About that Post on a collection of Poetry in English over 700 years - these are a few cut-out scraps that particularly caught my eye - and I should say "at the time", because poetry is such a “mood” thing. I thought - no, felt - they were great ways to say something about this whole bizzo called Life, with all of its myriad faces of weirdness and whimsy, clarity and confusion. You could do worse then tracking down the whole piece they came from….
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Flanagan got up on a Saturday morning
Pulled on his pants while the coffee was warming
He didn't remember the doctor's warning
“Your heart's too big Mr Flanagan”
At noon he was drinking in the lounge bar corner
With a Sergeant of police and a racehorse owner
When the Angel of death looked over his shoulder
“Could you spare a moment Flanagan?”
from “Lament for Barney Flanagan”
James K Baxter - 1954 New Zealand
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I can hear you
making small holes in the silence
from “Rain”
Hone Tuwhare - 1970 New Zealand
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Women reminded him of lilies and roses
Me, they remind rather of blood and soap
Armed with a warm rag assaulting noses
Ears, neck, mouth, and all the secret places
from “Thoughts After Ruskin”
Elma Mitchell - 1976 Scotland
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Do not go gentle into that good night
Old age should burn and rave at close of day
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light
from “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good
Night”
Dylan Thomas - 1951 Wales
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Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green
The night above the dingle starry
Time let me head hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes
from “Fernhill”
Dylan Thomas - 1945 Wales
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When Tom and Elizabeth took the farm
The bracken made their bed
And Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
the Magpies said
from “The Magpies”
Dennis Glover - New Zealand 1941
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I went out to the hazel wood
Because a fire was in my head
And cut and peeled a hazel wand
And hooked a berry to a thread
And when white moths were on the wing
And moth-like stars were flickering out
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout
from “The Song of Wandering Aengus”
W.B. Yeats - Ireland 1899
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The roving breezes come and go, the reed beds sweep and sway
The sleepy river murmurs low, and loiters on its way
It is the land of lots o’ time, along the Castlereagh
from “The Travelling Post Office”
A.B. Paterson – Australia 1895
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T’was brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre anfd gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogoves
And the mome wraths outgrabe
from “Jabberwocky”
Lewis Carroll - 1872 England
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Tiger tiger burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry
from "The Tyger"
William Blake - 1794 England
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....and one of my all time favs, in full....
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said - "Two vast and trunkless legs of
stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand
Half sunk a shattered visage lies whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well
those passions read
Which yet survive stamped on these lifeless things
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
On the pedestal these words appear
My name is Ozymandias king of kings
Look at my works ye mighty and despair."
Nothing beside remains round the decay
Of that colossal wreck and boundless and bare
The lone and level
sands stretch far away
From "Ozymandias"
Percy Bysshe Shelley - 1819 England
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