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Post by spiderwort on Dec 20, 2023 2:48:55 GMT
Prairie Spring by Willa Cather
Evening and the flat land, Rich and sombre and always silent; The miles of fresh-plowed soil, Heavy and black, full of strength and harshness; The growing wheat, the growing weeds, The toiling horses, the tired men; The long empty roads, Sullen fires of sunset, fading, The eternal, unresponsive sky. Against all this, Youth, Flaming like the wild roses, Singing like the larks over the plowed fields, Flashing like a star out of the twilight; Youth with its insupportable sweetness, Its fierce necessity, Its sharp desire, Singing and singing, Out of the lips of silence, Out of the earthy dusk.
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Post by Nalkarj on Dec 21, 2023 17:28:01 GMT
The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper
So the shortest day came, and the year died, And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world Came people singing, dancing, To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees, They hung their homes with evergreen, They burned beseeching fires all night long To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake, They shouted, revelling. Through all the frosty ages you can hear them Echoing behind us — listen!
All the long echoes sing the same delight, This shortest day, As promise wakens in the sleeping land: They carol, feast, give thanks, And dearly love their friends, And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now, This year and every year. Welcome Yule!
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Post by Nalkarj on Dec 25, 2023 5:00:23 GMT
The Oxen by Thomas Hardy
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. “Now they are all on their knees,” An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt in their strawy pen, Nor did it occur to one of us there To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave In these years! Yet, I feel, If someone said on Christmas Eve, “Come; see the oxen kneel,
“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb Our childhood used to know,” I should go with him in the gloom, Hoping it might be so.
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Post by Nalkarj on Dec 31, 2023 15:39:01 GMT
Good Riddance, But Now What? by Ogden Nash
Come, children, gather round my knee; Something is about to be. Tonight’s December Thirty-first, Something is about to burst. The clock is crouching, dark and small, Like a time bomb in the hall. Hark! It’s midnight, children dear. Duck! Here comes another year.
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Post by mikef6 on Jan 4, 2024 16:51:20 GMT
Tolkien’s birthday was yesterday (January 3). To the many (like me) who have piled on the years, this is inspiration to find new adventures.
Upon the hearth the fire is red, Beneath the roof there is a bed; But not yet weary are our feet, Still round the corner we may meet A sudden tree or standing stone That none have seen but we alone.
Tree and flower and leaf and grass, Let them pass! Let them pass! Hill and water under sky, Pass them by! Pass them by!
Still round the corner there may wait A new road or a secret gate, And though we pass them by today, Tomorrow we may come this way And take the hidden paths that run West of the moon, east of the sun.
Apple, thorn, and nut and sloe, Let them go! Let them go! Sand and stone and pool and dell, Fare you well! Fare you well!
Home is behind, the world ahead, And there are many paths to tread Through shadows to the edge of night, Until the stars are all alight. Then world behind and home ahead, We'll wander back to home and bed.
Mist and twilight, cloud and shade, Away shall fade! Away shall fade! Fire and lamp, and meat and bread, And then to bed! And then to bed!
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sam
Nick Nack
Posts: 235
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Post by sam on Jan 6, 2024 8:38:45 GMT
Death Of Love Fenton Johnson
I Where sinks deep my love, dead love, That so warmly glowed awhile? Where the passion of my dreams And the kiss of afterwhile? In the City of Delight, In the palace built of air, In the smile of dying Day And the vision of Despair.
II Not where Morning shakes the dew From the sunshine of her locks; Not where Evening breathes her flame And the moon so gently rocks; But where gleams the firefly's wing In the swamp of dead desire; And a fairy shrinks amazed At the passing of the fire.
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Post by mikef6 on Jan 8, 2024 15:02:38 GMT
I am not sure if I - or someone else - may have already shared this poem. I am in too much of a hurry to check. If so, well, here it is again. I love this thread.
Acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost
I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain — and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye; And further still at an unearthly height, A luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night.
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Post by theravenking on Jan 9, 2024 9:37:46 GMT
A humorous little poem from Calvin and Hobbes which made me laugh so much, that I just had to share it.
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Post by spiderwort on Jan 12, 2024 1:41:42 GMT
The Chinese Peaks - Robert Bly For Donald Hall
I love the mountain peak but I know also its rolling foothills half-invisible in mist and fog.
The Seafarer gets up long before dawn to read. His soul is a whale feeding on the Holy Word.
The soul who loves the peak also inhales the deep breath rising from the mountain buried in mist.
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Post by mikef6 on Jan 12, 2024 16:45:06 GMT
Stop All The Clocks 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 on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crepe 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 for ever: 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.
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Post by spiderwort on Jan 14, 2024 2:03:30 GMT
The History of Red by Linda Hogan
First there was some other order of things never spoken but in dreams of darkest creation. Then there was black earth, lake, the face of light on water. Then the thick forest all around that light, and then the human clay whose blood we still carry rose up in us who remember caves with red bison painted in their own blood, after their kind. A wildness swam inside our mothers, desire through closed eyes, a new child wearing the red, wet mask of birth, delivered into this land already wounded, stolen and burned beyond reckoning. Red is this yielding land turned inside out by a country of hunters with iron, flint and fire. Red is the fear that turns a knife back against men, holds it at their throats, and they cannot see the claw on the handle, the animal hand that haunts them from some place inside their blood. So that is hunting, birth, and one kind of death. Then there was medicine, the healing of wounds. Red was the infinite fruit of stolen bodies. The doctors wanted to know what invented disease how wounds healed from inside themselves how life stands up in skin, if not by magic. They divined the red shadows of leeches that swam in white bowls of water: they believed stars in the cup of sky. They cut the wall of skin to let what was bad escape but they were reading the story of fire gone out and that was a science. As for the animal hand on death’s knife, knives have as many sides as the red father of war who signs his name in the blood of other men. And red was the soldier who crawled through a ditch of human blood in order to live. It was the canal of his deliverance. It is his son who lives near me. Red is the thunder in our ears when we meet. Love, like creation, is some other order of things. Red is the share of fire I have stolen from root, hoof, fallen fruit. And this was hunger. Red is the human house I come back to at night swimming inside the cave of skin that remembers bison. In that round nation of blood we are all burning, red, inseparable fires the living have crawled and climbed through in order to live so nothing will be left for death at the end. This life in the fire, I love it. I want it, this life.
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Post by spiderwort on Jan 15, 2024 19:13:12 GMT
I Dream A World by Langston Hughes
I dream a world where man No other man will scorn, Where love will bless the earth And peace its paths adorn I dream a world where all Will know sweet freedom's way, Where greed no longer saps the soul Nor avarice blights our day. A world I dream where black or white, Whatever race you be, Will share the bounties of the earth And every man is free, Where wretchedness will hang its head And joy, like a pearl, Attends the needs of all mankind- Of such I dream, my world!
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Post by Nalkarj on Jan 15, 2024 19:34:01 GMT
Fear of Happiness by A.E. Stallings
Looking back, it’s something I’ve always had: As a kid, it was a glass-floored elevator I crouched at the bottom of, my eyes squinched tight, Or staircase whose gaps I was afraid I’d slip through, Though someone always said I’d be all right— Just don’t look down or See, it’s not so bad (The nothing rising underfoot). Then later The high-dive at the pool, the tree-house perch, Ferris wheels, balconies, cliffs, a penthouse view, The merest thought of airplanes. You can call It a fear of heights, a horror of the deep; But it isn’t the unfathomable fall That makes me giddy, makes my stomach lurch, It’s that the ledge itself invents the leap.
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Post by spiderwort on Jan 26, 2024 19:27:55 GMT
Amazing Grace by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
At what point in the avalanche do we realize there’s nothing to be done but be pummeled and tumbled and broken by the world? At what point do we know that no matter how hard we swim, the current will carry us over the falls and into to the rocks below? At what point are we sure we can’t save our beloveds, not from the world and not from themselves? In that moment, and perhaps only then, grace comes in to do what the will cannot, and whatever it is that is larger than us makes a home in us. If we survive it, sometimes it stays.
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sam
Nick Nack
Posts: 235
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Post by sam on Jan 30, 2024 8:31:44 GMT
Sonnet 116 William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me prov’d, I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.
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