ladylinda
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August
Aug 17, 2014 16:54:47 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Aug 17, 2014 16:54:47 GMT -5
Further in Summer than the Birds
Emily Dickinson
Further in Summer than the Birds Pathetic from the Grass A minor Nation celebrates Its unobtrusive Mass.
No Ordinance be seen So gradual the Grace A pensive Custom it becomes Enlarging Loneliness.
Antiquest felt at Noon When August burning low Arise this spectral Canticle Repose to typify
Remit as yet no Grace No Furrow on the Glow Yet a Druidic Difference Enhances Nature now
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ladylinda
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August
Aug 17, 2014 16:55:02 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Aug 17, 2014 16:55:02 GMT -5
Women Washing Their Hair
Carl Sandburg
THEY have painted and sung the women washing their hair, and the plaits and strands in the sun, and the golden combs and the combs of elephant tusks and the combs of buffalo horn and hoof.
The sun has been good to women, drying their heads of hair as they stooped and shook their shoulders and framed their faces with copper and framed their eyes with dusk or chestnut.
The rain has been good to women. If the rain should forget, if the rain left off for a year— the heads of women would wither, the copper, the dusk and chestnuts, go.
They have painted and sung the women washing their hair— reckon the sun and rain in, too.
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ladylinda
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August
Aug 17, 2014 16:55:45 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Aug 17, 2014 16:55:45 GMT -5
Santorini - The naked child
George Seferis
Bend if you can to the dark sea forgetting the flute's sound on naked feet that trod your sleep in the other, the sunken life.
Write if you can on your last shell the day the place the name and fling it into the sea so that it sinks.
We found ourselves naked on the pumice stone watching the rising islands watching the red islands sink into their sleep, into our sleep. Here we found ourselves naked, holding the scales that tipped toward injustice.
Instep of power, unshadowed will, considered love, projects that ripen in the midday sun, course of fate with a young hand slapping the shoulder; in the land that was scattered, that can't resist, in the land that was once our land the islands, -rust and ash- are sinking.
Altars destroyed and friends forgotten leaves of the palm tree in mud.
Let your hands go traveling if you can here on time's curve with the ship that touched the horizon. When the dice struck the flagstone when the lance struck the breast-plate when the eye recognized the stranger and love went dry in punctured souls; when looking round you see feet harvested everywhere dead hands everywhere eyes darkened everywhere; when you can't any longer choose even the death you wanted as your own- hearing a cry, even the wolf's cry, your due: let your hands go traveling if you can free yourself from unfaithful time and sink- So sinks whoever raises the great stones
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August
Aug 17, 2014 17:03:46 GMT -5
Post by beth on Aug 17, 2014 17:03:46 GMT -5
Thanks, Lin. I always read and enjoy the poems you post ... some better than others, of course, but all are of interest. Back up a little, I like the Teasdale a lot. She had a fine eye for detail and sentiment that kept her inside the piece but not so over-blown as to be too much. Of course, My Last Duchess (Browning) is a classic and a treat.
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ladylinda
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August
Aug 17, 2014 17:12:25 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Aug 17, 2014 17:12:25 GMT -5
Thanks, Beth. Yes, some I post more for curiosity value than for intrinsic quality but Browning is one of my favourite poets and so is that staggering pioneer of modernism Teasdale. Often forgotten because she wasn't about blowing her own trumpet like Pound and Eliot and some others but if you study her work (I have her collected poems) she was every bit as much a pioneer in the path to modernism.
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ladylinda
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August
Aug 20, 2014 15:26:37 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Aug 20, 2014 15:26:37 GMT -5
Low tide at St. Andrews (New Brunswick)
Emily Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) The long red flats stretch open to the sky, Breathing their moisture on the August air. The seaweeds cling with flesh-like fingers where The rocks give shelter that the sands deny; And wrapped in all her summer harmonies St. Andrews sleeps beside her sleeping seas.
The far-off shores swim blue and indistinct, Like half-lost memories of some old dream. The listless waves that catch each sunny gleam Are idling up the waterways land-linked, And, yellowing along the harbour's breast, The light is leaping shoreward from the west.
And naked-footed children, tripping down, Light with young laughter, daily come at eve To gather dulse and sea clams and then heave Their loads, returning laden to the town, Leaving a strange grey silence when they go,-- The silence of the sands when tides are low.
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ladylinda
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August
Aug 20, 2014 15:27:08 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Aug 20, 2014 15:27:08 GMT -5
Slightly Foxed: or, the Widower of Bayswater
William Plomer Decades ago wits, poets and dukes Circled like planets round Gloria Jukes, Bluestocking, tuft-hunter, grande amoureuse̶ Was ever a salon brilliant as hers? Her name still turns up though she’s turned up her toes, 5 You meet her in memoirs, they still quote her mots, And old crones remember her faults and her furs̶ Such foibles, my dear, such sables were hers! A wrecker of homes and a breaker of hearts She talked like a book and encouraged the arts, 10 Political hostesses envied her poise, And said they preferred conversation to noise. Her cook was a dream, her pearls were in ropes, She furthered ambitions, she realized hopes, Lent Dowson a fiver, put rouge on her eyebrows, 15 Enchanted grandees and reconciled highbrows, Acclimatized novel Bohemian behaviour In the stuffiest house in Victorian Belgravia, And when St John’s Wood was abandoned to orgies Behaved like a dignified bride at St George’s. 20 A Personage paid to her regal poitrine A compliment royal, and she looked like a queen̶ But of some Ruritanian kingdom, maybe̶ All plastered with gifts like a Christmas tree. When her guests were awash with champagne and with gin 25 She was recklessly sober, as sharp as a pin: An abstemious man would reel at her look As she rolled a bright eye and praised his last book. She twitted George Moore, she flirted with Tree, Gave dear Rider Haggard material for She, 30 Talked scansion with Bridges and scandal with Wilde, To Drinkwater drank and at Crackanthorpe smiled. Brzeska and Brooke were among those she knew, And she lived long enough to meet Lawrences too, D. H. and T. E.̶ she, who’d known R. L. S., 35 Talked to Hardy of Kim, and to Kipling of Tess! Now she’s been dead for more than ten years We look round in vain to discover her peers; The Gloria (it has often been said) is departed And a new, and inferior period has started . . . 40 But tucked right away in a Bayswater attic, Arthritic, ignoble, stone-deaf and rheumatic, There still lingers on, by the strangest of flukes, Yes, Gloria’s husband̶ Plantagenet Jukes! Ignored in her lifetime, he paid for her fun, 45 And enjoyed all the fuss. When she died he was done. He sold up the house and retired from the scene Where nobody noticed that he’d ever been. His memoirs unwritten (though once he began ’em) He lives on a hundred and fifty per annum 50 And once in the day totters out for a stroll To purchase two eggs, The Times, and a roll. Up to now he has paid for his pleasures and needs With books he had saved and that everyone reads, Signed copies presented by authors to Gloria 55 In the reigns of King Edward and good Queen Victoria. They brought in fair prices but came to an end, Then Jukes was reduced to one book-loving friend, A girl of the streets with a smatter of culture And the genial ways of an African vulture. 60 To this bird he offered the last of the lot, A volume of Flecker beginning to rot. She opened it, stormed: ‘Cor blimey, you’re potty! D’you think I can’t see that the pages are spotty! ‘Your Flecker is foxed, you old fool, and I’m through!’ 65 Then out of the door in a tantrum she flew, Leaving poor Jukes, in the black-out, in bed With his past, and the book, and a bruise on his head.
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ladylinda
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August
Aug 20, 2014 15:27:30 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Aug 20, 2014 15:27:30 GMT -5
Song of the Torres Strait Islands
Ernest Favenc
Bold Torres, the sailor, came and went, with his swarthy, storm-worn band, he saw Saavedra's Isle to north- to south a loom of land. He left unknowing his name would live through ages with big fate, as the first to stem with broad-bowed ship the wash of the Northern Strait.
Round the western coast the Dutch ships crept, seeking the hidden way; some left their bones on that bare, west coast, and the others sailed away. Turned back, turned back, by reef and shoal, twin guards of the narrow gate- the path of the sun from the eastern seas- they were mocked by the Northern Strait.
Year in, year out, the monsoons swept o'er the isles of the coral shore, The savage tossed in his frail canoe, but the white man came no more. No sail in sight at the flash of dawn! No sail at the gloaming late! Silent and still was the lonley pass- Unsought was the Northern Strait.
A rattle of arms and a roll of drums, and the meteor flag flies free, as an English voice proclaims King George Lord of the tropic sea. The parrots scream as the volleys flash; the gulls their haunts vacate; and the 'south-east' fills the 'Endeavours' sails as she heads through the Northern Strait.
And ever since then has our watch been kept o'er the ships in the narrow way, where the smoking funnels flare by night, and the house-flags flaunt by day. Ever the same strong south-east blows, and ever we watch and wait, the wardens we, in Australia's name, the guard of the Northern Strait.
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ladylinda
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Aug 22, 2014 18:47:48 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Aug 22, 2014 18:47:48 GMT -5
Municipal
Rudyard Kipling
"Why is my District death-rate low?" Said Binks of Hezabad. "Well, drains, and sewage-outfalls are "My own peculiar fad. "I learnt a lesson once, It ran "Thus," quoth that most veracious man: --
It was an August evening and, in snowy garments clad, I paid a round of visits in the lines of Hezabad; When, presently, my Waler saw, and did not like at all, A Commissariat elephant careering down the Mall.
I couldn't see he driver, and across my mind it rushed That that Commissariat elephant had suddenly gone musth. I didn't care to meet him, and I couldn't well get down, So I let the Waler have it, and we headed for the town.
The buggy was a new one and, praise Dykes, it stood the strain, Till he Waler jumped a bullock just above the City Drain; And the next that I remember was a hurricane of squeals, And the creature making toothpicks of my five-foot patent wheels.
He seemed to want the owner, so I fled, distraught with fear, To the Main Drain sewage-outfall while he snorted in my ear -- Reached the four-foot drain-head safely and, in darkness and despair, Felt the brute's proboscis fingering my terror-stiffened hair.
Heard it trumpet on my shoulder -- tried to crawl a little higher -- Found the Main Drain sewage outfall blocked, some eight feet up, with mire; And, for twenty reeking minutes, Sir, my very marrow froze, While the trunk was feeling blindly for a purchase on my toes!
It missed me by a fraction, but my hair was turning grey Before they called the drivers up and dragged the brute away. Then I sought the City Elders, and my words were very plain. They flushed that four-foot drain-head and -- it never choked again!
You may hold with surface-drainage, and the sun-for-garbage cure, Till you've been a periwinkle shrinking coyly up a sewer. I believe in well-flushed culverts. . . . This is why the death-rate's small; And, if you don't believe me, get shikarred yourself. That's all.
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ladylinda
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August
Aug 22, 2014 18:48:19 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Aug 22, 2014 18:48:19 GMT -5
The Belle of the Ballroom
Winthrop Mackworth Praed
Years, years ago, ere yet my dreams Had been of being wise and witty; Ere I had done wth writing themes, Or yawn'd o'er this infernal Chitty; -- Years, years ago, while all my joy Was in my fowling-piece and filly; In short, while I was yet a boy, I fell in love with Laura Lily.
I saw her at the County Ball; There, when the sounds of flute and fiddle Gave signal sweet in that old hall Of hands across and down the middle, Hers was the subtlest spell by far Of all that set young hearts romancing: She was our queen, our rose, our star; And then she danced -- oh, Heaven, her dancing!
Dark was her hair, her hand was white; Her voice was exquisitely tender; Her eyes were full of liquid light; I never saw a waist so slender; Her every look, her every smile, Shot right and left a score of arrows; I though 'twas Venus from her isle, And wonder'd where she left her sparrows.
Through sunny May, through sultry June, I loved her with a love eternal; I spoke her praises to the moon, I wrote them to the Sunday Journal. My mother laugh'd; I soon found out That ancient ladies have no feeling: My father frown'd, but how should gout See any happiness in kneeling?
She was the daughter of a dean, Rich, fat, and rather apoplectic; She had one brother just thriteen, Whose color was extremely hectic; Her grandmother, for many a year Had fed the parish with her bounty; Her second cousin was a peer, And lord-lieutenant of the county.
But titles and the three-per-cents, And mortgages, and great relations, And India bonds, and tithes and rents, Oh! what are they to love's sensations? Black eyes, fair forehead, clustering locks, -- Such wealth, such honors, Cupid chooses; He cares as little for the stocks, As Baron Rothschild for the Muses.
She sketched; the vale, the wood, the beach, Grew lovelier from her pencil's shading; She botanized; I envied each Young blossom in her boudoir fading; She warbled Händel; it was grand, -- She made the Catalina jealous; She touch'd the organ; I could stand For hours and hours to blow the bellows.
She kept an album, too, at home, Well fill'd with all an album's glories; Paintings of butterfiles, and Rome, Patterns for trimming, Persian stories, Soft songs to Julia's cockatoo, Fierce odes to Famine and to Slaughter; And autographs of Prince Lèboo, And recipes for elder-water.
And she was flatter'd, worshipp'd, bored; Her steps were watch'd, her dress was noted; Her poodle-dog was quite adored, Her saying were extremely quoted. She laugh'd, and every heart was glad, As if the taxes were abolish'd; She frown'd, and every look was sad, As if the Opera were demolished.
She smil'd on many just for fun, -- I knew that there was nothing in it; I was the first, the only one Her heart had thought of for a minute. I knew it, for she told me so, In phrase which was divinely moulded; She wrote a charming hand, and oh, How sweetly all her notes were folded!
Our love was like most other loves, --- A little glow, a little shiver, A rosebud and a pair of gloves, And 'Fly Not Yet,' upon the river; Some jealousy of some one's heir, Some hopes of dying broken-hearted; A miniature, a lock of hair, The usual vows -- and then we parted.
We parted -- months and years roll'd by; We met again four summers after; Our parting was all sob and sigh -- Our meeting was all mirth and laughter; For in my heart's most secret cell, There had been many other lodgers; And she was not the ball-room's belle, But only -- Mrs. Something Rogers.
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ladylinda
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Aug 22, 2014 18:48:50 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Aug 22, 2014 18:48:50 GMT -5
Night on the Island
Pablo Neruda.
All night I have slept with you next to the sea, on the island. Wild and sweet you were between pleasure and sleep, between fire and water. Perhaps very late our dreams joined at the top or at the bottom, Up above like branches moved by a common wind, down below like red roots that touch.
Perhaps your dream drifted from mine and through the dark sea was seeking me as before, when you did not yet exist, when without sighting you I sailed by your side, and your eyes sought what now-- bread, wine, love, and anger-- I heap upon you because you are the cup that was waiting for the gifts of my life.
I have slept with you all night long while the dark earth spins with the living and the dead, and on waking suddenly in the midst of the shadow my arm encircled your waist.
Neither night nor sleep could separate us.
I have slept with you and on waking, your mouth, come from your dream, gave me the taste of earth, of sea water, of seaweed, of the depths of your life, and I received your kiss moistened by the dawn as if it came to me from the sea that surrounds us.
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ladylinda
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Aug 24, 2014 17:03:21 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Aug 24, 2014 17:03:21 GMT -5
If Still Your Orchards Bear
Edna St Vincent Millay
Brother, that breathe the August air Ten thousand years from now, And smell—if still your orchards bear Tart apples on the bough—
The early windfall under the tree, And see the red fruit shine, I cannot think your thoughts will be Much different from mine.
Should at that moment the full moon Step forth upon the hill, And memories hard to bear at noon, By moonlight harder still, Form in the shadow of the trees, — Things that you could not spare And live, or so you thought, yet these All gone, and you still there,
A man no longer what he was, Nor yet the thing he'd planned, The chilly apple from the grass Warmed by your living hand—
I think you will have need of tears; I think they will not flow; Supposing in ten thousand years Men ache, as they do now.
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ladylinda
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Aug 24, 2014 17:03:44 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Aug 24, 2014 17:03:44 GMT -5
A Subaltern’s Love Song
John Betjeman
Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Furnish’d and burnish’d by Aldershot sun, What strenuous singles we played after tea, We in the tournament – you against me!
Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy, The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy, With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won, I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.
Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won, The warm-handled racket is back in its press, But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.
Her father’s euonymus shines as we walk, And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk, And cool the verandah that welcomes us in To the six-o’clock news and a lime-juice and gin.
The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath, The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path, As I struggle with double-end evening tie, For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I.
On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts, And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports, And westering, questioning settles the sun, On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.
The Hillman is waiting, the light’s in the hall, The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall, My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair And there on the landing’s the light on your hair.
By roads “not adopted”, by woodlanded ways, She drove to the club in the late summer haze, Into nine-o’clock Camberley, heavy with bells And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells.
Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, I can hear from the car park the dance has begun, Oh! Surrey twilight! importunate band! Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl’s hand!
Around us are Rovers and Austins afar, Above us the intimate roof of the car, And here on my right is the girl of my choice, With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice.
And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said, And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead. We sat in the car park till twenty to one And now I’m engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.
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ladylinda
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August
Aug 24, 2014 17:04:34 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Aug 24, 2014 17:04:34 GMT -5
'Ebb of the oceanic light'
Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo
Ebb of the oceanic light. The octopi, in their drivel blacken the sand with their thick ink; but countless little fish which resemble shells of silver, not able to escape, struggle therein: they are taken with nets stiffened by dark seaweed that become lianas and invade the cliffs of heaven
(Rabearivelo is considered one of the finest poets of Madagascar)
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ladylinda
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Aug 26, 2014 7:44:17 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Aug 26, 2014 7:44:17 GMT -5
Blue Bridge
Geraldine Connolly
Praise the good-tempered summer and the red cardinal that jumps like a hot coal off the track. Praise the heavy leaves, heroines of green, frosted with silver. Praise the litter of torn paper, mulch and sticks, the spiny holly, its scarlet land mines.
Praise the black snake that whips and shudders its way across my path and the lane where grandmother and grandfather walked, arms around each other's waists next to such a river, below a blue bridge about to be crossed by a train.
In the last gasp of August, they erase the time it might be now, whispering into the darkness that passed, blue plumes of smoke and cicada, eager and doomed.
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