Friday Poetry: Sara Teasdale

It’s Friday!

Happy Friday Everyone!

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the moon landing so I have chosen a related poem. Yes, this week I am very moon landing orientated on the blog.

This poem is by Sara Teasdale, Teasdale was an American lyric poet born in 1884. Sadly she committed suicide in 1933.

This poem depicts the moon one morning.

Morning Song

A diamond of a morning

Waked me an hour too soon;

Dawn had taken in the stars

And left the faint white moon.

O white moon, you are lonely,

It is the same with me,

But we have the world to roam over,

Only the lonely are free.

Sara Teasdale

Happy reading.

Friday Poetry: Langston Hughes

Hello my fellow readers!

I am back home now after an amazing holiday, I am slowly getting used to the time difference.

I have a lot of book reviews to write over the next few days, so I will be playing catch up blog wise but hopefully I will get there. Usually I post my Friday Poetry entry in the morning so apologies this is late in the day.

The chosen poem this week is by Langston Hughes, Hughes is best remembered as a pioneer of American jazz poetry. Jazz poetry has jazz like movements in rhythm, repetitive phrasing and the appearance of improvisation.

To You

To sit and dream, to sit and read,

To sit and learn about the world

Outside our world of here and now-

Our problem world-

To dream of vast horizons of the soul

Through dreams made whole,

Unfettered, free – help me!

All you who are dreamers too,

Help me to make

Our world anew.

I reach out my dreams to you.

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

Happy Friday!

Friday Poetry, 5th July 2019

Happy Friday!

I have chosen a poem about summer and when it rains in summer.

This poem is by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). Longfellow was an American poet and educator. He was also the first American to translate Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy and was one of the Fireside Poets from New England.

Rain in Summer

How beautiful is the rain!

After the dust and heat,

In the broad and fiery street,

In the narrow lane,

How beautiful is the rain!

How it clatters along the roofs,

Like the tramp of hoofs

How it gushes and struggles out

From the throat of the overflowing spout!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Hope you all have a book filled weekend.

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Friday Poetry, 28th June 2019

Yay it’s finally Friday!

Yesterday’s weather was beautiful and the birds were having a wonderful time so I have chosen a poem that is about birds!

This poem is by one of my favourite poets Emily Dickinson.

A Bird Came Down the Walk

A Bird came down the Walk –

He did not know I saw –

He bit an Angleworm in halves

And ate the fellow, raw,

And then he drank a Dew

From a convenient Grass –

And then hopped sidewise to the Wall

To let a Beetle pass –

He glanced with rapid eyes

That hurried all around –

They looked like frightened Beads, I thought –

He stirred his Velvet Head

Like one in danger, Cautious,

I offered him a Crumb

And he unrolled his feathers

And rowed him softer home –

Than Oars divide the Ocean,

Too silver for a seam –

Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon

Leap, plashless as they swim.

Emily Dickinson

Have a good weekend!

p.s the only pictures of birds I have are either ducks or chickens for some reason, so hope you enjoy the duck picture!

Friday Poetry, 21st June 2019

So tomorrow is meant to be the longest day of the year so I have chosen something suitable and also something close to my heart as I studied the play for my Drama A Level.

I’m not entirely sure whether this counts as a poem but I am going for it.

This chosen piece is from A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare and is the meditation that Duke Theseus delivers on what it means to dream.

More strange than true! I never may believe

These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,

Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

More than cool reason ever comprehends.

The lunatic, the lover and the poet

Are of imagination all compact.

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold:

That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.

The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

Such tricks hath strong imagination,

That if it would but apprehend some joy,

It comprehends some bringer of that joy;

Or in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush suppos’d a bear!

William Shakespeare

Friday Poetry

Happy Friday my wonderful Book Dragons!

I hope you all have an amazing weekend planned.

My chosen poem this week is by Tony Mitton. Mitton is a children’s author and poet.

Days

Old day, gold day,

where did you go?

Over the skyline,

sinking low.

Into the arms

of the waiting night

to nestle myself

in its dark delight.

New day, blue day,

what will you bring?

Light in the sky

and a song to sing.

Sun bobs brightly

up with the dawn,

spreading warmth

as the day is born.

Tony Mitton

Have a good day everyone.

Happy reading.

Friday Poetry

Morning everyone!

After an amazing dog walk yesterday, I decided to choose a poem with a dog theme. Coco went on her biggest walk since her operation yesterday and managed to get to the top of Kinver Edge. She also dragged my husband and myself at top speed around the route that should of taken 45mins and we did it in 30mins. Not bad for a woof woof with three legs!

The chosen poem is by Ogden Nash. Frederic Ogden Nash (1902-1971) was an American poet known for his unconventional rhyming schemes. He wrote over 500 pieces in his lifetime.

“The Dog”

The Truth I do not stretch or shove

When I state that the dog is full of love.

I’ve also found, by actual test,

A wet dog is the lovingest.

Ogden Nash

Happy Friday Everyone!

Friday Poetry

Happy Friday!

I am very sorry this post is a little late today, I’ve fallen rather behind with my blogging and reading but plan on getting back on form in June.

With all the lovely sunshine we have been having I decided on an appropriate poem to celebrate and what better poet to choose but the longest serving Poet Laureate in history. Can you guess who it is? He served as Poet Laureate from 1850 to his death in 1892. He was also a favourite poet of Queen Victoria, who found his poems soothing after the death of her husband Prince Albert.

Lets see if you can work out who it is by the end of the poem.

The Throstle

‘Summer is coming, summer is coming.

I know it, I know it, I know it.

Light again, leaf again, life again, love again,’

Yes, my wild little Poet.

Sing the new year in under the blue.

Last year you sang it as gladly.

‘New, new, new, new! Is it then so new

That you should carol so madly?

‘Love again, song again, nest again, young again,’

Never a prophet so crazy!

And hardly a daisy as yet, little friend,

See, there is hardly a daisy.

‘Here again, here, here, here, happy year!’

O warble unchidden, unbidden!

Summer is coming, is coming, my dear,

And all the winters are hidden.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Hope you managed to work it out.

Have a good weekend everyone and I hope you all have some wonderful sunshine to sit and read in.

Photo was taken at a recent day out at Daniel’s Mill Bridgnorth.

Friday Poetry

Today’s chosen poem was chosen because I have always been interested in the mystery of Mary Celeste. The Mary Celeste washed up on the shores of the Azores islands on the 5th December 1872, the crew were nowhere to be seen, the cargo was undisturbed and the ship was completely unscathed and still able to sail. The mystery still remains unsolved.

Mary Celeste

Only the wind sings
in the riggings,
the hull creaks a lullaby;
a sail lifts gently
like a message
pinned to a vacant sky.
The wheel turns
over bare decks,
shirts flap on a line;
only the song of the lapping waves
beats steady time…

First mate,
off-duty from
the long dawn watch, begins
a letter to his wife, daydreams
of home.

The Captain’s wife is late;
the child did not sleep
and breakfast has passed…
She, too, is missing home;
sits down at last to eat,
but can’t quite force
the porridge down.
She swallows hard,
slices the top from her egg.

The second mate
is happy
A four-hour sleep,
full stomach
and a quiet sea
are all he craves

The child now sleeps, at last,
head firmly pressed into her pillow
in a deep sea-dream.

Then why are the gulls wheeling
like vultures in the sky?
Why was the child snatched
from her sleep? What drew
the Captain’s cry?

Only the wind replies
in the rigging,
and the hull creaks and sighs,
a sail spells out its message
over silent skies.
The wheel still turns
over bare decks,
shirts blow on the line;
the siren-song of lapping waves
still echoes over time.

Judith Nicholls

Happy Friday! I hope everyone has a fab weekend planned.

Friday Poetry

Happy Friday Everyone!

I hope everyone has bookish plans for the weekend.

My chosen poem for this week celebrates books, so it is a brilliant poem obviously.

There Is No Frigate Like A Book

There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away,
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Travel may the poorest take
Without offence of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human soul.

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson 1830-1886 and was an American poet. While Dickinson was a prolific poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly 1800 poems were published during her lifetime. The poems published then, were usually edited significantly to fit conventional poetic rules. Her poems were unique for her era.