Archive for the Poetry Category

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Autumn Song

Posted in Poetry with tags on October 14, 2014 by telescoper

Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
         Laid on it for a covering,
         And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

And how the swift beat of the brain
Falters because it is in vain,
         In Autumn at the fall of the leaf
         Knowest thou not? and how the chief
Of joys seems—not to suffer pain?

Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
         Bound up at length for harvesting,
         And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

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Poetic Words: Dannie Abse

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on September 30, 2014 by telescoper

I don’t usually post about poetry two days running, but circumstances seem to justify reblog of the poem Three Street Musicians by wonderful Welsh poet Dannie Abse, who died on Sunday.

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House on a Cliff

Posted in Poetry with tags , , , on September 29, 2014 by telescoper

Indoors the tang of a tiny oil lamp. Outdoors
The winking signal on the waste of sea.
Indoors the sound of the wind. Outdoors the wind.
Indoors the locked heart and the lost key.

Outdoors the chill, the void, the siren. Indoors
The strong man pained to find his red blood cools,
While the blind clock grows louder, faster. Outdoors
The silent moon, the garrulous tides she rules.

Indoors ancestral curse-cum-blessing. Outdoors
The empty bowl of heaven, the empty deep.
Indoors a purposeful man who talks at cross
Purposes, to himself, in a broken sleep.

by Louis MacNeice (1907-1963).

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Beloved Dust

Posted in Poetry with tags , , , on September 24, 2014 by telescoper

And you as well must die, beloved dust,
And all your beauty stand you in no stead,
This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,
This body of flame and steel, before the gust
Of Death, or under his autumnal frost,
Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead
Than the first leaf that fall, —this wonder fled.
Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost.
Nor shall my love avail you in your hour.
In spite of all my love, you will arise
Upon that day and wander down the air
Obscurely as the unattended flower,
It mattering not how beautiful you were,
Or how beloved above all else that dies.

by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

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Scotland Small?

Posted in Poetry with tags , , , on September 18, 2014 by telescoper

Scotland small? Our multiform, our infinite Scotland _small_?
Only as a patch of hillside may be a cliche corner
To a fool who cries “Nothing but heather!” Where in September another
Sitting there and resting and gazing around
Sees not only heather but blaeberries
With bright green leaves and leaves already turned scarlet,
Hiding ripe blue berries; and amongst the sage-green leaves
Of the bog-myrtle the golden flowers of the tormentil shining;
And on the small bare places, where the little Blackface sheep
Found grazing, milkworts blue as summer skies;
And down in neglected peat-hags, not worked
In living memory, sphagnum moss in pastel shades
Of yellow, green and pink; sundew and butterwort
And nodding harebells vying in their colour
With the blue butterflies that poise themselves delicately upon them,
And stunted rowans with harsh dry leaves of glorious colour
“Nothing but heather!” — How marvellously descriptive! And incomplete!

 

by Hugh McDiarmid (1892-1978)

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As Summer into Autumn slips

Posted in Poetry with tags , , , on September 10, 2014 by telescoper

As Summer into Autumn slips
And yet we sooner say
“The Summer” than “the Autumn,” lest
We turn the sun away,

And almost count it an Affront
The presence to concede
Of one however lovely, not
The one that we have loved —

So we evade the charge of Years
On one attempting shy
The Circumvention of the Shaft
Of Life’s Declivity.

by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

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After Bank Holiday

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on August 26, 2014 by telescoper

Now deserted are the roads
Where awhile the lovers went;
Vacant are the field-abodes
Where a vivid hour they spent:
Solemn dark
Broods again in lane and park.

‘Tis no matter where are gone
Those warm lives—to halls, maybe,
Festive, or to lodgings lone:
Of the land their tenancy
Now is o’er;
Earth to earth belongs once more.

Gone are they as hourly goes
From the sombre fields of space
Our world, with its little glows—
Passion’s ship that has no place,
Leaves no track,
On time’s endless ocean black.

by Elizabeth Daryush (1887-1977)

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On Problems

Posted in Poetry, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on August 19, 2014 by telescoper

Since I’m in Denmark I thought I’d put up one of the wonderfully witty little poems written by Danish mathematician Piet Hein. He called each of these verses a “grook” (or actually, in Danish, the word is gruk) and he wrote thousands of them over his long life. I’ve posted one of these before but this one is even shorter but it makes a deep point, the danger of becoming be trapped by your own assumptions. I won’t comment on the relevance of this to the cosmology workshop I’m attending…

Our choicest plans
have fallen through
our airiest castles
tumbled over
because of lines
we neatly drew
and later neatly
stumbled over.

by Piet Hein (1905-1996).

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O Captain! My Captain!

Posted in Film, Poetry with tags , , on August 12, 2014 by telescoper

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

by Walt Whitman (1819-1892), posted in memoriam Robin Williams.

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JULY 1914, by Anna Akhmatova

Posted in History, Poetry with tags , , , on August 5, 2014 by telescoper

I heard a great poem on Radio 3 last night. It was part of a programme that preceded a late night promenade concert during which, at 10pm, people across the country were invited to turn their lights out and place a candle in their window as an act of remembrance. From what I could see, not many in my street bothered, but I did…

LightsOut

 

The poem I heard was written by Russian poet Anna Akhmatova on the eve of her country’s entry into World War 1. It’s actually just the first part of a poem called JULY 1914 (the capitalization is deliberate). It perfectly captures that sense of foreboding she felt as the clouds gathered, and the hot weather we’ve been having made it all the more effective:

It smells of burning. For four weeks
The dry peat bog has been burning.
The birds have not even sung today,
And the aspen has stopped quaking.

The sun has become God’s displeasure,
Rain has not sprinkled the fields since Easter.
A one-legged stranger came along
And all alone in the courtyard he said:

“Fearful times are drawing near. Soon
Fresh graves will be everywhere.
There will be famine, earthquakes, widespread death,
And the eclipse of the sun and the moon.

But the enemy will not divide
Our land at will, for himself;
The Mother of God will spread her white mantle
Over this enormous grief.”

by Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966).

 

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