English Poetry

When I was a little boy, I had but a little wit,
’Tis a long time ago, and I have no more yet;
Nor ever ever shall, until that I die,
For the longer I live the more fool am I.
‘Wit and Mirth, an Antidote against Melancholy’ (1684)
Where is the man who has the power and skill
To stem the torrent of a woman’s will?
For if she will, she will, you may depend on’t;
And if she won’t, she won’t; so there’s an end on’t.

From the Pillar Erected on the Mount

Poetic fields encompass me around,
And still I seem to tread on classic ground.
In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow,
Thou’rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow;
Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about thee,
There is no living with thee, nor without thee.

‘Letter from Italy’ (1704)

My Love in her attire doth show her wit,
It doth so well become her:
For every season she hath dressings fit,
For winter, spring, and summer.
No beauty she doth miss,
When all her robes are on;
But beauty’s self she is,
When all her robes are gone.
Madrigal

A masquerade, a murdered peer,
His throat just cut from ear to ear—
A rake turned hermit—a fond maid
Run mad, by some false loon betrayed—
These stores supply the female pen,
Which writes them o’er and o’er again,
And readers likewise may be found
To circulate them round and round.
‘A Receipt for Writing a Novel’ l. 65

What a thread...so much to read
and absorb...
GR8 going Priya, Catch, Shiv.....

SOme from me...

Unending Love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms,
Numberless times,
In life after life, in age after age forever.
My spell-bound heart has made and re-made the necklace of songs
That you take as a gift, wear around your neck in
Your many forms
In life after life, in age after age forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love,
Its age old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together,
As I stare on and on into the past,
In the end you emerge
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount
At the heart of time love of one for another.
We played alongside millions of lovers shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love, but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you,
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life,
The memories of all of loves merging with this one love of ours-
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

by : Rabindranath Tagore





But Not Forgotten
(by Dorothy Parker)


I think, no matter where you stray,
That I shall go with you a way.
Though you may wander sweeter lands,
You will not soon forget my hands,
Nor yet the way I held my head,
Nor all the tremulous things I said.
You still will see me, small and white
And smiling, in the secret night,
And feel my arms about you when
The day comes fluttering back again.
I think, no matter where you be,
You'll hold me in your memory
And keep my image, there without me,
By telling later loves about me.

After you leave, I will become a tree

by Nicholas Gordon)


After you leave, I will become a tree
Alone on a hillside, loving wind and sun,
Waiting for you to return home to me
Though centuries of lonely stars may run.

I'll grow tall and give lots of shade,
Sheltering birds and other bright-eyed things.
Pleased with all the progress that I've made,
I'll spread my leafy branches out like wings.

But oh! Every moment of every day
I'll miss you with the passion of the wind,
Gazing endlessly upon the way
That without you must empty, empty wind.

Only—but this is rare—
When a belovèd hand is laid in ours,
When, jaded with the rush and glare
Of the interminable hours,
Our eyes can in another’s eyes read clear,
When our world-deafened ear
Is by the tones of a loved voice caressed—
A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.
The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,
And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.
‘The Buried Life’ (1852)

The rabbit has a charming face:
Its private life is a disgrace.
I really dare not name to you
The awful things that rabbits do.

‘The Rabbit’ in ‘The Week-End Book’ (1925)

I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street.
I’ll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

‘As I Walked Out One Evening’ (1940)

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
‘Epitaph on a Tyrant’ (1940).

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
‘In Memory of W. B. Yeats’ (1940)

WITHOUT RHYME OR REASON

Tread gently, said the flagstone,
For I bear the weight, of emotions.

Leather soles kissed me,
Wore out my soul.

Pavements crumble, trust shatters,
Concrete resurrects, love does not.

My heart is not a public thoroughfare,
For you to ride rough-shod on.

The WaterFall

With what deep murmurs through time's silent stealth
Doth thy transparent, cool, and wat'ry wealth
Here flowing fall,
And chide, and call,
As if his liquid, loose retinue stay'd
Ling'ring, and were of this steep place afraid;
The common pass
Where, clear as glass,
All must descend
Not to an end,
But quicken'd by this deep and rocky grave,
Rise to a longer course more bright and brave.

Dear stream! dear bank, where often I
Have sate and pleas'd my pensive eye,
Why, since each drop of thy quick store
Runs thither whence it flow'd before,
Should poor souls fear a shade or night,
Who came, sure, from a sea of light?
Or since those drops are all sent back
So sure to thee, that none doth lack,
Why should frail flesh doubt any more
That what God takes, he'll not restore?

O useful element and clear!
My sacred wash and cleanser here,
My first consigner unto those
Fountains of life where the Lamb goes!
What sublime truths and wholesome themes
Lodge in thy mystical deep streams!
Such as dull man can never find
Unless that Spirit lead his mind
Which first upon thy face did move,
And hatch'd all with his quick'ning love.
As this loud brook's incessant fall
In streaming rings restagnates all,
Which reach by course the bank, and then
Are no more seen, just so pass men.
O my invisible estate,
My glorious liberty, still late!
Thou art the channel my soul seeks,
Not this with cataracts and creeks.

- Henry Vaughan


The Astronomer's Drinking Song

Whoe'er would search the starry sky,
Its secrets to divine, sir,
Should take his glass-I mean, should try
A glass or two of wine, sir!
True virtue lies in golden mean,
And man must wet his clay, sir;
Join these two maxims, and 'tis seen
He should drink his bottle a day, sir!

Old Archimedes, reverend sage!
By trump of fame renowned, sir,
Deep problems solved in every page,
And the sphere's curved surface found, sir:
Himself he would have far outshone,
And borne a wider sway, sir,
Had he our modern secret known,
And drank a bottle a day, sir!

When Ptolemy, now long ago,
Believed the Earth stood still, sir,
He never would have blundered so,
Had he but drunk his fill, sir:
He'd then have felt it circulate,
And would have learnt to say, sir,
The true way to investigate
Is to drink your bottle a day, sir!

Copernicus, that learned wight,
The glory of his nation,
With draughts of wine refreshed his sight,
And saw the Earth's rotation
Each planet then its orb described,
The Moon got under way, sir;
These truths from nature he imbibed
For he drank his bottle a day, sir!

The noble Tycho placed the stars,
Each in its due location;
He lost his nose by spite of Mars,
But that was no privation:
Had he but lost his mouth, I grant
He would have felt dismay, sir,
Bless you! he knew what he should want
To drink his bottle a day, sir!

Cold water makes no lucky hits;
On mysteries the head runs:
Small drink let Kepler time his wits
On the regular polyhedrons:
He took to wine, and it changed the chime,
His genius swept away, sir,
Through area varying as the time
At the rate of a bottle a day, sir!

Poor Galileo, forced to rat
Before the Inquisition,
E pur si muove was the pat
He gave them in addition:
He meant, whate'er you think you prove,
The Earth must go its way, sirs;
Spite of your teeth I'll make it move,
For I'll drink my bottle a day, sirs!

Great Newton, who was never beat
Whatever fools may think, sir;
Though sometimes he forgot to eat,
He never forgot to drink, sir:
Descartes took nought but lemonade,
To conquer him was play, sir;
The first advance that Newton made
Was to drink his bottle a day, sir!

D'Alembert, Euler, and Clairaut,
Though they increased our store, sir,
Much further had been seen to go
Had they tippled a little more, sir!
Lagrange gets mellow with Laplace,
And both are wont to say, sir,
The philosophe who's not an ass
Will drink his bottle a day, sir!

Astronomers! what can avail
Those who calumniate us;
Experiment can never fail
With such an apparatus;
Let him who'd have his merits known
Remember what I say, sir;
Fair science shines on him alone
Who drinks his bottle a day, sir!

How light we reck of those who mock
By this we'll make to appear, sir,
We'll dine by the sidereal clock
For one more bottle a year, sir:
But choose which pendulum you will,
You'll never make your way, sir,
Unless you drink--and drink your fill,
At least a bottle a day, sir!

-By Author Unknown
Published by Augustus de Morgan in "A Budget of Paradoxes"

Unni, U write poetry!!!!!!

Yeh tumne likha hai??????

This is good stuff.

Really good.

"Mein shaayar badnaam", wunly.

Miracles will never cease. Monkeys writing poetry!!!
But me always says U a born writer na.
Very crisp and concise and yet with a world of meaning. Post more na.

Dimps, that's a beautiful piece,

Unni

I .. have never before used this *bows* (and probably would never again)

that's a fine limerick

Oh no Catch!!! The monkey will gloat that he inspires poetry.

Good Ones Shiv and Catch -
very interesting and very different.

When love is an affliction
(by Nicholas Gordon)

When love is an affliction,
There's not much one can do.
Despite the way you've treated me,
I'm still in love with you.

I am the wave and you the rock
Against which I must break:
Again, again the crushing jolt,
The pain I can't forsake;

Again, again the long retreat
To safety, far from shore,
And then again, I don't know why,
The long trip back for more.

Perhaps it is nostalgia for
A long uncertain glow,
Or just some hope so beautiful
I cannot let it go.

Perhaps it is the need to try
For those who must depend
On who we are and what we do,
For whom this should not end.

What evil makes you hurt me so,
What defect of the heart?
What sense there is no greater whole
Of which you are a part?

What lonely choice that only you
Be served by what you choose?
What hard, hard fear of losing what
It is a gift to lose?

I dream sometimes my waiting love
Has made you turn again.
But you care only for yourself,
And I must love in vain.



You left me, but you cannot leave my heart

(by Nicholas Gordon)

You left me, but you cannot leave my heart.
I hold you there, with or without your will.
No matter where you go, you will be part
Of me, my dearest friend and lover still.
I'll tell you of the pain I feel, and all
The things you've done that hurt and make me bleed.
And then your icy words you will recall,
And comfort me, and give me what I need.
This I can do alone, and yet the real
You lives and lies far beyond my touch.
But since my true intention is to steal
The you I loved, the real you isn't much.
Don't worry--I'll treat you tenderly:
The lovely you, you left behind with me.