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Poem of the Day

Casted_Runes
Mr Karswell
Fire of Insight
England 5awards
Joined 4th Oct 2021
Forum Posts: 386

Gods Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1884 to 1889)

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

 It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
 It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed.
 Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
 And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
 And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell:  the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.


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.

Casted_Runes
Mr Karswell
Fire of Insight
England 5awards
Joined 4th Oct 2021
Forum Posts: 386

Voltaire at Ferney by WH Auden (1907 to 1973)

Perfectly happy now, he looked at his estate.

An exile making watches glanced up as he passed
And went on working; where a hospital was rising fast,
A joiner touched his cap; an agent came to tell
Some of the trees he'd planted were progressing well.

The white alps glittered.
It was summer.
He was very great.


Far off in Paris where his enemies
Whsipered that he was wicked, in an upright chair
A blind old woman longed for death and letters.
He would write,
"Nothing is better than life.
" But was it? Yes, the fight
Against the false and the unfair
Was always worth it.
So was gardening.
Civilize.


Cajoling, scolding, screaming, cleverest of them all,
He'd had the other children in a holy war
Against the infamous grown-ups; and, like a child, been sly
And humble, when there was occassion for
The two-faced answer or the plain protective lie,
But, patient like a peasant, waited for their fall.


And never doubted, like D'Alembert, he would win:
Only Pascal was a great enemy, the rest
Were rats already poisoned; there was much, though, to be done,
And only himself to count upon.

Dear Diderot was dull but did his best;
Rousseau, he'd always known, would blubber and give in.


Night fell and made him think of women: Lust
Was one of the great teachers; Pascal was a fool.

How Emilie had loved astronomy and bed;
Pimpette had loved him too, like scandal; he was glad.

He'd done his share of weeping for Jerusalem: As a rule,
It was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.


Yet, like a sentinel, he could not sleep.
The night was full of wrong,
Earthquakes and executions: soon he would be dead,
And still all over Europe stood the horrible nurses
Itching to boil their children.
Only his verses
Perhaps could stop them: He must go on working: Overhead,
The uncomplaining stars composed their lucid song.

Casted_Runes
Mr Karswell
Fire of Insight
England 5awards
Joined 4th Oct 2021
Forum Posts: 386

untitled by Emily Dickinson (1830 to 1886)

She rose to His Requirement—dropt
The Playthings of Her Life
To take the honorable Work
Of Woman, and of Wife—

If ought She missed in Her new Day,
Of Amplitude, or Awe—
Or first Prospective—Or the Gold
In using, wear away,

It lay unmentioned—as the Sea
Develop Pearl, and Weed,
But only to Himself—be known
The Fathoms they abide—

Casted_Runes
Mr Karswell
Fire of Insight
England 5awards
Joined 4th Oct 2021
Forum Posts: 386

The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus (1849 to 1887)

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles.
 From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips.
 "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Casted_Runes
Mr Karswell
Fire of Insight
England 5awards
Joined 4th Oct 2021
Forum Posts: 386

Sonnet 29 by William Shakespeare (1564 to 1616)

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee—and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
  For thy sweet love rememb'red such wealth brings
  That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Casted_Runes
Mr Karswell
Fire of Insight
England 5awards
Joined 4th Oct 2021
Forum Posts: 386

The Last Leaf by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 to 1894)

I saw him once before,
As he passed by the door,
And again
The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o'er the ground
With his cane.

They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.

But now he walks the streets,
And looks at all he meets
Sad and wan,
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
"They are gone."

The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.

My grandmamma has said—
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago—
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow;

But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff,
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.

I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!

And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.

Casted_Runes
Mr Karswell
Fire of Insight
England 5awards
Joined 4th Oct 2021
Forum Posts: 386

Frost at Midnight by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 to 1834)

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind.
The owlet's cry
Came loud---and hark, again! loud as before.

The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.

`Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness.
Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.

Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.


But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
>From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersed vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shall learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.

But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.

Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.


Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

Casted_Runes
Mr Karswell
Fire of Insight
England 5awards
Joined 4th Oct 2021
Forum Posts: 386

Work Without Hope by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 to 1834)

All Nature seems at work.
Slugs leave their lair --
The bees are stirring -- birds are on the wing --
And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.


Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,
Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.

Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,
For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!
With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll:
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?
Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And Hope without an object cannot live.

Casted_Runes
Mr Karswell
Fire of Insight
England 5awards
Joined 4th Oct 2021
Forum Posts: 386

Death Be Not Proud by John Donne (1572 to 1631)

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Casted_Runes
Mr Karswell
Fire of Insight
England 5awards
Joined 4th Oct 2021
Forum Posts: 386

Maidenhair by Michael Field, pseudonym of Katherine Harris Bradley (1846 to 1914) and Edith Emma Cooper (1862 to 1913)

Plato of the clear, dreaming eye and brave
Imaginings, conceived, withdrawn from light,
The hollow of man's heart even as a cave.

With century-slow dropping stalactite
My heart was a dripping tedious in despair.

But yesterday, awhile before I slept:
I wake to find it live with maidenhair
And mosses to the spiky pendants crept.

Great prodigies there are--Johovah's flood
Widening the margin of the Red Sea shore,--
Great marvel when the moon is turned to blood
It is to mortals, yet I marvel more
At the soft rifts, the pushings at my heart,
That lift the great stones of its rock apart.

Casted_Runes
Mr Karswell
Fire of Insight
England 5awards
Joined 4th Oct 2021
Forum Posts: 386

On the Welsh Language by Katherine Philips (1631/2 to 1664)

If honor to an ancient name be due,
Or riches challenge it for one that's new,
The British language claims in either sense
Both for its age, and for its opulence.

But all great things must be from us removed,
To be with higher reverence beloved.

So landskips which in prospects distant lie,
With greater wonder draw the pleasèd eye.

Is not great Troy to one dark ruin hurled?
Once the fam'd scene of all the fighting world.

Where's Athens now, to whom Rome learning owes,
And the safe laurels that adorned her brows?
A strange reverse of fate she did endure,
Never once greater, than she's now obscure.

Even Rome her self can but some footsteps show
Of Scipio's times, or those of Cicero.

And as the Roman and the Grecian state,
The British fell, the spoil of time and fate.

But though the language hath the beauty lost,
Yet she has still some great remains to boast,
For 'twas in that, the sacred bards of old,
In deathless numbers did their thoughts unfold.

In groves, by rivers, and on fertile plains,
They civilized and taught the listening swains;
Whilst with high raptures, and as great success,
Virtue they clothed in music's charming dress.

This Merlin spoke, who in his gloomy cave,
Even Destiny her self seemed to enslave.

For to his sight the future time was known,
Much better than to others is their own;
And with such state, predictions from him fell,
As if he did decree, and not foretell.

This spoke King Arthur, who, if fame be true,
Could have compelled mankind to speak it too.

In this one Boadicca valor taught,
And spoke more nobly than her soldiers fought:
Tell me what hero could be more than she,
Who fell at once for fame and liberty?
Nor could a greater sacrifice belong,
Or to her children's, or her country's wrong.

This spoke Caractacus, who was so brave,
That to the Roman fortune check he gave:
And when their yoke he could decline no more,
He it so decently and nobly wore,
That Rome her self with blushes did believe,
A Britain would the law of honor give;
And hastily his chains away she threw,
Lest her own captive else should her subdue.

Casted_Runes
Mr Karswell
Fire of Insight
England 5awards
Joined 4th Oct 2021
Forum Posts: 386

The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.


And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.


I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Casted_Runes
Mr Karswell
Fire of Insight
England 5awards
Joined 4th Oct 2021
Forum Posts: 386

Grotto of bronze by Alice Paalen

Grotto of bronze
amplifier of tempests
of the two hemispheres
where shadows cannot die

the stone owl's head
keeps watch
over the town of the sailors
Limbos of unborn springs
of stifled loves
under false lovers coupled
false presences
false windows
to the walls of night
false virtue of the weak

our bones curling in fire
desert turned ash from waiting
where the madwoman with the mirror reigns

robert43041
Viking
Tyrant of Words
Canada 43awards
Joined 30th July 2020
Forum Posts: 918

Excellent choice.  Regards, Robert

poet Anonymous

A Child Ill. Betjeman

https://youtu.be/qyiO4ZuAiZc

Istanbul. Morrissey

https://youtu.be/5JokvILYzwI

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