Your favourite poem?

triseke · 01-12-2011 09:21AM

Another poster beat me to it.

One of my favourite poems has to be "Funeral Blues" by W.H. Auden.

"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good."

Really does describe grief better than anything I have ever read, especially the third verse.

Junco Partner · 01-12-2011 09:41AM

The second coming by yeats heavy heavy stuff

anything wilfred owen wrote

and this by mark lamarr of never mind the buzzcocks fame
"too fast to live, too young to work"

I'm the James Dean of the dole queue
You've got to admire my cheek -
Trying to work out how to live fast and die young
On seventeen-fifty a week.
A legend in my own cubicle
All alone, never one of the mob
I'm the James Dean of the dole queue
A rebel without a job.

foxyboxer · 01-12-2011 09:45AM

Kinsella's Mirror in February

You'll reach a point in your life where it becomes poignant i.e. can't stop getting old

The day dawns, with scent of must and rain,
Of opened soil, dark trees, dry bedroom air.
Under the fading lamp, half dressed -- my brain
Idling on some compulsive fantasy --
I towel my shaven jaw and stop, and stare,
Riveted by a dark exhausted eye,
A dry downturning mouth.
It seems again that it is time to learn,
In this untiring, crumbling place of growth
To which, for the time being, I return.
Now plainly in the mirror of my soul
I read that I have looked my last on youth
And little more; for they are not made whole
That reach the age of Christ.

Below my window the wakening trees,
Hacked clean for better bearing, stand defaced
Suffering their brute necessities;
And how should the flesh not quail, that span for span
Is mutilated more? In slow distaste
I fold my towel with what grace I can,
Not young, and not renewable, but man.

leonidas83 · 01-12-2011 09:46AM

Dylan Thomas - And Death shall have no Dominion

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion

Gr8 gr8 poem

Capt'n Midnight · 01-12-2011 09:56AM

chucken1 wrote: »

Mine is The Raven
..and Im not going to quote it

http://www.heise.de/ix/raven/Literature/Lore/TheRaven.html

Here's some Nostalgia

Abort, Retry, Ignore

Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary,
System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bed sheets, still I sat there doing spreadsheets.
Having reached the bottom line I took a floppy from the drawer,
I then invoked the SAVE command and waited for the disk to store,
Only this and nothing more.

Deep into the monitor peering, long I sat there wond'ring, fearing,
Doubting, while the disk kept churning, turning yet to churn some more.
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token.
"Save!" I said, "You cursed mother! Save my data from before!"
One thing did the phosphors answer, only this and nothing more,
Just, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

Was this some occult illusion, some maniacal intrusion?
These were choices undesired, ones I'd never faced before.
Carefully I weighed the choices as the disk made impish noises.
The cursor flashed, insistent, waiting, baiting me to type some more.
Clearly I must press a key, choosing one and nothing more,
From "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

With fingers pale and trembling, slowly toward the keyboard bending,
Longing for a happy ending, hoping all would be restored,
Praying for some guarantee, timidly, I pressed a key.
But on the screen there still persisted words appearing as before.
Ghastly grim they blinked and taunted, haunted, as my patience wore,
Saying "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

I tried to catch the chips off guard, and pressed again, but twice as hard.
I pleaded with the cursed machine: I begged and cried and then I swore.
Now in mighty desperation, trying random combinations,
Still there came the incantation, just as senseless as before.
Cursor blinking, angrily winking, blinking nonsense as before.
Reading, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

There I sat, distraught, exhausted, by my own machine accosted.
Getting up I turned away and paced across the office floor.
And then I saw a dreadful sight: a lightning bolt cut through the night.
A gasp of horror overtook me, shook me to my very core.
The lightning zapped my previous data, lost and gone forevermore.
Not even, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

To this day I do not know the place to which lost data go.
What demonic nether world us wrought where lost data will be stored,
Beyond the reach of mortal souls, beyond the ether, into black holes?
But sure as there's C, Pascal, Lotus, Ashton-Tate and more,
You will one day be left to wander, lost on some Plutonian shore,
Pleading, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

But sure as there's C, Pascal, Lotus, Ashton-Tate

Feisar · 01-12-2011 10:13AM

Bingen on the Rhine

A SOLDIER of the Legion lay dying in Algiers,
There was a lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's tears;
But a comrade stood beside him, while his lifeblood ebbed away,
And bent with pitying glances, to hear what he might say.
The dying soldier faltered, and he took that comrade's hand,
And he said, "I nevermore shall see my own, my native land:
Take a message, and a token, to some distant friends of mine,
For I was born at Bingen, -- at Bingen on the Rhine.
"Tell my brothers and companions, when they meet and crowd around,
To hear my mournful story, in the pleasant vineyard ground,
That we fought the battle bravely, and when the day was done,
Full many a corpse lay ghastly pale beneath the setting sun;
And, mid the dead and dying, were some grown old in wars, --
The death-wound on their gallant breasts, the last of many scars;
And some were young, and suddenly beheld life's morn decline, --
And one had come from Bingen, -- fair Bingen on the Rhine.
"Tell my mother that her other son shall comfort her old age;
For I was still a truant bird, that thought his home a cage.
For my father was a soldier, and even as a child
My heart leaped forth to hear him tell of struggles fierce and wild;
And when he died, and left us to divide his scanty hoard,
I let them take whate'er they would, -- but kept my father's sword;
And with boyish love I hung it where the bright light used to shine
On the cottage wall at Bingen, -- calm Bingen on the Rhine.
"Tell my sister not to weep for me, and sob with drooping head,
When the troops come marching home again with glad and gallant tread,
But to look upon them proudly, with a calm and steadfast eye,
For her brother was a soldier too, and not afraid to die;
And if a comrade seek her love, I ask her in my name
To listen to him kindly, without regret or shame,
And to hang the old sword in its place (my father's sword and mine)
For the honor of old Bingen, -- dear Bingen on the Rhine.
"There's another, -- not a sister: in the happy days gone by
You'd have known her by the merriment that sparkled in her eye;
Too innocent for coquetry, -- too fond for idle scorning, --
O friend! I fear the lightest heart makes sometimes heaviest mourning!
Tell her the last night of my life (for, ere the moon be risen,
My body will be out of pain, my soul be out of prison), --
I dreamed I stood with her, and saw the yellow sunlight shine
On the vine-clad hills of Bingen, -- fair Bingen on the Rhine.
"I saw the blue Rhine sweep along, -- I heard, or seemed to hear,
The German songs we used to sing, in chorus sweet and clear;
And down the pleasant river, and up the slanting hill,
The echoing chorus sounded, through the evening calm and still;
And her glad blue eyes were on me, as we passed, with friendly talk,
Down many a path beloved of yore, and well-remembered walk!
And her little hand lay lightly, confidingly, in mine, --
But we'll meet no more at Bingen, -- loved Bingen on the Rhine."
His trembling voice grew faint and hoarse, -- his grasp was childish weak, --
His eyes put on a dying look, -- he sighed, and ceased to speak;
His comrade bent to lift him, but the spark of life had fled, --
The soldier of the Legion in a foreign land is dead;
And the soft moon rose up slowly, and calmly she looked down
On the red sand of the battle-field, with bloody corses strown;
Yet calmly on that dreadful scene her pale light seemed to shine,
As it shone on distant Bingen, -- fair Bingen on the Rhine.

Caroline Norton

jackie1974 · 01-12-2011 10:48AM

Funeral Blues and Midterm Break stand out for the sheer grief in the words.

I love 'Stopping by Woods on a snowy evening' Robert Frost

And this is apt for the weather, I love it

Winter

(From "Love's Labour's Lost")

When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,

When blood is nipp’d and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit;Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marion’s nose looks red and raw,

When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit;Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

Amirani · 01-12-2011 11:12AM

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 honeybee,
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.

W.B. Yeats

yeppydeppy · 01-12-2011 11:15AM

Warning

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
Jenny Joseph

sbsquarepants · 01-12-2011 11:17AM

Favourite is probably A dream within a dream, by Edgar Allen Poe. I also love, She walks in beauty by Byron, and If by Kipling - he makes exceedingly good mince pies too:D

Edit just remembered - Paradise Lost - A bit on the long side, but i loved the passages from it i done in school

keano_afc · 01-12-2011 11:17AM

September 1913:

What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone;
For men were born to pray and save;
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Yet they were of a different kind,
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman's rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Yet could we turn the years again,
And call those exiles as they were
In all their loneliness and pain,
You'd cry `Some woman's yellow hair
Has maddened every mother's son':
They weighed so lightly what they gave.
But let them be, they're dead and gone,
They're with O'Leary in the grave.

Still appropriate nearly 100 years later.

edgecutter · 01-12-2011 11:20AM

The Earl of Rochester's 'A Ramble in St. James's Park'. I can't post the poem due to its content, but Rochester speaks from the heart and also seems like a lad.

Mongarra · 01-12-2011 11:23AM

I haven't a clue who wrote it, or when, but I learned it in the back of a taxi one night about 40 years ago when we were all a little under the weather and I still use it as my party piece.

The dogs they had a meeting, they came from near and far,
Some came by horse-drawn vehicle and some by motor car.
On their way into the meeting, in a hall they had to book,
Each dog he took his ars*hole off and hung it on a hook.
Hardly were they seated, every mother's son and sire
When a little b*stard of a pup began to shout out "Fire".
So out they all rushed in a bunch, they had not time to look,
Each dog he grabbed at random an ars*hole from a hook.
They got their ars*holes all mixed up, this made them very sore
To have to wear an ars*hole that they never wore before.
And that's the reason why you'll see, when walking down the street,
Each dog he'll stop and swap a smell with every dog he meets,
And that's the reason why a dog will leave a grand fat bone
And go and smell an ars*hole in the hope he'll find his own.:)

Precious flower · 01-12-2011 11:42AM

Loved Robert Frost in school

After Apple-Picking
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

Eavan Boland
Child Of Our Time
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Yesterday I knew no lullaby
But you have taught me overnight to order
This song, which takes from your final cry
Its tune, from your unreasoned end its reason;
Its rhythm from the discord of your murder,
Its motive from the fact you cannot listen.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]
[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]We who should have known how to instruct
With rhymes for your waking, rhythms for your sleep
Names for the animals you took to bed,
Tales to distract, legends to protect,
Later an idiom for you to keep
And living, learn, must learn from you, dead.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]
[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]To make our broken images rebuild
Themselves around your limbs, your broken
Image, find for your sake whose life our idle
Talk has cost, a new language. Child
Of our time, our times have robbed your cradle.
Sleep in a world your final sleep has woken.[/FONT]

ronano · 01-12-2011 11:51AM

Da Shins Kelly wrote: »

'The Second Coming' by Yeats.

This!

don't like yeats the person but damn the poet was exceptional

BrensBenz · 01-12-2011 12:03PM

The Moon by Robert Louis Stevenson

The moon has a face like the clock in the hall;
She shines on thieves on the garden wall,
On streets and fields and harbour quays,
And birdies asleep in the forks of the trees.

The squalling cat and the squeaking mouse,
The howling dog by the door of the house,
The bat that lies in bed at noon,
All love to be out by the light of the moon.

But all of the things that belong to the day
Cuddle to sleep to be out of her way;
And flowers and children close their eyes
Till up in the morning the sun shall arise.

A favourite, from primary school, but only because our teacher recited it while making appropriate facial expressions and hand movements, e.g. his eyes darted left and right through the phrase “....thieves on a garden wall” and didn’t use the universal, mandatory and God-awful poetry-reading drone that still makes me want to go somewhere else when |I hear it. He brought the words to life and they’ve stayed with me for fifty years.
Also, you could do a lot worse that have a read of these extracts of lyrics from a certain Robert Zimmerman (aka Bob Dylan). You know, that lad can turn a phrase!

….
Though I know that evenin's empire has returned into sand
Vanished from my hand,
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping.
My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet,
I have no one to meet,
And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming.
….
Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin' ship,
My senses have been stripped,
My hands can't feel to grip,
My toes too numb to step,
Wait only for my boot heels to be wanderin',

I'm ready to go anywhere,
I'm ready for to fade,
Into my own parade,
Cast your dancing spell my way,
I promise to go under it.
….
Though you might hear laughin', spinnin' swingin' madly across the sun,
It's not aimed at anyone,
It's just escapin' on the run,
And but for the sky there are no fences facin',
And if you hear vague traces of skippin' reels of rhyme,
To your tambourine in time,
It's just a ragged clown behind,
I wouldn't pay it any mind,
It's just a shadow you're seein' that he's chasing.

….
Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time,
Far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees,
Out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea,
Circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate,
Driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.

Hey! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

endabob1 · 01-12-2011 12:06PM

Memory of my Father

Every old man I see
Reminds me of my father
When he had fallen in love with death
One time when sheaves were gathered.

That man I saw in Gardner Street
Stumbled on the kerb was one,
He stared at me half-eyed,
I might have been his son.

And I remember the musician
Faltering over his fiddle
In Bayswater, London,
He too set me the riddle.

Every old man I see
In October-coloured weather
Seems to say to me:
"I was once your father."

Patrick Kavanagh

Truley · 01-12-2011 12:11PM

Hiawatha's Childhood by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It's just one chapter of an epic poem, full chapter can be found here

And the West-Wind came at evening,
Walking lightly o'er the prairie,
Whispering to the leaves and blossoms,
Bending low the flowers and grasses,
Found the beautiful Wenonah,
Lying there among the lilies,
Wooed her with his words of sweetness,
Wooed her with his soft caresses,
Till she bore a son in sorrow,
Bore a son of love and sorrow.

Thus was born my Hiawatha,
Thus was born the child of wonder;
But the daughter of Nokomis,
Hiawatha's gentle mother,
In her anguish died deserted
By the West-Wind, false and faithless,
By the heartless Mudjekeewis.

For her daughter long and loudly
Wailed and wept the sad Nokomis;
"O that I were dead!" she murmured,
"O that I were dead, as thou art!
No more work, and no more weeping,
Wahonowin! Wahonowin!"

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.

There the wrinkled old Nokomis
Nursed the little Hiawatha,
Rocked him in his linden cradle,
Bedded soft in moss and rushes,
Safely bound with reindeer sinews;
Stilled his fretful wail by saying,
"Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!"
Lulled him into slumber, singing,
"Ewa-yea! my little owlet!
Who is this, that lights the wigwam?
With his great eyes lights the wigwam?
Ewa-yea! my little owlet!"

foxyboxer · 01-12-2011 12:13PM

Me, We.

- Muhammed Ali

Formosa · 01-12-2011 12:19PM

If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath
I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
You'd see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
Reading the Roll of Honour. "Poor young chap,"
I'd say — "I used to know his father well;
Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap."
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I'd toddle safely home and die — in bed.

--Kaiser-- · 01-12-2011 12:22PM

Just about every W.B. Yeats poem

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

And 'The Raven' by Poe

stovelid · 01-12-2011 12:26PM

The Bronx?

No thonx.

- Ogden Nash

OldGoat · 01-12-2011 12:28PM

Poem for the lonely by Spike Milligan.

Hello.

OldGoat · 01-12-2011 12:30PM

Poem for the lonely and the hard of hearing by Spike Milligan.

HELLO!

SEPT 23 1989 · 01-12-2011 12:31PM

For What Died the Sons of Róisín, was it fame
For What Died the Sons of Róisín, was it fame
For what flowed Irelands blood in rivers,
That began when Brian chased the Dane,
And did not cease nor has not ceased,
With the brave sons of ´16,
For what died the sons of Róisín, was it fame
For What Died the Sons of Róisín, was it greed
For What Died the Sons of Róisín, was it greed
Was it greed that drove Wolfe Tone to a paupers death in a cell of cold wet stone?
Will German, French or Dutch inscribe the epitaph of Emmet?
When we have sold enough of Ireland to be but strangers in it.
For What Died the Sons of Róisín, was it greed

To whom do we owe our allegiance today
To whom do we owe our allegiance today
To those brave men who fought and died that Róisín live again with pride?
Her sons at home to work and sing,
Her youth to dance and make her valleys ring,
Or the faceless men who for Mark and Dollar,
Betray her to the highest bidder,
To whom do we owe our allegiance today

For what suffer our patriots today
For what suffer our patriots today
They have a language problem, so they say,
How to write "No Trespass" must grieve their heart full sore,
We got rid of one strange language now we are faced with many, many more,
For what suffer our patriots today

Deus Ex Machina · 01-12-2011 12:36PM

The Highway Man by Alfred Noyes.

Deedsie · 01-12-2011 12:36PM

William Ernest Henley.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

stovelid · 01-12-2011 12:39PM

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

Was it greed that drove Wolfe Tone to a paupers death in a cell of cold wet stone?

Closing his account was one thing but that's just taking the martyrdom a little too far.

SEPT 23 1989 · 01-12-2011 12:48PM

stovelid wrote: »

Closing his account was one thing but that's just taking the martyrdom a little too far.

:pac:

raveni · 01-12-2011 12:52PM

Out, Out-

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside them in her apron
To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart—
He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

Robert Frost

Your favourite poem?

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