poems!

[Don Quixote]

WHEN we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

2

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow —
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

3

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me —
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well: —
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

4

In secret we met —
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee? —
With silence and tears.

Lord Byron

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs, and blow to smithereens
Those air-conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town --
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week for half-a-crown
For twenty years,

And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women's tears,

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.

It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sports and makes of cars
In various bogus Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

-- John Betjeman

 

[dougdeep]

Leon Knight.
He's just shite.

 

[cannedheat]

Scooby do be do had a poo
it fell in shaggys shoe,
shaggy put it on
what a pong
it made him shake and shiver.

 

[withdeanwombat]

Tis all a chequer board of nights and days

Where Destiny with men for pieces plays

Hither and thither moves,and mates and slays

And one by one back in the closet lays.

Khayyam.

or....

Half ower,half ower frae Aberdour tis forty fathoms deep,

And there lies good Sir Patrick Spens with the Scots lairds at his feet.

or.......

Water ,water everywhere,

And all the boards did shrink,

Water water everywhere

But CIDER is the drink!

 

[humpy]

there was a man from nantucket.....................

 

[Barrow Boy]

What is life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and
stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or
cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in
grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at
night.
No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can
dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and
stare.

William Henry Davies



IF.....


IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling

 

[lighthouse]

The cow is of the bovine ilk
One ends moo and the other ends milk

Anon

 

[Super Steve Earle]

Mrs Dighty in her nightie
walking in the dark
Trod upon a puppy dogs tail
and made the creature bark

Mrs Dighty in her nightie
let the creature go
By lifting up her instep
and raising her big toe.

Millgna

 

[Biscuit]

Good to see Kipling and Frost.. mine is not a big name but I came across this poem recently and thought it was beautiful.

The World and Mrs Elphinstone by M.R. Peacocke
From: In Praise of Aunts
Published: Peterloo Poets

The weekly shop, time for a cup of tea before the bus.
The basket snug against her lyle calves and her thick brown purse on the cloth,
Pennies, shillings, her ticket home, ration books clipped.
The butcher in a good mood today, a bit extra
Enough coupons left for... expect that…

Only a small bomb close to the green,
The Cinema showing Helta Poppin.
Brown coat ripped wide, decent corset. Kidneys and breast of lamb.
Supposed after the engine coughed,
Someone had shouted up to the young reconnaissance pilot checking his gear,
“Oh!” The propellers spinning to a blur.
“Good luck, and by the way.
On your route home when the coasts in sight, why you’re about it,
Just kill Mrs Elphinstone would you?”
“Wearing felt hat, fifties. About your mothers build.”
Might the world be different?

 

[skipper734]

The world is full of double beds

The world is full of double beds
And most delightful maidenheads,
Which being so, there’s no excuse
For sodomy of self-abuse.

Hilaire Belloc

 

[Gwylan]

An admission on my part ... when it comes to poetry I am a complete Philistine, however Ozymandius facinates me, as for other works of Shelly ....

Shelley is, of course, a Sussex man - born in Horsham (his family is the Shelley of the Shelley's Arms in Lewes).

His other famous works are Adonais - read by Mick Jagger at the Hyde Park gig in 1969 - Ode to a Skylark (Hail to thee, blithe spirit) and Ode to the West Wind with its famous ending "If winter comes, shall spring be far behind?

His Mask of Anarchy is a powerful attack on the state of England in the early part of the 19th century and is well worth reading.

 

[Nottseagull]

there was a man from nantucket.....................

I met two young ladies from Buckingham.......

 

[skipper734]

Horsham. Bit of a hotbed for poets. Hilaire Belloc as well. P O E T S day tomorrow, hurray.

 

[fatbadger]

Milton's Paradise Lost - the single greatest piece of literature in the English language.

 

[Nottseagull]

We sat upon a grassy bank,
And she was all aquiver.
I undid her suspender belt,
And her leg fell in the river.

Paul McCartney.

 

[Don Quixote]

Milton's Paradise Lost - the single greatest piece of literature in the English language.

Make a heav'n of hell and a hell of Heav'n
...
Better to reign in hell and serve in Heav'n

 

[Bevendean Hillbilly]

The moon shone on the village green
It shone on little Nell
Was she pumping water?
Was she f***ing hell.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

YouTube - UNDER MILK WOOD.


To begin at the beginning.

It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the
cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courter's-and-rabbits' wood limping
invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing
sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine tonight in the
snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by
the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows'
weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.

Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and
pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the
fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen
and the tidy wives. Young girls lie bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with
rings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the
organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked of the bucking ranches of the
night and the jollyrodgered sea. And the anthracite statues of the horses sleep
in the fields, and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wet-nosed yard;
and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly, streaking and needling, on
the one cloud of the roofs.

You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing.

Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded town fast, and slow,
asleep.

And you alone can hear the invisible starfall, the darkest-before-dawn minutely
dewgrazed stir of the black, dab-filled sea where the Arethusa, the Curlew and
the Skylark, Zanzibar, Rhiannon, the Rover, the Cormorant, and the Star of Wales
tilt and ride.

Listen. It is night moving in the streets, the processional salt slow musical wind in
Coronation Street and Cockle Row, it is the grass growing on Llareggub Hill,
dewfall, starfall, the sleep of birds in Milk Wood.

Listen. It is night in the chill, squat chapel, hymning in bonnet and brooch and
bombazine black, butterfly choker and bootlace bow, coughing like nannygoats,
sucking mintoes, fortywinking hallelujah; night in the four-ale, quiet as a
domino; in Ocky Milkman's lofts like a mouse with gloves; in Dai Bread's bakery
flying like black flour. It is tonight in Donkey Street, trotting silent, with
seaweed on its hooves, along the cockled cobbles, past curtained fernpot, text
and trinket, harmonium, holy dresser, watercolours done by hand, china dog and
rosy tin teacaddy. It is night neddying among the snuggeries of babies.

Look. It is night, dumbly, royally winding through the Coronation cherry trees;
going through the graveyard of Bethesda with winds gloved and folded, and dew
doffed; tumbling by the Sailors Arms.

Time passes. Listen. Time passes.

Come closer now.

Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt and
silent black, bandaged night. Only you can see, in the blinded bedrooms, the
combs and petticoats over the chairs, the jugs and basins, the glasses of teeth,
Thou Shalt Not on the wall, and the yellowing dickybird-watching pictures of the
dead. Only you can hear and see, behind the eyes of the sleepers, the movements
and countries and mazes and colours and dismays and rainbows and tunes and
wished and flight and fall and despairs and big seas of their dreams.

From where you are, you can hear their dreams...

 

[Captain Haddock]

Boom boom boom boom,
boom boom boom,
boom boom boom boom,
boom boom boom.



Baldrick (circa 1914-18)