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Sunsilver
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Posted: Thu 03 Mar , 2005 1:37 pm
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Service is best know for his Yukon poems, of course. He witnessed the Gold Rush firsthand. Here, he captures the essence of the true prospectors, the ones who lived to seek out gold. My husband had a little pewter statue of a prospector, his eyes wide with amazement, as he looks at the contents of his gold pan. I printed this poem up for the little prospector, and placed it underneath:

The Prospector

I strolled up old Bonanza, where I staked in ninety-eight,
A-purpose to revisit the old claim.
I kept thinking mighty sadly of the funny ways of Fate,
And the lads who once were with me in the game.
Poor boys, they're down-and-outers, and there's scarcely one to-day
Can show a dozen colors in his poke;
And me, I'm still prospecting, old and battered, gaunt and gray,
And I'm looking for a grub-stake, and I'm broke.

I strolled up old Bonanza. The same old moon looked down;
The same old landmarks seemed to yearn to me;
But the cabins all were silent, and the flat, once like a town,
Was mighty still and lonesome-like to see.
There were piles and piles of tailings where we toiled with pick and pan,
And turning round a bend I heard a roar,
And there a giant gold-ship of the very newest plan
Was tearing chunks of pay-dirt from the shore.

It wallowed in its water-bed; it burrowed, heaved and swung;
It gnawed its way ahead with grunts and sighs;
Its bill of fare was rock and sand; the tailings were its dung;
It glared around with fierce electric eyes.
Full fifty buckets crammed its maw; it bellowed out for more;
It looked like some great monster in the gloom.
With two to feed its sateless greed, it worked for seven score,
And I sighed: "Ah, old-time miner, here's your doom!"

The idle windlass turns to rust; the sagging sluice-box falls;
The holes you digged are water to the brim;
Your little sod-roofed cabins with the snugly moss-chinked walls
Are deathly now and mouldering and dim.
The battle-field is silent where of old you fought it out;
The claims you fiercely won are lost and sold;
But there's a little army that they'll never put to rout--
The men who simply live to seek the gold.

The men who can't remember when they learned to swing a pack,
Or in what lawless land the quest began;
The solitary seeker with his grub-stake on his back,
The restless buccaneer of pick and pan.
On the mesas of the Southland, on the tundras of the North,
You will find us, changed in face but still the same;
And it isn't need, it isn't greed that sends us faring forth--
It's the fever, it's the glory of the game.

For once you've panned the speckled sand and seen the bonny dust,
Its peerless brightness blinds you like a spell;
It's little else you care about; you go because you must,
And you feel that you could follow it to hell.
You'd follow it in hunger, and you'd follow it in cold;
You'd follow it in solitude and pain;
And when you're stiff and battened down let someone whisper "Gold",
You're lief to rise and follow it again.

Yet look you, if I find the stuff it's just like so much dirt;
I fling it to the four winds like a child.
It's wine and painted women and the things that do me hurt,
Till I crawl back, beggared, broken, to the Wild.
Till I crawl back, sapped and sodden, to my grub-stake and my tent--
There's a city, there's an army (hear them shout).
There's the gold in millions, millions, but I haven't got a cent;
And oh, it's me, it's me that found it out.

It was my dream that made it good, my dream that made me go
To lands of dread and death disprized of man;
But oh, I've known a glory that their hearts will never know,
When I picked the first big nugget from my pan.
It's still my dream, my dauntless dream, that drives me forth once more
To seek and starve and suffer in the Vast;
That heaps my heart with eager hope, that glimmers on before--
My dream that will uplift me to the last.

Perhaps I am stark crazy, but there's none of you too sane;
It's just a little matter of degree.
My hobby is to hunt out gold; it's fortressed in my brain;
It's life and love and wife and home to me.
And I'll strike it, yes, I'll strike it; I've a hunch I cannot fail;
I've a vision, I've a prompting, I've a call;
I hear the hoarse stampeding of an army on my trail,
To the last, the greatest gold camp of them all.

Beyond the shark-tooth ranges sawing savage at the sky
There's a lowering land no white man ever struck;
There's gold, there's gold in millions, and I'll find it if I die,
And I'm going there once more to try my luck.
Maybe I'll fail--what matter? It's a mandate, it's a vow;
And when in lands of dreariness and dread
You seek the last lone frontier, far beyond your frontiers now,
You will find the old prospector, silent, dead.

You will find a tattered tent-pole with a ragged robe below it;
You will find a rusted gold-pan on the sod;
You will find the claim I'm seeking, with my bones as stakes to show it;
But I've sought the last Recorder, and He's--God.


I especially like the lines: Perhaps I am stark crazy, but there's none of you too sane/It's just a little matter of degree; and "Beyond the shark-toothed ranges, sawing savage at the sky...."


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Axordil
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Posted: Thu 03 Mar , 2005 4:20 pm
Not so deep as a well
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So for me it's Paul Simon these days, and often.

The Cool, cool river

Moves like a fist through the traffic
Anger and no one can heal it
Shoves a little bump into the momentum
It's just a little lump
But you feel it
In the creases and the shadows
With a rattling deep emotion
The cool, cool river
Sweeps the wild, white ocean

Yes Boss. The government handshake
Yes Boss. The crusher of language
Yes Boss. Mr. Stillwater,
The face at the edge of the banquet
The cool, the cool river
The cool, the cool river

I believe in the future
I may live in my car
My radio tuned to
The voice of a star
Song dogs barking at the break of dawn
Lightning pushes the edge of a thunderstorm
And these old hopes and fears
Still at my side

Anger and no one can heal it
Slides through the metal detector
Lives like a mole in a motel
A slide in a slide projector
The cool, cool river
Sweeps the wild, white ocean
The rage of love turns inward
To prayers of devotion
And these prayers are
The constant road across the wilderness
These prayers are
These prayers are the memory of God
The memory of God

And I believe in the future
We shall suffer no more
Maybe not in my lifetime
But in yours I feel sure
Song dogs barking at the break of dawn
Lightning pushes the edges of a thunderstorm
And these streets
Quiet as a sleeping army
Send their battered dreams to heaven, to heaven
For the mother's restless son
Who is a witness to, who is a warrior
Who denies his urge to break and run


Who says: Hard times?
I'm used to them
The speeding planet burns
I'm used to that
My life's so common it disappears
And sometimes even music
Cannot substitute for tears

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Alatar
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Posted: Thu 03 Mar , 2005 4:25 pm
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I'll agree with you there Ax. Paul Simon is a wonderful poet. Here's one from early in his career.

The Dangling Conversation

It’s a still life water color,
Of a now late afternoon,
As the sun shines through the curtained lace
And shadows wash the room.
And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference,
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
Are the borders of our lives.

And you read your emily dickinson,
And I my robert frost,
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what we’ve lost.
Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm,
Couplets out of rhyme,
In syncopated time
Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
Are the borders of our lives.

Yes, we speak of things that matter,
With words that must be said,
Can analysis be worthwhile?
Is the theater really dead?
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow,
I cannot feel your hand,
You’re a stranger now unto me
Lost in the dangling conversation.
And the superficial sighs,
In the borders of our lives.


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Meneltarma
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Posted: Thu 03 Mar , 2005 5:04 pm
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Speaking of Baudelaire...

Sed non Satiata

Bizarre déité, brune comme les nuits,
Au parfum mélangé de musc et de havane,
Oeuvre de quelque obi, le Faust de la savane,
Sorcière au flanc d'ébéne, enfant des noirs minuits

(there's more...it's too much effort to type the é and è. That's my favourite verse anyway.:P)

Here's another - it's a simple little poem but means a lot to us. :) It's by Wendy Cope

Being Boring

If you ask me "what's new?", I have nothing to say
Except that the garden is growing.
I had a slight cold but it's better today.
I'm content with the way things are going.
Yes, he is the same as he usually is,
Still eating, and sleeping, and snoring.
I get on with my work. He gets on with his.
I know this is all very boring.

There was drama enough in my turbulent past:
Tears and passion - I've used up a tankful.
No news is good news, and long may it last.
If nothing much happens, I'm thankful.
A happier cabbage you never did see,
My vegetable spirits are soaring.
If you're after excitement, steer well clear of me.
I want to go on being boring.

I don't go to parties. Well, what are they for,
If you don't need to find a new lover?
You drink and you listen and drink a bit more
And you take the next day to recover.
Someone to stay home with was all my desire
And, now that I've found a safe mooring,
I've just one ambition in life: I aspire
To go on and on being boring.


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Nin
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Posted: Thu 03 Mar , 2005 5:19 pm
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Meneltarma... if you search for them, you'll find them all typed....

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Rodia
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Posted: Thu 03 Mar , 2005 5:58 pm
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Oh, boys....you just made me get all dreamy with those Paul Simon lyrics. He's amazing.

(wish my record player worked so I could put Rhythm of the Saints on.)

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Axordil
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Posted: Thu 03 Mar , 2005 6:12 pm
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I saw him on his Rhythm of the Saints tour.

You can touch my avatar if you'd like. :D

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Destiny is a rhythm track on which we must improvise.

In some cases, firing the drummer helps.


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Leoba
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Posted: Thu 03 Mar , 2005 7:44 pm
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I had to learn 'Ozymandias' by Percy Bysshe Shelley as part of my Verse Speaking class when I was 10. It's so depressing but I love it still.
Quote:
I met a traveler 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,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.


Another favourite shows up in many people's favourite lists: 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' by Wilfred Owen. A couple of winters ago there was an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London, of 12 soldier poets of the First World War. There in a case was the original manuscript for this poem, with Sassoon's anotations made when both men were at Craiglockhart war hospital. Not many museum trips leave me in tears.
Quote:
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
-Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

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Aglanor
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Posted: Tue 08 Mar , 2005 9:54 pm
Morituri Nolumus Mori
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He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
~ William Butler Yeats


:love:

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"The moon reflects in her eyes,
And tears fall down like stars.
Her gentle kiss goodnight;
Her dagger stuck in my heart.
My love broken and betrayed
And my eyes are closed tight,
As death now does us part."


A Rune engraved on my heart...


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TheEllipticalDisillusion
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Posted: Wed 09 Mar , 2005 9:58 pm
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Not a huge fan of poetry myself, but here are some gems I like:

Beowulf by unknown (I'll spare you all and just post a link http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~beowulf/)

To the Athlete Dying Young by A.E. Houseman

THE TIME you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.

That's all for now.

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Leoba
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Posted: Thu 10 Mar , 2005 10:04 am
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TheEllipticalDisillusion wrote:
Not a huge fan of poetry myself....
Yet you spent how many hours in the TORC Scriptorium, pouring over people's verses (and attempts at ;) )?! :suspicious:

Last edited by Leoba on Thu 10 Mar , 2005 8:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Rodia
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Posted: Thu 10 Mar , 2005 1:18 pm
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AAAAH! When did he get here? :Q

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Dindraug
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Posted: Thu 10 Mar , 2005 1:36 pm
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Hiawatha; a poem, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I won't post the whole lot here but look at ]http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/moden ... nHiaw.html

This one means a lot to me. We did a dramatic production of this in school and it was the most amazing thing. Basically we copied the National Theatre interpritation of Ted Hughe's version of it, which considering the cast were 14-18 year old comprehensive school kids form Cheshire, well it was awesome.

Anyway, the into goes as follows, you should try reading the whole thing because it is stunning, as an adventure, as a tale, and all of that. Very sad in places though ;)
Quote:
Should you ask me,
whence these stories?
Whence these legends and traditions,
With the odors of the forest
With the dew and damp of meadows,
With the curling smoke of wigwams,
With the rushing of great rivers,
With their frequent repetitions,
And their wild reverberations
As of thunder in the mountains?


I should answer, I should tell you,
"From the forests and the prairies,
From the great lakes of the Northland,
From the land of the Ojibways,
From the land of the Dacotahs,
From the mountains, moors, and fen-lands
Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
Feeds among the reeds and rushes.
I repeat them as I heard them
From the lips of Nawadaha,
The musician, the sweet singer."


Should you ask where Nawadaha
Found these songs so wild and wayward,
Found these legends and traditions,
I should answer, I should tell you,
"In the bird's-nests of the forest,
In the lodges of the beaver,
In the hoofprint of the bison,
In the eyry of the eagle!

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TheEllipticalDisillusion
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Posted: Thu 10 Mar , 2005 7:07 pm
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Quote:
Yet you spent how many hours in the TORC Scriptorium, pouring over people's verses (and attempts at;) )?!
I did. I like trying to help people with writing, which is why I spent so long in the Scriptorium.

I take it from the "ahhhh!" Rodia remembers me as the ogre of the Scriptorium that I was?

:devil: RAWR!

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Estel
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Posted: Fri 11 Mar , 2005 5:08 am
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TheEllipticalDisillusion wrote:
Quote:
Yet you spent how many hours in the TORC Scriptorium, pouring over people's verses (and attempts at;) )?!
I did. I like trying to help people with writing, which is why I spent so long in the Scriptorium
Said you were gonna come critique my poems and then never did *shakes fist* :rage:

I was looking forward to it too!! I sw00ned for you more than any other person on TORC *or* b77 (including Lidless :Q )

It was all under another ID though :P Damara ;) Melly was the only one who every gave me critiques.

I did move the whole thread over here =:) but since you said you don't like poetry all that much, I won't tease you about it, cause mine is crap :oops: :LMAO:


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TheEllipticalDisillusion
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Posted: Fri 11 Mar , 2005 4:04 pm
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:Q Did I? I apologize! I don't remember when that was. Perhaps it was about the time I got fed up and quit posting in that forum.

In any case, I said I like helping people with their writing and I mean that. Whether I like poetry or not is secondary. I'd be happy to check out anything. Point me in the right direction if you'd like.

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Rodia
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Posted: Sat 12 Mar , 2005 12:32 pm
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I never posted my poems for fear you would critique them.

Hang on...eventually I did but the thread got two replies before dying. :P

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TheEllipticalDisillusion
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Posted: Sat 12 Mar , 2005 7:13 pm
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Quote:
I never posted my poems for fear you would critique them.
That's funny. I didn't realize I was so feared. :devil:

Oh well. My style wasn't popular, but I y'am what I y'am.

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Kushana
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Posted: Tue 29 Mar , 2005 7:23 am
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Nuts, someone else got to Frost, first. (I know a lovely tune for that one...)

I'm sorry to post another poem about death, but it is my favorite:
Quote:
"The Embrace"

You weren't well or really ill yet either;
just a little tired, your handsomeness
tinged by grief or anticipation, which brought
to your face a thoughtful, deepening grace.

I didn't for a moment doubt you were dead.
I knew that to be true still, even in the dream.
You'd been out -- at work maybe? --
having a good day, almost energetic.

We seemed to be moving from some old house
where we'd lived, boxes everywhere, things
in disarray: that was the storyof my dream,
but even asleep I was shocked out of narrative

by your face, the physical fact of your face:
inches from mine, smooth-shaven, loving, alert.
Why so difficult, remembering the actual look
of you? Without a photograph, without strain?

So when I saw your unguarded, reliable face,
your unmistakable gaze opening all the warmth
and clarity of you -- warm brown tea -- we held
each other for the time the dream allowed.

Bless you. You came back, so I could see you
once more, plainly, so I could rest against you
without thinking this happiness lessened anything,
without thinking you were alive again.

-Mark Doty[
source:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/foolingwithword ... poem6.html

For me it captures the feeling of dreaming of a dead loved one perfectly.

-Kushana

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Semprini
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Posted: Thu 31 Mar , 2005 11:40 am
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All my favorite poems are in French (out of the top of my head: Baudelaire's Le Voyage, Victor Hugo's Booz Endormi, De Banville's Le Clown, and Rimbaud's Le Bateau Ivre). For those who have read them in English, how do they flow when translated in English?


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