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

Oh, and your poem is too easy, Jab. It's from the beginning of "Macbeth," by Shakespeare,

Sorry. The actual title is The Child Alone, fom a Child's Garden of Verses.

Can we go back to my one please?


Jabs

Paul 'from the beginning of Macbeth' is not specific enough.

Jabs, those words are taken from the three witches' "Double, double toil and trouble" incantation at the beginning of Act 4 (scene 1), when Macbeth returns to consult them about MacDuff. They're voiced by Second Witch, who also utters the immortal words, as Macbeth approaches, "By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes."

Is that specific enough?

Next -

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud, -and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.

Frost at Midnight - Coleridge. That'confusing, because I keep on thinking it's a piece by Robert Frost


When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.

Sorry if it's not very complicated Paul but its simplicity adds to its enormous power, for me. Surely, only a man with a great intellect could have written it.

Jabs

That's Song by Christina Rossetti, Jabs.

This next one's fairly topical - and still in copyright, I guess, so just the first three stanzas.


Here is the body fearfully beautiful
The pushy you of just nineteen –
How could you know, in shin or skull,
What's dead already in the sheen?

Immersed in time, we question time
And ask for commentators' rights.
The amoeba has a taste for slime
Among its range of appetites.

It's always too early to die – Oh, yuss!
Says Churchill, dew-lapped TV hound
To The Man on the Clapham Omnibus –
The ice-cap's melting; seek high ground!

I don't mind uncomplicated poems, Jabs.
A few extremely well-chosen words can inspire people to move mountains [figuratively if not literaloly]

I have a weakness for poetic or musical reminiscences about childhood. Many of the 19th century composers wrote evocative pieces for children, and I love them all. The child is father of the man.

Understood and agreed, Paul.

Your poem, WFAT, is ‘Mitu’s Spice Tour’ by Blessing Musariri (who he?)

Try this hard one:

There's a one-eyed yellow idol
To the north of Kathmandu;
There's a little marble cross below the town;
And a brokenhearted woman
Tends the grave of 'Mad' Carew,
While the yellow god for ever gazes down.

Blessing Musariri, I'm led to believe, is a Zimbabwean writer of the female gender. I'd like to tell you more about her, but my internet access is so slow tonight that I've given up.

In any case, the lines I quoted were not by her, nor were they from "Mitu's Spice Tour", which may very well be. By her, that is. The piece I quoted from was Peter Porter's "Random Ageist Verses".

As for your poem, Jabs, it's a very well known one - "The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God" - written by J. Milton Hayes, who is hardly known at all.

Now here's something truly inspirational:-

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Emma Lazurus, on the Statue of Liberty.

[A lazurus briefly raised, then quickly back again.]


With the roads blocked
How will I work?
With knocking and searching
How will I sing?
With a house with no walls,
How can I cook
Tonight and tomorrow,
In a windowless cell ,
How will I play the violin?
And with a wall encircling
My land
Can my thoughts
Fly like birds
Over the barbed wire?
I did nothing,
How can I work?
How can I sing?

As you may surmise, Jabs, I've never come across that poem or its author before. It's "No Roads" by Alice E Rogoff.

Here's another poem you can probably find only on the internet. You may recognise the poet, but possibly not.


The hedgehog and the toad are gone to rest;
All breath suspended, life traded for survival;
The silent forest wears a shroud
And mourns the passing of the year,
The meadow sheds its coat of many colours.
Old John forsakes the highway, seeks the barn
And we turn in upon ourselves as though we might deny
The last dark remnant of the year.

The lamp spills out its light across the frozen lane
And fire-side voices from the inn weave tales
Of winters past to keep alive
Their legends saved from long ago.
The shepherd and the cowman turn their collars
To cheat the spiteful wind, and head for home.
The children's snowman grins its welcome in the yard
And supper beckons from the stove.

The dark days pass; the village wakens. Cautiously
We steal a glance from deep inside ourselves
To wonder at the sun-roused meadow
Rehearsing colours it once knew.
Old friends return to fill again the dawn with song,
Among the trees the life-blood newly rises,
The waking hedgerow tries a gown of freshest green,
Old John along the lane is seen.

"The Passing year," by Les Derbyshire.
It's copyrighted 2009, so it's very recent.

Next poem:

He is a tower unleaning. But how he’ll break
If Heaven assault him with full wind and sleet,
And what uproar tall trees concumbent make!


More than a hundred years and a hundred feet
Naked he rears against cold skies eruptive,
Only his temporal twigs unsure of seat,


And the frail leaves of a season, who are susceptive
To the mad humors of wind, and turn and flee
In panic round the stem on which they are captive.


Now a certain heart, too young and mortally
Yoked with an unbeliever of bantering brood,
Observed, as an eminent witness of life, the tree;


She exulted, wrapped in a phantasy of good:
“Be the great oak for his long winterings
Our symbol of love, better than summer’s brood!”


Then the patient oak, delivered of his pangs,
Put forth profuse his green banners of peace
And testified to her with innumerable tongues.


And what but she fetch me up to the steep place
Where the oak vaunted? A flat where birdsong flew
Had to be traversed, and a quick populace


Of daisies and yellow kinds, and here she knew,
Instructed well by much mortality,
Better than brag in this distraught purlieu.


Above their pied and dusty clumps was he
Standing, sheer on his hill, not much soiled over
By the knobs and broken boughs of an old tree.


She looked and murmured, “Established there, forever!”
But, that her pitiful error be undone,
I knocked upon his house, a sorrowing lover,


And like a funeral came the hollow tone.
“The grand old fellow,” I grieved, “holds gallantly,
But before our joy has lapsed, even, will be gone.”


I beat more sternly, and the dolorous cry
Boomed till its loud reverberance outsounded
The singing of bees; or the coward birds that fly


Otherwhere with their songs when summer is sped,
And if they stayed would perish miserably;
Or the weeping girl remembering her dread.

You're quite right, Paul. Normally, I'd be reluctant to quote such a poem in full, but I'm pretty sure that el D won't mind.

Has anyone seen him lately?

The Vaulting Oak by John Crowe Ransom. The difference between poets known in the US and here is a constant fascination for me. I must be one of the few here (England, not h2g2)who've even heard of Crowe Ransom, let alone his major place in poetry. Two countries divided by a common language yet again - that insight from G.B.Shaw.

I couldn't resist this one (see line 3). First verse:



Every morning the water again runs clear
as it has for twenty years
of jabs
and stabs
where we’ve joined in single combat, my dear,

on a strand or at a ford.
Every evening I’ve fleshed my sword
in a scabbard.
The hedgehog bristling on your tabard.
Behind each of us is arrayed a horde

of heroes ready to vie
for a piece of the pie
with Hector, Ajax, Ferdia, Cu Chulainn,
and all the other squeaky-clean
champions who’ve once more forgotten to die.

Jabs,

There's a vast ocean of poetry
out there.
Few of us venture far
along our own coastline,
let alone set sail
for the other side.

But just occasionally
we find,
on the deserted beach,
a message in a bottle.

Your poem is "When the Pie Was Opened" by Paul Muldoon.

Here are the opening lines to a very long poem, which I've yet to read in full - I just like the author's name.


Where Kensington, high o'er the neighbouring lands
Midst greens and sweets, a regal fabric, stands,
And sees each spring, luxuriant in her bowers,
A snow of blossoms, and a wild of flowers,
The dames of Britain oft in crowds repair
To gravel walks, and unpolluted air.
Here, while the town in damps and darkness lies,
They breathe in sun-shine, and see azure skies;
Each walk, with robes of various dyes bespread,
Seems from afar a moving tulip-bed,
Where rich brocades and glossy damasks glow,
And chints, the rival of the showery bow.
Here England's daughter, darling of the land,
Sometimes, surrounded with her virgin band,
Gleams through the shades. She, towering o'er the rest,
Stands fairest of the fairer kind confest,
Form'd to gain hearts, that Brunswick's cause deny'd,
And charm a people to her father's side.

This post has been removed.

"Kensington Garden," by Thomas Tickell

Next poem:

Said the wind,” This is where I have been,
Hot desert sand, caravans marching
Scented market places, voices everywhere
Commoners and merchantmen alike
People shoving, coins flashing
Hawkers crying, selling their wares.


Mountain tops, tall and free
Valleys deep and somber
Cool evening forests, twilight’s glow
Lovers walking hand in hand
Whispered words of love intended
Promises made, so long ago.


Storm tossed waves, thunder and light
Dark streets and shadowed alleys
A small hungry figure, covered in cloth
Flashing lights, red and blue
A woman leans out a window, searching
Candled street lights flicker, a moth.


This is where I have been today, my friend,”
Said the wind

I trust you understood the Tickell/Tickle allusion, Jabs. Not sure I understand your "seriously underrated" comment about T S Eliot, from whose poem "Gerontion" your last was extracted. I daresay I underestimate him, though, cuz I can't get my head round that stuff. Maybe when I'm older and I have more time - is that a contradiction in terms?

Here's something more minimalist from an internet 'poet':-

To stay alive,
I write my living death;
Because
Some vital part of me,
Perhaps
The very heart of me,
Longs to survive,
Still loves each painful breath.