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

"The lost land" by Eavan Boland

Gizza poem paulie




please



bigeyes

or even

No-one seems to have identified the poem in #314, which was "This Be The Verse" by Philip Larkin. Very short and punchy, and rather depressing - a bit like the stuff I write, only better.

Anyway, I claim the right to set a new poetic poser.


I thought it was the little bed
I slept in long ago;
A straight white curtain at the head,
And two smooth knobs below.
I thought I saw the nursery fire,
And in a chair well-known
My mother sat, and did not tire
With reading all alone.
If I should make the slightest sound
To show that I'm awake,
She'd rise, and lap the blankets round,
My pillow softly shake;
Kiss me, and turn my face to see
The shadows on the wall,
And then sing Rousseau's Dream to me,
Till fast asleep I fall.
But this is not my little bed;
That time is far away;
With strangers now I live instead,
From dreary day to day.

Sorry about that, WFAT. As a peace offering, I offer a deep poem by one of my favourite poets. The thought is simple, yet very profound:




There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Wait8ng4atickle, your poem is "Half-awake" by William Allingham.

Jabs, your poem is "There will come soft rains" by Sara Teasdale

The next poem:

Come back to me, Gongyla, here tonight,
You, my rose, with your Lydian lyre.
There hovers forever around you delight:
A beauty desired.

Even your garment plunders my eyes.
I am enchanted: I who once
Complained to the Cyprus-born goddess,
Whom I now beseech

Never to let this lose me grace
But rather bring you back to me:
Amongst all mortal women the one
I most wish to see.

According to 'Sappho's Surviving Fragments' this is the first surviving fragment of Sappho - and it's clearly the best: Eurydice. It's about the love of a woman for a woman, but such things were interchangeable in the ruling/intelligentia classes of the time - they even change in the poem.Socrates too was a bit of a lad among the lads.

Now:

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines, and silver hooks.

Dis one is only 4 lines. Any of use guys (m or f) got an attention span of 4 lines?

Four lines is more than my attention span at the moment (I'm exhausted from sing the whole brahms "Requiem" at a concert this afternoon).

The poet is John Donne, and the title is the first line.

Next poem:

The rose, the lily, the dove, the sun,
I once loved them all in love's bliss.
I love them no more, I love only
the small, the fine, the pure, the one;
she herself, source of all love,
is rose and lily and dove and sun.
I love only
the small, the fine, the pure, the one!

[This is a translation from the original German.
A famous composer set the poem to music]

Paul, that's a translation of "Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne" by Heinrich Heine, one of 16 of Heine's poems set to music in a song cycle composed by Robert Schumann, called "Dichterliebe" ("Poet's Love"?) although initially entitled, rather less snappily, "Twenty Songs from the Lyric Intermezzo in the Book of Songs for One Singer and Piano." Four of the poems were subsequently omitted from the cycle, leaving just 16.

Well, that's what it says on the internet, so it must be right. I don't know who did that particular translation. There seem to be several different ones around. And Schumann isn't the only composer to have set that song to music.

As this appears to be your field, Paul, do you happen to know if anyone has set any of Rupert Brooke's poems to music? I'm no musician, but I often 'sing' "I said I Splendidly Loved You" to myself and can't help feeling that several of his other lyrics could make good songs.

Whilst researching the above I came across the text of a lecture on Romantic Poetry in which Heine's work was discussed and the suggestion made that Die Rose, etc, being "drippingly sentimental", could "easily grace a Hallmark Valentine's Day card". There was also a link to this, which, being of an idle nature, I'm posting as the next poem.


When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-piléd books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!---then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

That's John Keats. The poem, far from romanticising death, is a deadly serious and thoughtful one, based on Keats' own dreadful reality. He knew he was to die young from the consumption (TB), from which he was already suffering (coughing up blood etc). Title is the first line.

Try this piece of Anglo-Saxon poetry, on a lighter :

'It was evening, and the smooth active badgers
were scratching and boring holes in the hill-side;
all unhappy were the parrots;
and the grave turtles squeaked out.'

(translation contentious). Poet and origin please - the poem seems to have no title.

ROLL UP! ROLL UP! ROLLUP your sleeves and have a go,or,or, or I'll have to give you the answer1 [shame].

Dontcha no yore Anglo-Saxon?

Sorry, I've been lost in uffish thought. Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

That's 19th century Anglo-Saxon. Or rather, Lewis Carroll's 'translation' of a "Stanza of Anglo-Saxon Poetry", being the first four lines of Jabberwocky ('Twas brillig, and the slithy toves...)

How about this?


They say that rhyme and rhythm are
Outmoded now.
I do not know, for I am far
From high of brow.
But if the twain you take away,
Since basely bred,
Proud Poetry, I dare to say,
Would scarce be read.
With humble heart I thus define
My role in rhyme:
Oh may I never write a line
That does not chime.
And though a verse be nigh as sweet
As honey-comb,
To please me, let it have the beat
Of metronome.
So to my modest muse I give
A greatful pen;
Of lowliness I sing, who live
With lowly men.
And though I never cease to grieve
Poetic lack,
I do my best, - please take or leave
A Verseman's Pack.

That's "Prelude - Carols of an old codger," by Robert W Service

The next poem:

AT evening when the lamp is lit,
Around the fire my parents sit;
They sit at home and talk and sing,
And do not play at anything.

Now, with my little gun, I crawl 5
All in the dark along the wall,
And follow round the forest track
Away behind the sofa back.

There, in the night, where none can spy,
All in my hunter’s camp I lie, 10
And play at books that I have read
Till it is time to go to bed.

These are the hills, these are the woods,
These are my starry solitudes;
And there the river by whose brink 15
The roaring lions come to drink.

I see the others far away
As if in firelit camp they lay,
And I, like to an Indian scout,
Around their party prowled about. 20

So, when my nurse comes in for me,
Home I return across the sea,
And go to bed with backward looks
At my dear land of Story-books

A disingenuous entry from Robert Service, although some of his own rhymed poetry is sublime.

but anyone can do it:

Many say that meaningless chiming is
A working of words towards rhyming
But others say that rhyming is
Itself a way to sing-song timing.
You'll note that this mere verse says nothing at all
Because the words are long but the thought is small.
And worse:
The 'poetry' is no more than facile verse.


Try this:


Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and howlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Jabs

Are you going to identify my poem, Jabs?