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

**
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

(same poem to those who don't know it)



Your turn, paul.

Here it is:

Science, that simple saint, cannot be bothered
Figuring what anything is for:
Enough for her devotions that things are
And can be contemplated soon as gathered.

She knows how every living thing was fathered,
She calculates the climate of each star,
She counts the fish at sea, but cannot care
Why any one of them exists, fish, fire or feathered.

Why should she? Her religion is to tell
By rote her rosary of perfect answers.
Metaphysics she can leave to man:
She never wakes at night in heaven or hell

Staring at darkness. In her holy cell
There is no darkness ever: the pure candle
Burns, the beads drop briskly from her hand.

Who dares to offer Her the curled sea shell!
She will not touch it!--knows the world she sees
Is all the world there is! Her faith is perfect!

And still he offers the sea shell . . .

What surf
Of what far sea upon what unknown ground
Troubles forever with that asking sound?
What surge is this whose question never ceases

[You will not guess the title from anything in the poem itself. This is an indication of this poet's puckish sense of humor....]

Dr. Sigmund Freud Discovers The Sea Shell by Archibald MacLeish. I think this poem is profoundly true. That science only tells us the how - not the why, and never the meaning.



This is by one of my favourites (whole poem). Author and title please:



Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) "Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no
Inner Resources." I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as Achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into the mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

It makes me feel very ignorant that I know (and understand) so few of the poems posted here. On reflection, though, it's probably a good thing.

Mr Google tells me that last one was "Life, friends, is boring" - or Dream Song 14 - by John Berryman.

I prefer simpler poems - like this one:-

"i could make you crawl
if i was payin' attention"
he said munchin' a sandwich
in between chess moves
"what d' you wanna make
me crawl for?"
"i mean i just could"
"could make me crawl"
"yeah, make you crawl!"
"humm, funny guy you are"
"no, i just play t' win,
that's all"
"well if you can't win me,
then you're the worst player
i ever played"
"what d' you mean?"
"i mean i lose all the time"
his jaw tightened an' he took
a deep breath
"hummm, now i gotta beat you"

WFAT - I don't know the answer, and I can't find out because it's not on Google. Because of course not everyone knows all the poems - we're no different to you in that respect - I always make sure that the poems I pose can be found on Google before I post them. That way, people can experience and enjoy (or not) poems that are new to them. Please have a look back at my Post 112, where I explain my attitude to this.

There is a great number of excellent poems that are not on the internet at all, like this one you've quoted, but to use them is to risk putting an end to the game. Thus the aim is not to beat everyone, but to use the game to share and enjoy poetry. Could you yourself give us the answer - author and title? Thanks for this poem though. I enjoyed it, but if I could have found out about the author, even just who he or she was, I could have enjoyed it more.

Jabs

Oh..... I've just found it! Please IGNORE the previous post

It's by Bob Dylan, and it's on the liner notes to his album Another Side of Bob Dylan. To be fair, though, the Streatham Chess Club's site, where I found it, describes it as 'elevated prose'.

Not that I agree. I think it's excellent as poetry, although it's not important what you call it. Have you read the book he wrote at the time, Tarantula? That's excellent too, although this time it's definitely not poetry. Or not intended to be.

So it's my turn again. This is one of the greatest poems ever written in the English language, by general acclaim. You may know it/it's easy to find. This is the first verse:


MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk *:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.


[* Lethe=the river of death]

Author and title please

Jabs

Sorry if that last one was difficult to find, Jabs - I thought everyone had a copy of "Another Side Of" Bob Dylan in their record collection.

There are a few such items on the sleeve, where I think they're described as "some other kinds of poetry". I'm not sure, though, as my copy is stashed away under the stairs awaiting digitalization. So I did get it from the interweb, though I can't remember if I Googled it or got it direct from bobdylan.com.

Your last one, of course, is from Keats' Ode to a Nightingale.

Here's something I found in a very old notebook of my mother's after she died (10+ years ago). For all that time I've been unsure whether the pieces in there were her own, or just things she'd copied down. I finally found this one on the net a couple of days ago, although I'm still not sure who the author is - if anyone can clarify that, I'd be very grateful.

But woman's gamble (there's only one:
And it takes some pluck to play,
When the rules are broke ere the game's begun;
When, lose or win, you must pay!)
Is a double wager on human kind,
A limitless risk and she goes it blind.

For she stakes, at love, on a single throw,
Pride, Honour, Scruples and Fears,
And dreams no lover can hope to know,
And the gold of the after-years.
(And all for a man; and there's no man lives
Who is worth the odds that a woman gives.)

Not the best, I know, but you'll understand why it's of interest to me.

It's from The Gamble, from The Poetical works of Gilbert Frankau, WFAT. If you're interested, this is the link:

http://www.archive.org/stream/poeticalworks02franuoft/poeticalworks02franuoft_djvu.txt

It's way down the page of his poetical works. I must admit I've never heard of him, but his work - war poetry -seems to be good stuff - WW1 poetry.. There's a list, and then the full texts.

There's also a short article about him in Wikipedia.

Jabs


Next, a wonderful poem of lost time:

Here is the ancient floor,
Footworn and hollowed and thin,
Here was the former door
Where the dead feet walked in.

She sat here in her chair,
Smiling into the fire;
He who played stood there,
Bowing it higher and higher.

Childlike, I danced in a dream;
Blessings emblazoned that day;
Everything glowed with a gleam;
Yet we were looking away!
:

Poet's name and title please.

Poet's name and the title of the poem! The poet is not Lord or Lady someone!

That's right, Jabs - I think. I found it on the website you mention, although it didn't seem entirely clear to me that all the poems were written by Gilbert Frankau. But I guess they must have been.

I recognise that last poem, having quoted it myself in another place a few weeks ago - it's The Self-Unseeing by Thomas Hardy.

Here's one of my favourites, which I sometimes sing to myself. I imagine it will be familiar to you.

I said I splendidly loved you; it's not true.
Such long swift tides stir not a land-locked sea.
On gods or fools the high risk falls -- on you --
The clean clear bitter-sweet that's not for me.
Love soars from earth to ecstasies unwist.
Love is flung Lucifer-like from Heaven to Hell.
But -- there are wanderers in the middle mist,
Who cry for shadows, clutch, and cannot tell
Whether they love at all, or, loving, whom:
An old song's lady, a fool in fancy dress,
Or phantoms, or their own face on the gloom;
For love of Love, or from heart's loneliness.
Pleasure's not theirs, nor pain. They doubt, and sigh,
And do not love at all. Of these am I.

It's a sonnet by Rupert Brooke, well known I think for its different take on love declarations!
The title is the first line.

Let's try a famous French poem - well, a famous last verse or line to be a little more exact. If you have at least schoolboy/schoolgirl French you'll have more than one chance. Here are the last three verses in the original French and in English translation. Please note that the original in French rhymes, while the translation doesn't. An example of something being 'lost in translation'.

Poet and title please. The poet is well known even to those who've never read him.


Mais parmi les chacals, les panthères, les lices,
Les singes, les scorpions, les vautours, les serpents,
Les monstres glapissants, hurlants, grognants, rampants,
Dans la ménagerie infâme de nos vices,

II en est un plus laid, plus méchant, plus immonde!
Quoiqu'il ne pousse ni grands gestes ni grands cris,
Il ferait volontiers de la terre un débris
Et dans un bâillement avalerait le monde;

C'est l'Ennui! L'oeil chargé d'un pleur involontaire,
II rêve d'échafauds en fumant son houka.
Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat,
-- Hypocrite lecteur, -- mon semblable, -- mon frère!



But among the jackals, panthers, and bitch-hounds,
The monkeys, scorpions, vultures, and serpents,
The yelping, howling, growling, groveling monsters
In the infamous menagerie of our vices,

There is one who is uglier, nastier, more foul!
Although he makes no grand gestures, no great noise,
He would willingly reduce the earth to ruins
And swallow the world in a yawn;

It is Ennui! His eye brimming with an involuntary teardrop,
He dreams of scaffolds while smoking a hookah.
You know him, reader, this delicate monster,
----Hypocrite reader, -- my like, -- my brother!



It's on the internet in both languages, with this translation, among others.

It's from "Les fleurs du mal," by Baudelaire. Its title (to the extent that it has one) is "To the reader." They don't give the French version of the title, but it's probably "Au lecteur." I read some of Baudelaire's poetry in French when I was in school. I figured the poem would be by Baudelaire, Jab.

Lemony Snicket chose "Baudelaire" as the family name for tjhe unfortunate children in his series of books.

Here's the next poem, or at least the beginning of it. It's a lofty entry indeed, and you can have extra credit if you guess not only the author and the title, but also the translator:

Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc'd by fate,
And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,
Expell'd and exil'd, left the Trojan shore.
Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore,
And in the doubtful war, before he won
The Latian realm, and built the destin'd town;
His banish'd gods restor'd to rites divine,
And settled sure succession in his line,
From whence the race of Alban fathers come,
And the long glories of majestic Rome

Okay, forget about guessing the translator then.
There are huge clues in the verse itself.......

It's the Preface to Virgil's Aenid, masterfully translated by Dryden. I recognised it. It's well known for itself and partly because G.B.Shaw wrote a hit play, 'Arms and the Man'.

Now the first three verses of another well known poem. Author and title please:

I was run over by the truth one day.
Ever since the accident I've walked this way
So stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

Heard the alarm clock screaming with pain,
Couldn't find myself so I went back to sleep again
So fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

Every time I shut my eyes all I see is flames.
Made a marble phone book and I carved out all the names
So coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

"Tell me lies about Vietnam," by Adrian Mitchell

I like to think about what sort of tune Country Joe and the Fish or Bob Dylan could have set those words to.

Here's the next poem, from a poet who inspired Mitchell:






HE wild winds weep,
And the night is a-cold;
Come hither, Sleep,
And my griefs enfold! . . .
But lo! the morning peeps
Over the eastern steeps,
And the rustling beds of dawn
The earth do scorn.

It's actually called 'To Whom It May Concern' paul, but almost everybody thinks of it as 'Tell Me Lies About Vietnam', which would have been a better title, IMO.

I'll back off and give someone else a chance.

Jabs

Mad Song by William Blake I was wondering when he'd tip up.

And next? 'tis your turn Magwitch.

Jabs