My newest blog at my home poetry site..

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

The complete work up to honor Gerard Manley Hopkins - Robert Lindley's Blog
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The complete work up to honor Gerard Manley Hopkins
Blog Posted:11/15/2019 2:12:00 PM
As Soup Does Not Allow Such A Lengthy Post


(1.) My first tribute poem

In Our Feasts, We Both Drank Lover's Wine,
Second poets tribute series, third poet Gerard Manley Hopkins

Blood that entices with its red-glow appeal
Its bright warmth into a wanton soul seeks
She that drove passion, ate my youthful zeal
Relishing that my words, were soft and meek!

Yet I, a victim lost and thus spellbound
Wore blinded eyes and heard no chains's rattles
Nor heard black-laced music's deep, darkest sound
Hid in imprison heart, raging battles!

There in nightmarish glee, her pleasures sought
She her tortures relished and thus she sang
Lover, thy soul my back-heart has now bought
From misery, my deepest desires sprang!

Yet I, in romantic delusion's maze
Saw only her bright-cast angelic wings
While pleading for more in a lustful haze
Heard I, paradise calls, dark sirens sing!

Hot blood flowed through my sacrificial veins
Sensual lips kissed my hot-desires rose
Only Love's blindness, can such lust explain
Passions did leap, seeing her naked pose!

Her romantic eyes shown to me as pearls
And her smile, a beautiful angel's face
Both causing me to forget other girls
In dark state, all reality replace!

In our feasts, we both drank lover's sweet wine
she said, "share we sweet wines of divine Gods"
Saw not, hers was blood-red, black as night mine
As did her touch, lustful spirit so prod!

Winter soon came, with its dark gloom and cold
Yet from first snows revealing lights did shine
Was then I saw, a monster's face so old
And knew on my flesh, it did with gusto dine!

Seeking help, to break her accursed spell
Sought I, dedicated priest to help give
That day, my story I did to him tell
Begged him to free me so I could live!

His true words, they woke a sad, dying soul
Open eyes, this dark world begin to see
It seeks to destroy, early death its goal
Using its, dark she-demons such as she!

By newfound faith, command it to depart
Order it back to its hellish dark pits
Say with faith, "I your black-curse tear apart"
To your realm go, as so your kind befits!

In a flash, sun again its bright rays sent
Blinded eyes could now reality see
Release came as dark lusts, I did repent
As divine forgiveness had set me free!

That joyful night, yellow moon again rose
For the first time, in many darkened years
In its light, a sweeter path I then chose
On my knees, I gave thanks with falling tears!

Robert J. Lindley,
Rhyme, ( O' Darkness, Within Thy Black Curse I Was Once Imprisoned )
Second poets tribute series, third poet Gerard Manley Hopkins

Note" The primary Hopkins poems that inspired these two poems, shown below,

(1.) "I Wake And Feel The Fell Of Dark, Not Day" by Gerard Manley Hopkins

(2.) "Moonless darkness stands between" by Gerard Manley Hopkins

(3.) "Carrion Comfort" by Gerard Manley Hopkins

(4.) " God's Grandeur" by Gerard Manley Hopkins
_________________________

(5.) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/gerard-manley-hopkins

(6.) https://poets.org/poet/gerard-manley-hopkins

Some Poems By This Famous Poet

Carrion Comfort

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.

But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?

Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.
Cheer whom though? The hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1918


I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.

With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.

Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves, but worse.
Gerard Manley Hopkins ,1918


God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1918

My 2nd poem for Second Series poets tributes- Hopkins

Eternal Is Your Dark Toll, I Have Songs Yet To Be Sung

Death is a vulture, its sharp talons dripping black and red
Rampages in all cultures, appetite very well fed
Noiseless it oft glides, even into healthiest people's beds
Nobody from its touch hides, as within Fate's path it treads!

O'death seek not this mortal soul, nor this body too young
Eternal is thy dark toll, I have songs yet to be sung!

Death in repose, I dare thee to walk surface of the sun
This dare I chose, as its heat may toast thy blackened buns
Such humor I send thy way, and with it no clever guile
Write I this today, hoping postpone thy visit a while!

O'death seek not this mortal soul, nor this body too young
Eternal is thy dark toll, I have songs yet to be sung!

If these words stay not thy hand, nor touch thy cold, frosted heart
I pray heart to withstand, needless worries on my sad part
So come as you are as you may, tis' but fated release
Bring steaks I'll pay, furnish even the pan and the grease!

O'death seek not this mortal soul, nor this body too young
Eternal is thy dark toll, I have songs yet to be sung!

Robert J. Lindley,
Rhyme, ( A Conversation With Fate And Its Black Handed Ally )
Honoring Gerard Manley Hopkins
************************************************** *
Below is commentary for this site--not my home poetry site..

I put a lot into these poets dedication series. Yet seems so many
poets today do not give a rat's fart about that, as liberal public
education system has steeped them into instant self-gratification,
selfishness, ego and only thinking of gaining more applause for
their own writings. These tribute series are primarily to introduce
new (young) poets to some of these legendary and very famous
poets of old. With examples of their works, and an example or two
of a poet interpreting their works, life, troubles, inspiration, path
taken and even about their death.
A pity that one can so easily see the negatives of the modern culture
and this younger generation. World molding its slaves to think they
are the new gods - or so it seems to me.--Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
Blog Posted:10/14/2020 8:00:00 AM
Adonais

An Elegy on the Death of John Keats

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)


I WEEP for Adonais—he is dead!
O, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers, 5
And teach them thine own sorrow! Say: ‘With me
Died Adonais; till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!’

Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, 10
When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies
In darkness? where was lorn Urania
When Adonais died? With veilèd eyes,
’Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise
She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath, 15
Rekindled all the fading melodies
With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath,
He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of death.

Oh weep for Adonais—he is dead!
Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep! 20
Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed
Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep,
Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;
For he is gone, where all things wise and fair
Descend;—oh, dream not that the amorous Deep 25
Will yet restore him to the vital air;
Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.

Most musical of mourners, weep again!
Lament anew, Urania!—He died,
Who was the Sire of an immortal strain, 30
Blind, old, and lonely, when his country’s pride,
The priest, the slave, and the liberticide,
Trampled and mocked with many a loathèd rite
Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified,
Into the gulf of death; but his clear Sprite 35
Yet reigns o’er earth; the third among the sons of light.

Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
Not all to that bright station dared to climb;
And happier they their happiness who knew,
Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time 40
In which suns perished; others more sublime,
Struck by the envious wrath of man or god,
Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime;
And some yet live, treading the thorny road,
Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame’s serene abode. 45

But now, thy youngest, dearest one has perished,
The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,
Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,
And fed with true-love tears, instead of dew;
Most musical of mourners, weep anew! 50
Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and last,
The bloom, whose petals nipt before they blew
Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste;
The broken lily lies—the storm is overpast.

To that high Capital, where kingly Death 55
Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay,
He came; and bought, with price of purest breath,
A grave among the eternal—Come away!
Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day
Is yet his fitting charnel-roof! while still 60
He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay;
Awake him not! surely he takes his fill
Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill.

He will awake no more, oh, never more!—
Within the twilight chamber spreads apace, 65
The shadow of white Death, and at the door
Invisible Corruption waits to trace
His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place;
The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe
Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface 70
So fair a prey, till darkness, and the law
Of change shall o’er his sleep the mortal curtain draw.

Oh weep for Adonais!—The quick Dreams,
The passion-wingèd Ministers of thought,
Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams 75
Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught
The love which was its music, wander not,—
Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain,
But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot
Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain, 80
They ne’er will gather strength, or find a home again.

And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head,
And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries;
‘Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead;
See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes, 85
Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies
A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain.’
Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise!
She knew not ’twas her own; as with no stain
She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain. 90

One from a lucid urn of starry dew
Washed his light limbs as if embalming them;
Another clipt her profuse locks, and threw
The wreath upon him, like an anadem,
Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem; 95
Another in her wilful grief would break
Her bow and wingèd reeds, as if to stem
A greater loss with one which was more week;
And dull the barbèd fire against his frozen cheek.

Another Splendour on his mouth alit, 100
That mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breath
Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit,
And pass into the panting heart beneath
With lightning and with music: the damp death
Quenched its caress upon his icy lips; 105
And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath
Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips,
It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse.

And others came … Desires and Adorations,
Wingèd Persuasions and veiled Destinies, 110
Splendours and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations
Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;
And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,
And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes, 115
Came in slow pomp;—the moving pomp might seem
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.

All he had loved, and moulded into thought,
From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound,
Lamented Adonais. Morning sought 120
Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,
Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,
Dimmed the ae¨rial eyes that kindle day;
Afar the melancholy thunder moaned,
Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay, 125
And the wild winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.

Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,
And feeds her grief with his remembered lay,
And will no more reply to winds or fountains,
Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray, 130
Or herdsman’s horn, or bell at closing day;
Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear
Than those for whose disdain she pined away
Into a shadow of all sounds:—a drear
Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear. 135

Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down
Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were,
Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown
For whom should she have waked the sullen year?
To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear 140
Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both
Thou, Adonais: wan they stand and sere
Amid the faint companions of their youth,
With dew all turned to tears; odour, to sighing ruth.

Thy spirit’s sister, the lorn nightingale, 145
Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain;
Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale
Heaven, and could nourish in the sun’s domain
Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain,
Soaring and screaming round her empty nest, 150
As Albion wails for thee; the curse of Cain
Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast,
And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest!

Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone,
But grief returns with the revolving year; 155
The airs and streams renew their joyous tone:
The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear;
Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons’ bier;
The amorous birds now pair in every brake,
And build their mossy homes in field and brere; 160
And the green lizard, and the golden snake,
Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake.

Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean
A quickening life from the Earth’s heart has burst
As it has ever done, with change and motion, 165
From the great morning of the world when first
God dawned on Chaos; in its stream immersed
The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light;
All baser things pant with life’s sacred thirst;
Diffuse themselves; and spend in love’s delight, 170
The beauty and the joy of their renewèd might.

The leprous corpse touched by this spirit tender
Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;
Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour
Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death 175
And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath;
Nought we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows
Be as a sword consumed before the sheath
By sightless lightning?—the intense atom glows
A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose. 180

Alas! that all we loved of him should be
But for our grief, as if it had not been,
And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!
Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene
The actors or spectators? Great and mean 185
Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow.
As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.

He will awake no more, oh, never more! 190
‘Wake thou,’ cried Misery, ‘childless Mother, rise
Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart’s core,
A wound more fierce than his, with tears and sighs.’
And all the Dreams that watched Urania’s eyes,
And all the Echoes whom their sister’s song 195
Had held in holy silence, cried: ‘Arise!’
Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory stung,
From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung.

She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs
Out of the East, and follows wild and drear 200
The golden Day, which, on eternal wings,
Even as a ghost abandoning a bier,
Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear
So struck, so roused, so rapt Urania;
So saddened round her like an atmosphere 205
Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way
Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay.

Out of her secret Paradise she sped,
Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel,
And human hearts, which to her airy tread 210
Yielding not, wounded the invisible
Palms of her tender feet where’er they fell:
And barbèd tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they
Rent the soft Form they never could repel,
Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May, 215
Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way.

In the death-chamber for a moment Death,
Shamed by the presence of that living Might,
Blushed to annihilation, and the breath
Revisited those lips, and Life’s pale light 220
Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear delight.
‘Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless,
As silent lightning leaves the starless night!
Leave me not!’ cried Urania: her distress
Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, and met her vain caress. 225

‘Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again;
Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live;
And in my heartless breast and burning brain
That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive,
With food of saddest memory kept alive, 230
Now thou art dead, as dead, as if it were a part
Of thee, my Adonais! I would give
All that I am to be as thou now art!
But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart!

‘O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert, 235
Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men
Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart
Dare the unpastured dragon in his den?
Defenceless as thou wert, oh where was then
Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear? 240
Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when
Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere,
The monsters of life’s waste had fled from thee like deer.

‘The herded wolves, bold only to pursue;
The obscene ravens, clamorous o’er the dead; 245
The vultures to the conqueror’s banner true
Who feed where Desolation first has fed,
And whose wings rain contagion;—how they fled,
When, like Apollo, from his golden bow,
The Pythian of the age one arrow sped 250
And smiled!—The spoilers tempt no second blow,
They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.

‘The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn;
He sets, and each ephemeral insect then
Is gathered into death without a dawn, 255
And the immortal stars awake again;
So is it in the world of living men:
A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight
Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when
It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light 260
Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit’s awful night.’

Thus ceased she: and the mountain shepherds came,
Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent;
The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame
Over his living head like Heaven is bent, 265
An early but enduring monument,
Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song
In sorrow; from her wilds Ierne sent
The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong,
And Love taught Grief to fall like music from his tongue. 270

Midst others of less note, came one frail Form,
A phantom among men; companionless
As the last cloud of an expiring storm
Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess,
Had gazed on Nature’s naked loveliness, 275
Actæon-like, and now he fled astray
With feeble steps o’er the world’s wilderness,
And his own thoughts, along that rugged way,
Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey.

A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift— 280
Love in desolation masked;—a Power
Girt round with weakness;—it can scarce uplift
The weight of the superincumbent hour;
It is a dying lamp, a falling shower,
A breaking billow;—even whilst we speak 285
Is it not broken? On the withering flower
The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek
The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.

His head was bound with pansies overblown,
And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue; 290
And a light spear topped with a cypress cone,
Round whose rude shaft dark ivy tresses grew
Yet dripping with the forest’s noonday dew,
Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart
Shook the weak hand that grasped it; of that crew 295
He came the last, neglected and apart;
A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter’s dart.

All stood aloof, and at his partial moan
Smiled through their tears; well knew that gentle band
Who in another’s fate now wept his own; 300
As in the accents of an unknown land,
He sung new sorrow; sad Urania scanned
The Stranger’s mien, and murmured: ‘Who art thou?’
He answered not, but with a sudden hand
Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow, 305
Which was like Cain’s or Christ’s—oh, that it should be so!

What softer voice is hushed over the dead?
Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown?
What form leans sadly o’er the white death-bed,
In mockery of monumental stone, 310
The heavy heart heaving without a moan?
If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise,
Taught, soothed, loved, honoured the departed one;
Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs
The silence of that heart’s accepted sacrifice. 315

Our Adonais has drunk poison—Oh!
What deaf and viperous murderer could crown
Life’s early cup with such a draught of woe?
The nameless worm would now itself disown:
It felt, yet could escape, the magic tone 320
Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and wrong,
But what was howling in one breast alone,
Silent with expectation of the song,
Whose master’s hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.

Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame! 325
Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me,
Thou noteless blot on a remembered name!
But be thyself, and know thyself to be!
And ever at thy season be thou free
To spill the venom when thy fangs o’erflow: 330
Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee;
Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow,
And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt—as now.

Nor let us weep that our delight is fled
Far from these carrion kites that scream below; 335
He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead;
Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now.—
Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow
Back to the burning fountain whence it came,
A portion of the Eternal, which must glow 340
Through time and change, unquenchably the same,
Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame.

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep—
He hath awakened from the dream of life—
’Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep 345
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit’s knife
Invulnerable nothings.—We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day, 350
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

He has outsoared the shadow of our night;
Envy and calumny and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again; 355
From the contagion of the world’s slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain;
Nor, when the spirit’s self has ceased to burn,
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. 360

He lives, he wakes—’tis Death is dead, not he;
Mourn not for Adonais.—Thou young Dawn,
Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone;
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan! 365
Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown
O’er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare
Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!

He is made one with Nature: there is heard 370
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder, to the song of night’s sweet bird;
He is a presence to be felt and known
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,
Spreading itself where’er that Power may move 375
Which has withdrawn his being to its own;
Which wields the world with never wearied love,
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.

He is a portion of the loveliness
Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear 380
His part, while the one Spirit’s plastic stress
Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there
All new successions to the forms they wear;
Torturing th’ unwilling dross that checks its flight
To its own likeness, as each mass may bear; 385
And bursting in its beauty and its might
From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven’s light.

The splendours of the firmament of time
May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not;
Like stars to their appointed height they climb 390
And death is a low mist which cannot blot
The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought
Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair,
And love and life contend in it, for what
Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there 395
And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.

The inheritors of unfulfilled renown
Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought,
Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton
Rose pale,—his solemn agony had not 400
Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought
And as he fell and as he lived and loved
Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot,
Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved:
Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved. 405

And many more, whose names on Earth are dark,
But whose transmitted effluence cannot die
So long as fire outlives the parent spark,
Rose, robed in dazzling immortality.
‘Thou art become as one of us,’ they cry, 410
‘It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long
Swung blind in unascended majesty,
Silent alone amid an Heaven of Song.
Assume thy wingèd throne, thou Vesper of our throng!’

Who mourns for Adonais? Oh, come forth, 415
Fond wretch! and know thyself and him aright.
Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth;
As from a centre, dart thy spirit’s light
Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might
Satiate the void circumference: then shrink 420
Even to a point within our day and night;
And keep thy heart light lest it make thee sink
When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink.

Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre
Oh, not of him, but of our joy: ’tis nought 425
That ages, empires, and religions there
Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought;
For such as he can lend,—they borrow not
Glory from those who made the world their prey;
And he is gathered to the kings of thought 430
Who waged contention with their time’s decay,
And of the past are all that cannot pass away.

Go thou to Rome,—at once the Paradise,
The grave, the city, and the wilderness;
And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, 435
And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress
The bones of Desolation’s nakedness,
Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead
Thy footsteps to a slope of green access
Where, like an infant’s smile, over the dead 440
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread.

And gray walls moulder round, on which dull Time
Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand;
And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime,
Pavilioning the dust of him who planned 445
This refuge for his memory, doth stand
Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath,
A field is spread, on which a newer band
Have pitched in Heaven’s smile their camp of death,
Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath. 450

Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet
To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned
Its charge to each; and if the seal is set,
Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind,
Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou find 455
Thine own well full, if thou returnest home,
Of tears and gall. From the world’s bitter wind
Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb.
What Adonais is, why fear we to become?

The One remains, the many change and pass; 460
Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.—Die,
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek! 465
Follow where all is fled!—Rome’s azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.

Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart?
Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here 470
They have departed: thou shouldst now depart!
A light is passed from the revolving year,
And man, and woman; and what still is dear
Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither.
The soft sky smiles,—the low wind whispers near; 475
’Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither,
No more let Life divide what Death can join together.

That Light whose smile kindles the Universe,
That Beauty in which all things work and move,
That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse 480
Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love
Which through the web of being blindly wove
By man and beast and earth and air and sea,
Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of
The fire for which all thirst; now beams on me, 485
Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.

The breath whose might I have invoked in song
Descends on me; my spirit’s bark is driven,
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given; 490
The massy earth and spherèd skies are riven!
I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar;
Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven,
The soul of Adonais, like a star,
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. 495
************************************

https://www.bartleby.com/41/522.html

************************************************

This Truth, All Must Find Dear Hope They Embrace


This Earth, this accumulation of life
a great mass of air, water, rock and soil
a dark world, where danger cuts like a knife
man gets bread and water by daily toil.

O' but those pleasures of heart-sweet dreams cast.
Calm, peaceful sea, ship sailing at full mast.

This World, its beauty that rivals its dark
a great mass of people, buildings and cars
a cauldron of darkness violently stark
all made from explosions of long dead stars.

O' but those pleasures of heart-sweet dreams cast.
Calm, peaceful sea, ship sailing at full mast.

This Life, its joys, heartaches and epic pains
a mystery, a climb, race against time
a harvest of precious golden grains
romance, verses born of sweet rhythmic rhyme.

O' but those pleasures of heart-sweet dreams cast.
Calm, peaceful sea, ship sailing at full mast.

This Truth, all must find dear hope they embrace
a revelation, a desire, love
a newfound world of divinely sent grace
giftings of manna from Heaven above.

O' but those pleasures of heart-sweet dreams cast.
Calm, peaceful sea, ship sailing at full mast.

Robert J. Lindley, 10-14-2020
Rhyme( When The Days Have Flown, Into That Mystical Mist )

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Blog: Of Ulysses, Homer's Troy And The Wrathful Gods
Blog Posted:11/2/2020 3:32:00 AM
( Blog: Of Ulysses, Homer's Troy And The Wrathful Gods )

(I.)

Of Ulysses, Homer's Troy And The Wrathful Gods

I, who am of the ancient tribe of trees
Climb slowly.

Aeons unguessed, ere I shall see the crest
Of the blue towers, - love's high citadels
Hath reared, utterably beautiful
Unutterably holy, truth's infinite light.

I, who am of the ancient tribe of trees
Climb slowly.

Thy mystic news from out the Invisible
Would save all men, were they content to dwell
In lowly station, proud to share the power
That forms the world in secret hour by hour.

I, who am of the ancient tribe of trees
Climb slowly.

I have not heard any man yet born
Unlocked in verse such cruel agony
Great gusts of song, raw as uptorn
Thou grim and gruesome master of the sea.

I, who am of the ancient tribe of trees
Climb slowly.

Set thee upon some mountain promontory
With no companion but that ancient story
In the mirror of Princes,
And thou shalt find thy throne restored to thee.

I, who am of the ancient tribe of trees
Climb slowly.

(II.)

Duality

Thy day is filled with echoes of olden time,
Shadows of pain. I watch the skylark climb
Into the sun above the golden grain.

One thou lovest for that he wrote his dream
In blood, then died. True joy is it doth gleam
Even among the sweet flowers of summer tide.

Yet thou and I are he that now doth write,
Of ancient seed deep-rooted, dark and light,
Sheltering good and evil at their need.

(III.)

A Little Poem

A little poem a dark soul brought forth
One hour of loneliness and misery;
Yet round it swung the keen stars of the north,
And deep within it moaned a troubled sea.

The joy'est trust of those eternal fires,
And all the calm those billows yearned unto,
Were in that poem, in that soul's desires,
And in the Heart that flashed that vision through.


R.J. Lindley, April, 3rd, 1973
(Within the shadows of a youthful mind's
mysterious desires and radiant glow)...

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Blog on Charles Bukowski, great Poetry- that is dark and gritty.
Blog Posted:11/11/2020 5:42:00 AM
Blog on Charles Bukowski,
great Poetry- that is dark and gritty.


He who truly understands Charles Bukowski,
sees the dark of the world, its pains and
has a much better understanding of life.
RJL

***************


https://poets.org/poem/so-you-want-be-writer

*****
(1.)

this kind of fire
Charles Bukowski - 1920-1994

sometimes I think the gods
deliberately keep pushing me
into the fire
just to hear me
yelp
a few good
lines.

they just aren't going to
let me retire
silk scarf about neck
giving lectures at
Yale.

the gods need me to
entertain them.

they must be terribly
bored with all
the others

and I am too.

and now my cigarette lighter
has gone dry.
I sit here
hopelessly
flicking it.

this kind of fire
they can't give
me.
From The Continual Condtion by Charles Bukowski.
Copyright © 2009 by Linda Lee Bukowski.


(2.)

so you want to be a writer?
Charles Bukowski - 1920-1994


if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

From sifting through the madness for the Word, the line,
the way by Charles Bukowski.
Copyright © 2003 by the Estate of Charles Bukowski.

*****
(3.)

the suicide kid
Charles Bukowski - 1920-1994

I went to the worst of bars
hoping to get
killed.
but all I could do was to
get drunk
again.
worse, the bar patrons even
ended up
liking me.
there I was trying to get
pushed over the dark
edge
and I ended up with
free drinks
while somewhere else
some poor
son-of-a-bitch was in a hospital
bed,
tubes sticking out all over
him
as he fought like hell
to live.
nobody would help me
die as
the drinks kept
coming,
as the next day
waited for me
with its steel clamps,
its stinking
anonymity,
its incogitant
attitude.
death doesn't always
come running
when you call
it,
not even if you
call it
from a shining
castle
or from an ocean liner
or from the best bar
on earth (or the
worst).
such impertinence
only makes the gods
hesitate and
delay.
ask me: I'm
72.
Copyright © 2005 by Charles Bukowski.
From Slouching Toward Nirvana: New Poems.

*****************

To many- any poet that wrote as dark and gritty as did Bukowski is looked upon with disdain. To me, such is a completely wrong-headed view. I see it as, a true poet that writes straight from the heart. Which is the very essence of poetry, and is also being a true poet.
And Charles Bukowski was not only a true poet but also a very great one as well.
Certainly, a top poet that should be deeply studied
read, and truly appreciated for that which he gave
to poetry, this world, and we that so love poetry. RJL

I am really tired of those poets that think "sweet candy poetry", is all that matters...
And thus frown upon the poets that do not agree with that myopic view..-Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Blog Posted:12/13/2020 8:33:00 AM

Blog on R.S. Thomas the famous poet

https://www.britannica.com/biography/R-S-Thomas



R.S. Thomas, in full Ronald Stuart Thomas, (born March 29, 1913, Cardiff, Glamorgan [now in Cardiff], Wales—died September 25, 2000, Llanfairynghornwy, Gwynedd), Welsh clergyman and poet whose lucid, austere verse expresses an undeviating affirmation of the values of the common man.

Thomas was educated in Wales at University College at Bangor (1935) and ordained in the Church of Wales (1936), in which he held appointments in several parishes. He published his first volume of poetry in 1946 and gradually developed his unadorned style with each new collection. His early poems, most notably those found in Stones of the Field (1946) and Song at the Year’s Turning: Poems 1942–1954 (1955), contained a harshly critical but increasingly compassionate view of the Welsh people and their stark homeland. In Thomas’s later volumes, starting with Poetry for Supper (1958), the subjects of his poetry remained the same, yet his questions became more specific, his irony more bitter, and his compassion deeper. In such later works as The Way of It (1977), Frequencies (1978), Between Here and Now (1981), and Later Poems 1972–1982 (1983), Thomas was not without hope when he described with mournful derision the cultural decay affecting his parishioners, his country, and the modern world. Though an ardent Welsh nationalist, Thomas learned to speak Welsh only in his 30s and did not feel comfortable writing poetry in that tongue; however, Neb (1985; “No One”; Eng. trans. Autobiographies), a collection of autobiographical essays, was written in Welsh. Thomas was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1964. His Collected Poems 1945–1990 was published in 1993.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Chelsey Parrott-Sheffer, Research Editor.

********************************************

********************************************

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/r-s-thomas

R. S. Thomas

1913–2000

Black and white headshot of poet R.S. Thomas.

Recognized as one of the leading poets of modern Wales, R. S. Thomas writes about the people of his country in a style that some critics have compared to that nation's harsh and rugged terrain. Using few of the common poetic devices, Thomas's work exhibits what Alan Brownjohn of the New Statesman calls a "cold, telling purity of language." James F. Knapp of Twentieth Century Literature explains that "the poetic world which emerges from the verse of R. S. Thomas is a world of lonely Welsh farms and of the farmers who endure the harshness of their hill country. The vision is realistic and merciless." Despite the often grim nature of his subject matter, Thomas's poems are ultimately life-affirming. "What I'm after," John Mole of Phoenix quotes Thomas explaining, "is to demonstrate that man is spiritual." As Louis Sasso remarks in Library Journal, "Thomas's poems are sturdy, worldly creations filled with compassion, love, doubt, and irony. They make one feel joy in being part of the human race."

The son of a sailor, Thomas spent much of his childhood in British port towns where he and his mother would live while his father was away at sea. His early education began late and was only sporadically pursued until his father found steady work with a ferry boat company operating between Wales and Ireland, and the family was able to settle in the Welsh town of Caergybi. After graduating from school Thomas studied for the Anglican priesthood, a career first suggested to him by his mother. As he recounts in his article for the Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series (CAAS), "Shy as I was, I offered no resistance."

In 1936, Thomas was ordained a deacon in the Anglican Church and was assigned to work as a curate in the Welsh mining village of Chirk. In 1937 he became an Anglican priest. The post in Chirk was the first of a series of positions he was to hold in the rural communities of Wales. Between 1936 and 1978, Thomas served in churches located in six different Welsh towns. These appointments gave him a firsthand knowledge of Welsh farming life and provided him with a host of characters and settings for his poetry.

Although he had written poetry in school, it was only after meeting Mildred E. Eldridge, the woman who was to become his wife, that Thomas began to write seriously. At the time they met she had already earned a reputation as a painter, and, as Thomas remarks in his article for CAAS, "this made me wish to become recognised as a poet." He began to compose poetry about the Welsh countryside and its people, influenced by the writings of Edward Thomas, Fiona Macleod, and William Butler Yeats.

Perhaps Thomas's best known character is Iago Prytherch, a farm laborer who appears in many of his poems. Thomas describes him in the poem "A Peasant" as "an ordinary man of the bald Welsh hills." Writing in British Poetry since 1970: A Critical Survey, Colin Meir explains that Prytherch epitomizes Welsh hill-farming life and "is seen as embodying man's fortitude." A. E. Dyson, in an article for Critical Quarterly, finds that Prytherch, being a farmer, is "cut off from culture and poetry, and cut off too ... from religion.... Yet [he] has an elemental reality and power in his life which is in part to be envied."

Prytherch is a kind of archetypal rural Welshman, standing as a symbol for his people. As Knapp remarks, Prytherch "represents the Welsh peasants in all their aspects throughout [Thomas's] poetry." According to Dyson, Prytherch is also used by Thomas as a symbol for humanity itself. His hard labor in an unyielding landscape, though representative of Welsh farmers, also exemplifies the hardships common to all men. "It seems then," Dyson states, "that in finding in the Welsh peasants a 'prototype' of man, Thomas is making a universal statement.... This pared-down existence, in a land of ruined beauty belonging to the past, is more human than any educated sophistication. Or perhaps one should say, it is more truly symbolic of the human predicament."

Many of Thomas's poems set his farming characters against the bleak and forbidding landscape of Wales, focusing on the difficulties of rural existence. "Many of his poems offer an unsparingly bleak view of man," Knapp admits, "and ... even in those cases where hope seems clearly offered, the elements of the drama are still exceedingly grim.... The basic postulate is a kind of minimal man, struggling to endure in his little universe.... Mostly the visual aspect of the poetry concerns lone figures, working the stony fields, walking along the roads." Comparing Thomas's work with that of Robert Frost, who also wrote of rural life, C. A. Runcie of Poetry Australia notes that Thomas's "farmers and labourers and hillmen, unlike Frost's, are not philosophers. Thought has been worked out of them year after year. Only life and a little, obtuse, silent feeling remain."

As a clergyman, Thomas imbues his poetry with a consistently religious theme, often speaking of "the lonely and often barren predicament of the priest, who is as isolated in his parish as Prytherch is on the bare hillside," as Meir writes. "In Christian terms," Dyson explains, "Thomas is not a poet of the transfiguration, of the resurrection, of human holiness.... He is a poet of the Cross, the unanswered prayer, the bleak trek through darkness, and his theology of Jesus, in particular, seems strange against any known traditional norm." Anne Stevenson of the Listener describes Thomas as "a religious poet" who "sees tragedy, not pathos, in the human condition.... He is one of the rare poets writing today who never asks for pity."

Writing in CAAS, Thomas asserts that "as long as I was a priest of the Church, I felt an obligation to try to present the Bible message in a more or less orthodox way. I never felt that I was employed by the Church to preach my own beliefs and doubts and questionings. Some people were curious to know whether I did not feel some conflict between my two vocations. But I always replied that Christ was a poet, that the New Testament was poetry, and that I had no difficulty preaching the New Testament in its poetic context."

Although he had already published three books of poetry, Thomas did not gain widespread recognition as a poet until the appearance of Song at the Year's Turning: Poems, 1942-1954. This volume, brought out by a major publisher and with an introduction by poet John Betjeman, introduced Thomas to a national audience and "caused quite a stir," according to W. J. Keith in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. The collection's poems, marked by a spare and controlled language, earned Thomas widespread critical praise. With each subsequent volume his reputation has increased.

Like the Welsh countryside he writes about, Thomas's poetry is often harsh and austere, written in plain, somber language, with a meditative quality. Runcie describes Thomas's style as consisting of "simple words and short nouns, nouns of such authentic meaning that they rarely need modifiers, moving as beats at a controlled pace in stress accent metre—a constant technique to effect a constant tone, his own inexhaustibly haunting tone that lingers like sounds in a darkness." Writing in Eight Contemporary Poets, Calvin Bedient also notes this spare style, claiming that "Thomas puts little between himself and his subject.... His poems are ascetic.... To seem at once lean and sensuous, transparent and deeply crimsoned, is part of his distinction." Thomas reveals his stylistic intentions in Words and the Poet: "A recurring ideal, I find, is that of simplicity. At times there comes the desire to write with great precision and clarity, words so simple and moving that they bring tears to the eyes."

Thomas's interest in such things as his Welsh homeland, his religion, the natural world, and a spare and simple poetic style reflect his disenchantment with the modern world. In Neb: Golygwyd gan Gwenno Hywyn, an autobiography, Thomas speaks of his tendency to "look back and see the past as better," according to Gwyneth Lewis in London Magazine. On several occasions he has expressed his dismay at this century's industrialization of Wales, arguing that the country's natural beauty has been ruined. In his article for CAAS, Thomas lists among his recent concerns "the assault of contemporary lifestyles on the beauty and peace of the natural world." Thomas notes too that religious faith has declined with the emergence of our technological civilization. "We are told with increasing vehemence," he writes in the Times Literary Supplement, "that this is a scientific age, that science is transforming the world, but is it not also a mechanized and impersonal age, an analytic and clinical one; an age in which under the hard gloss of affluence there can be detected the murmuring of the starved heart and the uneasy spirit?"

Since the late 1950s, Thomas has focused on "matters of greater importance to man at the close of the 20th century," notes a critic for the Economist. "His pursuit of an elusive God and the general crises of faith; the dehumanising effect of the machine; the scientific world view and the challenges it poses to the poet." In a review of Counterpoint William Scammell of the Times Literary Supplement remarks: "Few creature comforts are offered to the reader of R. S. Thomas's later verse. The language tends to be flat, plain and declarative.... The conceptual mix is one of Christian myth, scientific terminology and late-twentieth-century scepticism." Acid rain, black holes, and noxious chemicals are set against biblical images and symbols. The result, according to Scammell, is "often like someone in a hurry to set down a scheme of first and last things."

Two of Thomas's more-recent collections, Mass for Hard Times and No Truce with the Furies, published in 1993 and 1995, respectively, reveal the hard edge, spiritual questioning, and cultural skepticism of Thomas's later poetry. Writing in the New Statesman & Society, Justin Wintle remarks that Thomas's "poems rub against each other unlike anyone else's. They also provoke a reciprocal turmoil in the reader, so fiercely negative at times is his treatment of humanity." Wintle, who praises the poet's "sea-shore cadences of a free verse as astringent as it is intellectual," concludes that "[Thomas] has doggedly pursued a clutch of themes as universal as you are likely to find."

The long-awaited Collected Poems, 1945-1990 was published to coincide with Thomas's eightieth birthday. In a Times Literary Supplement review of the volume, Stephen Knight observes: "From the beginning, Thomas was determined to follow his own path and this extraordinary book bears witness to that." C. H. Sisson echoes this view. "Thomas's work is marked by the integrity of a man who has taken a difficult path and persisted in it," he writes in the Spectator. Sisson explains that Thomas "passes from the first ruthless impact of his still rural parishioners on a young townsman fresh from university and theological college, to a ruthless perception of his own agonies and difficulties."

Runcie believes that with Thomas, the poet and the poetry are one. He describes Thomas as "a Welshman and a parson, a tidy, boney man with a thin face rutted by severity. And the poems are the man. Austere and simple and of repressed power." Similarly, William Cole in the Saturday Review/World comments that "Thomas is austere, tough-minded, but can bring tears." Looking back on his long career, Thomas writes in CAAS that he "moved in unimportant circles, avoiding, or being excluded from the busier and more imposing walks of life." He claims that the critical praise he has received is due to "a small talent for turning my limited thoughts and experience and meditation upon them into verse."

Despite what he sees as a "small talent," Thomas is often ranked among the most important Welsh poets of this century. Writing in the Anglo-Welsh Review, R. George Thomas finds him to be "the finest living Welsh poet writing in English." Keith reports that Thomas is "now recognized as a prominent voice in British poetry of the second half of the twentieth century" and "has strong claims to be considered the most important contemporary Anglo-Welsh poet." Indeed, in the 1990s Thomas began to be mentioned as a possible candidate for the Nobel Prize for literature, and in 1996 he was awarded the prestigious Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. Robert Hass, writing in the Washington Post, notes that Thomas "has made remarkable poetry out of the flinty and unforgiving hill country of Wales and an obdurate, existential Christianity." Meir concludes that Thomas's work expresses a religious conviction uncommon in modern poetry. Thomas, according to Meir, believes that "one of the important functions of poetry is to embody religious truth, and since for him as poet that truth is not easily won, his poems record the struggle with marked honesty and integrity, thereby providing the context for the necessarily infrequent moments of faith and vision which are expressed with a clarity and gravity rarely matched by any of his contemporaries."

This quote below drew me to this fine poet..

("""

Machine generated alternative text:
Like the Welsh countryside he writes about, Thomas's poetry isoften harsh and austere, written
in plain, somber language, with a meditative quality. Runcie describes Thomas's style as
consistingof "simple words and short nouns, nouns of such authentic meaning that they rarely
need modifiers, movingas beats ata controlled pace in stress accent metre—a constant
technique to effect a constant tone, his own inexhaustibly haunting tone that lingers like sounds
in a darkness. " Writing in Eight Contemporary Poets, Calvin Bedientalso notes this spare style,
claiming that "Thomas puts little between himself and his subject.... His poems are ascetic.... To
seem at once lean and sensuous, transparent and deeply crimsoned, is partof his distinction."
Thomas reveals hisstylistic intentions in Words and the Poet: "A recurring ideal, I find, is thatof
simplicity. At times there comes the desire to write with great precision and clarity, words so
simple and moving that they bring tears to the eyes. "

""")

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Into Darkness She Had So Sadly And Swiftly Fallen

( A Very Sad Tale With No Fairytale Ending )


There in the dark cold room, emptiness and sorrow

Hung like a nose awaiting its next dying soul

Like youth that dares not to wait for next tomorrow

Was that broken heart suffering its greatest toll.

An epic tragedy of Shakespearian might

A fallen angel, writhing in throes of despair

To be sure she was indeed a very poor sight

Clad in torn dress with her dirty dishwater hair!



In that sad place that time, doomed to meet her end

Amidst the hovel and willfully silent walls

Alone and starving, devoid of care and her friend

Into the chasm of agony fell her weak calls.

She that had once dazzling beauty and her great fame

Now a fallen angel, tormented by her sin

Without home or even a penny to her name

Begging death's dark-hand, anything to the hurt end!



As that midnight bell sounded with its sadden strokes

She turn to gaze at the full moon beaming so bright

Gone were the friends, the parties and the gayest jokes

There lay she in the mess of her pitiful sight.

No courageous white-knight came to her rescue

There in the corner stood that monster laughing loud

Of its evil-cast origins she had not a clue

Always above its ugly head hung a black cloud!



Time was fast ticking, she said her final sad words

She was there with her beloved snow-white horses

In the open plains riding with the racing herds

Towards the gold castle that held the sweetest voices.

Dawn rays found her frozen body, her eyes bound shut

The monster had flown her to its hideous lair

Its razor sharp claws had gifted the ending cut

She was at final rest no longer in its wicked snare!

Robert J. Lindley, 12-14-2020

Rhyme, Composed In Tribute to - R.S. Thomas…

( Doom Brought On By Drug Addiction- Death As Its Monster Feeds )



Note: The year was 1977, my friend was in mourning for his beautiful cousin.

She had ran away the year before with her drug crazed idiotic boyfriend.

A year later she was dead.. As he told it - she died for love-- first came the love for

the idiot boyfriend, the guy that got her hooked on drugs. Then he abandoned her

far away from home to die by herself in a cheap motel room. Life gives us

Choices-- some of them turn out to be deadly.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Blog on the amazing poet, Ivor Gurney- A tribute to a great poet and brave man - Robert Lindley's Blog
...

Blog on the amazing poet, Ivor Gurney- A tribute to a great poet and brave man
Blog Posted:12/18/2020 10:27:00 AM
Blog on the amazing poet , Ivor Gurney

A tribute to a great poet and brave man

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57254/laventie

(1.)

To the Poet Before Battle

---BY IVOR GURNEY

Now, youth, the hour of thy dread passion comes;

Thy lovely things must all be laid away;

And thou, as others, must face the riven day

Unstirred by rattle of the rolling drums,

Or bugles' strident cry. When mere noise numbs

The sense of being, the sick soul doth sway,

Remember thy great craft's honour, that they may say

Nothing in shame of poets. Then the crumbs

Of praise the little versemen joyed to take

Shall be forgotten; then they must know we are,

For all our skill in words, equal in might

And strong of mettle as those we honoured; make

The name of poet terrible in just war,

And like a crown of honour upon the fight.

(2.)

Ballad of the Three Spectres

----BY IVOR GURNEY

As I went up by Ovillers

In mud and water cold to the knee,

There went three jeering, fleering spectres,

That walked abreast and talked of me.



The first said, ‘Here’s a right brave soldier

That walks the dark unfearingly;

Soon he’ll come back on a fine stretcher,

And laughing for a nice Blighty.’



The second, ‘Read his face, old comrade,

No kind of lucky chance I see;

One day he’ll freeze in mud to the marrow,

Then look his last on Picardie.’



Though bitter the word of these first twain

Curses the third spat venomously;

‘He’ll stay untouched till the war’s last dawning

Then live one hour of agony.’



Liars the first two were. Behold me

At sloping arms by one – two – three;

Waiting the time I shall discover

Whether the third spake verity.

(3.)

Laventie

---BY IVOR GURNEY

One would remember still

Meadows and low hill

Laventie was, as to the line and elm row

Growing through green strength wounded, as home elms grow.

Shimmer of summer there and blue autumn mists

Seen from trench-ditch winding in mazy twists.

The Australian gunners in close flowery hiding

Cunning found out at last, and smashed in the unspeakable lists.

And the guns in the smashed wood thumping and grinding.



The letters written there, and received there,

Books, cakes, cigarettes in a parish of famine,

And leaks in rainy times with general all-damning.

The crater, and carrying of gas cylinders on two sticks

(Pain past comparison and far past right agony gone)

Strained hopelessly of heart and frame at first fix.



Café-au-lait in dug-outs on Tommies' cookers,

Cursed minniewerfs, thirst in eighteen-hour summer.

The Australian miners clayed, and the being afraid

Before strafes, sultry August dusk time than Death dumber —

And the cooler hush after the strafe, and the long night wait —

The relief of first dawn, the crawling out to look at it,

Wonder divine of Dawn, man hesitating before Heaven's gate.

(Though not on Coopers where music fire took at it,

Though not as at Framilode beauty where body did shake at it)

Yet the dawn with aeroplanes crawling high at Heaven's gate

Lovely aerial beetles of wonderful scintillate

Strangest interest, and puffs of soft purest white —

Soaking light, dispersing colouring for fancy's delight.



Of Maconachie, Paxton, Tickler, and Gloucester's Stephens;

Fray Bentos, Spiller and Baker, odds and evens

Of trench food, but the everlasting clean craving

For bread, the pure thing, blessed beyond saving.

Canteen disappointments, and the keen boy braving

Bullets or such for grouse roused surprisingly through (Halfway) Stand-to.

And the shell nearly blunted my razor at shaving;

Tilleloy, Pauquissart, Neuve Chapelle, and mud like glue.



But Laventie, most of all, I think is to soldiers

The Town itself with plane trees, and small-spa air;

And vin, rouge-blanc, chocolat, citron, grenadine:

One might buy in small delectable cafés there.

The broken church, and vegetable fields bare;

Neat French market town look so clean,

And the clarity, amiability of North French air.



Like water flowing beneath the dark plough and high Heaven,

Music's delight to please the poet pack-marching there.

******

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivor_Gurney

Ivor Gurney

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ivor Bertie Gurney (28 August 1890 – 26 December 1937) was an English poet and composer, particularly of songs. He was born and raised in Gloucester. He suffered from manic depression through much of his life and spent his last 15 years in psychiatric hospitals. Critical evaluation of Gurney has been complicated by this, and also by the need to assess both his poetry and his music.[1] Gurney himself thought of music as his true vocation: "The brighter visions brought music; the fainter verse".[2]

Contents

1 Life

2 Mental illness

3 Death and legacy

4 Works

4.1 Compositions

4.2 War poet/local poet

4.3 Posthumous collections of poetry and letters

4.4 Five Elizabethan songs

4.5 Other songs

4.6 Selected poems

5 See also

6 References

7 Sources

8 External links

Life

Ivor Gurney was born at 3 Queen Street, Gloucester, in 1890, as the second of four surviving children of David Gurney, a tailor, and his wife Florence, a seamstress.[3]



He showed early musical ability. He sang as a chorister at Gloucester Cathedral from 1900 to 1906, when he became an articled pupil of Dr Herbert Brewer at the cathedral. There he met a fellow composer, Herbert Howells, who became a lifelong friend. Alongside Gurney and Howells, Brewer's third pupil at this time was Ivor Novello, then known as Ivor Davies. He also enjoyed an enduring friendship with the poet F. W. Harvey, whom he met in 1908.



The adults of most significance in Gurney's early life were the Rev. Alfred H. Cheesman, and two sisters, Emily and Margaret Hunt, who nurtured Gurney's interests in music and literature. Gurney began composing music at the age of 14,[4] and won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in 1911. He studied there with Charles Villiers Stanford, who also taught Ralph Vaughan Williams, John Ireland, Marion Scott, Rebecca Clarke, Frank Bridge, Arthur Bliss, Herbert Howells and many others. Stanford told Howells that Gurney was potentially "the biggest of them all", but he was "unteachable".[5]



Gurney possessed a dynamic personality, but he had been troubled by mood swings that became apparent during his teenage years. He had a difficult time focusing on his work at college and suffered his first breakdown in 1913.[6] After taking a rest, he seemed to recover and returned to college.



Gurney's studies were interrupted by World War I, when he enlisted as a private soldier in the Gloucestershire Regiment in February 1915. At the front, he began writing poetry seriously, sending his efforts to his friend, the musicologist and critic Marion Scott, who worked with Gurney as his editor and business manager. He was in the midst of writing the poems for what would become his first book, Severn and Somme, when he was wounded in the shoulder in April 1917. He recovered and returned to battle, still working on his book and composing music, including the songs "In Flanders" and "By A Bierside". Sidgwick & Jackson accepted Severn and Somme in July, with publication set for the autumn. In the meantime, Gurney was gassed in September the same year and sent to the Edinburgh War Hospital, where he met and fell in love with a VAD nurse, Annie Nelson Drummond, but the relationship later broke down. There remains some controversy about the possible effects of the gas on his mental health, even though Gurney had clearly shown signs and symptoms of a bipolar disorder since his teens.[7] "Being gassed (mildly) [his parenthesis] with the new gas is no worse than catarrh or a bad cold," Gurney wrote in a letter to Marion Scott on 17 September 1917. After his release from hospital, he was posted to Seaton Delaval, a mining village in Northumberland, where he wrote poems, including "Lying Awake in the Ward". His volume Severn and Somme was published in November 1917.

Mental illness

Memorials to Ivor Gurney in Gloucester Cathedral

stained-glass window

Ivor Gurney memorial window

stone plaque

Ivor Gurney memorial plaque

In March 1918, Gurney suffered a serious breakdown, triggered at least in part by the sudden breakdown of his relationship with Drummond.[7][8] He was hospitalised in the Gallery Ward at Brancepeth Castle, County Durham, where he wrote several songs, despite the piano sounding, he said, like "a boiler factory in full swing because of the stone walls".[9] In June he threatened suicide, but he did not attempt it.



Gurney slowly regained some of his emotional stability and in October was honourably discharged from the army. Gurney received an unconventional diagnosis of nervous breakdown from "deferred" shell shock.[6] The notion that Gurney's instability should primarily be attributed to "shell shock" was perpetuated by Marion Scott, who used this term in the initial press releases after Gurney's death, as well as in his entry for Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians.



Gurney seemed to thrive after the war and was regarded as one of the most promising men of his generation, but his mental distress continued to worsen.[7] He studied for a brief time with Ralph Vaughan Williams upon returning to the Royal College of Music, but he withdrew from the college before completing his studies. His second volume of poetry, War's Embers, appeared in May 1919 to mixed reviews. He continued to compose, producing a large number of songs, instrumental pieces, chamber music, and two works for orchestra: War Elegy (1920) and A Gloucestershire Rhapsody (1919–1921). His music was being performed and published. However, by 1922, his condition had deteriorated to the point where his family had him declared insane.



It has been speculated that Gurney's mental problems may have resulted from syphilis, contracted either while he was a music student before the war, or perhaps while serving as a soldier in France. Blevins, Gurney's biographer, however, concludes that he did not suffer from syphilis. The issue has also been discussed, more recently, by Cambridge academic and broadcaster Kate Kennedy.[10]



Gurney spent the last 15 years of his life in psychiatric hospitals, first for a short period at Barnwood House in Gloucester, and then at the City of London Mental Hospital, Dartford, where he was diagnosed as suffering from "delusional insanity (systematised)".[11] Gurney wrote prolifically during the asylum years, producing some eight collections of verse. His output included two plays in Shakespearean style – "Gloucester Play (1926) and "The Tewkesbury Trial" (1926).[12] During this time he appeared to believe himself to be Shakespeare in person. He continued also to compose music, but to a far lesser degree. An examination of his archive suggests that up to two-thirds of his musical output remains unpublished and unrecorded.[13]



By the 1930s Gurney wrote little of anything, although he was described by Scott as being "so sane in his insanity".

Death and legacy

The grave of Ivor Gurney at Twigworth, Gloucestershire

The Candle, Gloucester Docks (2011)

Gurney died of tuberculosis while still a patient at the City of London Mental Hospital, shortly before dawn on 26 December 1937, aged 47. He was buried in Twigworth, near Gloucester. The service was conducted by his godfather, Rev. Alfred Cheesman. Gurney was "a lover and maker of beauty", it was stated on his gravestone. (The stone was replaced after it was damaged – the original is now stored inside Twigworth church.) Marion Scott preserved Gurney's manuscripts and letters and worked with composer Gerald Finzi to ensure that his legacy should not be forgotten.



On 11 November 1985, Gurney was among 16 Great War Poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner.[14] The inscription on the stone was written by a fellow Great War poet, Wilfred Owen: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."



In 2000, a stained-glass window was installed in St Mary de Lode Church, Gloucester and dedicated to the memory of Ivor Gurney.[15] A memorial to Gurney was erected in 2009 Sint-Juliaan, near Ypres, close to the spot where he was the victim of a mustard gas attack in 1917.[16][17]



A sculpture by Wolfgang Buttress entitled The Candle was unveiled in 2011 in Victoria Dock, Gloucester Docks; it is inscribed with lines from the Gurney's poem "Requiem" around the base.[18][19] There is also a blue plaque memorial to Gurney in Eastgate Street, Gloucester.[20]



In April 2014, BBC Four broadcast a documentary about Gurney, entitled The Poet Who Loved the War, presented by Tim Kendall, which focused on how the First World War had in some ways helped Gurney through the periods of depression he suffered and helped him become one of the war's foremost poets.[21]



In June and July 2014 Gurney was the subject of BBC Radio 3's Composer of the Week, based on Dr Kate Kennedy's biography, Ivor Gurney: Dweller in Shadows, as part of the station's Music in the Great War series. The programmes included a number of Gurney's pieces, especially recorded by the BBC.[13]



Works

Gurney's reputation as a poet and as a composer has continued to rise.

Compositions

Cover of a 1923 edition of Gurney's song cycle Ludlow and Teme

Gurney wrote hundreds of poems and more than 300 songs but only set a handful of his own poems to music, the best known being Severn Meadows. His well-known compositions include his Five Elizabethan Songs (or 'The Elizas' as he called them), written in 1913-14 while he was still as student at the Royal College of Music. The song cycles Ludlow and Teme (published 1923) and The Western Playland, (published 1926), both settings of poetry by A. E. Housman, were prepared for publication with the help of admirers and friends, including Gerald Finzi and his wife Joy, Howard Ferguson and Marion Scott.[22] Oxford University Press issued two sets of ten songs in 1938, a year after his death, selected and edited by Finzi and Ferguson. Three further sets of ten songs came out in 1952, 1959 and 1979.



Gurney set to music many of the poems of his contemporaries, including at least nineteen poems written by Edward Thomas, six of them collected in the orchestral song cycle Lights Out published in 1926, and at least seven by W. H. Davies.[23] All of Gurney's settings from the Canadian poet Bliss Carman's Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics (1904) were gathered together in a new collection, Seven Sappho Songs by Richard Carder in 1998.[24] There is something of Schubert and Schumann, but considerably less of the prevailing folk idiom of the time, in the intensity of Gurney's musical language.[25]



His Five Preludes for piano were written in 1919-20 and published the following year. He also wrote as many as 20 string quartets, although most of these are lost. The String Quartet in D minor, composed in 1924, received its premiere recording in 2020.[26]



War poet/local poet

Edmund Blunden, at the urging of Gerald Finzi, assembled the first collection of Gurney's poetry which was published in 1954. This was followed by P. J. Kavanagh's Collected Poems, first published in 1982 and reissued in 2004. It remains the most comprehensive edition of Gurney's poetry. Gurney is regarded as one of the great World War I poets, and like others of them, such as Edward Thomas, whom he admired, he often contrasted the horrors of the front line with the beauty and tranquillity of his native English landscape – these themes were explored in the 2012 musical play A Soldier and a Maker.



Deliberately unrhetorical in his poetic tone,[27] and writing as a ranker not an officer,[28] Gurney offered a complex, wry, unheroic view of the soldierly world of the Western Front:[29] presenting not a large statement (for or against war), but an individual experience.[30] Without diminishing the horrors of the front line, Gurney's poems often emphasise the moments of relief. "On Rest" was above all what he called "the relief of knowing mere being".[31] By detailing the "small trifles" of trench life[32] – moments of comradeship, letters from home, singsongs, bread and Fray Bentos corned beef, wine, chocolate and café-au-lait[33] Gurney was able (in Blunden's words) to "express part of the Western Front secret... with distinctive, intimate and imaginative quickness."[34] In so far as he had a "manifesto", it was to present "the protest of the physical against the exalted spiritual; of the cumulative weight of small facts against the one large".[35]



At the same time, Gurney was something of a local poet, rooted in Gloucester and its surroundings, which remained a touchstone of reality for him, in the front line and later in the asylum.[36] In the preface to his first book, he wrote of "my county, Gloucester, that whether I live or die stays always with me."[37] His tribute poem, "Crickley Hill", was described by Edna Longley as "perhaps Gurney's most rapturous expression of local patriotism".[38]



Posthumous collections of poetry and letters

Severn & Somme and War's Embers, ed. R. K. R. Thornton. Carcanet Press, 1997

80 Poems or So, ed. George Walter and R. K. R. Thornton. Carcanet Press, 1997

Rewards of Wonder: Poems of London, Cotswold and France, ed. George Walter. Carcanet Press, 2000

Best Poems and The Book of Five Makings, ed. R.K.R. Thornton. Carcanet Press, 1995

Collected Poems, ed. P.J. Kavanagh. Fyfield Books (Carcanet Press), 2004

Stars in a Dark Night: The Letters from Ivor Gurney to the Chapman Family. Anthony Boden (ed.), The History Press, 2004 (2nd edition)

Five Elizabethan songs

"Orpheus" (John Fletcher)

"Sleep" (John Fletcher)

"Spring" (Thomas Nashe)

"Tears" (anon.)

"Under the Greenwood Tree" (William Shakespeare)

Other songs

collections: A First Volume of Ten Songs (FV); A Second Volume of Ten Songs (SV); Five Songs (FS); Lights Out (LO); Ludlow and Teme (LT); Seven Sappho Songs (SS); The Western Playland (WP)

"A Bird's Anger" (W H Davies)

"A Piper" (Seumas O'Sullivan)

"All Night Under The Moon" (Wilfred Gibson) FV

"All Suddenly the Wind" (Rupert Brooke) FS

"An Epitaph" (Walter de la Mare) SV

"A Sword" (Robin Flower) SV

"Black Stitchel" (Wilfred Gibson) FV

"Blaweary" (Wilfred Gibson) SV

"Bread and Cherries" (Walter de la Mare) SV

"Bright Clouds" (Edward Thomas) LO

"Brown Is My Love" (anon.)

"By a Bierside" (John Masefield)

"Cathleen ni Houlihan" (W B Yeats) FV

"Clouds" (Rupert Brooke) FS

"Desire in Spring" (Francis Ledwidge)

"Down by The Salley Gardens" (W B Yeats) FV

"Dreams of the Sea" (W H Davies)

"Early Morn" (W H Davies)

"Edward, Edward" (anon.)

"Epitaph in Old Mode" (J C Squire) SV

"Even Such Is Time" (Sir Walter Raleigh)

"Far in a Western Brookland" (A E Housman) LT

"Goodnight to the Meadow" (Robert Graves)

"Ha'nacker Mill" (Hilaire Belloc) FV

"Hawk and Buckle" (Robert Graves) SV

"Hesperus" (Bliss Carman) SS

"I Praise the Tender Flower" (Robert Bridges)

"In Flanders" (F W Harvey)

"I Shall Ever be Maiden" (Bliss Carman) SS

"Is My Team Ploughing?" (Housman) WP

"Lament" (Ivor Gurney)

"Last Hours" (John Freeman) SV

"Lights Out" (Edward Thomas) LO

"Lonely Night" (Bliss Carman) SS

"Loveliest of Trees" (Housman) WP

"Love Shakes my Soul" (Bliss Carman) SS

"Ludlow Fair" (Housman) LT

"Most Holy Night" (Hilaire Belloc)

"Nine of the Clock" (Robert Graves) FV

"Oh Happy Wind" (W H Davies)

"One Day" (Rupert Brooke) FS

"On the Idle Hill of Summer" (Housman) LT

"The Quiet Mist" (Bliss Carman) SS

"Reveille" (Housman) WP

"Scents" (Edward Thomas) LO

"Severn Meadows" (Ivor Gurney)

"Soft Was the Wind" (Bliss Carman) SS

"Song of Caibhan" (Ethna Carbery)

"Song of Silence" (Ivor Gurney)

"Snow" (Edward Thomas)

"The Aspens" (Housman) WP

"The Apple Orchard" (Bliss Carman) SS

"The Boat Is Chafing" (Walter de la Mare) SV

"The Cloths Of Heaven" (W B Yeats)

"The Far Country" (Housman) WP

"The Fiddler of Dooney" (W B Yeats)

"The Fields Are Full" (Edward Shanks)

"The Folly of Being Comforted" (W B Yeats) SV

"The Latmian Shepherd" (Edward Shanks) FV

"The Lent Lily" (Housman) LT

"The Moon" (W H Davies)

"The Night of Trafalgar" (Thomas Hardy)

"The Penny Whistle" (Edward Thomas) LO

"There's Wisdom in Women" (Rupert Brooke) FS

"The Scribe" (Walter de la Mare) SV

"The Ship" (J C Squire)

"The Singer" (Edward Shanks) FV

"The Sun at Noon to Higher Air" (Housman) WP

"The Treasure" (Rupert Brooke) FS

"The Trumpet" (Edward Thomas) LO

"The Twa Corbies" (volkslied)

"Thou Didst Delight My Eyes" (Robert Bridges)

"'Tis Time, I Think, by Wenlock Town" (Housman) LT

"To Violets" (Robert Herrick)

"Twice a Week" (Housman) WP

"Walking Song" (F W Harvey)

"When Death to Either Shall Come" (Bridges) FV

"When I Was One-and-twenty" (Housman) LT

"When On a Summer's Morning (W H Davies)

"When Smoke Stood up from Ludlow" (Housman) LT

"The White Cascade" (W H Davies)

"With rue my heart is laden" (Housman) WP

"Will You Come?" (Edward Thomas) LO

"You Are My Sky" (J C Squire) FV

Selected poems

The following poems provide an introduction to his work:



"Strange Hells" – The effect of war on soldiers' psyches

"The Ballad of Three Spectres" – A soldier's vision

"Maisemore" – A soldier thinks of home

"The Estaminet" – Comradeship

"Purple and Black" – The politics of death

"To the Poet before Battle" – A soldier poet prepares for the fight

"To His Love" – A soldier writes to a dead comrade's lover of his death

"The Silent One" – An account of a moment of terror during a battle

See also…….

************************************

My Tribute poem --to this great man, great artist, great composer of song

To The Great Poet, After A Courageous Life Lived,

Tribute to Ivor Gurney



Now , hero- thy darkened days away hath flown

Savage were the conflicts- within war's raging tones

Duty done, we giveth mercy pleas for the dead

We with blessings, thank heaven for our daily bread

Sleep, sleep the dear peace and quiet so well earned

All thy brave duty, world notes thee never spurned

In bloodied trenches and seeing life flee away

Hearing the screams of those dying- you chose to stay

Compose your poetry- cite the carnage war brings

Of thy many great songs others may hear and sing

We that were blessed not to face horror of war

Shall now read your fine writings-- seeing your bright star

Forgive us our lateness, life and love carries on

Those that come to know you, read grieving you are gone



Yours be a crown of glory for duty well done

Such courage , allows us to live free and have fun

Ours is the treasure that true sacrifice hath brought

Sad truth- war tis a damn, horrible lesson taught

In darkened times, in that horrific war you were caught

Aware of the brighter peaceful life that you sought

We that can see, envy you not your earned rest

Not blind- we remember the dying of the best

If Heaven rewards us, greater days in the sun

We thank heroes that fight bravely rather than run

Now in your silent slumber, we give our salute

For those that served, learned well to fight and shoot

True, a brave hero and poet, such is your name

By your service, your poetry brings thee acclaim.



Robert J. Lindley, 12-18- 2020

Tribute to Ivor Gurney

Rhyme

Note: I found this great poet as I continue my

study of war poetry. My study of poets that wrote

a hundred years ago. This one was a soldier, a poet,

a song writer. One that suffered horrible from the

evils and carnage of war. A man that did his duty

Gave the world both beautiful music and beautiful

poetry. May God bless such men…

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Blog on the famous poet, Dylan Thomas
(A poet, a genius, a troubled soul )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_Thomas


Dylan Thomas
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigationJump to search
For other uses, see Dylan Thomas (disambiguation).
Dylan Thomas
A black and white photograph of Thomas wearing a suit with a white spotted bow tie in a book shop in New York.
Thomas at the Gotham Book Mart,
in New York City, 1952
Born Dylan Marlais Thomas
27 October 1914
Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom
Died 9 November 1953 (aged 39)
Greenwich Village, New York City, United States
Resting place Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, Wales
Occupation Poet and writer
Spouse Caitlin Macnamara ​(m. 1937)​
Children Llewelyn Edouard Thomas (1939–2000)
Aeronwy Bryn Thomas (1943–2009)
Colm Garan Hart Thomas (1949–2012)
Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953)[1] was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "And death shall have no dominion"; the "play for voices" Under Milk Wood; and stories and radio broadcasts such as A Child's Christmas in Wales and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog. He became widely popular in his lifetime and remained so after his premature death at the age of 39 in New York City.[2] By then he had acquired a reputation, which he had encouraged, as a "roistering, drunken and doomed poet".[3]

Thomas was born in Swansea, Wales, in 1914. An undistinguished pupil, he left school at 16 to become a journalist for a short time. Many of his works appeared in print while he was still a teenager. In 1934, the publication of "Light breaks where no sun shines" caught the attention of the literary world. While living in London, Thomas met Caitlin Macnamara. They married in 1937. In 1938, they settled in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, and brought up their three children.

Thomas came to be appreciated as a popular poet during his lifetime, though he found earning a living as a writer was difficult. He began augmenting his income with reading tours and radio broadcasts. His radio recordings for the BBC during the late 1940s brought him to the public's attention, and he was frequently used by the BBC as an accessible voice of the literary scene.

Thomas first travelled to the United States in the 1950s. His readings there brought him a degree of fame, while his erratic behaviour and drinking worsened. His time in the United States cemented his legend, however, and he went on to record to vinyl such works as A Child's Christmas in Wales. During his fourth trip to New York in 1953, Thomas became gravely ill and fell into a coma. He died on 9 November 1953 and his body was returned to Wales. On 25 November 1953, he was interred at St Martin's churchyard in Laugharne.

Although Thomas wrote exclusively in the English language, he has been acknowledged as one of the most important Welsh poets of the 20th century. He is noted for his original, rhythmic and ingenious use of words and imagery.[4][5][6][7] His position as one of the great modern poets has been much discussed, and he remains popular with the public.[8][9]


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

*****************************************
https://www.panmacmillan.com/blogs/literary/dylan-thomas-welsh-poems

Fern Hill

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,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

From Read Me 2: A Poem For Every Day of The Year

***

The Song of the Mischievous Dog
There are many who say that a dog has its day,

And a cat has a number of lives;

There are others who think that a lobster is pink,

And that bees never work in their hives.

There are fewer, of course, who insist that a horse

Has a horn and two humps on its head,

And a fellow who jests that a mare can build nests

Is as rare as a donkey that's red.

Yet in spite of all this, I have moments of bliss,

For I cherish a passion for bones,

And though doubtful of biscuit, I'm willing to risk it,

And I love to chase rabbits and stones.

But my greatest delight is to take a good bite

At a calf that is plump and delicious;

And if I indulge in a bite at a bulge,

Let's hope you won't think me too vicious.

From Read Me: A Poem A Day

***

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.



Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.



Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.



Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.



Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.



And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

From A Poem For Every Night of The Year

***

From ‘Under Milk Wood’
Every morning when I wake,
Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,
O please do keep Thy lovely eye
On all poor creatures born to die

And every evening at sun-down
I ask a blessing on the town,
For whether we last the night or no
I’m sure is always touch-and-go.

We are not wholly bad or good
Who live our lives under Milk Wood,
And Thou, I know, wilt be the first
To see our best side, not our worst.

O let us see another day!
Bless us all this night, I pray,
And to the sun we all will bow
And say, good-bye – but just for now!

From A Poem For Every Day Of The Year

***

And Death Shall Have No Dominion

And death shall have no dominion.

Dead man naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the west moon;

When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,

They shall have stars at elbow and foot;

Though they go mad they shall be sane,

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;

Though lovers be lost love shall not;

And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.

Under the windings of the sea

They lying long shall not die windily;

Twisting on racks when sinews give way,

Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;

Faith in their hands shall snap in two,

And the unicorn evils run them through;

Split all ends up they shan’t crack;

And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.

No more may gulls cry at their ears

Or waves break loud on the seashores;

Where blew a flower may a flower no more

Lift its head to the blows of the rain;

Though they be mad and dead as nails,

Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;

Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,

And death shall have no dominion.

---- From A Poem For Every Day Of The Year

******************************

That Life Extends Its Seeds Beyond Our Mortal Coils,
( Wherein Truth And Light Sets A Saving Path )


That death, dark and dread of night, mortal souls oft vex
In anger Fate its massive powers too oft flexs
Yet there within meadows beauty its powers grows
As in heart of winter's spirit blows whitest snows
Man can but deny the light and thus misbehave
Walk the horrendous maze- so seeking what he craves
All is not dark and dreary, some light must break through
We of mere flesh and bones --we too have our just dues!

That life extends its seeds beyond our mortal coils
To bring bountiful fruits from world's abundant soils
All cannot be perfect, there must be some dark blight
Man lives within evils savage and wicked sights
Beneath skies blue or else frothing with angry storms
All is daily life with its oft mysteries norms
This truth, we are destined to one day depart
Despite our wishes, those pleadings from crying hearts!

That love a magnificent gift , oft healing balm
We ever seek a life that is peaceful and calm
A true soulmate, one to cherish with baited breath
A faithful companion - to love until our death
Such is a part of man, a part of destiny
Fact of life, tho' we ever seek eternity
Heaven smiles unto we of mere mortal desires
And in divine light baths us in its holy fires!

Robert J. Lindley, 12-23-2020
Rhyme, ( Set Sail, The Sea Is Calm And The Sky Softest Blue )

Note: This blog, this poem both are inspired by a dream
I had a few nights ago. Has taken three days to get this
completed-seems it needs more. Truth is that I have no
more in me as of now. Thus accepting my lack of ability
I must make do as is now created. And abandon the second
poem that I had hoped to be able to compose to honor
Dylan Thomas. If Fate destines that second tribute poem
comes to me later- rest assured I will ink it and present it.
God bless and Merry Christmas to all..