posted on July 28, 2000 10:03:34 AM new
I was wondering after reading the Kipling poem someone posted if anyone would like to share thier favorite poem with the rest of us.
The following is a poem I discovered in the middle of my pretty traumatic childhood.
While it may read rather dark I found it very inspirational. So much of what I read as a child seemed to be talking to those going through a "normal" childhoods and not to me.
This is the first thing I ever read that spoke to my soul.
THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT
FOR those that never know the light,
The darkness is a sullen thing;
And they, the Children of the Night,
Seem lost in Fortune's winnowing.
But some are strong and some are weak, --
And there's the story. House and home
Are shut from countless hearts that seek
World-refuge that will never come.
And if there be no other life,
And if there be no other chance
To weigh their sorrow and their strife
Than in the scales of circumstance,
'T were better, ere the sun go down
Upon the first day we embark,
In life's imbittered sea to drown,
Than sail forever in the dark.
But if there be a soul on earth
So blinded with its own misuse
Of man's revealed, incessant worth,
Or worn with anguish, that it views
No light but for a mortal eye,
No rest but of a mortal sleep,
No God but in a prophet's lie,
No faith for "honest doubt" to keep;
If there be nothing, good or bad,
But chaos for a soul to trust, --
God counts it for a soul gone mad,
And if God be God, He is just.
And if God be God, He is Love;
And though the Dawn be still so dim,
It shows us we have played enough
With creeds that make a fiend of Him.
There is one creed, and only one,
That glorifies God's excellence
So cherish, that His will be done,
The common creed of common sense.
It is the crimson, not the gray,
That charms the twilight of all time;
It is the promise of the day
That makes the starry sky sublime
It is the faith within the fear
That holds us to the life we curse; --
So let us in ourselves revere
The Self which is the Universe!
Let us, the Children of the Night,
Put off the cloak that hides the scar!
Let us be Children of the Light,
And tell the ages what we are!
posted on July 28, 2000 11:08:08 AM new
I don't guess this qualifie as a poem, but here's one that sums up my childhood.
[i]They're creepy and they're kooky,
Mysterious and spooky,
They're all together ooky,
The La La Family.
Their house is a museum
Where people come to see 'em
They really are a scream
The La La Family.
(Neat)
(Sweet)
(Petite)
So get a witches shawl on
A broomstick you can crawl on
We're gonna pay a call on
The La La Family.[/i]
Actually, my family was soooooo ultra conservative it gave me the creeps. We've all lightened up now. It helps to have a bad memory too.
edited cause these itallics are really pi$$ing me off.
[ edited by mybiddness on Jul 28, 2000 11:09 AM ]
posted on July 28, 2000 11:13:00 AM new
I've always been very fond of poetry. I suppose I could go dust off the old Norton's Anthology and transcribe some classic prose to this thread. To do so, however, would make me feel like one of those pretentious clerks in the record store who affect the airs of a rock star.
I like the romantic poets most of all: Byron, Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Coleridge, Wordsworth, et al. I'm also partial to the sonnets of Shakespeare.
My favorite poem is "Ozymandias".
Maybe we should post our own bootless attempts at immortal verse?
posted on July 28, 2000 11:29:00 AM new
Lamentably, poetry does not spring easily from my all too prosaic soul. I'll work on it, though.
I think there may be a decent Elizabethan sonnet lurking somewhere inside me. If memory serves, I believe that would be 3 ABAB verses in Iambic pentameter followed by a rhyming couplet.
posted on July 28, 2000 12:01:23 PM new
I had to write a sonnet once for a college class. Painful....
I haven't written poetry in years but it would be fun to try again.
I wasn't very good but I liked it. (No sonnets though)
posted on July 28, 2000 12:06:05 PM new
xardon, very close with the Elizabethan sonnet; pattern is abab cdcd efef gg.
A short English Romantic period poem that I like by Wordsworth:
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety
posted on July 28, 2000 12:18:21 PM newThe Goat Paths
The crooked paths go every way
Upon the hill -- they wind about
Through the heather in and out
Of the quiet sunniness.
And there the goats, day after day,
Stray in sunny quietness,
Cropping here and cropping there,
As they pause and turn and pass,
Now a bit of heather spray,
Now a mouthful of the grass.
In the deeper sunniness,
In the place where nothing stirs,
Quietly in quietness,
In the quiet of the furze,
For a time they come and lie
Staring on the roving sky.
If you approach they run away,
They leap and stare, away they bound,
With a sudden angry sound,
To the sunny quietude;
Crouching down where nothing stirs
In the silence of the furze,
Couching down again to brood
In the sunny solitude.
If I were as wise as they
I would stray apart and brood,
I would beat a hidden way
Through the quiet heather spray
To a sunny solitude;
And should you come I'd run away,
I would make an angry sound,
I would stare and turn and bound
To the deeper quietude,
To the place where nothing stirs
In the silence of the furze.
In that airy quietness
I would think as long as they;
Through the quiet sunniness
I would stray away to brood
By a hidden beaten way
In a sunny solitude.
I would think until I found
Something I can never find,
Something lying on the ground,
In the bottom of my mind.
posted on July 28, 2000 03:30:54 PM new
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(what was this guy taking?)
Kubla Khan
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced;
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves:
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 't would win me
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
posted on July 28, 2000 03:50:28 PM new
Joy! shipmate--joy!
(Pleas'd to my Soul at death I cry; )
Our life is closed--our life begins;
The long, long anchorage we leave,
The ship is clear at last--she leaps!
She swiftly courses from the shore;
Joy! shipmate--joy!
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
***************
And hail, Xardon, with whom I've not spoken since we worked on your OAUA registration!
"I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
It hadn't hit her
Youth had flown
Her beauty betrayed
She just didn't know
On this interstate she learns
No stranger will stop
No help will come
The tire needs changing
she dials her cell phone
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 all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath 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!
posted on July 28, 2000 09:50:21 PM new
Barry(the poet)Barris, I see a marked improvement in your poetic prowess from the Jack and Jill to the Miss Muffet. Practice man and you will be a star! Let's see what you can do with Humpty Dumpty - or maybe the Little Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe??? I'm cheering for ya!
posted on July 28, 2000 10:38:11 PM newDon't fall off a wall because some crazy person will come along and cook your a$$ and then feed you to the villagers.
posted on July 28, 2000 10:42:16 PM new
There was a young lady from Blass
who had a magnificent ass
Twas not round and pink
as you commonly think,
but was gray had long ears and ate grass.
posted on July 28, 2000 10:55:20 PM new
The little toy dog is covered with dust
But sturdy and staunch he stands.
The little toy soldier is red wit rust
And his musket molds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new
And the soldier was passing fair,
And that was the time that our little boy blue
Kissed them and placed them there.
Now don’t you go till I come he said
And don’t you make any noise
Then toddling off to his trundle bed
He dreamt of his pretty toys.
But as he was dreaming an angels song
Awakened our little boy blue.
Oh, the years are many, the years are long
But our little toy friends are true.
Each wondering while waiting
Those long years through in the dust of that little chair,
Oh what has become of our little boy blue
Since he kissed them and placed them there?
I do not know who the poet is for this one.
My father taught it to me some 40 years ago.
posted on July 28, 2000 11:18:24 PM new
Beside a western watering tank
One cold November day,
Inside an empty boxcar
A dieing Hobo lay.
His partner stood beside him
With lowly bowed down head
Listening to the last words
That the dieing Hobo said
“I’m going to a better land
where everything is bright,
where handouts grow on bushes
and you sleep out every night.
Where you never have too work at all
And never change your socks
And little streams or alcohol
Come trickling down the rocks.
Tell the boys in Frisco
My face they will no longer view.
Tell them I’ve caught a fast freight
And I’m moving straight on through,
Tell them not to worry,
No tears in their eyes should lurk,
Tell them I’ve gone to a better place
Where they hate that word called work.
Now Hark! I hear a whistle.
I must catch her on the fly!
Just one more scoop of beer I’d like
Once more before I die!”
The Hobo stopped.
His head fell back,
He’d sung his last refrain.
His partner took his hat and shoes
And caught the east-bound train.
Another I don’t know the author on
This was recited by my brother at my father’s funeral.
posted on July 29, 2000 06:09:51 AM new
Australian Poetry
THE MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER
by Banjo Patterson.
There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around
That the colt from old Regret had got away,
And had joined the wild bush horses, he was worth a thousand pound,
So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.
All the tried and noted riders from the stations near and far
Had mustered at the homestead overnight,
For the bushmen love hard riding where the wild bush horses are,
And the stock-horse snuffs the battle with delight.
There was Harrison, who made his pile when Pardon won the cup,
The old man with his hair as white as snow;
But few could ride beside him when his blood was fairly up,
He would go wherever horse and man could go.
And Clancy of the Overflow came down to lend a hand, No better
horseman ever held the reins;
For never horse could throw him while the saddle-girths would stand,
He learnt to ride while droving on the plains.
And one was there, a stripling on a small and weedy beast,
He was something like a racehorse undersized,
With a touch of Timor pony, three parts thoroughbred at least,
And such as are by mountain horsemen prized.
He was hard and tough and wiry, just the sort that won't say die
There was courage in his quick impatient tread;
And he bore the badge of gameness in his bright and fiery eye,
And the proud and lofty carriage of his head.
But still so slight and weedy, one would doubt his power to stay,
And the old man said, `That horse will never do
For a long and tiring gallop, lad, you'd better stop away, Those hills
are far too rough for such as you.'
So he waited sad and wistful, only Clancy stood his friend,
`I think we ought to let him come,' he said;
`I warrant he'll be with us when he's wanted at the end, For both his
horse and he are mountain bred.
`He hails from Snowy River, up by Kosciusko's side,
Where the hills are twice as steep and twice as rough,
Where a horse's hoofs strike firelight from the flint stones every stride,
The man that holds his own is good enough.
And the Snowy River riders on the mountains make their home,
Where the river runs those giant hills between;
I have seen full many horsemen since I first commenced to roam,
But nowhere yet such horsemen have I seen.'
So he went, they found the horses by the big mimosa clump,
They raced away towards the mountain's brow,
And the old man gave his orders, `Boys, go at them from the jump,
No use to try for fancy riding now.
And, Clancy, you must wheel them, try and wheel them to the right.
Ride boldly, lad, and never fear the spills,
For never yet was rider that could keep the mob in sight, If once they
gain the shelter of those hills.'
So Clancy rode to wheel them, he was racing on the wing Where the
best and boldest riders take their place,
And he raced his stock-horse past them, and he made the ranges ring
With the stockwhip, as he met them face to face.
Then they halted for a moment, while he swung the dreaded lash,
But they saw their well-loved mountain full in view,
And they charged beneath the stockwhip with a sharp and sudden dash,
And off into the mountain scrub they flew.
Then fast the horsemen followed, where the gorges deep and black
Resounded to the thunder of their tread,
And the stockwhips woke the echoes, and they fiercely answered back
From cliffs and crags that beetled overhead.
And upward, ever upward, the wild horses held their way, Where
mountain ash and kurrajong grew wide;
And the old man muttered fiercely, `We may bid the mob good day,
NO man can hold them down the other side.'
When they reached the mountain's summit, even Clancy took a pull,
It well might make the boldest hold their breath,
The wild hop scrub grew thickly, and the hidden ground was full
Of wombat holes, and any slip was death.
But the man from Snowy River let the pony have his head,
And he swung his stockwhip round and gave a cheer,
And he raced him down the mountain like a torrent down its bed,
While the others stood and watched in very fear.
He sent the flint stones flying, but the pony kept his feet, He cleared
the fallen timber in his stride,
And the man from Snowy River never shifted in his seat, It was grand
to see that mountain horseman ride.
Through the stringy barks and saplings, on the rough and broken ground,
Down the hillside at a racing pace he went;
And he never drew the bridle till he landed safe and sound,
At the bottom of that terrible descent.
He was right among the horses as they climbed the further hill,
And the watchers on the mountain standing mute,
Saw him ply the stockwhip fiercely, he was right among them still,
As he raced across the clearing in pursuit.
Then they lost him for a moment, where two mountain gullies met
In the ranges, but a final glimpse reveals
On a dim and distant hillside the wild horses racing yet, With the man
from Snowy River at their heels.
And he ran them single-handed till their sides were white with foam.
He followed like a bloodhound on their track,
Till they halted cowed and beaten, then he turned their heads for home,
And alone and unassisted brought them back.
But his hardy mountain pony he could scarcely raise a trot,
He was blood from hip to shoulder from the spur;
But his pluck was still undaunted, and his courage fiery hot,
For never yet was mountain horse a cur.
And down by Kosciusko, where the pine-clad ridges raise
Their torn and rugged battlements on high,
Where the air is clear as crystal, and the white stars fairly blaze
At midnight in the cold and frosty sky,
And where around the Overflow the reedbeds sweep and sway
To the breezes, and the rolling plains are wide,
The man from Snowy River is a household word to-day, And the stockmen tell the story of his ride.
posted on July 29, 2000 10:32:26 AM newKel
I hope you peek in on this thread. You're poem blew me away.
It reminded me of a personal experience I had several years ago - only I had no cell phone. Within a week I got my first cell phone and have never been without it since.
To this day the experience affects me. Your poem said it all. I copied it down.
It helps to have a bad memory too.
