Friday Poetry: John Clare

Hello!

Happy Friday Everyone!

My chosen poem this week is by a favourite of mine.

The Instinct of Hope

Is there another world for this frail dust
To warm with life and be itself again?
Something about me daily speaks there must,
And why should instinct nourish hopes in vain?
'Tis nature's prophesy that such will be,
And everything seems struggling to explain
The close sealed volume of its mystery. 
Time wandering onward keeps its usual pace
As seeming anxious of eternity,
To meet that calm and find a resting place. 
E'en the small violet feels a future power
And waits each year renewing blooms to bring,
And surely man is no inferior flower
To die unworthy of a second spring?

John Clare

Happy Reading

Etsy

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Friday Poetry: John Osborne

Happy Friday!

I hope everyone has some fun plans for the weekend.

My chosen poem this week is by the English playwright, screenwriter, actor, and entrepreneur John Osborn (1929-1994).

There Is Handholding Still

My friend's grandparents married
three weeks after they first met. 

Their third date was a pub Sunday roast,
walking her back home he proposed.

Two eighteen year olds saying
'I've got a good feeling about this.'

I think about them when I need reminding
sometimes we have to take risks. 

John Osborne

Happy Reading

Etsy

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Friday Poetry: Walt Whitman

Happy Friday Everyone!

My chosen poem today is by the American poet, essayist and journalist Walt Whitman (1819-1892).

To a Stranger

Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall'd as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become 
not yours only nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone,
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you. 

Walt Whitman

Happy Reading

Etsy

If you enjoy reading my blog and would like to make a donation I would be very grateful. Thank you

Friday Poetry: James Fenton

Happy Friday Everyone!

My chosen poem this week is by a new poet for me. James Fenton (1949) is an English poet, journalist and literary critic.

Hinterhof

Stay near to me and I'll stay near to you -
As near as you are dear to me will do, 
Near as the rainbow to the rain,
The west wind to the windowpane,
As fire to the hearth, as dawn to dew.

Stay true to me and I'll stay true to you -
As true as you are new to me will do,
New as the rainbow in the spray,
Utterly new in every way,
New in the way that what you say is true.

Stay near to me, stay true to me. I'll stay
As near, as true to you as heart could pray.
Heart never hoped that one might be
Half of the things you are to me -
The dawn, the fire, the rainbow and the day. 

James Fenton

Happy Reading

Etsy

If you enjoy reading my blog and would like to make a donation I would be very grateful. Thank you

Friday Poetry: Robert Graves

Happy Friday!

I hope everyone has some good plans for the weekend. I am still recovering so I imagine more reading will be happening.

My chosen poem this week is by Robert Graves (1895-1985).

Love at First Sight

'Love at first sight,' some say, misnaming
Discovery of twinned helplessness
Against the huge tug of procreation. 

But friendship at first sight? This also
Catches fiercely at the surprised heart
So that the cheek blanches and then blushes. 

Robert Graves

Happy Reading

Etsy

If you enjoy reading my blog and would like to make a donation I would be very grateful. Thank you

Friday Poetry: John Clare

Happy Friday!

My chosen poem this week is by one of my favourites.

First Love

I ne'er was struck before that hour
With love so sudden and so sweet,
Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower
And stole my heart away complete.
My face turned pale as deadly pale,
My legs refused to walk away,
And when she looked, what could I ail?
My life and all seemed turned to clay.

And then my blood rushed to my face
And took my eyesight quite away,
The trees and bushes round the place
Seemed midnight at noonday.
I could not see a single thing,
Words from my eyes did start -
They spoke as chords do from the string,
And blood burnt round my heart.

Are flowers the winter's choice?
Is love's bed always snow?
She seemed to hear my silent voice,
Not love's appeal to know.
I never saw so sweet a face
As that I stood before.
My heart has left its dwelling-place
And can return no more.

John Clare

Happy Reading

Etsy

If you enjoy reading my blog and would like to make a donation I would be very grateful. Thank you

Friday Poetry: Wallace Stevens

Happy Friday!

I have had a fab day of reading again and managed to finish a book.

My chosen poem this week is by the American modernist poet, Wallace Stevens (1879-1955).

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Wallace Stevens

Happy Reading

Etsy

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Friday Poetry: Helen Hunt Jackson

Happy Friday!

My chosen quote this week is by the American poet and writer Helen Hunt Jackson. Jackson became an activist on behalf of improved treatment of Native Americans by the United States government.

Dawn

With a ring of silver,
And a ring of gold,
And a red, red rose
Which illumines her face,
The sun, like a lover
Who glows and is bold,
Wooes the lovely earth
To his strong embrace.

Helen Hunt Jackson

Happy Reading

Etsy

If you enjoy reading my blog and would like to make a donation I would be very grateful. Thank you

Friday Poetry: Susan Coolidge

Happy Friday Everyone!

My chosen poem today is by a new poet for me. Susan Coolidge is the pen name for Sarah Chauncey Woolsey (1835-1905). Coolidge was an American children’s author.

New Every Morning

Every morn is the world made new.
You who are weary of sorrow and sinning,
Here is a beautiful hope for you, -
A hope for me and a hope for you. 

All the past things are past and over;
The tasks are done and the tears are shed.
Yesterday's errors let yesterday cover;
Yesterday's wounds, which smarted and bled,
Are healed with the healing which night has shed. 

Yesterday now is a part of forever,
Bound up in a sheaf, which God holds tight, 
With glad days, and sad days, and bad days, which never
Shall visit us more with their bloom and their blight,
Their fulness of sunshine or sorrowful. 

Let them go, since we cannot re-live them,
Cannot undo and cannot atone;
God in his mercy receive, forgive them!
Only the new days are our own;
To-day is ours, and to-day alone.

Here are the skies all burnished brightly,
Here is the spent earth all re-born,
Here are the tired limbs springing lightly
To face the sun and to share with the morn
In the chrism of dew and the cool of dawn.

Every day is a fresh beginning;
Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain,
And, spite of old sorrow and older sinning,
And puzzles forecasted and possible pain,
Take heart with the day, and begin again. 

Susan Coolidge

Happy Reading

Etsy

If you enjoy reading my blog and would like to make a donation I would be very grateful. Thank you

Friday Poetry: Ravi Shankar

Happy Friday!

My chosen poem this week is by the American poet, editor and former literature professor at Central Connecticut State University and City University of Hong Kong and Chairman of the APWT, Dr Ravi Shankar (1975).

Snowfall

Particulate as ash, new year's first snow falls
upon peaked roofs, car hoods, undulant hills,
in imitation of motion that moves the way

static cascades down screens when the cable
zaps out, persistent & granular with a flicker
of legibility that dissipates before it can be

interpolated into any succession of imagery.
One hour stretches sixty minutes into a field
of white flurry: hexagonal lattices of water

molecules that accumulate in drifts too soon
strewn with sand, hewn into browning
mounds by plow blade, left to turn to slush.

Ravi Shankar