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

Please, please do not consider stopping anytime soon. I am enjoying this thread to the up-most these chilly grey (no snow) days and awaiting > > > >
........ "there is no time like spring when life's alive in everything."

Irving Fine set that poem to music. It is delightful!

The poem is by Lewis Carroll, and I think it was in "Alice in Wonderland." The poem about the Jabberwock, of course, was in "Alice Threw the Looking-Glass."

No, Paul H . .. .............
..................... There is no time like Spring, .........................
..................... When life's alive in everything,......................
..................... Before new nestlings sing, ......................
..................... Before cleft swallows speed their journey back
..................... Along the trackless track~~~ .....................- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ------
............... ......................
..................... There is no time like Spring, ......................
..................... Like Spring that passes by; ......................
..................... There is no life like Spring - life born to die,--- ...

Gingersnapper, I was answering Jab's "Father William" poem. I didn't know you had posted until after I posted my answer.

Paul, how did you manage to answer my poem correctly without mentioning the poet or the author? Clever stuff, but it won't work with me



Try again. Slightly fuller answer this time, please.



Jabs




And welcome to our little thread, called Little Fred, Ginger

Sorry Paul, it's now 4 a.m. in this country and I maligned you out of sheer not-going-to-bed-when-I-shouldness. You DID give me the author. And the title of the poem is simply 'You Are Old, Father William', in, as you said, Alice In Blunderland, (hence the load of rubbish above) - whereas, as you again said correctly, the Jabberwock lives Threw the Looking Glass. Ho, hum.

Here's a short extract, maybe a bit harder 'cos it's in a tongue foreign to both our countries:

Dulce et Decorum Est - that's the title. It's part of a quote from the Latin poet Horace. This poem's a fantastic poem, and has been described as the finest poem of the First World War. The poem's in English.

Name of poet please.

Jabs

I'm afraid Little Fred is too intellectual for me. Hell, I can't even remember my own poems a few minutes after I have written them.

This, however, is a poem by a famous writer that I am sure Jab will have no trouble knowing.

I have been here before...
I know the grass beyond the door,
the sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

You have been mine before,
Though how or when I cannot tell,
Yet just when at that swallows soar
You neck turned so...
I knew it all of yore.

Though age, faith or creed may keep us now apart...
One travels the hill, the other, the lake
I claim you still for my own love's sake
Delayed though it may be for more lives yet.
Much is to learn, much to forget e're the time
be come for taking you, but the time will come,
Oh yes!
The time will come.


I love it.

Lew -


Who told you about Little Fred?

Mine was "dulce et decorum" (est pro patria mori) - a satire on Sweet and Honourable is it to die for one's country - Owen, thought by many to be the best of our First World War poets, was killed exactly a week before the end of the war. There was nothing sweet or honourable about the war he's writing about. First verse:

"DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind."

*[5-9's - German shells]

Yours was "Sudden Light" by Dante Gabriel Rossetti - a love poem of great power, the feelings of which come right across the page at you.

Try this:

"Earth has not anything to show more fair" - poet and title please?

Jabs

Twas on a dark and dismal day
in a week that had seen rain
when all the roads lead to strady park
with the all blacks here again
they thundered down from the valleys
they came from far and wide
there were twenty thousand in the ground
and me and dai outside

?????????????

That's a tough one. It seems to be a New Zealand rugby sng, possiblt by Max Boyce.

The title is "9-3," and it seems to have originally been in Welsh, but I could be wrong.

see post 2

not a song

a poem

title?????

some of the lines were in welsh and max would translate them when he perfomed them on stage

Re: Post 23 ... Spring ...
.. . . . . . . . Christina Rossetti
.. . . . . . . . 1830 - 1894 ...

A poem about Spring would be less useful to me now than Spring itself.

I'll have to answer it myself.

'Earth has not anything to show more fair' - is from 'Composed Upon Westminster Bridge' by William Wordsworth.

Famous poem- possibly among the Nation's (UK) Favourite Poems.

By famous poet

(the one who isn't Max Boyce)

Jab

A fond kiss, and then we sever;
A farewell, and then forever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,

Ae fareweel, alas for ever

Robert Burns is the poet.
The title as Burns wrote it is:
"Ae fond kiss, and then we sever."




Here are a couple quatrains by one of my favorite poets, though in translation:

For I remember stopping by the way
To watch a Potter thumping his wet Clay:
And with its all-obliterated Tongue
It murmur'd--"Gently, Brother, gently, pray!"

And has not such a Story from of Old
Down Man's successive generations roll'd
Of such a clod of saturated Earth
Cast by the Maker into Human mould?

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam, trans Fitzgerald? I'm not certain because I'm afraid he isn't one I like very much. It was a hard one, no?

But it put me in mind immediately of this one, which surely most Americans know, (and so hopefully is really easy - but I love it). Be careful, the first line is not the title:



TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,



Title and author then next one please

Jabs

glad you liked it jabs

i am now going to steal from this one and try it on the change a word thread