Our favourite poems.

[Mal Hombre]

An epitaph dedicated to HMS Warspite from one of the many sailors that had served on her, Lt-Cmdr R A B Mitchell. This was written after HMS Warspite ran aground at the Prussian Cove on her way to the breakers yard on St. Georges Day 1947.

You say you have no subject
And your brushes all have dried;
But come to Marazion
At the ebbing of the tide.

And look you out to seaward,
Where my Lady battle scarred
Hugs the rock that is more welcome,
Than the shameful breakers yard.

Paint her there upon the sunset
In her glory and despair,
With the diadem of victory
Still in flower upon her hair.

Let her whisper as she settles
Of her blooding long ago,
In the mist that mingles Jutland
With the might of Scapa Flow.

Let her tell you, too, of Narvik
With its snowy hills, and then
Of Matapan, Salerno
And the shoals of Walcheren;
And finally of Malta,
When along the purple street
Came in trail the Roman Navy
To surrender at her feet.

Of all these honours conscious,
How could she bear to be
Delivered to the spoiler
Or severed from the sea ?

So hasten then and paint her
In the last flush of her pride
On the rocks of Marazion,
At the ebbing of the tide.

[skimmer66]

“Alone”
From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen

As others saw—I could not bring

My passions from a common spring—

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow—I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone—

And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—

Then—in my childhood—in the dawn

Of a most stormy life—was drawn

From ev’ry depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still—

From the torrent, or the fountain—

From the red cliff of the mountain—

From the sun that ’round me roll’d

In its autumn tint of gold—

From the lightning in the sky

As it pass’d me flying by—

From the thunder, and the storm—

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view—

-Edgar Allan Poe

[Mal Hombre]

I rise at eleven, I dine about two,

I get drunk before seven, and the next thing I do,

I send for my whore, when for fear of the clap,

I spend in her hand, and I spew in her lap;

Then we quarrel and scold, till I fall fast asleep,

When the bitch growing bold, to my pocket does creep.

Then slyly she leaves me, and to revenge the affront,

At once she bereaves me of money and cunt.

If by chance then I wake, hot-headed and drunk,

What a coil do I make for the loss of my punk!

I storm and I roar, and I fall in a rage.

And missing my whore, I bugger my page.

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

[Dr Pepper]

One well remembered from my school days...

Good afternoon, Sir Smasham Uppe !
We’re having tea : do take a cup !
Sugar and milk ? – Now let me see –
Two lumps, I think? . . . Good gracious me !
The silly thing slipped off your knee !
Pray don’t apologize, old chap :
A very trivial mishap!
So clumsy of you ? How absurd !
My dear Sir Smasham, not a word !
Now do sit down and have another,
And tell us all about your brother –
You know, the one who broke his head.
Is the poor fellow still in bed ? –
A chair – allow me, sir ! . . . Great Scott !
That was a nasty smash ! Eh, what ?
Oh, not at all : the chair was old –
Queen Anne, or so we have been told.
We’ve got at least a dozen more :
Just leave the pieces on the floor.
I want you to admire our view :
Come nearer to the window, do ;
And look how beautiful . . . Tut, tut !
You didn’t see that it was shut ?
I hope you are not badly cut !
Not hurt ? A fortunate escape !
Amazing ! Not a single scrape !
And now, if you have finished tea,
I fancy you might like to see
A little thing or two I’ve got.
That china plate ? Yes, worth a lot :
A beauty too . . . Ah, there it goes !
I trust it didn’t hurt your toes ?
Your elbow brushed it off the shelf ?
Of course : I’ve done the same myself.
And now, my dear Sir Smasham – Oh,
You surely don’t intend to go ?
You must be off ? Well, come again
So glad you’re fond of porcelain !

E.V.Rieu

[Pinkpapercut]

We seem at the moment to be posting a lot of gloomy poems so here are two of Philip Larkin's gloomiest:


LOVE AGAIN
Philip Larkin

Love again: wanking at ten past three
(Surely he’s taken her home by now?),
The bedroom hot as a bakery,
The drink gone dead, without showing how
To meet tomorrow, and afterwards,
And the usual pain, like dysentery.

Someone else feeling her breasts and cunt,
Someone else drowned in that lash-wide stare,
And me supposed to be ignorant,
Or find it funny, or not to care,
Even ... but why put it into words?
Isolate rather this element

That spreads through other lives like a tree
And sways them on in a sort of sense
And say why it never worked for me.
Something to do with violence
A long way back, and wrong rewards,
And arrogant eternity.



THE VIEW
Philip Larkin

The view is fine from fifty,
Experienced climbers say;
So, overweight and shifty,
I turn to face the way
That led me to this day.

Instead of fields and snowcaps
And flowered lanes that twist,
The track breaks at my toe-caps
And drops away in mist.
The view does not exist.

Where has it gone, the lifetime?
Search me. What’s left is drear.
Unchilded and unwifed, I’m
Able to view that clear:
So final. And so near.

[bonepone]

I always shed a tear when I hear "High Flight". Don't no why, I'm an old dude now. I reached out and touched the face of God.

[ubu55]

Groucho Marx At T.S. Eliot's Funeral (Audio) 1965
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqbzT5NzQxc

Gus: The Theatre Cat

Gus is the Cat at the Theatre Door.
His name, as I ought to have told you before,
Is really Asparagus. That's such a fuss
To pronounce, that we usually call him just Gus.
His coat's very shabby, he's thin as a rake,
And he suffers from palsy that makes his paw shake.
Yet he was, in his youth, quite the smartest of Cats -
But no longer a terror to mice and to rats.
For he isn't the Cat that he was in his prime;
Though his name was quite famous, he says, in its time.
And whenever he joins his friends at their club
(Which takes place at the back of the neighbouring pub. )
He loves to regale them, if someone else pays,
With anecdotes drawn from his palmiest days.
For he once was a Star of the highest degree -
He has acted with Irving, he's acted with Tree.
And he likes to relate his success on the Halls,
Where the Gallery once gave him seven cat-calls.
But his grandest creation, as he loves to tell,
Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.

`I have played', so he says, `every possible part,
And I used to know seventy speeches by heart.
I'd extemporize back-chat, I knew how to gag,
And I know how to let the cat out of the bag.
I knew how to act with my back and my tail;
With an hour of rehearsal, I never could fail.
I'd a voice that would soften the hardest of hearts,
Whether I took the lead, or in character parts.
I have sat by the bedside of poor Little Nell;
When the Curfew was rung, then I swung on the bell.
In the Pantomime season I never fell flat
And I once understudied Dick Whittington's Cat.
But my grandest creation, as history will tell,
Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.'

Then, if someone will give him a toothful of gin,
He will tell how he once played a part in East Lynne.
At a Shakespeare performance he once walked on pat,
When some actor suggested the need for a cat.
He once played a Tiger - could do it again -
Which an Indian Colonel pursued down a drain.
And he thinks that he still can, much better than most,
Produce blood-curdling noises to bring on the Ghost.
And he once crossed the stage on a telegraph wire,
To rescue a child when a house was on fire.
And he says: `Now, these kittens, they do not get trained
As we did in the days when Victoria reigned.
They never get drilled in a regular troupe,
And they think they are smart, just to jump through a hoop.'
And he'll say, as he scratches himself with his claws,
`Well, the Theatre's certainly not what it was.
These modern productions are all very well,
But there's nothing to equal, from what I hear tell,
That moment of mystery
When I made history
As Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.

For an account of how the two men knew one another search 'The fraught friendship of t. s. eliot and groucho marx - The New Yorker'

[Gruenspecht]

Im Nebel.

Seltsam, im Nebel zu wandern!
Einsam ist jeder Busch und Stein,
Kein Baum sieht den andern,
Jeder ist allein.

Voll von Freunden war mir die Welt,
Als noch mein Leben licht war;
Nun, da der Nebel fällt,
Ist keiner mehr sichtbar.

Wahrlich, keiner ist weise,
Der nicht das Dunkel kennt,
Das unentrinnbar und leise
Von allen ihn trennt.

Seltsam, im Nebel zu wandern!
Leben ist Einsamsein.
Kein Mensch kennt den andern,
Jeder ist allein.

Hermann Hesse
1877-1962

Audio:
Im Nebel.

Translated:

In the fog:

Strange to go for a walk in the fog!
Every bush and stone is lonely,
No tree sees the other
Everyone is alone.

The world was full of friends
When my life was still light;
Now that the fog falls,
Is nobody visible anymore.

Verily no one is wise
Who does not know the dark
That inescapably and quietly
Separates him from all.

Strange to go for a walk in the fog!
Life is loneliness.
Nobody knows the other
Everyone is alone.

[MasterRible]

Ozymandias
BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

[Melchior]

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Emily Dickinson - 1830-1886

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
-----------------------------------------------------------------
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders Fields, the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

By Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae (1872 – 1918)