Our favourite poems.

[Mal Hombre]

Childe Harold's Pilgramage
Canto IV
I see before me the Gladiator lie:
He leans upon his hand–his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his dropp'd head sinks gradually low–
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now
The arena swims around him–he is gone,
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail'd the wretch who won.
He heard it, but he heeded not–his eyes
Were with his heart and that was far away;
He reck'd not of the life he lost nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother–he, their sire,
Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday–
All this rush'd with his blood.–Shall he expire
And unavenged?–Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!

Lord Byron

[Roubignol]

Original language

Demain, dès l’aube…
Victor Hugo

Demain, dès l’aube, à l’heure où blanchit la campagne,
Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m’attends.
J’irai par la forêt, j’irai par la montagne.
Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.

Je marcherai les yeux fixés sur mes pensées,
Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit,
Seul, inconnu, le dos courbé, les mains croisées,
Triste, et le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit.

Je ne regarderai ni l’or du soir qui tombe,
Ni les voiles au loin descendant vers Harfleur,
Et quand j’arriverai, je mettrai sur ta tombe
Un bouquet de houx vert et de bruyère en fleur.

Victor Hugo, extrait du recueil «Les Contemplations»


Translation

Tomorrow, at dawn, in the hour when the countryside becomes white,
I will leave. You see, I know that you are waiting for me.
I will go by the forest, I will go by the mountain.
I cannot stay far from you any longer.

I will walk the eyes fixed on my thoughts,
Without seeing anything outside, nor hearing any noise,
Alone, unknown, the back curved, the hands crossed,
Sad, and the day for me will be like the night.

I will not look at the gold of the evening which falls,
Nor the faraway sails descending towards Harfleur.
And when I arrive, I will put on your tomb
A green bouquet of holly and flowering heather.

.

[Silicone Carne]

"I love you, you love me.
Going down the sugar tree.
We'll go down the sugar tree, and see lots of bees: playing, playing.
But the bees won't sting, because you love me."

[Roubignol]

Original language

Le Dormeur du val
Arthur Rimbaud

C’est un trou de verdure où chante une rivière
Accrochant follement aux herbes des haillons
D’argent ; où le soleil, de la montagne fière,
Luit : c’est un petit val qui mousse de rayons.

Un soldat jeune, bouche ouverte, tête nue,
Et la nuque baignant dans le frais cresson bleu,
Dort ; il est étendu dans l’herbe, sous la nue,
Pâle dans son lit vert où la lumière pleut.

Les pieds dans les glaïeuls, il dort. Souriant comme
Sourirait un enfant malade, il fait un somme :
Nature, berce-le chaudement : il a froid.

Les parfums ne font pas frissonner sa narine ;
Il dort dans le soleil, la main sur sa poitrine,
Tranquille. Il a deux trous rouges au côté droit.

Arthur Rimbaud


Translation

The Sleeper of the Vale

It’s a gully of green where sings a river
Desperately hanging on the grass its rags
Of silver; where the sun, from the proud mount
Shines: it’s a little vale that foams with rays.

A young soldier, mouth open, head bare,
And his neck bathing in the cool blue cress,
Sleeps; he is stretched out in the grass, ‘neath the sky,
Pale on his green bed where the light rains.

His feet in the gladiolas, he sleeps. Smiling like
A sick child smiles, he takes a snooze:
Nature, cradle him warmly: he is cold.

The scents do not make his nostrils quiver;
He sleeps in the sun, one hand on his peaceful
Chest. He has two red holes in his right side.



tr. by A. Rodallec

[ubu55]

From
Part One: Life

VICTORY comes late,
And is held low to freezing lips
Too rapt with frost
To take it.
How sweet it would have tasted,
Just a drop!
Was God so economical?
His table’s spread too high for us
Unless we dine on tip-toe.
Crumbs fit such little mouths,
Cherries suit robins;
The eagle’s golden breakfast
Strangles them.
God keeps his oath to sparrows,
Who of little love
Know how to starve!

__________________Emily Dickinson

[jomama]

Originally Posted by Mal Hombre

More song lyrics,This time Gordon Lightfoot's commemoration of the sinking in 1975 of the bulk carrier Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior.The song is hauntingly beautiful and lyrics stand up well as poetry.
The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
By Gordon Lightfoot

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy.

With a load of iron ore - 26,000 tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early

The ship was the pride of the American side
Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin
As the big freighters go it was bigger than most
With a crew and the Captain well seasoned.

Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
When they left fully loaded for Cleveland
And later that night when the ships bell rang
Could it be the North Wind they'd been feeling.

The wind in the wires made a tattletale sound
And a wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as the Captain did, too,
T'was the witch of November come stealing.

The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
When the gales of November came slashing
When afternoon came it was freezing rain
In the face of a hurricane West Wind

When supper time came the old cook came on deck
Saying fellows it's too rough to feed ya
At 7PM a main hatchway caved in
He said fellas it's been good to know ya.

The Captain wired in he had water coming in
And the good ship and crew was in peril
And later that night when his lights went out of sight
Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours
The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay
If they'd put fifteen more miles behind her.

They might have split up or they might have capsized
They may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters.

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the ruins of her ice water mansion
Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams,
The islands and bays are for sportsmen.

And farther below Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the gales of November remembered.

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed
In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral
The church bell chimed, 'til it rang 29 times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
Superior, they say, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vST6hVRj2A

that's one hell of a good song

[charliels531]

I am surprised that after ten years this thread doesn't have the poem that I consider the best description of the century in which I lived most of my life:

The Second Coming, by W.B.Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight; a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

[Pinkpapercut]

I'm going to be cheeky and re-post a poem I've already posted in this thread years ago because it's particularly appropriate to the Covid-19 crisis.

Originally Posted by Pinkpapercut

The Storm Cone

This is the midnight - let no star
Delude us - dawn is very far.
This is the tempest long foretold-
Slow to make head but sure to hold

Stand by! The lull 'twixt blast and blast
Signals the storm is near, not past;
And worse than present jeopardy
May our forlorn tomorrow be.

If we have cleared the expectant reef,
Let no man look for his relief.
Only the darkness hides the shape
Of further peril to escape.

It is decreed that we abide
The weight of gale against the tide
And those huge waves the outer main
Sends in to set us back again.

They fall and whelm. We strain to hear
The pulses of her labouring gear,
Till the deep throb beneath us proves,
After each shudder and check, she moves!

She moves, with all save purpose lost,
To make her offing from the coast;
But, till she fetches open sea,
Let no man deem that he is free!

Rudyard Kipling

[Paddy Bog]

Spring in Brooklyn by Anonymous (There are many versions of this poem. This is the one I remember from high school English class.)

Spring is sprung,
Da grass is riz,
I wonders where da boidies is?
Da little boids is on their wing.
Now ain't that absoid,
Da little wings is on the boids.

[Thinkwell]

Originally Posted by Paddy Bog

Spring in Brooklyn by Anonymous

Spring is sprung,
Da grass is riz,
I wonders where da boidies is?
Da little boids is on their wing.
Now ain't that absoid,
Da little wings is on the boids.

This one is probably from the same soil, harvested about the same time:

ABCD gol'fish?
MNO gol'fish.
SDR gol'fish.
RDR gol'fish.