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April
Apr 3, 2014 16:37:43 GMT -5
Post by beth on Apr 3, 2014 16:37:43 GMT -5
April is National Poetry Month on this side of the pond. Let's find something nice and springy and add our voices to the crescendo we're surely going to hear ... any minute.
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ladylinda
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April
Apr 4, 2014 8:49:29 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Apr 4, 2014 8:49:29 GMT -5
The arrival of Spring
By the side of the road golden primroses blossom violets shield themselves from view as if playing possum
The hedges glisten and sparkle with dew,, the cuckoo and thrush sing aloud butterflies dance and swirl in the air while above a cloud gambols like sheep, the cotton wool reminding us the spring is come at last, while from the red breasts of linnets songs pour out as gentle winds replace cold winter's blast
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ladylinda
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April
Apr 4, 2014 8:50:01 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Apr 4, 2014 8:50:01 GMT -5
I'll dig out some classic poems on spring rather than just posting one of my own!
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ladylinda
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April
Apr 4, 2014 15:42:05 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Apr 4, 2014 15:42:05 GMT -5
A slightly different take on Spring:
Spring Comes To Murray Hill by Ogden Nash
I sit in an office at 244 Madison Avenue And say to myself You have a responsible job havenue? Why then do you fritter away your time on this doggerel? If you have a sore throat you can cure it by using a good goggeral, If you have a sore foot you can get it fixed by a chiropodist, And you can get your original sin removed by St. John the Bopodist, Why then should this flocculent lassitude be incurable? Kansas City, Kansas, proves that even Kansas City needn't always be Missourible. Up up my soul! This inaction is abominable. Perhaps it is the result of disturbances abdominable. The pilgrims settled Massachusetts in 1620 when they landed on a stone hummock. Maybe if they were here now they would settle my stomach. Oh, if I only had the wings of a bird Instead of being confined on Madison Avenue I could soar in a jiffy to Second or Third.
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ladylinda
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April
Apr 4, 2014 15:45:42 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Apr 4, 2014 15:45:42 GMT -5
Another slightly unusual take on spring:
Like
Written by: Frank O'Hara
It's not so much abstractions are available: the lofty period of the mind ending a sentence while the pain endures: departures absences.
And you are still on the dock the smoke hasn't cleared in The Narrows At noon I sit in Jim's Place waiting for George Who is mopping the stage up While two girls cry in the last row.
I think they got laid last night. But who didn't? it was a spring night. Probably George did too.
And now the ship has gone beyond come sheets windows streets telephones and noises: to where I cannot go not even a long distance swimmer like myself.
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ladylinda
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April
Apr 4, 2014 15:47:05 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Apr 4, 2014 15:47:05 GMT -5
Another unusual Spring poem:
Spring Beauties
Written by: Ruth Stone
The abandoned campus, empty brick buildings and early June when you came to visit me; crossing the states midway, the straggled belts of little roads; hitchhiking with your portable typewriter. The campus, an academy of trees, under which some hand, the wind's I guess, had scattered the pale light of thousands of spring beauties, petals stained with pink veins; secret, blooming for themselves. We sat among them. Your long fingers, thin body, and long bones of improbable genius; some scattered gene as Kafka must have had. Your deep voice, this passing dust of miracles. That simple that was myself, half conscious, as though each moment was a page where words appeared; the bent hammer of the type struck against the moving ribbon. The light air, the restless leaves; the ripple of time warped by our longing. There, as if we were painted by some unknown impressionist.
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ladylinda
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April
Apr 4, 2014 15:48:58 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Apr 4, 2014 15:48:58 GMT -5
Here's another unusual take on Spring:
Spring
Written by: e e cummings
Spring is like a perhaps hand (which comes carefully out of Nowhere)arranging a window,into which people look(while people stare arranging and changing placing carefully there a strange thing and a known thing here)and
changing everything carefully
spring is like a perhaps Hand in a window (carefully to and from moving New and Old things,while people stare carefully moving a perhaps fraction of flower here placing an inch of air there)and
without breaking anything.
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ladylinda
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April
Apr 4, 2014 15:50:15 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Apr 4, 2014 15:50:15 GMT -5
This is a beautiful poem - probably the finest short poem the author ever wrote.
Work Without Hope
Written by: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair -- The bees are stirring -- birds are on the wing -- And Winter slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring! And I the while, the sole unbusy thing, Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.
Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow, Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow. Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may, For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away! With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll: And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul? Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve, And Hope without an object cannot live.
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ladylinda
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April
Apr 4, 2014 15:51:33 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Apr 4, 2014 15:51:33 GMT -5
This is by a seventeenth century poet:
The Spring
Written by: Thomas Carew
Now that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost Candies the grass, or casts an icy cream Upon the silver lake or crystal stream; But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth, And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree The drowsy cuckoo and the humble-bee. Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring In triumph to the world the youthful spring. The valleys, hills, and woods in rich array Welcome the coming of the long'd-for May. Now all things smile; only my love doth lour; Nor hath the scalding noonday sun the power To melt that marble ice, which still doth hold Her heart congeal'd, and makes her pity cold. The ox, which lately did for shelter fly Into the stall, doth now securely lie In open fields; and love no more is made By the fireside, but in the cooler shade Amyntas now doth with his Chloris sleep Under a sycamore, and all things keep Time with the season; only she doth carry June in her eyes, in her heart January.
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ladylinda
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April
Apr 4, 2014 16:16:36 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Apr 4, 2014 16:16:36 GMT -5
A slightly jaunciced take on spring:
Spring
Edna St. Vincent Millay
To what purpose, April, do you return again? Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with the redness Of little leaves opening stickily. I know what I know. The sun is hot on my neck as I observe The spikes of the crocus. The smell of the earth is good. It is apparent that there is no death. But what does that signify? Not only under ground are the brains of men Eaten by maggots. Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. It is not enough that yearly, down this hill, April Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers
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ladylinda
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April
Apr 4, 2014 16:19:17 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Apr 4, 2014 16:19:17 GMT -5
A poem that isn't often thought of as having a spring component but it does in its very opening section:
The Waste Land: Part I - Burial of the Dead
by T S Eliot
April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke's, My cousin's, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You canot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either your shadow at morning striding behind you or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. Frish weht der Wind Der Heimat zu Mein Irisch Kind, Wo weilest du? 'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; They called me the hyacinth girl.' —Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden, Your arms full and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence. Oed' und leer das Meer.
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ladylinda
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April
Apr 5, 2014 16:10:20 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Apr 5, 2014 16:10:20 GMT -5
Hear how the birds, on ev'ry bloomy spray, With joyous musick wake the dawning day! Why sit we mute when early linnets sing, When warbling Philomel salutes the spring?
Alexander Pope
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ladylinda
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April
Apr 5, 2014 16:12:30 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Apr 5, 2014 16:12:30 GMT -5
Spring
By Gerard Manley Hopkins
Nothing is so beautiful as spring — When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing; The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy? A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning In Eden garden. — Have, get, before it cloy, Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning, Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy, Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning. What did you think
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ladylinda
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April
Apr 5, 2014 17:37:49 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Apr 5, 2014 17:37:49 GMT -5
Song of May
By Ludwig Uhland
What shall I say of spring? What gifts has it bestowed? For all its loveliness it cannot bring One thing to ease my weary spirit's load.
How can the heart be gay, Crushed, as my own, in endless pain? Now I first see that it is May, Now that the flowers lie crushed by the rain.
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ladylinda
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April
Apr 6, 2014 12:28:03 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Apr 6, 2014 12:28:03 GMT -5
Early Spring
By W H Davies
How sweet this morning air in spring, When tender is the grass and wet! I see some little leaves have not Outgrown their curly childhood yet; And cows no longer hurry home, However sweet a voice cries "Come."
Here, with green nature all around, While that fine bird the skylark sings; Who now in such a passion is, He flies by it, and not his wings; And many a blackbird, thrush, and sparrow Sing sweeter songs that I may borrow.
These watery swamps and thickets wild - Called Nature's slums - to me are more Than any courts where fountains play, And men-at-arms guard every door; For I could sit down here alone, And count the oak-trees one by one
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