The Poem thread

methodistgirl

New member
I think I have one. Here goes!

The moon is out tonight.
The stars are shining bright.
Sandman's calling time to go to sleep.
Try to close your eyes and dream a little dream.
Close your eyes it's nighty night.
judy tooley

P.S. This is a lullaby that I used to sing to my pet animals when they
were just kittens. This would calm them down and they would go
to sleep so that I could get some shut eye.
 

marval

New member
Hi Judy

That is lovely, the only problem now is that I want to go to sleep (Yawn.)


Margaret
 

marval

New member
  • The Listeners


    “Is there anybody there?” said the Traveler,
    Knocking on the moonlit door;
    And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
    Of the forest’s ferny floor.
    And a bird flew up out of the turret,
    Above the traveler’s head:
    And he smote upon the door again a second time;
    “Is there anybody there?” he said.
    But no one descended to the Traveler;
    No head from the leaf-fringed sill
    Leaned over and looked into his gray eyes,
    Where he stood perplexed and still.
    But only a host of phantom listeners
    That dwelt in the lone house then
    Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
    To that voice from the world of men:
    Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair
    That goes down to the empty hall,
    Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
    By the lonely Traveler’s call.
    And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
    Their stillness answering his cry,
    While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
    ’Neath the starred and leafy sky;
    For he suddenly smote the door, even
    Louder, and lifted his head: —
    “Tell them I came, and no one answered,
    That I kept my word,” he said.
    Never the least stir made the listeners,
    Though every word he spake
    Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
    From the one man left awake:
    Aye, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
    And the sound of iron on stone,
    And how the silence surged softly backward,
    When the plunging hoofs were gone.


    Walter de la Mare (1913)
 

Contratrombone64

Admiral of Fugues
Margaret - I know not Mare's poetry, and the example you posted is quite disturbing in a way, but beautiful. Must use "smote" more often in daily parlance.
 

marval

New member
Hi CT

I find this poem quite atmospheric, but I do like it.

The BBC described him as, "A poetic master of the macabre."

Here is a little about him.


Walter de la Mare was born in Kent in 1873, educated at St Paul's School, London and from 1890-1908 worked for Anglo-American Oil. However, de la Mare was already devoted to writing by 1902, when his first collection of poems were published.
De la Mare's first novel, Henry Brocken, was published in 1904. Whether writing in prose or verse, for adults or for children, his vision revealed an unseen world that could be both beautiful and terrible, but was always mysterious. Come Hither (1923), his anthology of verse aimed mainly at children, is regarded as one of the most original ever compiled. In 1912, his collection of poems, The Listeners and Other Poems, contains in the title poem one of the most anthologised pieces in English literature.
Some of de la Mare's ghost stories, such as Seaton's Aunt, convey an atmosphere of barely-concealed terror and perversity behind a façade of respectability. Others have a fantastic but strangely beautiful quality which enables the reader to enter a world of deeper reality. His novel, The Return (1910), is a straightforward tale of terror where a dead man impresses his features on a living being. Memoirs of a Midget (1921), by contrast, achieves moments of great poetic fantasy without attempting to terrify the reader.
Some of de la Mare's work, such as his long poem The Traveller (1946), has a visionary quality and most of it tends to evoke the uncanny in the midst of the ordinary and everyday. His writing has a charm which makes reading his poems and stories a pleasurable experience. De la Mare was highly esteemed as a writer in his lifetime. Made a Companion of Honour in 1948 and awarded the Order of Merit in 1953, he was buried in St Paul's Cathedral.


Margaret
 

marval

New member
Here is another Walter De La Mare poem.


Sleep.


When all, and birds, and creeping beasts
When the dark of night is deep
From the moving wander of their lives
Commit themselves to sleep.

Without a thought, or fear, they shut
The narrow gates of sense
Heedless and quiet, in slumber turn
Their strength to inpotence.

The transient strangeness of the earth
Their spirits no more see
Within a silent gloom withdrawn
They slumber in secrecy.

Two worlds they have--a globe forgot
Wheeling from dark to light
And all the enchanted realm of dream
That burgeons out of night.
 

methodistgirl

New member
Cherokee Prayer Blessing

May the warm winds of Heaven blow softly upon your house.
May the Great Spirit(God) bless all who enter there.
May you mocassins make happy tracks in many snows,
and may the rainbow always touch your shoulder.

judy tooley
 

marval

New member
The Embarrassing Experience with a Parrot.


At the Cotswold wild life park
In the merry month of May
I paid the man the money
And went to spend the day
Straightway to the pets corner
I turned my eager feet
To go and see the rabbits
And give them something to eat.

As I approached the hutches
I was alarmed to see
A crowd of little yobbos
Ollerin' with glee
I crept up close behind them
And weighed the scene up quick
And saw them poke the rabbits
Poke them! with a stick.

"Get off you little buggers"
I shouted in their ear
"Don't you poke them rabbits
That's not why they are here"
I must have really scared them
In seconds they were gone
And feelin' I had done some good
I carried on along.

Till up beside the parrot's cage
I stood to view the scene
They was lovely parrots
Beautiful blue and green
In and out the nestbox
They was really having fun
Squawking out and flying about
All except for one.

One poor old puffed-up parrot
Clung grimly to his perch
And as the wind blew frontwards
Backwards he would lurch
One foot up in his feathers
Abandoned by the rest
He sat there plainly dying
His head upon his chest.

Well, I walked on down the pathway
And I stroked a nanny goat
But the thought of parrots dyin'
Brought a lump into me throat
I could no longer stand it
And to the office I fled
Politely I began: Scuse me
Your parrots nearly dead.

So me and a curator
In urgent leaps and bounds
With a bottle of parrot cure
Dashed across the grounds
The dust flew up around us
As we reached the parrots pen
And the curator he turned to me
Saying "which one is it then?"

You know what I am going to say
He was not there at all
At least not where I left him
No, he flit from wall to wall
As brightly as a button
Did he squawk and jump and leap
The curator was very kind
Saying, "I expect he was asleep."

But I was humiliated
As I stood before the wire
The curator went back
To put his feet up by the fire
So I let the parrot settle
And after a short search
I found the stick the yobbos had
And poked him off his perch.


Pam Ayres
 

marval

New member
Here's a silly one I wrote one Christmas.

Did you ever wonder
Just how it felt
To be a warm snowman
Begining to melt.

My life is so short
There is no growing old
I am just existing
As long as it is cold.

You all cheer the sun
And hope that it will stay
But I am just a puddle
That melted away.

Black currants for eyes
Orange carrot for a nose
A pipe in my mouth
and someone's old clothes.

Will you be sorry
When I am not here
Still you could rebuild me
In Winter next year.


Margaret
 

Corno Dolce

Admiral Honkenwheezenpooferspieler
Here's a favorite of mine:


Wie bist du, meine Königin,
Durch sanfte Güte wonnevoll
Du lächle nur, Lenzdüfte wehn
Durch mein Gemüte, wonnevoll

Frisch aufgeblühter Rosen Glanz,
Vergleich ich ihn dem deinigen?
Ach, über alles, was da blüht,
Ist deine Blüte wonnevoll

Durch tote wüsten wandle hin,
Und grüne Schatten breiten sich,
Ob fürchterliche Schwüle dort
Ohn Ende brüte, wonnevoll

Laß mich vergehn in deinem Arm!
Es ist ihm ja selbst der Tod,
Ob auch die herbste Todesqual
Die Brust durchwüte, wonnevoll
 

marval

New member
Bar Humbug

When I took my zebra to Tesco
It got scanned by mistake at the till
How I wish I'd discovered the error
Before I'd settled the bill...

Patrick Winstanley.
 

methodistgirl

New member
The Mayan Calender
There is a river flowing very fast it is so swift that there are those, who
will be afraid, they will try to hold on to the shore and they will feel like
they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly.

Know that the river has a destination. The elders say we must let go
of the shore, push off into the middle of the river and see who is in
there with you and celebrate. The time of the lone wolf is over. We
are the ones we are waiting for.
The Mayan Calender
judy tooley
 

intet_at_tabe

Rear Admiral Appassionata (Ret.)
Cherokee Prayer Blessing

May the warm winds of Heaven blow softly upon your house.
May the Great Spirit(God) bless all who enter there.
May you mocassins make happy tracks in many snows,
and may the rainbow always touch your shoulder.

judy tooley

Ms. Judy :tiphat:

Beautiful Cherokee poem :clap::clap::clap::clap:I salute you Ms. Judy!!

The interesting thing with the native American tribes of indians on the North American prairie were, that they all had, no matter if they were Black Feat, Apache, Cherokee, Mohikans or any other native tribe, a completely different concept of nature itself, than the former Europeans who arrived to the new world across the Atlantic to move further and further to the west acroos America killing everything alive they met on their way to the coast in what later became the state of California.

For instance the great American Buffalo, which were hunted down by the tribes with the bows and the arrows or spears, which both gave the indian prairie tribes food, but also the fur was used for clothings, and the horns of the Buffalo were used for making tools to work with and jewelry. So the indians would never just slaughter a certain number of the Buffalo species, skin them for the fur to be sold, but leave the animal sometimes not even dead, but certainly dying.

The indians respected nature and the animals and even the weather living on the prairie as Gods, they sacrifised to nature to say thank you for the meat from the Buffalo for instance. The former Europeans almost had the entire number of Buffalos erased from the great plains, until someone realised that there were less than 200 individual Buffalos left.

Your poem from the Cherokee tribe show excactly this concept of nature itself. Of course what history later showed the entire indian tribes were almost erased themselves, and the few that survived General George C. Custer and his seventh cavalry, like the Apache Chief Geronimo were imprisoned in reservations, which stille exist today, only they are not called for reservations for indians, but the Indian Nations.
 
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