Two favourite poems.

[Yvonned]

As an exile from Carmarthenshire thanks for reminding me about Dydd, Santes Dwynwen.
I’d forgotten all about her......found the derelict chapel on Google Earth......ah hiraeth.

[rich.hr6]

Sorry, I only have one favourite at the moment.


A Child in the 80s

'Daddy, how old is Groucho Marx?'
'Sorry dear boy, he's dead.'
'Gosh! And Chico? Oh yes, and Harpo?'
'Dead. All of them dead.'
'Daddy, is Lassie very old?'
'Dogs die young, you know.'
'Will Hay's good! Is he dead too?'
'Thirty years ago.

'Daddy, if Elvis comes this way
Can we go and see him?'
'Elvis stays in Memphis now,
Blue carnations near him.'
'Sossidge is on again tonight.'
'That was Joyce Grenfell, eh?'
Was? Oh, Daddy, did she die?'
'Just the other day.'

This is immortality
Never dreamed of yet:
Life because a child sits by
A television set.
'Gary Cooper's good on horses.'
'That was his last ride.'
'Disney must be very rich.'
'Was, until he died.'

But the child who's sitting there
Starts to love each day
People who at natural breaks
Death will take away.
'John Wayne - Bogey - Errol Flynn -
Are they full of lead?'
'Darling, it wasn't quite like that -
But all of them are dead.'



Derwent May

[ambodach]

You never said goodbye
Author unknown.

You never said I'm leaving,
You never said goodbye.
You were gone before I knew it,
And only God knew why.

A million times I needed you,
A million times I cried.
If love alone could have saved you,
You never would have died.

In life I loved you dearly,
In death I love you still.
In my heart you hold a place,
That no one could ever fill.

It broke my heart to lose you,
But you didn't go alone.
For part of me went with you,
The day God took you home.

[Mike Sales]

As an exile from Carmarthenshire thanks for reminding me about Dydd, Santes Dwynwen.
I’d forgotten all about her......found the derelict chapel on Google Earth......ah hiraeth.

You know Ynys Llanddwyn? One of my favourite places. How often have I sighted the little lighthouse coming in from Bae Caernarfon, and known I had the key to the Narrows and the Straits? I have a photo of my little boat anchored just off its shore, in Mermaid Cove.

[Mike Sales]

Robert Louis Stevenson - 1850-1894

15. Requiem

UNDER the wide and starry sky

Dig the grave and let me lie:

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.


This be the verse you 'grave for me:

Here he lies where he long'd to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

[Cyril Haearn]

Read a review by Philip Larkin of the collected poems of William Barnes (1962), reached for my copy of the Oxford Book of English Verse..
The poems are in Dorset dialect,very good

[philvantwo]

There once was a man called Reg
Who went with a girl in a hedge
Along came his wife
With a big carving knife
And cut off his meat and two veg!

[jimlews]

Two fragments.

The World

I saw eternity the other night
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm as it was bright,
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years
Driv'n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov'd, In which the world
And all her triin were hurl'd


The Waterfall

With what deep murmurs through times silent stealth
Does thy transparent, cool and watry wealth
Here flowing fall
And chide, and call,
As if his liquid, loose Retinue staid
Lingering, and were of this steep place afraid,
The common pass
Where, clear as glass,
Not to an end:
But quickned by this deep and rocky grave,
Rise to a longer course more bright and brave.


Both by HENRY VAUGHN

[Cyril Haearn]

Oh no, the Grauniad reports that poetry is to be only an option at GCSE

Poets are predictably bleating

I discovered poetry much later, not sure forcing teenagers to study it is necessary

[Oldjohnw]

History says, don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

- Seamus Heaney

[reohn2]

Is now the time
When a tyrant is ousted
and the land is cleaned
of political grime?

We can but hope
for a clear sign
and cleansing soap
of democracy fine


PS,I'm not holding my breath

[francovendee]

Is now the time
When a tyrant is ousted
and the land is cleaned
of political grime?

We can but hope
for a clear sign
and cleansing soap
of democracy fine


PS,I'm not holding my breath

Just as well, I think you'd suffocate. It's a mountain to climb to get the two tribes here and the USA to come together.
77 years of age (me) and I can only see trouble ahead

[Jdsk]

And hope and history rhyme.

Never heard that before. Excellent. Thanks for posting.

I hear that Biden is a Heaney enthusiast.

Jonathan

[Cyril Haearn]

There once was a president trump
Who many considered a chump

Then came the noble knight Biden
And gave trumps backside a good hiding
..

[reohn2]

Just as well, I think you'd suffocate. It's a mountain to climb to get the two tribes here and the USA to come together.
77 years of age (me) and I can only see trouble ahead

Yer not wrong