A Poem A Day

[HogwldFLTR]

[yt]arerEqDZQPQ[/yt]

 

 

 

[brokenclay]

Wow, @HogwldFLTR, that's a blast from the past!

[brokenclay]

A little light Romanticism...

 

 

So We'll Go No More a Roving

by Lord Byron

 

So, we'll go no more a roving 

   So late into the night, 

Though the heart be still as loving, 

   And the moon be still as bright. 

 

For the sword outwears its sheath, 

   And the soul wears out the breast, 

And the heart must pause to breathe, 

   And love itself have rest. 

 

Though the night was made for loving, 

   And the day returns too soon, 

Yet we'll go no more a roving 

   By the light of the moon.

 

[HogwldFLTR]

On 3/4/2021 at 4:06 PM, brokenclay said:

Wow, @HogwldFLTR, that's a blast from the past!

 

For some reason it's become a bit of an obsession for me as of late. Seems I want to learn it and play and sing it. It's a beautiful sad song perhaps most commonly sung by Joan Baez. I came across the Chad Mitchell Trio doing it but screwed up the posting. So it goes. Interesting past members of the trio included Roger McGuin, John Denver, and Fred Hellerman (of The Weavers fame). I like the way music and poetry intersect as attested to Bob Dylan winning a Nobel Prize in Literature.

 

-Lee

[HogwldFLTR]

18 hours ago, brokenclay said:

A little light Romanticism...

 

 

So We'll Go No More a Roving

by Lord Byron

 

So, we'll go no more a roving 

   So late into the night, 

Though the heart be still as loving, 

   And the moon be still as bright. 

 

For the sword outwears its sheath, 

   And the soul wears out the breast, 

And the heart must pause to breathe, 

   And love itself have rest. 

 

Though the night was made for loving, 

   And the day returns too soon, 

Yet we'll go no more a roving 

   By the light of the moon.

 

 

Too much can I identify with that poem. Sounds like the plight of aging!!

 

-Lee

[brokenclay]

 

 

AN OLD CHINESE ZEN TRAVELLER OFTEN DEPICTED IN SUMI-E

CARRYING A LARGE DIM WHITE BAG LIKE A LIGHT CLOUD

by John Tagliabue

 

Hotei has his own hotel with him also his own mountain also his own sleep also his own Zen also his own weather and whether you like it or not also our own galaxy. Clouds may imitate him. Birds may migrate to him. Zen may repose in him. But nevertheless no concept or poem is his hotel. Hotei laughs at him-self-and-you.

 

 

[HogwldFLTR]

Too much to write out but thinking of song and verse this came to mind.

 

The Highwayman

BY ALFRED NOYES

PART ONE

 

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.   

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.   

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,   

And the highwayman came riding—

         Riding—riding—

The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

 

He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,   

A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin.

They fitted with never a wrinkle. His boots were up to the thigh.   

And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,

         His pistol butts a-twinkle,

His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

 

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard.

He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred.   

He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there   

But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,

         Bess, the landlord’s daughter,

Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

 

And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked

Where Tim the ostler listened. His face was white and peaked.   

His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,   

But he loved the landlord’s daughter,

         The landlord’s red-lipped daughter.

Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—

 

“One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I’m after a prize to-night,

But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;

Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,   

Then look for me by moonlight,

         Watch for me by moonlight,

I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.”

 

He rose upright in the stirrups. He scarce could reach her hand,

But she loosened her hair in the casement. His face burnt like a brand

As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;   

And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,

         (O, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)

Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the west.

 

PART TWO

 

He did not come in the dawning. He did not come at noon;   

And out of the tawny sunset, before the rise of the moon,   

When the road was a gypsy’s ribbon, looping the purple moor,   

A red-coat troop came marching—

         Marching—marching—

King George’s men came marching, up to the old inn-door.

 

They said no word to the landlord. They drank his ale instead.   

But they gagged his daughter, and bound her, to the foot of her narrow bed.

Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!   

There was death at every window;

         And hell at one dark window;

For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.

 

They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest.

They had bound a musket beside her, with the muzzle beneath her breast!

“Now, keep good watch!” and they kissed her. She heard the doomed man say—

Look for me by moonlight;

         Watch for me by moonlight;

I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!

 

She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!

She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!   

They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years

Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,

         Cold, on the stroke of midnight,

The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

 

The tip of one finger touched it. She strove no more for the rest.   

Up, she stood up to attention, with the muzzle beneath her breast.   

She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;   

For the road lay bare in the moonlight;

         Blank and bare in the moonlight;

And the blood of her veins, in the moonlight, throbbed to her love’s refrain.

 

Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horsehoofs ringing clear;   

Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?

Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,

The highwayman came riding—

         Riding—riding—

The red coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still.

 

Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!   

Nearer he came and nearer. Her face was like a light.

Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,   

Then her finger moved in the moonlight,

         Her musket shattered the moonlight,

Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.

 

He turned. He spurred to the west; he did not know who stood   

Bowed, with her head o’er the musket, drenched with her own blood!   

Not till the dawn he heard it, and his face grew grey to hear   

How Bess, the landlord’s daughter,

         The landlord’s black-eyed daughter,

Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

 

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,

With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high.

Blood red were his spurs in the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat;

When they shot him down on the highway,

         Down like a dog on the highway,

And he lay in his blood on the highway, with a bunch of lace at his throat.

 

.       .       .

 

And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,

When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,   

When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,   

A highwayman comes riding—

         Riding—riding—

A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

 

Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard.

He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred.   

He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there   

But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,

         Bess, the landlord’s daughter,

Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

 

n/a

Source: Collected Poems (1947)

 

 

 

 

[inkstainedruth]

Interesting.  I didn't know Phil Ochs did this as an actual song.  I've heard the (abridged) version by Loreena McKennitt.  And of course loved the original Alfred Noyes poem since childhood.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[HogwldFLTR]

2 hours ago, inkstainedruth said:

Interesting.  I didn't know Phil Ochs did this as an actual song.  I've heard the (abridged) version by Loreena McKennitt.  And of course loved the original Alfred Noyes poem since childhood.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

I'll have to look up the Loreena McKennitt version; I've loved the Phil Ochs version for about 50 years. Even his versoin is somewhat abridged.

 

-Lee

[BigBlot]

When the offspring were a bit put off by poems in school, I pointed out that lyrics are poems. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to help.

 

Abdul Abulbul Amir is both the longest poem and song I know by heart. It was perfect for annoying the family on long road trips.

 

I have to be careful with poems. One of my favorite is Dust by Sidney King Russell,  but don't think it's in public domain yet. Since poems and lyrics are so short, fair use is practically non-existent.

[inkstainedruth]

I had a class on Modern Poetry when I was in high school, and the teacher was clearly a Deadhead: she pointed out the Classical Greek myth references in some song the Grateful Dead did  (I just looked it up and it was the opening to "Weather Report Suite Part II: Let It Grow").

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

[brokenclay]

2 hours ago, BigBlot said:

I have to be careful with poems. One of my favorite is Dust by Sidney King Russell,  but don't think it's in public domain yet. Since poems and lyrics are so short, fair use is practically non-existent.

 

You make an uncomfortable point. Perhaps I should not be doing this at all.

[BigBlot]

7 hours ago, brokenclay said:

 

You make an uncomfortable point. Perhaps I should not be doing this at all.

There's plenty of good public domain works. Public domain varies from country to country. I think it would be safe to say the following is in public domain:

 

And let me the canikin clink, clink,

And let me the canikin clink.

A soldier's a man

A life's just a span

Why, then, let a soldier drink.

 

Which was penned by William Shakespeare for a work I've forgotten the title.

 

Or, perhaps appropriate for this unfortunate tune of events:

 

'Tis the last rose of summer

Left blooming alone

All her lovely companions

Are blooming alone

No flower of her kindred

No rosebud is nigh

To reflect back her blushes

Or give sigh to sigh.

 

That, of course, is from The Last Rose of Summer, a 19th Century poem which seems appropriately mournful at the moment. The last thing I intended was to shut this marvelous topic down. I was only hinting at a bit of caution. Song lyrics really brought it to mind, although those can get muddy. The Sloop John B is often associated with The Beach Boys but is far older. There is a hazily remembered instance when members of a popular band took exception to their song showing up in a TV commercial, only for them to learn they didn't own the rights to it anymore. But that band did raise a complaint, which is why I was mentioning the issue now. But I could quote Abdul Abulbul Amir. 

 

Really, I for one would hate to see no more poems for Poem of the Day. I was just urging a bit of caution. And there are plenty of wonderful poems that fall under public domain.

 

 

 

[HogwldFLTR]

Public domain or not, I'd hate to let such considerations affect the pursuit of raising concciousness of readers to great poetry and to point readers towards poets which are meaningful.

[A Smug Dill]

9 hours ago, brokenclay said:

You make an uncomfortable point. Perhaps I should not be doing this at all.

 

1 hour ago, BigBlot said:

There's plenty of good public domain works.

 

The copyright on the Three Hundred Tang Poems has long expired, 😏 and I've never heard of anyone worrying about using their contents in any context or for any purpose outside than plagiarism. I just found my dad's >40-year-old copy of one edition of the compilation among his things the other day, actually, and might use some of those poems for writing practice.

 

24 minutes ago, HogwldFLTR said:

Public domain or not, I'd hate to let such considerations affect the pursuit of raising concciousness of readers to great poetry and to point readers towards poets which are meaningful.

 

Hate those rules as you may, but in a society where the same set of rules bind everyone, one private party's legitimate rights trump the potential benefit to any other party or group that may result from undermining those rights and breaking the rules. The fact that so many people feel their personal values or causes ought to take priority and free them from the ‘artificial’ strictures of laws and non-like-minded folks' rights is the reason why we end up with so much conflict, so many lawsuits and so many lawyers in the Western world.

 

By all means, point the interested readers to the poets that are meaningful, and let them make the effort to locate and access the material on their own in order to benefit from ‘consuming’ or being exposed to it. We live in an information age, and retrieving content from authorised information channels and libraries — without necessarily making it more convenient or cheap for the individual — has never been easier. If, in their judgment, the potential benefit from finding and reading those poems are not likely to be worth making the initial investment, then so be it.

[brokenclay]

I'm sort of amazed that I hadn't found this poem earlier. This doesn't describe anyone here, does it?

 

 

Cacoëthes Scribendi

by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

 

If all the trees in all the woods were men; 

And each and every blade of grass a pen; 

If every leaf on every shrub and tree 

Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea 

Were changed to ink, and all earth's living tribes 

Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, 

And for ten thousand ages, day and night, 

The human race should write, and write, and write, 

Till all the pens and paper were used up, 

And the huge inkstand was an empty cup, 

Still would the scribblers clustered round its brink 

Call for more pens, more paper, and more ink. 

[yubaprof]

On 3/6/2021 at 8:28 PM, brokenclay said:

 

You make an uncomfortable point. Perhaps I should not be doing this at all.

No one on this forum, as far as I know, is engaging in a commercial activity or trying to gain profit so is there any loss to the original poet? Also, we are in different countries with different copyright laws. I doubt there is a problem, but I am not a lawyer and most importantly, I have never played one on TV.

[HogwldFLTR]

15 hours ago, yubaprof said:

No one on this forum, as far as I know, is engaging in a commercial activity or trying to gain profit so is there any loss to the original poet? Also, we are in different countries with different copyright laws. I doubt there is a problem, but I am not a lawyer and most importantly, I have never played one on TV.

It's funny as a friend used to work for ASCAP and was involved in enforcement. There was talk about trying to prevent music being played around campfires. It clearly is impossible to enforce. I really doubt we're going to be policed here. Here's a poem that is an old favorite by James Dickey. A bit too long to pen.

 

-Lee

 

The Sheep Child

BY JAMES L. DICKEY

Farm boys wild to couple

With anything      with soft-wooded trees   

With mounds of earth      mounds   

Of pinestraw      will keep themselves off   

Animals by legends of their own:   

In the hay-tunnel dark

And dung of barns, they will   

Say    I have heard tell

 

That in a museum in Atlanta   

Way back in a corner somewhere   

There’s this thing that’s only half   

Sheep      like a woolly baby

Pickled in alcohol      because   

Those things can’t live.      his eyes

Are open      but you can’t stand to look   

I heard from somebody who ...

 

But this is now almost all   

Gone. The boys have taken   

Their own true wives in the city,

The sheep are safe in the west hill

Pasture      but we who were born there

Still are not sure. Are we,

Because we remember, remembered

In the terrible dust of museums?

 

Merely with his eyes, the sheep-child may   

 

Be saying      saying

 

         I am here, in my father’s house.

         I who am half of your world, came deeply

         To my mother in the long grass

         Of the west pasture, where she stood like moonlight

         Listening for foxes. It was something like love

         From another world that seized her

         From behind, and she gave, not lifting her head   

         Out of dew, without ever looking, her best

         Self to that great need. Turned loose, she dipped her face   

         Farther into the chill of the earth, and in a sound   

         Of sobbing      of something stumbling

         Away, began, as she must do,

         To carry me. I woke, dying,

 

         In the summer sun of the hillside, with my eyes

         Far more than human. I saw for a blazing moment   

         The great grassy world from both sides,

         Man and beast in the round of their need,

         And the hill wind stirred in my wool,

         My hoof and my hand clasped each other,

         I ate my one meal

         Of milk, and died

         Staring. From dark grass I came straight

         

         To my father’s house, whose dust

         Whirls up in the halls for no reason

         When no one comes      piling deep in a hellish mild corner,   

         And, through my immortal waters,

         I meet the sun’s grains eye

         To eye, and they fail at my closet of glass.

         Dead, I am most surely living

         In the minds of farm boys: I am he who drives

         Them like wolves from the hound (bleep) and calf

         And from the chaste ewe in the wind.

         They go into woods      into bean fields      they go

         Deep into their known right hands. Dreaming of me,   

         They groan      they wait      they suffer

         Themselves, they marry, they raise their kind.

 

[brokenclay]

Goes out,

comes back—

the love life of a cat. 
 

by Kobayashi Issa 

translated by Robert Hass

[Madeline]

So beautiful! (and the paper! and the ink!)