

They **** 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 ****** 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.

That wasn't by Faust, Jabs, unless you were making a joke.

Sorry

Goethe of course - but was he really Faust - or Adolf Loos? I hear he kept playing Faust and Loos with the girls!

Jabs.....

Great pun!

Why thankya,kind sir.Your turn now, paul.

There ought to be an icon. He's so busy, he has been known frequently to neglect his domestic duties

Ear, bet e don't no any!

I'll do it neself, then. Particularly since I can introduce a poem so pellucid yet fragmentary, with a beautiful inner strength, that we can all learn so much simply from reading and re-reading it:



I have two daughters.

They are all I ever wanted from the earth.

Or almost all.

I also wanted one piece of ground:

One city trapped by hills. One urban river.
An island in its element.

So I could say mine. My own.
And mean it.

Now they are grown up and far away
and memory itself
has become an emigrant,
wandering in a place
where love dissembles itself as landscape:

Where the hills
are the colours of a child's eyes,
where my children are distances, horizons:

At night,
on the edge of sleep,
I can see the shore of Dublin Bay.
Its rocky sweep and its granite pier.

Is this, I say
how they must have seen it,
backing out on the mailboat at twilight,

shadows falling
on everything they had to leave?
And would love forever?
And then

I imagine myself
at the landward rail of that boat
searching for the last sight of a hand.

I see myself
on the underwold side of that water,
the darkness coming in fast, saying
all the names I know for a lost land:

Ireland. Absence. Daughter.