ladylinda
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May
May 22, 2014 6:49:52 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 22, 2014 6:49:52 GMT -5
The Owl
Edward Thomas
Downhill I came, hungry, and yet not starved; Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof Against the North wind; tired, yet so that rest Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof.
Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest, Knowing how hungry, cold, and tired was I. All of the night was quite barred out except An owl’s cry, a most melancholy cry
Shaken out long and clear upon the hill, No merry note, nor cause of merriment, But one telling me plain what I escaped And others could not, that night, as in I went.
And salted was my food, and my repose, Salted and sobered, too, by the bird’s voice Speaking for all who lay under the stars, Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.
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ladylinda
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May
May 22, 2014 6:50:25 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 22, 2014 6:50:25 GMT -5
The Owl
Ted Hughes
I saw my world again through your eyes As I would see it again through your children's eyes. Through your eyes it was foreign. Plain hedge hawthorns were peculiar aliens, A mystery of peculiar lore and doings. Anything wild, on legs, in your eyes Emerged at a point of exclamation As if it had appeared to dinner guests In the middle of the table. Common mallards Were artefacts of some unearthliness, Their wooings were a hypnagogic film Unreeled by the river. Impossible To comprehend the comfort of their feet In the freezing water. You were a camera Recording reflections you could not fathom. I made my world perform its utmost for you. You took it all in with an incredulous joy Like a mother handed her new baby By the midwife. Your frenzy made me giddy. It woke up my dumb, ecstatic boyhood Of fifteen years before. My masterpiece Came that black night on the Grantchester road. I sucked the throaty thin woe of a rabbit Out of my wetted knuckle, by a copse Where a tawny owl was enquiring. Suddenly it swooped up, splaying its pinions Into my face, taking me for a post.
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ladylinda
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May
May 23, 2014 10:10:09 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 23, 2014 10:10:09 GMT -5
Today it's the turn of quails.
Here's the first poem:
Enough Flour
Raymond Foss
Like the manna and the quail the flour and oil never running out always enough for them
Their calling only, to trust in God He is ever faithful our cup overflowing our daily bread ever giving us all we need
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ladylinda
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May 23, 2014 10:10:51 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 23, 2014 10:10:51 GMT -5
Teapots and Quails
Edward Lear
"Teapots and Quails, Snuffers and Snails, Set him a sailing and see how he sails! .. Mitres and Beams, Thimbles and Creams, Set him a screaming and hark! how he screams! .. Houses and Kings, Whiskers and Swings, Set him a stinging and see how he stings! .. Ribands and Pigs, Helmets and Figs, Set him a jigging and see how he jigs! .. Rainbows and Knives, Muscles and Hives, Set him a driving and see how he drives! .. Tadpoles and Tops, Teacups and Mops, Set him a hopping and see how he hops! .. Herons and Sweeps, Turbans and Sheeps, Set him a weeping and see how he weeps! Lobsters and Owls, Scissors and Fowls, Set him a howling and hark how he howls! .. Eagles and Pears, Slippers and Bears, Set him a staring and see how he stares! .. Sofas and Bees, Camels and Keys, Set him a sneezing and see how he'll sneeze! .. Wafers and Bears, Ladders and Squares, Set him a staring and see how he stares! .. Cutlets and Eyes, Swallows and Pies, Set it a flying and see how it flies! .. Thistles and Moles, Crumpets and Soles, Set it a rolling and see how it rolls! .. Tea urns and Pews, Muscles and Jews, Set him a mewing and hear how he mews! Watches and Oaks, Custards and Cloaks, Set him a poking and see how he pokes! .. Bonnets and Legs, Steamboats and Eggs, Set him a begging and see how he begs! .. Volumes and Pigs, Razors and Figs, Set him a jigging and see how he jigs! .. Hurdles and Mumps, Poodles and Pumps, Set it a jumping and see how he jumps! .. Pancakes and Fins, Roses and Pins, Set him a grinning and see how he grins! .. Gruel and Prawns, Bracelets and Thorns, Set him a yawning and see how he yawns! .. Chimnies and Wings, Sailors and Rings, Set him a singing, and hark how he sings! Trumpets and Guns, Beetles and Buns, Set him a running and see how he runs! .. Saucers and Tops, Lobsters and Mops, Set it a hopping and see how it hops! .. Puddings and Beams, Cobwebs and Creams, Set him a screaming and hear how he screams! .. Rainbows and Wives, Puppies and Hives, Set him a driving and see how he drives! .. Houses and Kings, Oysters and Rings, Set him a singing and see how he sings! .. Scissors and Fowls, Filberts and Owls, Set him a howling and see how he howls! .. Blackbirds and Ferns, Spiders and Churns, Set it a turning and see how it turns!
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ladylinda
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May 23, 2014 10:11:37 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 23, 2014 10:11:37 GMT -5
The Quails
Francis Brett Young
(In the south of Italy the peasants put out the eyes of a captured quail so that its cries may attract the flocks of spring migrants into their nets.)
All through the night I have heard the stuttering call of a blind quail, A caged decoy, under a cairn of stones, Crying for light as the quails cry for love.
Other wanderers, Northward from Africa winging on numb pinions, dazed With beating winds and the sobbing of the sea, Hear, in a breath of sweet land-herbage, the call Of the blind one, their sister.... Hearing, their fluttered hearts Take courage, and they wheel in their dark flight, Knowing that their toil is over, dreaming to see The white stubbles of Abruzzi smitten with dawn, And spilt grain lying in the furrows, the squandered gold That is the delight of quails in their spring mating.
Land-scents grow keener, Penetrating the dank and bitter odour of brine That whitens their feathers; Far below, the voice of their sister calls them To plenty, and sweet water, and fulfilment. Over the pallid margin of dim seas breaking, Over the thickening in the darkness that is land, They fly. Their flight is ended. Wings beat no more. Downward they drift, one by one, like dark petals, Slowly, listlessly falling Into the mouth of horror: The nets....
Where men come trampling and crying with bright lanterns, Plucking their weak, entangled claws from the meshes of net, Clutching the soft brown bodies mottled with olive, Crushing the warm, fluttering flesh, in hands stained with blood, Till their quivering hearts are stilled, and the bright eyes, That are like a polished agate, glaze in death.
But the blind one, in her wicker cage, without ceasing Haunts this night of spring with her stuttering call, Knowing nothing of the terror that walks in darkness, Knowing only that some cruelty has stolen the light That is life, and that she must cry until she dies.
I, in the darkness, Heard, and my heart grew sick. But I know that to-morrow A smiling peasant will come with a basket of quails Wrapped in vine-leaves, prodding them with blood-stained fingers, Saying, 'Signore, you must cook them thus, and thus, With a sprig of basil inside them.' And I shall thank him, Carrying the piteous carcases into the kitchen Without a pang, without shame.
'Why should I be ashamed? Why should I rail Against the cruelty of men? Why should I pity, Seeing that there is no cruelty which men can imagine To match the subtle dooms that are wrought against them By blind spores of pestilence: seeing that each of us, Lured by dim hopes, flutters in the toils of death On a cold star that is spinning blindly through space Into the nets of time?'
So cried I, bitterly thrusting pity aside, Closing my lids to sleep. But sleep came not, And pity, with sad eyes, Crept to my side, and told me That the life of all creatures is brave and pityful Whether they be men, with dark thoughts to vex them, Or birds, wheeling in the swift joys of flight, Or brittle ephemerids, spinning to death in the haze Of gold that quivers on dim evening waters; Nor would she be denied. The harshness died Within me, and my heart Was caught and fluttered like the palpitant heart Of a brown quail, flying To the call of her blind sister, And death, in the spring night.
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ladylinda
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May 24, 2014 8:08:06 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 24, 2014 8:08:06 GMT -5
Today it's poems about hawks. Here's the first:
Hawk Roosting
Ted Hughes
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed. Inaction, no falsifying dream Between my hooked head and hooked feet: Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat. The convenience of the high trees! The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray Are of advantage to me; And the earth's face upward for my inspection. My feet are locked upon the rough bark. It took the whole of Creation To produce my foot, my each feather: Now I hold Creation in my foot Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly – I kill where I please because it is all mine. There is no sophistry in my body: My manners are tearing off heads – The allotment of death. For the one path of my flight is direct Through the bones of the living. No arguments assert my right: The sun is behind me. Nothing has changed since I began. My eye has permitted no change. I am going to keep things like this.
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ladylinda
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May 24, 2014 8:08:44 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 24, 2014 8:08:44 GMT -5
How still the hawk
Charles Tomlinson
How still the hawk Hangs innocent above Its native wood: Distance, that purifies the act Of all intent, has graced Intent with beauty. Beauty must lie As innocence must harm Whose end (sited, Held) is naked Like the map it cowers on. And the doom drops: Plummet of peace To him who does not share The nearness and the need. The shrivelled circle Of magnetic fear.
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ladylinda
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May 24, 2014 8:09:20 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 24, 2014 8:09:20 GMT -5
The Hawk
Frederick V Branford
Heavy with the brackish wine at midnight I Pledge thee in thy polar enterprise Who art the keen edge of sobriety. Colder than crime art thou and arrow-wise And strong. Thou art the most perfidious beast that flies.
I too have drunk delight in weakling’s tears, The rapture of quick cruelty, and the prize Of sudden prey. I too have handled fears, And filled the air with iron merchandise, Like a pitiless falcon nailed upon the skies.
Thou art the grinding intellect that whets The razor reason on the throat of love/ Thou art the satyr of the soil that sets His image with the gods, and downward drove His body like a bullet on the homing dove.
Thou art the image of the Earth, grey bird, Thou desolate island moored in the unpoled skies The aerial absolute, the sullen surd And tragedy of cosmic enterprise. And lo! A hundred hawks assail our broken eyes.
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ladylinda
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May 25, 2014 1:42:03 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 25, 2014 1:42:03 GMT -5
Today it's the turn of buffaloes. Here's the first poem about them:
Water-Buffaloes
Yvonne Ffrench
They haunt the shadowless and shoreless jheel That breeds white heat, malaria and flies; And that the Indian sun’s transmuting eyes Has burnished till it seems a lake of steel. Across the water skims a flight of teal. A ripple on its surface spreads and dies: The frail reeds stir; and in their Paradise Of cool content the buffaloes reveal
Their dark grey heads, magnificently crowned, Whose bodies stand invisible and drowned In shallows that the thirsty moon devours. And so, like mystics in a state of grace That mildly meditate on time and space, With clay-blue eyes they pass the scorching hours.
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ladylinda
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May 25, 2014 1:42:38 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 25, 2014 1:42:38 GMT -5
Buffalo Dusk
Carl Sandburg
THE BUFFALOES are gone. And those who saw the buffaloes are gone. Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and how they pawed the prairie sod into dust with their hoofs, their great heads down pawing on in a great pageant of dusk, Those who saw the buffaloes are gone. And the buffaloes are gone.
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ladylinda
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May 25, 2014 1:43:08 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 25, 2014 1:43:08 GMT -5
The Blue Water Buffalo
Marilyn L. Taylor
One in 250 Cambodians, or 40,000 people, have lost a limb to a landmine. —Newsfront, U.N. Development Programme Communications Office
On both sides of the screaming highway, the world is made of emerald silk—sumptuous bolts of it, stitched by threads of water into cushions that shimmer and float on the Mekong's munificent glut.
In between them plods the ancient buffalo—dark blue in the steamy distance, and legless where the surface of the ditch dissects the body from its waterlogged supports below
or it might be a woman, up to her thighs in the lukewarm ooze, bending at the waist with the plain grace of habit, delving for weeds in water that receives her wrist and forearm
as she feels for the alien stalk, the foreign blade beneath that greenest of green coverlets where brittle pods in their corroding skins now shift, waiting to salt the fields with horror.
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ladylinda
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May 26, 2014 12:56:05 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 26, 2014 12:56:05 GMT -5
Today it's ducks in the poetic spotlight!
Here's the first poem:
Feeding Ducks
Norman McCaig
One duck stood on my toes. The others made watery rushes after bread Thrown by my momentary hand; instead She stood duck-still and got far more than those.
An invisible drone boomed by With a beetle in it; the neighbour’s yearning bull Bugled across five fields. And an evening full Of other evenings quietly began to die.
And my everlasting hand Dropped on my hypocrite duck her grace of bread, And I thought, ‘The first to be fattened, the first to be dead,’ Till my gestures enlarged, wide over the darkening land.
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ladylinda
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May 26, 2014 12:56:32 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 26, 2014 12:56:32 GMT -5
The Wild Duck
John Masefield
Twilight. Red in the West. Dimness. A glow on the wood. The teams plod home to rest. The wild duck come to glean. O souls not understood, What a wild cry in the pool; What things have the farm ducks seen That they cry so – huddle and cry? Only the soul that goes. Eager. Eager. Flying. Over the globe of the moon, Over the wood that glows. Wings linked. Necks a-strain. A rush and a wild crying. . . . . A cry of the long pain In the reeds of a steel lagoon, In a land that no man knows.
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ladylinda
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May 26, 2014 12:57:10 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 26, 2014 12:57:10 GMT -5
The Ugly Duckling
Edward Davison
At last the cygnet, preening his plumed snow, Wins the mid-stream! Mark his new beauty well! Erect, uplit he sails; in the clear flow Reflected, breast and wing, And proud beak winnowing The April air, all carved like a sea-shell.
Out of deformity he grew to this Divinest form, burgeoning on the stream, A living water-flower. He scorned the hiss And cackle in those ranks That watched him from the banks; He knew what seed he was; he had his dream.
And the dream raised the seed and moulded him In its own secret image, secretly: Refashioned him, curved serpentine and slim That delicate white neck, Feathered without a fleck, Taught him his poise, shaped him the thing you see.
O Thou that shepherdest the waddling geese Upon the flowery banks of Helicon, Bid the hoarse gabble, the upbraiding, cease, And guide Thy flock to see How lovely and leisurely Sails on this sunny river the young swan.
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ladylinda
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May 27, 2014 8:29:46 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 27, 2014 8:29:46 GMT -5
Cuckoos today:
To the Cuckoo
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
O blithe New-comer! I have heard, I hear thee and rejoice. O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird, Or but a wandering Voice?
While I am lying on the grass Thy twofold shout I hear; From hill to hill it seems to pass, At once far off, and near.
Though babbling only to the Vale Of sunshine and of flowers, Thou bringest unto me a tale Of visionary hours.
Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring! Even yet thou art to me No bird, but an invisible thing, A voice, a mystery;
The same whom in my school-boy days I listened to; that Cry Which made me look a thousand ways In bush, and tree, and sky.
To seek thee did I often rove Through woods and on the green; And thou wert still a hope, a love; Still longed for, never seen.
And I can listen to thee yet; Can lie upon the plain And listen, till I do beget That golden time again.
O blessèd Bird! the earth we pace Again appears to be An unsubstantial, faery place; That is fit home for Thee!
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