A Poem a day keeps the melancholy away

Dave!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU5rZrs3NU0

Greater Love

Red lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
O Love, your eyes lose lure
When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!

Your slender attitude
Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,
Rolling and rolling there
Where God seems not to care:
Till the fierce love they bear
Cramps them in death’s extreme decrepitude.

Your voice sings not so soft,—
Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft,—
Your dear voice is not dear,
Gentle, and evening clear,
As theirs whom none now hear,
Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.

Heart, you were never hot
Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
And though your hand be pale,
Paler are all which trail
Your cross through flame and hail:
Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.

Wilfred Owen

Professor Moriarty

In Memory Of My Mother

Patrick Kavanagh


I do not think of you lying in the wet clay
Of a Monaghan graveyard; I see
You walking down a lane among the poplars
On your way to the station, or happily

Going to second Mass on a summer Sunday -
You meet me and you say:
'Don't forget to see about the cattle - '
Among your earthiest words the angels stray.

And I think of you walking along a headland
Of green oats in June,
So full of repose, so rich with life -
And I see us meeting at the end of a town

On a fair day by accident, after
The bargains are all made and we can walk
Together through the shops and stalls and markets
Free in the oriental streets of thought.

O you are not lying in the wet clay,
For it is a harvest evening now and we
Are piling up the ricks against the moonlight
And you smile up at us - eternally.

GerB40

I don't know if chat is allowed here but any time I see a new poem posted I read it, am generally impressed, and go directly up to 'Suicide in the Trenches'. I never heard of it until it was posted here and now it's my favourite poem by a mile. So simply written but absolutely devastating in its content. How, in 12 lines the mood can change so dramatically is genius.

New Home

I love this thread, too, but the one thing I have to say is that it's not having the desired effect - some of these really don't keep melancholy away at all!

tayto lover

New Home wrote: »

I love this thread, too, but the one thing I have to say is that it's not having the desired effect - some of these really don't keep melancholy away at all!

Try this --

The Flatulence Tax

by John O'Neill

A flatulence tax on cattle and sheep,
Another rip-off to make us all weep.
Preserving the ozone at any expense,
It's all propaganda that doesn't make sense.

Abandon the flock and abolish the herd,
When it comes to survival, then nothing's absurd.
But what will we eat for daily protein?
The answer is simple, the mighty baked bean.

So plough in the forage and pastures too
Put paid to the curse of the cattle poo.
Then plant all the land with navy beans,
Belching out gasses from smokey machines.

The resulting erosion will wipe any smiles,
Make the Greenies appear they're suffering piles.
With options so few when it comes to a meal,
And the after affects still part of the deal.

With the whole population gobbling baked beans,
The potential was there for some horrid scenes.
The worst of our fears were about to come true,
The Follies were gobbling their baked beans too.

And adding more fuel to their natural reserve,
The electorate was poised to get its deserve.
Their innards vibrated their faces contorted,
The speaker collapsed and debate was aborted.

Then rising as one from babes to old Granny,
With timing so perfect was almost uncanny.
The whole population let off a great fart,
With a bloody big bang blew the ozone apart.

New Home

That's gas!

Professor Moriarty

The Posture

Lucretius (translated from Latin by John Dryden)


Of like importance is the posture too,
In which the genial feat of Love we do:
For as the females of the four foot kind,
Receive the leapings of their Males behind;
So the good Wives, with loins uplifted high,
And leaning on their hands the fruitful stroke may try:
For in that posture will they best conceive:
Not when supinely laid they frisk and heave;
For active motions only break the blow,
And more of Strumpets than of Wives they show;
When answering stroke with stroke, the mingled liquors flow.
Endearments eager, and too brisk a bound,
Throws off the Plow-share from the furrow’d ground.
But common Harlots in conjunction heave,
Because ’tis less their business to conceive
Than to delight, and to provoke the deed;
A trick which honest Wives but little need.

donegal_man

Epigram III.65

The breath of a young girl, biting an apple,
The scent that wafts from Corycian saffron,
The smell of the white vine, flowering with first clusters,
The odor of fresh grass, where sheep have grazed,
Fragrance of myrtle, spice-reaping Arab, rubbed amber,
A fire glowing pale with eastern incense,
The earth just lightly touched with summer rain,
A garland that has circled someone's hair
Wet with spikenard. Diadumenus, cruel child,
All these things breathe forth from your perfect kisses:
Can you not give them freely, unbegrudging?


Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis)

marienbad

Return of Ulysses

Ulysses kills the suitors close to a fragile bowl of milk
which a servant
with breasts henceforth pierced by arrows
was clasping
in its whiteness.

Surprise in the corpses’ eyes.

Surprise in Ulysses’s heart:
that great odyssey for such a homecoming,
a wife barely recognised, a servant butchered in error.

He collects himself. Tenderness
of the loom
of the bed
the sun on milk.

The long voyage crowded with monsters
now
is
a finger tracing exile’s endless shore around the bowl’s rim

the face reflected
in confines of liquid

and enough blue sky to tint the milk around it.

Marie-Claire Bancquart (Translated by Martin Sorrell )

Professor Moriarty

Valentine

Carol Ann Duffy


Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.

It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.

It will blind you with tears
like a lover.

It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.

Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.

Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.

Lethal.

Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

Professor Moriarty

Everyone Hates the English

Kit Wright


Everyone hates the English,
Including the English. They sneer
At each other for being so English,
So what are they doing here,
The English? It's thick with the English,
All over the country. Why?
Anyone ever born English
Should shut up, or fúck off, or die.

Anyone ever born English
Should hold their extraction in scorn
And apologise all over England
For ever at all being born,
For that's how it is, being English;
Fodder for any old scoff
That England might be a nice country
If only the English fúcked off.

Professor Moriarty

Those Winter Sundays

Robert Hayden


Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

feargale

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Those Winter Sundays

Robert Hayden

A good one, Moriarty. I like it.

Dave!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5LBLhGZJHc

Two Tramps in Mud Time

Robert Frost

Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"
I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.

Good blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good,
That day, giving a loose my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.

A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume,
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake; and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn't blue,
But he wouldn't advise a thing to blossom.

The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheelrut's now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don't forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.

The time when most I loved my task
The two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You'd think I never had felt before
The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,
The grip of earth on outspread feet,
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.

Out of the wood two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps).
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
The judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax
They had no way of knowing a fool.

Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man's work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right--agreed.

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

feargale

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

The Posture

Lucretius (translated from Latin by John Dryden)

..........
But common Harlots in conjunction heave,
Because ’tis less their business to conceive
Than to delight, and to provoke the deed;
A trick which honest Wives but little need.

I don't recall this one being on the Leaving Cert curriculum.

feargale

A Smuggler’s Song

If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet,
Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street,
Them that asks no questions they isn’t told a lie.
Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

Five-and-twenty ponies, trotting through the dark—
With brandy for the Parson and ‘baccy for the Clerk.
Laces for a lady and letters for a spy,
And watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

Running round the woodlump if you chance to find
Little barrels, roped and tarred, all full of brandy-wine;
Don’t you shout to come and look, nor use ’em for your play;
Put the brushwood back again,—and they’ll be gone next day!

If you see the stable-door setting open wide;
If you see a tired horse lying down inside;
If your mother mends a coat cut about and tore;
If the lining’s wet and warm—don’t you ask no more!

If you meet King George’s men, dressed in blue and red,
You be careful what you say, and mindful what is said.
If they call you “pretty maid”, and chuck you ‘neath the chin,
Don’t you tell where no one is, nor yet where no one’s been!

Knocks and footsteps round the house—whistles after dark—
You’ve no call for running out until the house-dogs bark.
Trusty’s here, and Pincher’s here, and see how dumb they lie—
They don’t fret to follow when the Gentlemen go by!

If you do as you’ve been told, likely there’s a chance
You’ll be give a dainty doll, all the way from France,
With a cap of Valenciennes, and a velvet hood—
A present from the Gentlemen, along o’ being good!

Five-and-twenty ponies, trotting through the dark—
Brandy for the Parson, ‘baccy for the Clerk.
Them that asks no questions isn’t told a lie—
So watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

- Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Professor Moriarty

Why Did I Dream Of You Last Night?

Philip Larkin


Why did I dream of you last night?
Now morning is pushing back hair with grey light
Memories strike home, like slaps in the face;
Raised on elbow, I stare at the pale fog
beyond the window.

So many things I had thought forgotten
Return to my mind with stranger pain:
- Like letters that arrive addressed to someone
Who left the house so many years ago.

I won't type out the whole thing, as it's very long.

But here's a recording of Gertrude Stein reading her 'If I told Him, A Completed Portrait of Picasso'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJEIAGULmPQ

Professor Moriarty

Symptoms

Sophie Hannah


Although you have given me a stomach upset,
Weak knees, a lurching heart, a fuzzy brain,
A high-pitched laugh, a monumental phone bill,
A feeling of unworthiness, sharp pain
When you are somewhere else, a guilty conscience,
A longing, and a dread of what’s in store,
A pulse rate for the Guinness Book of Records -
Life now is better than it was before.

Although you have given me a raging temper,
Insomnia, a rising sense of panic,
A hopeless challenge, bouts of introspection,
Raw, bitten nails, a voice that’s strangely manic,
A selfish streak, a fear of isolation,
A silly smile, lips that are chapped and sore,
A running joke, a risk, an inspiration –
Life now is better than it was before.

Although you have given me a premonition,
Chattering teeth, a goal, a lot to lose,
A granted wish, mixed motives, superstitions,
Hang-ups and headaches, fear of awful news,
A bubble in my throat, a dare to swallow,
A crack of light under a closing door,
The crude, fantastic prospect of forever –
Life now is better that it was before.

Insect Overlord

Oíche Nollaig na mBan (le Seán Ó Ríordáin)

Bhi fuinneamh sa stoirm a éalaigh aréir,
Aréir Oíche Nollaig na mBan,
As gealt-teach iargulta 'tá laistiar den ré
is do scread tríd an spéir chughainn 'na gealt,

Gur ghiosc geataí comharsan mar ghogallach gé,
Gur bhúir abhainn slaghdanach mar tharbh,
Gur múchadh mo choinneal mar bhuille ar mo bhéal
A las 'na splanc obann an fhearg.

Ba mhaith liom go dtiocfadh an stoirm sin féin
An oíche go mbeadsa go lag
Ag filleadh abhaile ó rince an tsaoil
Is solas an pheaca ag dul as,

Go lionfaí gach neomat le liúraigh on spéir,
Go ndéanfaí don domhan scuaine scread,
Is ná cloisfinn an ciúneas ag gluaiseacht fám dhein,
Ná inneal an ghluaisteáin ag stad.

(There was power in the storm that came last night,
Last night on the eve of Women's Christmas;
From some remote mad-house beyond the moon
That shrieked towards us through the sky like a lunatic,

So the neighbour's gate rattled like the gaggling of geese,
So the queasy river bellowed like a bull,
Dousing my candle like a thump on my jaw,
Lighting a sudden spark of anger

I hope such a storm will come to me
The night I begin to die
As I return home from the dance of life
And the light of this sinner going out,

So every moment might be filled with cries from the sky,
Transforming the world into a chorus of screams,
So I would not hear the silence moving toward me
Or feel the engine that moves me stop.)

feargale

For the day that's in it:


October Winds aka The Castle of Dromore


1. The October winds lament
Around the castle of Dromore
Yet peace is in her lofty halls
A pháiste gheal a stóir. *
Though autumn vines may droop and die
A bud of spring are you.

Chorus

Sing hushabye low, lah, loo, lo lan
Sing hushabye low, lah loo

2. Bring no ill wind to hinder us
My helpless babe and me
Dread spirit of the Blackwater
Clan Eoin's wild banshee
And holy Mary pitying us in heaven
For grace doth sue

Chorus

3. Take time to thrive my ray of hope
In the garden of Dromore
Take heed young eaglet till your wings
Are feathered fit to soar
A little rest and then our land
Is full of things to do

Chorus


- Sir Harold Boulton (1859-1935)

donegal_man

Reminded me of this from my long gone school days.

Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day

My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring
And carried aloft on the winds of the breeze;
For above and around me the wild wind is roaring,
Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas.

The long withered grass in the sunshine is glancing,
The bare trees are tossing their branches on high;
The dead leaves beneath them are merrily dancing,
The white clouds are scudding across the blue sky.

I wish I could see how the ocean is lashing
The foam of its billows to whirlwinds of spray;
I wish I could see how its proud waves are dashing,
And hear the wild roar of their thunder today!

Anne Brontë

DunnoKidz

Not Fear

Not fear.
Maybe, out there somewhere,
the possibility of fear; the wall
that might tumble down, because it's for sure
that behind it is the sea.

Not fear.
Fear has a countenance;
It's external, concrete,
like a rifle, a shot bolt,
a suffering child,
like the darkness that's hidden
in every human mouth.

Not fear.
Maybe only the brand
of the offspring of fear.

It's a narrow, interminable street
with all the windows darkened,
a thread spun out from a sticky hand,
friendly, yes, not a friend.

It's a nightmare
of polite ritual wearing a frightwig.

Not fear.
Fear is a door slammed in your face.

I'm speaking here of a labyrinth
of doors already closed, with assumed
reasons for being, or not being,
for categorizing bad luck
or good, bread, or an expression
— tenderness and panic and frigidity - for the children
growing up.
And the silence.

And the cities, sparkling, empty.

and the mediocrity, like a hot
lava, spewed out over
the grain, and the voice, and the idea.

It's not fear.
The real fear hasn't come yet.

But it will.
It's the doublethink
that believes peace is only another movement.

And I say it with suspicion, at the top of my lungs.

And it's not fear, no.
It's the certainty
that I'm betting, on a single card,
the whole haystack I've piled up,
straw by straw, for my fellow man.

Rafael Guillen

feargale

October Winds


When you feel so tired trying
When you ask and no-one knows
When your heart is tired fighting
When you feel like letting go
Take this love I've freely given
Take this dream I'm wishing for

How long is forever
If I can't see you anymore
I'll miss you most whenever October winds begin to blow

Well these days have lost their meaning
And these nights can feel so cold
Endless days not ever knowing
What is all this suffering for
Take these words "so sad to leaveing"
Take this breath I breathe that's warm
Take these tears so softly falling
Take these love forever more

How long is forever
If I can't see you anymore
I'll miss you most whenever October winds begin to blow

How long is forever
If I can't see you anymore
I'll miss you most whenever October winds began to blow
Now the leaves have started turning
Wind whispers through my door
And I'm dreaming of my father
Save in my heart forever more.
- Cara Dillon.

donegal_man

Love Song

My own dear love, he is strong and bold
And he cares not what comes after.
His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
And his eyes are lit with laughter.
He is jubilant as a flag unfurled
Oh, a girl, she’d not forget him.
My own dear love, he is all my world
And I wish I’d never met him

My love, he’s mad, and my love, he’s fleet,
And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
And the skies are sunlit for him.
As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
As the fragrance of acacia.
My own dear love, he is all my dreams,
And I wish he were in Asia.

My love runs by like a day in June,
And he makes no friends of sorrows.
He’ll tread his galloping rigadoon
In the pathway of the morrows.
He’ll live his days where the sunbeams start,
Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
My own dear love, he is all my heart,
And I wish somebody’d shoot him.

Dorothy Parker

DunnoKidz

As I Grew Older

It was a long time ago.
I have almost forgotten my dream.
But it was there then,
In front of me,
Bright like a sun-
My dream.
And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky-
The wall.
Shadow.
I am black.
I lie down in the shadow.
No longer the light of my dream before me,
Above me.
Only the thick wall.
Only the shadow.
My hands!
My dark hands!
Break through the wall!
Find my dream!
Help me to shatter this darkness,
To smash this night,
To break this shadow
Into a thousand lights of sun,
Into a thousand whirling dreams
Of sun!

Langston Hughes

Professor Moriarty

Another Reason Why I Don't Keep A Gun In The House

Billy Collins


The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.


The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.

DunnoKidz

To Time

Time! on whose arbitrary wing
The varying hours must flag or fly,
Whose tardy winter, fleeting spring,
But drag or drive us on to die---
Hail thou! who on my birth bestowed
Those boons to all that know thee known;
Yet better I sustain thy load,
For now I bear the weight alone.
I would not one fond heart should share
The bitter moments thou hast given;
And pardon thee---since thou couldst spare
All that I loved, to peace or Heaven.
To them be joy or rest---on me
Thy future ills shall press in vain;
I nothing owe but years to thee,
A debt already paid in pain.
Yet even that pain was some relief;
It felt, but still forgot thy power:
The active agony of grief
Retards, but never counts the hour.
In joy I've sighed to think thy flight
Would soon subside from swift to slow;
Thy cloud could overcast the light,
But could not add a night to Woe;
For then, however drear and dark,
My soul was suited to thy sky;
One star alone shot forth a spark
To prove thee---not Eternity.
That beam hath sunk---and now thou art
A blank---a thing to count and curse
Through each dull tedious trifling part,
Which all regret, yet all rehearse.
One scene even thou canst not deform---
The limit of thy sloth or speed
When future wanderers bear the storm
Which we shall sleep too sound to heed.
And I can smile to think how weak
Thine efforts shortly shall be shown,
When all the vengeance thou canst wreak
Must fall upon---a nameless stone.

Lord Byron

marienbad

Woman - Oliver Goldsmith

[SIZE=-1]WHEN[/SIZE] lovely woman stoops to folly, And finds too late that men betray,What charm can soothe her melancholy? What art can wash her tears away? The only art her guilt to cover,[SIZE=-2] 5[/SIZE] To hide her shame from ev'ry eye,To give repentance to her lover, And wring his bosom is—to die

And then we have T.S.Eliot's take on those lines in The Wasteland



She turns and looks a moment in the glass,

Hardly aware of her departed lover;

Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:

“Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.”

When lovely woman stoops to folly and

Paces about her room again, alone,

She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,

And puts a record on the gramophone

Professor Moriarty

Without You

Hermann Hesse


My pillow gazes upon me at night
Empty as a gravestone;
I never thought it would be so bitter
To be alone,
Not to lie down asleep in your hair.

I lie alone in a silent house,
The hanging lamp darkened,
And gently stretch out my hands
To gather in yours,
And softly press my warm mouth
Toward you, and kiss myself, exhausted and weak
Then suddenly I'm awake
And all around me the cold night grows still.
The star in the window shines clearly
Where is your blond hair,
Where your sweet mouth?

Now I drink pain in every delight
And poison in every wine;
I never knew it would be so bitter
To be alone,
Alone, without you.