Poetry, stories and strange odds and ends from the desk of a writer
Nothing Gold Can Stay1923 Nature’s first green is gold,Her hardest hue to hold.Her early leaf’s a flower;But only so an hour.Then leaf subsides to leaf.So Eden sank to grief,So dawn goes down to day.Nothing gold can stay Robert FrostBorn: 20 March 1874, California, USANationality: AmericanDied: 29 January 1963, Massachusetts, USA Robert Lee Frost was a … Continue reading Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost
Going Blind She sat just like the others at the table.But on second glance, she seemed to hold her cupa little differently as she picked it up.She smiled once. It was almost painful. And when they finished and it was time to standand slowly, as chance selected them, they leftand moved through many rooms (they … Continue reading Going Blind by Rainer Maria Rilke
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk....
On Linden when the sun was low, All bloodless lay the untrodden snow, And dark as winter was the flow Of Iser, rolling rapidly...
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' lazy at the sea, There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me; For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say: "Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay! " Come you back to Mandalay...
'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:...
That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold...
The dark wings of night enfolded the city upon which Nature had spread a pure white garment of snow; and men deserted the streets for their houses in search of warmth, while the north wind probed in contemplation of laying waste the gardens. There in the suburb stood an old hut heavily laden with snow and on the verge of falling. In a dark recess of that hovel was a poor bed in which a dying youth was lying, staring at the dim light of his oil lamp, made to flicker by the entering winds....
Time is endless in thy hands, my lord. There is none to count thy minutes. Days and nights pass and ages bloom and fade like flowers...
I don't believe in age. All old people carry in their eyes....
Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year...
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 hail and climb Golden in the heydays of his eyes
Love in a hut, with water and a crust, Is — Love, forgive us! — cinders, ashes, dust; Love in a palace is perhaps at last More grievous torment than a hermit's fast:— That is a doubtful tale from faery land, Hard for the non-elect to understand...
More than air More than water More than lips...
Shakespeare was a poet, playwright, and actor. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language. Referred to as ‘the Bard’ his works include 39 plays, 154 sonnets, narrative poems and other verses. His plays have been translated into all major languages...
‘What are the bugles blowin’ for?' said Files-on-Parade. ‘To turn you out, to turn you out,’ the Colour-Sergeant said. ‘What makes you look so white, so white?’ said Files-on-Parade. ‘I’m dreadin’ what I’ve got to watch,’ the Colour-Sergeant said. For they’re hangin’ Danny Deever, you can hear the Dead March play, The Regiment’s in ’ollow square—they’re hangin’ him to-day; They’ve taken of his buttons off an’ cut his stripes away, An’ they're hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin'...
I am the only being whose doom No tongue would ask, no eye would mourn; I never caused a thought of gloom, A smile of joy, since I was born...
Often, to amuse themselves, the men of a crew Catch albatrosses, those vast sea birds That indolently follow a ship...
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...
At the bottom of my garden There’s a hedgehog and a frog And a lot of creepy-crawlies...
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
McGough is a poet, performance poet, children’s author, playwright, and broadcaster. He presents BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Please, as well as performing his own poetry...
"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. (I think I made you up inside my head.)...
But now at thirty years my hair is grey— (I wonder what it will be like at forty ? I thought of a peruke the other day—)...
I had a little nut-tree, Nothing would it bear. I searched in all its branches...
I see before me now a traveling army halting, Below a fertile valley spread, with barns and the orchards of summer...
Ye Mariners of England That guard our native seas! Whose flag has braved, a thousand years...
Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June, Dawdling away their wat'ry noon) Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,....
American Detectives Never remove their hats When investigating murders...
Day after day, O lord of my life, shall I stand before thee face to face. With folded hands, O lord of all worlds...
Kitty caught a caterpillar, Kitty caught a snail, Kitty caught a turtle...
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has withered from the lake....
And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon Englands mountains green: And was the holy Lamb of God...
Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas Cos turkeys jus wanna hav fun Turkeys are cool, an turkeys are wicked...
I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd...
I have met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses...
Is anybody happier because you passed his way? Does anyone remember that you spoke to him today? This day is almost over, and its toiling time is through...
Prelutsky is a writer of children’s poetry. He served as the first US Children’s Poet Laureate from 2006-08. Born in New York, USA he was still a baby when a fire killed his family, he was saved by his Uncle Charlie. He claims to have hated poetry when he was younger and after his teacher discovered his musical talents and suggest he attended The High School of Music and Art...
I do not love you except because I love you; I go from loving to not loving you, From waiting to not waiting for you...
Baudelaire was a poet, essayist, art critic and a pioneer in the translation of Edgar Allan Poe. His most notable work, Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil), a book of lyric poetry in which the author expresses the changing nature of beauty in the mid -19th century Paris during a period of rapid industrialization...
Rossetti was a poet of various romantic, children’s, and devotional genres. Best known for the poems ‘Remember’ and ‘Goblin Market’ she also authored the Christmas carols ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ and ‘Love Came Down at Christmas.’..
Tagore was a polymath, poet, musician, and artist. He is credited with reshaping Bengali literature and Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1913 he was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. A Brahmo Hindu with ancestry in Burdwan and Jessore, he began writing poet at eight years old. At sixteen, Tagore released his first substantial poems under the pen-name of Bhānusiṃha. He had graduated to short stories and dramas using his real name by 1877. Tagore was a humanist, universalist, internationalist, and an anti-nationalist, denouncing the British raj and advocating Indian independence from Britain...
Blunden was a poet, author, and critic. He wrote of his experiences in World War I in both verse and prose. Blunden was also a reviewer for English publications and an academic in Tokyo and Hong Kong. He ended his career as Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford and was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature six times...
Brontë was a novelist and poet best known for her novel ‘Wuthering Heights.’ She published a collection of poems with her sisters Charlotte and Anne, ‘Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell,’ with her poems being regarded as poetic genius. She published under the pen name Ellis Bell...
McGough is a poet, performance poet, children’s author, playwright, and broadcaster. He presents BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Please, as well as performing his own poetry. He was one of the leading members of the Liverpool poets influenced by the 1960s Beat poetry and popular music and culture known as the Liverpool poets...
Nash was a poet known for his light verse. With his unconventional rhyme schemes, he is regarded as America’s best writer of humorous poetry...
We, this people, on a small and lonely planet Traveling through casual space Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns...
Plath was a poet, short-story writer, and novelist. Best-known for advancing the genre of confessional poetry through her published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems and Ariel she won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1982. Plath married the poet Ted Hughes in 1956 and they lived firstly in America then moved to England. The couple had two children before separating in 1962...
William Butler Yeats was a poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A stoic pillar of the Irish literary establishment he helped found the Abbey Theatre and served as a Senator of the Irish Free State...
Poe was a writer, editor, and critic, best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre through poetry and short stories. He was a central figure of Romanticism in the USA and one of the earliest practitioners of the short story. He was the first well-known American writer to earn a living from writing alone, leading to a financially difficult life and career....
