Poetry Wednesday

I write this column just days before I sing in a choral production of Ralph Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem and Randall Thompson's The Testament of Freedom that these documents include crucial historical references from three major battles -- the Revolutionary War, the Crimean War, and the Civil War.  For the first time in ten years, I have the opportunity to sing with the husband and wife soloists of Michael (baritone) and Serena (soprano) LaRoche, which those who have known me enough understand Mrs. LaRoche taught me to sing, opening my musical horizons outside of the commercial pop church music and has sent me into Händel, Haydn, Beethoven, Fauré, and others where I've called out the bad Top 40 on KLVR after deeper analysis.

Mr. Williams was influenced by reading the poetry of Walt Whitman, especially his Civil War poetry, which most of us know from "O Captain! My Captain!," an elegy of President Lincoln.  The first of three which we sing, "Beat! Beat! Drums!," was written after he attended a Donizetti opera, and news spread that Fort Sumter had launched the Civil War, which this battle went to the Confederacy.

(Nota Bene:  We're singing both at the SOM Recital Hall in Columbia on June 28 at 7:30 PM and June 30 at 4 PM.  Today's Poetry Wednesday references Whitman's three poems that are war-inspired.)

Beat! Beat! Drums!
Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
Through the windows—through doors—burst like a ruthless force,
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,
Into the school where the scholar is studying,
Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no happiness must he have now with his bride,
Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering his grain,
So fierce you whirr and pound you drums—so shrill you bugles blow.

Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
Over the traffic of cities—over the rumble of wheels in the streets;
Are beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses? no sleepers must sleep in those beds,
No bargainers’ bargains by day—no brokers or speculators—would they continue?
Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?
Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge?
Then rattle quicker, heavier drums—you bugles wilder blow.

Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
Make no parley—stop for no expostulation,
Mind not the timid—mind not the weeper or prayer,
Mind not the old man beseeching the young man,
Let not the child’s voice be heard, nor the mother’s entreaties,
Make even the trestles to shake the dead where they lie awaiting the hearses,
So strong you thump O terrible drums—so loud you bugles blow.

Reconciliation
From the 1900 version of Leaves of Grass:

Word over all, beautiful as the sky! 
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost; 
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world:   
... For my enemy is dead—a man divine as myself is dead;   
I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin—I draw near;   
I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

Dirge for Two Veterans
From the 1891 version of the aforementioned book:

   The last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath,
On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking,
   Down a new-made double grave.

   Lo, the moon ascending,
Up from the east the silvery round moon,
Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon,
   Immense and silent moon.

   I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-key'd bugles,
All the channels of the city streets they're flooding,
   As with voices and with tears.

   I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring,
And every blow of the great convulsive drums,
   Strikes me through and through.

   For the son is brought with the father,
(In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,
Two veterans son and father dropt together,
   And the double grave awaits them.)

   Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive,
And the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded,
   And the strong dead-march enwraps me.

   In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumin'd,
('Tis some mother's large transparent face,
   In heaven brighter growing.)

   O strong dead-march you please me!
O moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me!
O my soldiers twain! O my veterans passing to burial!
   What I have I also give you.

   The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music,
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
   My heart gives you love.

Poetry Wednesday

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.


-- "God's Grandeur," Gerard Manley Hopkins (public domain)

Poetry Wednesday

Our summer chorus finished off our season that had three songs -- a Mozart Missa Brevis (K. 140), Brahams' "Nänie," (Op. 82m, Schiller's elegy), and Corigliano's "Fern Hill" (a setting of Dylan Thomas' poem).

Over the next few weeks, we'll share some thoughts of one of the two poems.

As our chorus sang the Corigliano's "Fern Hill," I had to reflect the poem was published in 1945, and it was at the end of World War II.  I thought the poem, while a reflection of family visits, could at the time, have reflected on soldiers from their youth to the unpredictable life of war that was happening at the time. Let's look back at the poem itself.

NOTE:  Because of copyright claims that are technically on the edge of public domain (the poem has a 1945 copyright, and US rules regarding the life plus 70 has this poem on the edge).  Read it from this site

Figures for an Apocalypse

VI: In the Ruins of New York
by Thomas Merton

The moon is paler than an actress
We have beheld her mourning in the brown ivy
Of the dendric bridges,
In the brown, broken ivy
That loves but a span of air.

The moon is paler than an actress, and weeps for you, New York,
Seeking to see you through the tattered bridges,
Leaning down to catch the sham brass
Of your sophisticated voice,
Whose songs are heard no more!

Oh how quiet it is after the black night
When flames out of the clouds burned down your cariated teeth,
And when those lightnings,
Lancing the black boils of Harlem and the Bronx,
Spilled the remaining prisoners,
(The ten and twenties of the living)
Into the trees of Jersey,
To the green farms, to find their liberty.

How are they down, how have they fallen down
Those great strong towers of ice and steel.
And melted by what terror and what miracle?
What fires and lights tore down,
With the white anger of their sudden accusation,
Those towers of silver and of steel?

You whose streets grew up on trellises
With roots in Bowling Green and tap-roots in the Upper Bay:
How are you stripped, now to your skeleton:
What has become of your lie and dead flesh:
Where is the shimmer of your bawdy leaves?
Oh, where your children in the evening of your final Sunday
Gunned after one another in the shadows of the Paramount,
The ashes of the leveled towers still curl with tufts of smoke
Veiling your obsequies in their incinerating haze
They write, in embers, this your epitaph:

”This was a city
That dressed herself in paper money.
She lived four hundred years
With nickels running in her veins.
She loved the waters of the seven purple seas,
And burned on her own green harbor
Higher and whiter than ever any Tyre.
She was as callous as a taxi;
Her high-heeled eyes were sometimes blue as gin,
And she nailed them, all the days of her life,
Through the hearts of her six million poor.
Now she has died in the terrors of a sudden contemplation
Drowned in the waters of her own, her poisoned well.”

Can we console you, stars,
For the so long survival of such wickedness?
Tomorrow and the day after
Grasses and flowers will grow
Upon the bosom of Manhattan.
And soon the branches of the hickory and sycamore
Will wave where all those dirty windows were--
Ivy and the wild-grape vine
Will tear those weak walls down,
Burying the brownstone fronts in freshness and fragrant flowers;
And the wild-rose and the crab-apple tree
Will bloom in all those silent mid-town dells.
There shall be doves’ nests, and hives of bees
In the cliffs of the ancient apartments,
And birds shall sing in the sunny hawthorns
Where was once Park Avenue.
And where Grand Central was, shall be a little hill
Clustered with sweet, dark pine.

Will there be some farmer, think you,
Clearing a place in the woods,
Planting an acre of bannering corn
On the heights above Harlem forest?
Will hunters come explore
The virgin glades of Broadway for the lynx and deer?
Or will some hermit, hiding in the birches, build himself a cell
With ths stones of the city hall,
When all the caved-in subways turn to streams
And creeks of fish,
Flowing in sun and silence to the reedy Battery?

But now the moon is paler than a statue.
She reaches out and hangs her lamp
In the iron trees of this destroyed Hesperides.
And by that light, under the caves that once were banks and theaters,
The hairy ones come out to play--
And we believe we hear the singing of the manticores
Echo along the rocks of Wall and Pine.
And we are full of fear, and muter than the upside-down stars
That limp in the lame waters,
Muter than the mother moon who, white as death,
Flies and escapes across the wastes of Jersey.

(H/T Fr. Z)

Who are "The Hollow Men"?

Last week Mitchell posted the famous final section of T.S. Eliot's magnificent, disturbing poem "The Hollow Men."  But I'm here to do him one better: here is Eliot himself reading his poem.



And just who are the hollow men?  Certainly the phrases may have meant something specific in Eliot's time, but as is the case in all truly great works, the meanings are timeless. But they are there, the hollow men, and they do exist; it is true as sure as is the truth of the poem's final four lines.  I will leave you to your own interpretation of who they are, and where.  ◙

The Hollow Men

The Hollow Men
by T.S. Eliot

Part V

 
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
                                Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Poetry Wednesday: Journey of the Magi

A special return of Poetry Wednesday is here as we celebrate the Epiphany tomorrow, while today marks Day Eleven of Christmastide, and those eleven pipers piping represent the eleven faithful disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Journey of The Magi

T.S. Elliot

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped in away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death?
There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death. ◙

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

- John McCrae ◙

Poetry Wednesday

By Mitchell Hadley

The finest poem I've read in quite a while (H/T Jonah at NRO):

Tiger Tiger turning right
In the driveway late at night
Your immortal hand and eye
Couldn't make the car comply?

Of whose waiting shapely thighs
Did you dream with bolted eyes
Instigating you to crash
Into the stately water ash?

Was it worth a rendezvous
With some star-struck ingenue
Just to verify you could
Withstand a sliced Norwegian wood?

Tiger Tiger turning right
In the driveway late at night
What covert obsession made
You climb into the Escalade?

With apologies, I'm sure, to William Blake.

Poetry Tuesday

By Mitchell

Stephen Crane (1871-1900) is best remembered for the Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage. Less well-known are his poems, which were remarkable for the day in that they were written in free verse, with neither rhyme nor meter. They are often dark and tightly wound, not poems one would recognize as being from the 19th Century. "In the desert" presents a stunning image (as well as providing Joyce Carol Oates with the title for one of her novels). It somehow seems appropriate today.

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said: "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter-bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."

Poetry Wednesday

By Judith

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And days of auld lang syne?

CHORUS
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne
We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes
And pu'd the gowans fine
But we've wander'd mony a weary foot
Sin' auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We twa hae paidl't in the burn
Frae morning sun till dine
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin' auld lang syne.

CHORUS

And surely ye'll be your pint stoup
And surely I'll be mine
And we'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne.

CHORUS

Robert Burns, 1788

'Twas the Night Before Christmas Dear Bloggers

By Kristin

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house.
Not a computer was stirring, not even it's mouse.
The ink pens were filled by blank paper with care,
In hopes that the writers soon would be there.
The bloggers were nestled all snug on the couch,
While browsing the op-ed’s, looking for something to write about.
And Ma with her memoir and I with my laptop,
Had just started writing, hopefully not the next flop.
When out in the study we heard such a noise,
At first I thought it was my brother, playing Pink Floyd.
Away down the stairs I flew like a dog,
In hopes that a comment had been posted on my blog.
The moon’s night light cast a still glow on the monitor,
As the cursor stood motionless, refusing to go farther.
When what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a tiny envelope in the corner from Outlook, beckoning me near.
I darted to the chair, sat and double clicked,
A thought crossed my mind, “A note from my editor, Mr. Nick”.
Then more emails appeared, by the dozens, hundred, thousands,
“So many”, I yelled so loud to be heard in all the neighborhood houses.
I opened the first email, from Old Nick, of course,
“We have a masterpiece,” he wrote, “sitting before us”.
“This blog entry is spectacular, and not too soon it came,”
All the other emails from readers read practically the same.

What will happen to our Blogging Hero? Will his latest entry truly be the next great blog? Or was this a clever spam email just trying to get his attention? We will find out...as the 25th approaches....

Poetry Wednesday

By Judith

From time to time in Poetry Wednesday we've looked at the poems of T.S. Eliot. Here is something a little different: listening to the voice of Eliot himself, reading "The Burial of the Dead" from "The Waste Land":



It is always startling when we realize we can hear the actual voices of some of the great poets reciting their own work, isn't it?

Poetry Wednesday

By Mitchell

Here's a poem suitable for a lead-in to St. Valentine's Day, from Lord Byron (1788-1824):

She Walks In Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

Poetry Wednesday

By Judith

The hallmark of a lyric poem is its inherent musicality. Whether it was written to be set to music or not, the lyric sounds as if it should be sung. A lyric poem such as Jonson's "Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes" (which we mentioned during our poetry quiz a few weeks ago) or Burns' "Auld Lang Syne" are examples of words that sing just by saying them out loud, although they are associated with music that makes them soar when sung.

Lyricists in the genre of the American Popular Song or American Standards (High Standards to XM radio - and I agree) wrote poems that sang even on paper. George Gershwin and Richard Rodgers may have written music without their famous counterparts (Ira and Lorenz Hart, respectively) but, oh, those lyrics. Cole Porter did both jobs and did them brilliantly. The line "When they begin the beguine" had people swaying to the rhythm, even though nobody knew what a "beguine" was. (Defined as a "spirited ballroom dance", although I've heard the story that Porter made up the word and the dance was created after that.)

From the romantic (Night and day you are the one/Only you beneath the moon or under the sun) to the slightly naughty (Some Argentines without means do it/I hear in Boston even beans do it/Let's do it, let's fall in love), Porter was clever, witty and even sentimental, without being saccharine.

This lyric is again full of one of my favorite poetic devices, internal rhyme. Like several of Porter's songs the tune has a slightly Latin beat that emerges even when the lyric is recited. In just a few short lines, a picture is painted and the universal emotion that a good poet can capture evokes the feeling that makes you want to draw your wrap around you a little tighter because of the "still, chill of the night."

In the Still of the Night

In the still of the night
As I gaze from my window
At the moon in its flight
My thoughts all stray to you

In the still of the night
While the world is in slumber
All the times without number
Darling when I say to you

Do you love me, as I love you
Are you my life to be, my dream come true
Or will this dream of mine fade out of sight
Like the moon growing dim,
On the rim of the hill
In the chill, still, of the night

Poetry Wednesday

By Judith

Many people think of Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886) as a small, quiet, reclusive lady who sat at home all her life and wrote nice little poems about daisies and bees. Well, sort of.

She may have been small of stature (she described herself as "small, like the wren"), but there was nothing little about her imagination or her favorite themes of life, death and eternity. She wrote 1,775 poems, approximately 2/3 of them before 1866. Less than a dozen were published during her lifetime. It wasn't exactly for want of trying. In 1862 she sent four poems to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, an essayist and reformer, to see whether he deemed them worthy of publication (although she had been previously published, albeit anonymously). He advised her to wait.

Most people who read her work didn't know what to make of it, for it didn't follow conventions of the day. Her use of unorthodox punctuation, capitalization and rhyming scheme was so unlike most other poets of her day (except, perhaps for that free spirit, Whitman). The poems didn't have titles, being known by their first lines. A rhyme scheme she often used was "slant rhyme", meaning that words might have different vowel or different consonant sounds, but still had a nearly-close rhyme sound. The sound was more jarring than pleasing, but this dissonance was a useful tool in conveying her thoughts on death and the hereafter. (A further force of life/Developed from within - /When Death lit all the shortness up/It made the hurry plain- )

After Emily Dickinson's death her sister found her vast store of poems and worked at getting them published. The first volume came out in 1890. In 1955 Thomas Johnson edited a complete edition of her poetry, numbered the poems, and, most importantly, presented them as the author had written them, without reformatting them with conventional rhyme and punctuation. His numbers are shown here.

1540 - written @ 1865

As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away -
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like Perfidy -
A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon -
The Dusk drew earlier in -
The Morning foreign shone -
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest, that would be gone -
And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful.

1176 - written @ 1870

We never know how high we are
Till we are asked to rise
And then if we are true to plan
Our statures touch the skies -

The Heroism we recite
Would be a normal thing
Did not ourselves the Cubits warp
For fear to be a King -

Poetry Wednesday

By Judith

The two song lyrics we're going to look at today were written by different people, but what brings them together is the composer, Bert Kaempfert, who recorded these and many other songs he wrote with his orchestra in the 1960s. And - this one's for you Badda - I'm going to tie him in to Frank Sinatra (of course) at the end.

I find these lyrics interesting because of their internal rhythm and rhyme scheme. Even without the music they move along with an infectious beat. The first, written by Kaempfert with Milt Gabler, was penned for Nat King Cole's last album in 1965. Notice the device of using the same word at the end of one line and the beginning of the next that provides emphasis and a strong push-off for the following line ("..game for two, two in love...") and the repeated, internal rhyme of "...make it, Take my heart and please don't break it". Not to mention the correct usage of "me and you", not "I and you" or "myself and you" as is so often used by people who have been scared into never using "me". (Actually, you and me flows better, but then doesn't rhyme. Oh well. Poetic license.)

L O V E

L is for the way you look at me
O is for the only one I see
V is very, very extraordinary
E is even more than anyone that you adore.

Love is all that I can give to you
Love is more than just a game for two
Two in love can make it
Take my heart and please don't break it
Love was made for me and you

The second song was written by Kurt Schwabach (with additional lyric by Milt Gabler) with Kaempfert and recorded in 1962. As with many of Kaempfert's songs, someone else made it famous. Remember 1963 when Wayne Newton was just a kid? Now the interesting thing about this is the mispronunciation of the German word "Schoen" (sounds like shern, not shane) in order to force the rhyme for "pain", "explain", "lane" and "again". To be fair, this isn't the first time it was done; the Andrews Sisters recorded a song called "Bei Mir Bist du Schoen" and also rhymed the last word with "explain".

This one is chock-full of internal rhyme and gives the impression that the singer (or speaker) is trotting down a staircase or skipping a stone on water. You want to move, even while reading it sitting down.

Danke Schoen

Danke Schoen, Darling, Danke Schoen.
Thank you for all the joy and pain.
Picture shows, second balcony, was the place we'd meet,
Second seat, go Dutch treat, you were sweet.

Danke Schoen, Darling, Danke Schoen.
Save those lies, Darling don't explain.
I recall, Central Park in fall.
How you tore your dress, what a mess, I confess. That's not all.

Danke Schoen, Darling, Danke Schoen.
Thank you for walks down Lover's Lane.
I can see, hearts carved on a tree.
Letters inter-twined, for all time, yours and mine, that was fine.

Danke Schoen, Darling, Danke Schoen.
Thank you for seeing me again.
Though we go on our seperate ways,
Still the memory stays, for always, my heart says, Danke Schoen.

Danke Schoen, Oh Darling, Danke Schoen.
I said, Thank you for seeing me again.
Though we go- on our seperate ways,
Still the memory stays, for always, my heart says, Danke Schoen.
Danke Schoen, Auf Wiedersehen, Danke Schoen.

Kaempfert wrote a number of other songs that ended up big hits for other people. "Moon Over Naples" became "Spanish Eyes", recorded by Al Martino and "A Swingin' Safari" reached # 13 on the charts as recorded by Billy Vaughn in 1962. Later that year the song gained even more fame when it became the theme for the game show "The Match Game". When the Beatles were performing and recording in Hamburg in the early 60s, a Croat singer named Ivo Robic convinced Kaempfert to hire them to be back-up for a singer named Tony Sheridan in a recording session. Ivo Robic also co-authored a famous song to be used as part of the score Kaempfert wrote for a movie in 1965 A Man Could Get Killed.

So where does Frank Sinatra come in? That song in the film was "Strangers in the Night", a # 1 hit for ol' blue eyes.

Poetry Wednesday

By Judith

No more calls, we have a winner! Yes, Cathy of Alex indeed answered each question in last week's poetry quiz correctly. Cudos to Cathy.

Now, here are the poets and the titles of the poems from which the quotes came.

1. Ben Jonson "To Celia"

2. Robert Herrick "Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May"

3. William Blake "The Tiger"

4. Edgar Allen Poe "To Helen"

5. Percy Bysshe Shelley "Ode to the West Wind"

6. Robert Browning "Home-Thoughts, From Abroad"

7. Robert Browning "song from Pippa Passes"

8. Robert Louis Stevenson "Requiem"

9. John Donne "from Holy Sonnets"

10. Robert Frost "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening"

As I mentioned in one of my comments to last week's post, perhaps the next contest will be "Bible, Shakespeare, Cervantes". No, it's not anything like Rock, Paper, Scissors. These three sources are responsible for a tremendous number of quotes found in every day conversation. I'll work on it.

Beginning next week, we'll move from 20th century poets to survey poems from all different eras and genres.

Poetry Wednesday

By Judith

Happy New Year to all!

We're going to start out the new year with a little fun. Get out your pencils and close your books; it's time for a poetry quiz. I'll give you a line or phrase from a poem and you have to come up with the author. For extra credit, name the poem from which it comes. They sound so familiar, but... (Hint, two of these are by the same poet.)

Answers will be given next week. Good luck!

1. Drink to me only with thine eyes,/And I will pledge with mine;

2. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may

3. Tiger! tiger! burning bright/In the forests of the night

4. To the glory that was Greece,/And the grandeur that was Rome

5. If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

6. Oh, to be in England/Now that April's there

7. God's in his heaven-/All's right with the world!

8. Home is the sailor, home from sea,/And the hunter home from the hill.

9. Death be not proud

10. But I have promises to keep/And miles to go before I sleep

Scoring:
8-10 Wow, you should be writing this column.
5-7 Pretty good. You must have paid attention in English Lit. class.
2-4 Turn off the television and pick up a book.
0-1 You probably shouldn't have played hooky so often.

Poetry Wednesday

By Judith

As everyone is recovering from the excesses of Christmas Day, here's a Merry Christmas message that gives the best reason for all the celebration. It's nice sometimes to look at the lyrics of Christmas carols without hearing the music (except in your head) and ponder what they mean and why they were written. Happy Christmas everyone.

Joy to the World

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King!
Let every heart prepare Him room
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven, and heaven and nature sing!

Joy to the earth, the Saviour reigns!
Let men their songs employ!
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat the sounding joy!

He rules the world with truth and grace
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His rightousness
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders of His love!