I came across this bit of poetry by William Wordsworth and thought I’d post here because quite a few of the readers of this blog might share his low opinion of University Life!
Archive for the Poetry Category
Authentic Tidings of Invisible Things
Posted in Poetry, The Universe and Stuff with tags dark matter, Particle Physics, Physics, The Excursion, William Wordsworth on January 5, 2013 by telescoperOne of my very first blog posts (from way back in 2008) was inspired by an old book of poems by William Wordsworth that I’ve had since I was a child. I was reading it again this evening and came across this short excerpt, near the end of the book, from The Excursion, and entitled for the purposes of the book The Universe a Shell. It struck me as having a message for anyone who works on the science of things either too big or too small to be sensed directly on a human scale, so I thought I’d post it.
I decided to scan it in rather than copy it from elsewhere on the net, as I really love the look of that old faded typeface on the yellowing paper, even if it is a bit wonky because it went over two pages. I’ve been fond of Wordsworth for as long as I can remember and, like a few other things, that’s something I’ll never feel the need to apologize for…
Winter landscape, with rocks
Posted in Poetry with tags Poetry, Sylvia Plath on December 29, 2012 by telescoperWater in the millrace, through a sluice of stone,
plunges headlong into that black pond
where, absurd and out-of-season, a single swan
floats chaste as snow, taunting the clouded mind
which hungers to haul the white reflection down.
The austere sun descends above the fen,
an orange cyclops-eye, scorning to look
longer on this landscape of chagrin;
feathered dark in thought, I stalk like a rook,
brooding as the winter night comes on.
Last summer’s reeds are all engraved in ice
as is your image in my eye; dry frost
glazes the window of my hurt; what solace
can be struck from rock to make heart’s waste
grow green again? Who’d walk in this bleak place?
by Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)
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Posted in Poetry with tags Debt, Poetry, Sara Teasdale on December 17, 2012 by telescoperWhat do I owe to you
Who loved me deep and long?
You never gave my spirit wings
Or gave my heart a song.
But oh, to him I loved,
Who loved me not at all,
I owe the open gate
That led through heaven’s wall.
by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)
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Posted in Poetry with tags A Refusal to Mourn the Death by Fire of a Child in London, connecticut, Dylan Thomas, murders, newtown on December 17, 2012 by telescoperI posted this poem after the terrible events in Norway last year. Sadly the awful killings in Newton, Connecticut make it relevant again.
The full title is A Refusal to Mourn the Death by Fire of a Child in London and it was written by Dylan Thomas. Published just after the end of the Second World War, it was written some time earlier when Thomas heard news of a young girl who had burned to death when the house she was in was set on fire during an air raid. Here is the poet himself reading it.
The idea behind the poem is complex, and its message double-edged, but Thomas finds a perfect balance between horror and sadness, and between indignation and heartbreak. Children shouldn’t have to die, and neither should anyone else whose life is cut short by another’s hand, but we have to accept that they can and do. There’s no consolation to be found in mourning and in any case it’s hypocritical to favour one death with elegies, when suffering is so widespread. The best we can do is allow the dead some dignity and their families and loved ones some time to grieve.
Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness
And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn
The majesty and burning of the child’s death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.
Deep with the first dead lies London’s daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.
The Winter Palace
Posted in Poetry with tags Philip Larkin, Poetry, The Winter Palace on December 5, 2012 by telescoperMost people know more as they get older:
I give all that the cold shoulder.
I spent my second quarter-century
Losing what I had learnt at university.
And refusing to take in what had happened since.
Now I know none of the names in the public prints,
And am starting to give offence by forgetting faces
And swearing I’ve never been in certain places.
It will be worth it, if in the end I manage
To blank out whatever it is that is doing the damage.
Then there will be nothing I know.
My mind will fold into itself, like fields, like snow.
by Philip Larkin (1922-1985)
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Posted in Poetry with tags 97, How like a winter hath my absence been, sonnet no, William Shakespeare on December 1, 2012 by telescoper
How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December’s bareness every where!
And yet this time remov’d was summer’s time;
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:
Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me
But hope of orphans and unfather’d fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute:
Or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer,
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.
Sonnet No.97 , by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Follow @telescoperThe Rain and the Wind
Posted in Poetry with tags Poems, The Rain and the Wind, W.E. Henley on November 25, 2012 by telescoperThe rain and the wind, the wind and the rain —
They are with us like a disease:
They worry the heart, they work the brain,
As they shoulder and clutch at the shrieking pane,
And savage the helpless trees.
What does it profit a man to know
These tattered and tumbling skies
A million stately stars will show,
And the ruining grace of the after-glow
And the rush of the wild sunrise?
Ever the rain — the rain and the wind!
Come, hunch with me over the fire,
Dream of the dreams that leered and grinned,
Ere the blood of the Year got chilled and thinned,
And the death came on desire!
by William Ernest Henley (1849-1903).
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Posted in Music, Poetry with tags Benjamin Britten, Feast of St Cecilia, Hymn to St Cecilia, W.H. Auden on November 22, 2012 by telescoperI almost forgot to post something to mark this very special day which is celebrated throughout the civilised world. Yes, of course, it is the Feast of St Cecilia. And not only that, it is Benjamin Britten‘s birthday. So why not kill two birds with one stone? And I don’t mean turkeys…
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Posted in Poetry with tags November, Poem, Thomas Hood on November 22, 2012 by telescoperNo sun–no moon!
No morn–no noon!
No dawn–no dusk–no proper time of day–
No sky–no earthly view–
No distance looking blue–
No road–no street–no “t’other side this way”–
No end to any Row–
No indications where the Crescents go–
No top to any steeple–
No recognitions of familiar people–
No courtesies for showing ’em–
No knowing ’em!
No traveling at all–no locomotion–
No inkling of the way–no notion–
“No go” by land or ocean–
No mail–no post–
No news from any foreign coast–
No Park, no Ring, no afternoon gentility–
No company–no nobility–
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member–
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds–
November
by Thomas Hood (1799-1845)
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In the Dark 