Friday Poetry: A. A. Milne

Hello!

I hope everyone is coping well with the first week back at work after New Year. I have come down with a nasty cold so I must admit I have been resting and reading to hopefully get over it quickly.

My chosen poem today is by A. A. Milne.

Explained

Elizabeth Ann
Said to her Nan:
'Please will you tell me how God began?
Somebody must have made Him. So 
Who could it be, cos I want to know?'
And Nurse said, 'Well!'
And Ann said, 'Well?
I know you know, and I wish you'd tell.'
And Nurse took pins from her mouth, and said,
'Now then, darling, it's time for bed.'

Elizabeth Ann
Had a wonderful plan:
She would run round the world till she found a man
Who knew exactly how God began.

She got up early, she dressed, and ran
Trying to find an Important Man.
She ran to London and knocked at the door
Of the Lord High Doodelum's coach-and-four.
'Please, sir (if there's anyone in),
However-and-ever did God begin?'

The Lord High Doodelum lay in bed
But out of the window, large and red,
Came the Lord High Coachman's face instead. 
And the Lord High Coachman laughed and said:
'Well, what put that in your quaint little head?'

Elizabeth Ann went home again
And took from the ottoman Jennifer Jane.
'Jenniferjane,' said Elizabeth Ann,
'Tell me at once how God began.'
And Jane, who didn't much care for speaking,
Replied in her usual way by squeaking.

What did it mean? Well, to be quite candid,
I don't know, but Elizabeth Ann did.
Elizabeth Ann said softly, 'Oh!
Thank you Jennifer. Now I know.'

A. A. Milne

Happy Reading

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Friday Poetry: John Cotton

Happy Friday!

The countdown to Christmas has definitely begun. I have been frantically wrapping presents today and trying to catch up on little jobs.

I have gone for a poem today which is all about the countdown to Christmas.

A Week to Christmas

Sunday with six whole days to go,
How we'll endure it I don't know! 

Monday the goodies are in the making,
Spice smells of pudding and mince pies a-baking.

Tuesday, Dad's home late and quiet as a mouse
He smuggles packages into the house. 

Wednesday's the day for decorating the tree.
Will the lights work again? We'll have to see!

Thursday's for last minute shopping and hurry,
We've never seen Mum in quite such a flurry!

Friday is Christmas Eve when we'll lie awake
Trying to sleep before the day break.

And that special quiet of Christmas morn
When out there somewhere Christ was born.

John Cotton

Happy Reading

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Friday Poetry: Thomas Hardy

Hello!

Happy Friday! I hope everyone has exciting plans for the weekend.

My chosen poem this week is by Thomas Hardy.

Snow in the Suburbs

Every branch big with it,
Bent every twig with it;
Every fork like a white web-foot;
Every street and pavement mute:
Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward when 
Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again.
The palings are glued together like a wall,
And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall.

A sparrow enters the tree,
Whereon immediately
A snow-lump thrice his own slight size
Descends on him and showers his head and eye
And overturns him,
And near inurns him,
And lights on a nether twig, when its brush
Starts off a volley of other lodgings lumps with a rush. 

The steps are a blanched slope,
Up which, with feeble hope,
A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;
And we take him in.

Thomas Hardy

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Friday Poetry: Robert Frost

Hello!

I hope everyone has had a good week. I have had a good week sorting out Christmas presents and I am actually starting to feel like I am a little ahead, instead of my usual panic on the week leading up to Christmas.

My chosen poem this week is by Robert Frost who was one of the United States’ best loved poets and playwrights. He had four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry and a Congressional Gold Medal.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold. 
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour. 
Then leaf subsides to leaf. 
So Eden sank to grief, 
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay. 

Robert Frost

Happy Reading

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Friday Poetry: A. A. Milne

Happy Friday!

I hope everyone has had a good week and some good plans for the weekend.

My chosen poem today is by one of my favourite authors Alan Alexander Milne. Although Milne wrote and adapted plays, wrote poems and adult fiction, he is best known for creating Edward bear, otherwise known as Winnie-the-Pooh and his many friends.

Solitude

I have a house where I go
When there's too many people,
I have a house where I go
Where no one can be;
I have a house where I go,
Where nobody ever says 'No'
Where no one says anything - so
There is no one but me.

A. A. Milne

Happy Reading

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Friday Poetry: Ted Hughes

Happy Friday!

I hope everyone has had a good week so far and everyone has exciting weekend plans. I have a busy weekend of work but I am hoping to fit in some reading time as well.

My chosen poem today is by the English poet Ted Hughes (1930-1998). Hughes was also a translator and children’s author. He was appointed poet laureate in 1984 and held the post until his death.

Leaves

Who's killed the leaves?
Me, says the apple, I've killed them all. 
Fat as a bomb or a cannonball
I've killed the leaves. 

Who sees them drop?
Me, says the pear, they will leave me all bare
So all the people can point and stare.
I see them drop. 

Who'll catch their blood?
Me, me, me, says the marrow, the marrow.
I'll get so rotund that they'll need a wheelbarrow.
I'll catch their blood. 

Who'll make their shroud?
Me, says the swallow, there's just time enough
Before I must pack all my spools and be off.
I'll make their shroud.

Who'll dig their grave?
Me, says the river, with the power of the clouds
A brown deep grave I'll dig under my floods. 
I'll dig their grave.

Who'll be their parson?
Me, says the Crow, for it is well known
I study the bible right down to the bone.
I'll be their parson.

Who'll be chief mourner?
Me, says the wind, I will cry through the grass
The people will pale and go cold when I pass.
I'll be chief mourner.

Who'll carry the coffin?
Me, says the sunset, the whole world will weep
To see me lower it into the deep. 
I'll carry the coffin.

Who'll sing a psalm?
Me, says the tractor, with my gear-grinding glottle
I'll plough up the stubble and sing through my throttle.
I'll sing the psalm.

Who'll toll the bell?
Me, says the robin, my song in October
Will tell the still gardens the leaves are over.
I'll toll the bell.

Ted Hughes

Happy Reading

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Friday Poetry: W. B. Yeats

Happy Friday!

I hope everyone has had a good week so far.

My chosen poem this week is by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) who won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.

The Wild Swans at Coole

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

W. B. Yeats

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Friday Poetry: D. H. Lawrence

Happy Friday!

I hope everyone has had a good week so far and I hope that everyone has some good weekend plans ahead.

My chosen poem this week is by David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930) who was an English writer and poet.

Autumn Rain

The plane leaves
fall black and wet
on the lawn;

the cloud sheaves
in heaven's fields set
droop and are drawn

in falling seeds of rain;
the seed of heaven
on my face

falling - I hear again
like echoes even
that softly pace

heaven's muffled floor,
the winds that tread
out all the grain

of tears, the store
harvested
in the sheaves of pain

caught up aloft:
the sheaves of dead
men that are slain

now winnowed soft
on the floor of heaven;
manna invisible

of all the pain
here to us given;
finely divisible
falling as rain. 

D. H. Lawrence

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Friday Poetry: Melinno

Happy Friday!

I have gone for a poem by Melinno this week. Melinno is known only by her one extant poem, a Greek hymn to the goddess Roma. The date of Melinno is highly disputed, with suggestions varying by over four hundred years. Some argue she is from as early as the second century BC, others think as late as the second century AD.

The poem is in the style of Sappho, and might have been composed for a ritual.

Melinno's Hymn to Roma

Hail to Roma, the war-god's daughter
warrior queen in a golden girdle,
your Heaven here on earth, eternal
and unassailable.

On you alone, our ancient of days. 
Fate has bestowed this royal glory
of unbroken rule, sovereign strength
to lead where all follow.

For under your yoke, by your strong reins,
the great back of earth and foam-white seas
are bent; without a falter you steer
the cities of all men.

But time's great span can topple us all;
life sways us one way, then another
you alone sail on fair winds of rule
and never alter course.

For you alone have borne strong warriors,
great spearman, springing up unbidden
like Demeter's fruitful ears of corn,
a crop of mortal men.

Melinno

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Friday Poetry: Corinna

Happy Friday!

I hope everyone has a good weekend planned. I have another busy weekend of work but I also have a family get together as well which will be nice.

I have been studying a lot of female poets from Ancient Greece for my dissertation so I have chosen one of the poems by Corinna. It sadly is not complete and the parts in brackets have been put in by the translator. Sadly, it is only fragments that survive from the female poets of Ancient Greece.

Songs of Old

On me my Muse has served her summons
to sing those beautiful songs of old
for Tanagran women in their dawn-
white dresses; as the city takes such
pleasure in my teasing-trilling songs.

for whatever great [deeds great heroes
might perform,] still taller tales [are told,]
the earth their open field for battle.
And so I've reset our fathers' tales,
[reworked their crown with these new jewels]
as I take up my lyre for my girls;

Often I've polished tales of Cephisus,
our country's own first founding-father,
often of Lord Orion, the fifty
high-and-mighty sons he brought into
being - with help from their mother nymphs;

and then at last I sang of Libya,
[Thebes' fair fore-mother...]

Corinna

Happy Reading