Poetry Friday

Friday, they do say, is Poets' Day.

So.

Although I've never been a hot shot in the poetry stakes, I thought I should at least do a bit of research to get myself up to speed. A bit of initial groundwork turned up this history of poetry.

I don't know much about poetry, but I know what I like, to coin a phrase. And I quite liked that.

Warning. If you actually do like poetry, I would nae click on that link if I were ye (as Robbie Burns might sae). Ye might find it a wee bit...disappointin'.

Move along poetry lovers, nothing to see here.

Time for a wee bat a' pooetry

A Red, Red Rose

O MY Luve 's like a red, red rose
That 's newly sprung in June:
O my Luve 's like the melodie
That's sweetly play'd in tune!

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry:

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun;
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only Luve,
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile.


Robert Burns. 1759–1796. No 503 in The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900. (Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919.)

Aye! But he were nae English! He were Scots!

Ring out the old

Ring Out, Wild Bells

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson

(Thanks, Nicole)

Kahlil Gibran, not.

A Moody friend, noting perhaps that too many poems have appeared on this blog recently, sent me this piece...

Expansive and yet vacuous is the prose of Kahlil Gibran,
And weary grows the mind doomed to read it.
The hours of my penance lengthen,
The penance established for me by the editor of this magazine,
And those hours may be numbered as the sands of the desert.
And for each of them Kahlil Gibran has prepared
Another ornamental phrase,
Another faux-Biblical cadence,
Another affirmation proverbial in its intent
But alas! lacking the moral substance,
The peasant shrewdness, of the true proverb.

O Book, O Collected Works of Kahlil Gibran ,
Published by Everyman's Library on a dark day,
I lift you from the Earth to which I recently flung you
When my wrath grew too mighty for me,
I lift you from the Earth,
Noticing once more your annoying heft,
And thanking God-though such thanks are sinful-
That Kahlil Gibran died in New York in 1931
At the age of forty-eight,
So that he could write no more words,
So that this Book would not be yet larger than it is.

My Moody friend tells me it was written by Alan Jacobs of Wheaton College.

Pushkin

I loved you – and my love, I think, was stronger
Than to be quite extinct within me yet;
But let it not distress you any longer;
I would not have you feel the least regret.
I loved you bare of hope and of expression,
By turns with jealousy and shyness sore;
I loved you with such purity, such passion
As may God grant you to be loved once more.

-Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin

(thanks to sandra j)

ah! bright wings.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

—Gerard Manley Hopkins, God's Grandeur