POEMS AND PROSE

Leaving it all behind for . . .

My hotel in Costa, Argolis, Peloponnese, Greece.

Blog postings will recommence on September 17.

The church dates from the 15th century.

THIS ROYAL THRONE OF KINGS

This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England

Richard II Act 2
William Shakespeare

Here is a little moral tale from Philip Larkin.

THE MOWER

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

Philip Larkin

For the past few weeks I have been posting verse from a small anthology from my bookshelf.

After reading it I was struck by the thought - "The things that are done by a Don" ! (Song from the Julian Slade musical 'Salad Days'.

When the ecstatic body grips
Its heaven, with little sobbing cries,
And lips are crushed on hot blind lips,
I read strange pity in your eyes.

For that in you which is not mine,
And that in you which I love best,
And that, which my day-thoughts divine
Masterless still, still unpossessed,

Sits in the blue eyes' frightened stare,
A naked lonely-dwelling thing,
A frail thing from its body-lair
Drawn at my body's summoning;

Whispering low, "O unknown man,
Whose hunger on my hunger wrought,
Body shall give what body can,
Shall give you all — save what you sought."

Whispering, "O secret one, forgive,
Forgive and be content though still
Beyond the blood's surrender live
The darkness of the separate will.

"Enough if in the veins we know
Body's delirium, body's peace —
Ask not that ghost to ghost shall go,
Essence in essence merge and cease."

But swiftly, as in sudden sleep,
That You in you is veiled or dead;
And the world's shrunken to a heap
Of hot flesh straining on a bed.

E.R. Dodds

Have you ever seen a "Tortoise Stove"?

They were often installed in churches and perhaps the most famous one is in this poem by Poet Laureate John Betjeman.

CHRISTMAS

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
'The church looks nice' on Christmas Day.

Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says 'Merry Christmas to you all'.

And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children's hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say 'Come!'
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?

And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

John Betjeman

Before you ask, 'Hookers Green' is an artist's colour and not a place of ill-repute!

Today a poem from our twelfth Poet Laureate - Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892), anticipating his death.

He succeeded Wordsworth in the post and became one of the most popular Victorian poets.

When he died in 1892 he was mourned publicly by millions and, in respect, no appointment was made to the post of Poet Laureate for four years.

CROSSING THE BAR

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For through from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Note: I found the woodcut illustration in the October 1892 edition of "Punch" magazine. It accompanied a long tribute poem to Tennyson, the last few lines being:

No sadness of farewell! Away regret,
When greatness nears its goal!
We follow thee, in thought, through light, afar
Divinely piloted beyond the bar!

'The Fall", as our North American friends say, has started early here in the UK and I am already sweeping up leaves.

However, this time of year has its pleasures and its music too, as so beautifully expressed by John Keats.

ODE TO AUTUMN

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats

Listen to Daniel Richards reading the poem at:

http://myenglishpod.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/Keats_To_Autumn.mp3

This sonnet by Christina Rossetti may be well known to you, as it is often used at funerals!

A mixture of happiness and depression tends to run throughout many of Christina Rosettis' poems, and this one is no exception.

REMEMBER

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

Christina Georgina Rossetti

Hear the poem read aloud by Eleanor Bron at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5AAzi7eWXw

Note: The portrait of Christina above the poem is by her artist brother Dante Gabriel Rosssetti.

This poem is a little out of season, but it is one of my favourites and well worth including in my "Potpourri of Verse".

HOME THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD

Oh, to be in England
Now that April 's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossom'd pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray's edge—
That 's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

Robert Browning

Play the audio:

HIGH FLIGHT

This is undoubtedly his most famous poem:

HIGH FLIGHT

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air....
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark nor even eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

John Gillespie Magee

Chidiock Tichborne is remembered as one of the conspirators in the Babington plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I and replace her with the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots who was next in line to the throne.

On September 20, 1586, Tichborne was executed with Anthony Babington, John Ballard, and four other conspirators. They were hanged, drawn and quartered, the mandatory punishment for treason.

ELEGY

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my good is but vain hope of gain;
The day is past, and yet I saw no sun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
The spring is past, and yet it hath not sprung;
The fruit is dead, and yet the leaves be green,
My youth is gone and yet I am but young,
I saw the world and yet I was not seen;
My thread is cut and yet it is not spun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
I sought my death and found it in my womb,
I looked for life and saw it was a shade,
I trod the earth and knew it was my tomb,
And now I die, and now I am but made;
My glass is full, and now my glass is run,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

Chidiock Tichborne

I shall be presenting "A Potpourri of Verse" to a live audience in the Spring of 2010. The cherry should then be in full blossom, so this well-known poem by A.E. Housman is very suitable for inclusion.

I have always thought the poem charming, but I find it a little sad that a young man of twenty should already be thinking about death.

LOVELIEST OF TREES, THE CHERRY NOW

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Alfred Edward Housman

Today, one of my favourite poems by the English poet Walter de la Mare (1873-1956).

Such are the marvels of modern technology!

THE LISTENERS

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

Walter de la Mare

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWrivHU0qwk

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. In 1845 she began exchanging letters with the poet Robert Browning. They were married a year later in secret (her father had forbidden any of his 12 children to marry) and they fled to Italy, where they remained until her death in 1861.
Elizabeth's poetry was so highly regarded during her lifetime, far more so than her husband's that she was proposed as the first female Poet Laureate when Wordsworth died in 1850. However, when it was realised that she would not return from Italy, the appointment was offered to Tennyson instead.

SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE
XLIII

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men might strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,–I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!–and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Elizabeth Barrett-Browning

The forty-four poems that became 'Sonnets from the Portuguese' were written by the future Mrs. Browning between 1845 and 1846 while she was being courted by Robert Browning.

Ted Hughes
By Reginald Gray

LOVESONG

He loved her and she loved him.
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Off that moment's brink and into nothing
Or everlasting or whatever there was

Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His words were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assassin's attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon's gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
Her vows put his eyes in formalin
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall

Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other's face

Ted Hughes

"My Boy Jack" is a poem by Rudyard Kipling who wrote it after his beloved son, John (called Jack) went missing in the Battle of Loos on 27th September 1915.

HAVE YOU NEWS OF MY BOY JACK?

"Have you news of my boy Jack?"
Not this tide.
"When d'you think that he'll come back?"
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
"Has any one else had word of him?"
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

"Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?"
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind -
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide.

Rudyard Kipling

In 1917 the poem was made into a song. If you click on the link below you can hear it sung by Louise Kirkby-Lunn, who was one of the leading English-born singers of the period 1900–1920, admired in concert, oratorio and opera.

http://www.firstworldwar.com/audio/Louise%20Kirkby-Lunn%20-%20Have%20You%20News%20Of%20My%20Boy,%20Jack.mp3

* There is also an interesting book about the search - details at:

http://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/?product_id=96

William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850) wrote this sonnet after crossing Westminster Bridge with his sister Dorothy on their way to Dover for their month-long visit to Calais.

She later wrote in her diary:

"It was a beautiful morning. The city, St. Paul's with the river and a multitude of little boats, made a most beautiful sight as we crossed Westminster Bridge. The houses were not overhung by their cloud of smoke, and they were spread out endlessly, yet the sun shone so brightly, with such a fierce light; that there was something like the purity of one of nature's own grand spectacles."

"COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE, SEPTEMBER 3 1802"

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This city now doth, like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto the fields and to the sky,
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did the sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

William Wordsworth

Of course, that was the first Westminster Bridge, which was opened in 1750 and replaced in 1862 by the present one. Nowadays the view is not quite the same!

John Donne begins this poem by berating the sun for disturbing him and his lover and tells him to go elsewhere. However, he ends by welcoming him to his bed.

THE SUN RISING

Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on
us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late schoolboys, and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices,
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of
time.

Thy beams, so reverend and strong
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long:
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late, tell me
Whether both the'Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear: 'All here in one bed lay.'

She'is all states, and all princes I,
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compar'd to this,
All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, sun, art half as happy'as we,
In that the world's contracted thus;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere.

John Donne

"John Donne (1572 – 1631) was an English Jacobean poet, preacher and a major representative of the metaphysical poets of the period.

(Wikipedia)

Those of you who have been following this blog for the past month will know that I have been featuring the work of poets who took their own lives.

More about that tomorrow. Firstly, here is the opening poem.

BREADFRUIT

Boys dream of native girls who bring breadfruit,
Whatever they are,
As bribes to teach them how to execute
Sixteen sexual positions on the sand;
This makes them join (the boys) the tennis club,
Jive at the Mecca, use deodorants, and
On Saturdays squire ex-schoolgirls to the pub
By private car.

Such uncorrected visions end in church
Or registrar:
A mortgaged semi- with a silver birch;
Nippers; the widowed mum; having to scheme
With money; illness; age. So absolute
Maturity falls, when old men sit and dream
Of naked native girls who bring breadfruit
Whatever they are.

Philip Larkin

With today's poem I have come to the end of my presentation of a selection of work from eight suicidal poets.

I hope you may have enjoyed some of them and the subject has not been too depressing.

Tomorrow I move on to a new project - in lighter vein.

FORGETFULNESS

Forgetfulness is like a song
That, freed from beat and measure, wanders.
Forgetfulness is like a bird whose wings are reconciled,
Outspread and motionless, --
A bird that coasts the wind unwearyingly.

Forgetfulness is rain at night,
Or an old house in a forest, -- or a child.
Forgetfulness is white, -- white as a blasted tree,
And it may stun the sybil into prophecy,
Or bury the Gods.

I can remember much forgetfulness.

Harold Hart Crane

EXILE

My hands have not touched pleasure since your hands,
No, nor my lips freed laughter since 'farewell',
And with the day, distance again expands
Voiceless between us, as an uncoiled shell.

Yet, love endures, though starving and alone.
A dove's wings clung about my heart each night
With surging gentleness, and the blue stone
Set in the tryst-ring has but worn more bright.

Harold Hart Crane

CARMEN DE BOHEME

Sinuously winding through the room
On smokey tongues of sweetened cigarettes, --
Plaintive yet proud the cello tones resume
The andante of smooth hopes and lost regrets.

Bright peacocks drink from flame-pots by the wall,
Just as absinthe-sipping women shiver through
With shimmering blue from the bowl in Circe's hall.
Their brown eyes blacken, and the blue drop hue.

The andante quivers with crescendo's start,
And dies on fire's birth in each man's heart.
The tapestry betrays a finger through
The slit, soft-pulling; -- -- -- and music follows cue.

There is a sweep, -- a shattering, -- a choir
Disquieting of barbarous fantasy.
The pulse is in the ears, the heart is higher,
And stretches up through mortal eyes to see.

Carmen! Akimbo arms and smouldering eyes; --
Carmen! Bestirring hope and lipping eyes; --
Carmen whirls, and music swirls and dips.
"Carmen!," comes awed from wine-hot lips.

Finale leaves in silence to replume
Bent wings, and Carmen with her flaunts through the gloom
Of whispering tapestry, brown with old fringe: --
The winers leave too, and the small lamps twinge.

Morning: and through the foggy city gate
A gypsy wagon wiggles, striving straight.
And some dream still of Carmen's mystic face, --
Yellow, pallid, like ancient lace.

Harold Hart Crane

We have come to the last of my eight poets who ended their own lives.

Harold Hart Crane was born in Garrettsville, Ohio in 1899 . His father, Clarence, was a successful Ohio businessman who had made his fortune in the candy business with chocolate bars. He originally held the patent for the 'Life Saver', but sold his interest to another businessman just before the candy became popular.

Finding both inspiration and provocation in the poetry of T. S. Eliot, Crane wrote poetry that was traditional in form, difficult and often archaic in language. Though frequently condemned as being difficult beyond comprehension, Crane has proved in the long run to be one of the most influential poets in English language of his generation.

Crane was gay and associated his sexuality with his vocation as a poet. Raised in the Christian Science tradition of his mother, he never ceased to view himself as a pariah in relation to society. He felt that this sense of alienation was necessary in order for him to attain the visionary insight that formed the basis for his poetic work.

Throughout the early 1920s, small but well-respected literary magazines published some of Crane’s lyrics, gaining him, among the avant-garde, a respect that White Buildings (1926), his first volume, ratified and strengthened. White Buildings contains many of Crane’s best lyrics, including "For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen," and a powerful sequence of erotic poems called "Voyages," written while he was falling in love with Emil Opffer, a Danish merchant mariner.

In 1930 he published '"The Bridge", where the Brooklyn Bridge is both the poem’s central symbol and its poetic starting point. The poem received poor reviews for the most part, but much worse than that was Crane’s sense of failure. It was during the late '20s, while he was finishing "The Bridge", that his drinking, always a problem, got notably worse.

While on a Guggenheim Fellowship in Mexico in 1931-32, his drinking continued while he suffered from bouts of alternating depression and elation.

His only heterosexual relationship - with Peggy Cowley, the soon to be ex-wife of his friend Malcolm Cowley, who joined Crane in the south when the Cowleys agreed to divorce - occurred here, and "The Broken Tower," one of his last published poems, emerges from that affair.

Crane still felt himself a failure, though, in part because he recommenced homosexual activity despite his relationship with Cowley. Just before noon on 27 April 1932, while onboard the steamship SS Orizaba heading back to New York from Mexico - right after he was beaten up for making sexual advances to a male crew member, which may have appeared to confirm his idea that one could not be happy as a homosexual - he committed suicide by jumping into the Gulf of Mexico.

Although he had been drinking heavily and left no suicide note, witnesses believed Crane's intentions to be suicidal, as several reported that he exclaimed "Goodbye, everybody!" before throwing himself overboard.

His body was never recovered. A marker on his father's tombstone in Garrettsville includes the inscription, "Harold Hart Crane 1899-1932 LOST AT SEA".

(Abridged from an article in Wikipedia)

MY GRANDMOTHER'S LOVE LETTERS

There are no stars to-night
But those of memory.
Yet how much room for memory there is
In the loose girdle of soft rain.

There is even room enough
For the letters of my mother's mother,
Elizabeth,
That have been pressed so long
Into a corner of the roof
That they are brown and soft,
And liable to melt as snow.

Over the greatness of such space
Steps must be gentle.
It is all hung by an invisible white hair.
It trembles as birch limbs webbing the air.

And I ask myself:

"Are your fingers long enough to play
Old keys that are but echoes:
Is the silence strong enough
To carry back the music to its source
And back to you again
As though to her?"

Yet I would lead my grandmother by the hand
Through much of what she would not understand;
And so I stumble. And the rain continues on the roof
With such a sound of gently pitying laughter.

Harold Hart Crane

This is the last of my choice of four poems from the work of Thomas Chatterton.

THE VIRGIN'S CHOICE.

Young Strephon is as fair a swain
As e'er a shepherd of the plain
In all the hundred round;
But Ralph has tempting shoulders, true,
And will as quickly buckle to
As any to be found.

Young Colin has a comely face,
And cudgels with an active grace,
In everything complete;
But Hobbinol can dance divine
Gods ! how his manly beauties shine
When jigging with his feet.

Roger is very stout and strong,
And Thyrsis sings a heavenly song,
Soft Giles is brisk and small.
Who shall I choose ? who shall I shun ?
Why must I be confined to one ?
Why can't I have them all ?

Thomas Chatterton

The life-size bronze statue of Chatteron is in Millennium Square, Bristol - the city where he was born and worked.

An earlier statue was erected by well-wishers outside the church of St Mary Redcliffe shortly after his death. However, it was removed during church renovations and never replaced because officials felt it was blasphemous to keep a monument to a suicidal boy on holy ground. When last seen the statue lay forgotten in a council storage shed.

Chatteron had obviously studied astronomy before writing the following poem, which correctly details the paths of the planets round the sun according to the theory of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), whose work ultimately led to rejection of the established geocentric cosmology, where the earth was centre of the universe.

THE COPERNICAN SYSTEM

The Sun revolving on his axis turns,
And with creative fire intensely burns;
Impell'd by forcive air, our Earth supreme,
Rolls with the planets round the solar gleam.
First Mercury completes his transient year,
Glowing, refulgent, with reflected glare;
Bright Venus occupies a wider way,
The early harbinger of night and day;
More distant still our globe terraqueous turns,
Nor chills intense, nor fiercely heated burns;
Around her rolls the lunar orb of light,
Trailing her silver glories through the night:
On the Earth's orbit see the various signs,
Mark where the Sun our year completing shines;
First the bright Ram his languid ray improves;
Next glaring watry thro' the Bull he moves;
The am'rous Twins admit his genial ray;
Now burning thro' the Crab he takes his way;
The Lion flaming bears the solar power;
The Virgin faints beneath the sultry show'r,
Now the just Balance weighs his equal force,
The slimy Serpent swelters in his course;
The sabled Archer clouds his languid face;
The Goat, with tempests, urges on his race;
Now in the Wat'rer his faint beams appear,
And the cold Fishes end the circling year.
Beyond our globe the sanguine Mars displays
A strong reflection of primoeval rays;
Next belted Jupiter far distant gleams,
Scarcely enlighten'd with the solar beams,
With four unfix'd receptacles of light,
He tours majestic thro' the spacious height:
But farther yet the tardy Saturn lags,
And five attendant Luminaries drags,
Investing with a double ring his pace,
He circles thro' immensity of space.
These are thy wondrous works, first source of Good!
Now more admir'd in being understood.

Thomas Chatterton

THE ADVICE

Revolving in their destin'd sphere,
The hours begin another year
As rapidly to fly;
Ah! think, Maria, e'er in grey
Those auburn tresses fade away
So youth and beauty die.

Tho' now the captivating throng
Adore with flattery and song,
And all before you bow;
Whilst unattentive to the strain,
You hear the humble muse complain,
Or wreathe your frowning brow.

Tho' poor Pitholeon's feeble line,
In opposition to the nine,
Still violates your name;
Tho' tales of passion meanly told,
As dull as Cumberland, as cold,
Strive to confess a flame.

Yet, when that bloom and dancing fire,
In silver'd rev'rence shall expire,
Aged, wrinkled, and defaced;
To keep one lover's flame alive,
Requires the genius of a Clive,
With Walpole's mental taste.

Tho' rapture wantons in your air,
Tho' beyond simile you're fair,
Free, affable, serene;
Yet still one attribute divine
Should in your composition shine--
Sincerity, I mean.

Tho' num'rous swains before you fall,
'Tis empty admiration all,
'Tis all that you require;
How momentary are their chains!
Like you, how unsincere the strains
Of those who but admire!

Accept, for once, advice from me,
And let the eye of censure see
Maria can be true;
No more for fools or empty beaux,
Heav'n's representatives disclose,
Or butterflies pursue.

Fly to your worthiest lover's arms,
To him resign your swelling charms,
And meet his gen'rous breast;
Or if Pitholeon suits your taste,
His muse with tattr'd fragments graced,
Shall read your cares to rest.

Thomas Chatterton

Miss Rumsey (Maria), to whom this poem is addressed, was at one time a sweetheart of Chatterton.

'Clive', mentioned in the fourth verse, was Kitty Clive, a famous actress of the day. She retired in 1769 to a villa in Twickenham that had been a gift from her friend Horace Walpole, dying there in 1785.

Thomas Chatterton (1752 – 1770) was a Romantic English poet who died very young.

(From Wikipedia)

"The Death of Chatterton, by Henry Wallis, is the most famous image of Chatterton in the 19th century. The figure of the poet was modelled by the young novelist and poet George Meredith

I am including the following Chatterton poem for obvious reasons!

COLIN INSTRUCTED

Young Colin was as stout a boy
As ever gave a maiden joy;
But long in vain he told his tale
To black-eyed Biddy of the Dale.
Ah why, the whining shepherd cried,
Am I alone your smiles denied?
I only tell in vain my tale
To black-eyed Biddy of the Dale.

True Colin, said the laughing dame,
You only whimper out your flame,
Others do more than sigh their tale
To black-eyed Biddy of the Dale.

He took the hint &c.

Thomas Chatterton

This is the last of the four poems I have chosen to illustrate the work of Thomas Beddoes. Tomorrow we shall move on to Thomas Chatteron

BALLAD OF HUMAN LIFE

WHEN we were girl and boy together,
We toss’d about the flowers
And wreath’d the blushing hours
Into a posy green and sweet.
I sought the youngest, best,
And never was at rest
Till I had laid them at thy fairy feet.
But the days of childhood they were fleet,
And the blooming sweet-briar-breath’d weather,
When we were boy and girl together.

Then we were lad and lass together,
And sought the kiss of night
Before we felt aright,
Sitting and singing soft and sweet.
The dearest thought of heart
With thee ’t was joy to part,
And the greater half was thine, as meet.
Still my eyelid’s dewy, my veins they beat
At the starry summer-evening weather,
When we were lad and lass together.

And we are man and wife together,
Although thy breast, once bold
With song, be clos’d and cold
Beneath flowers’ roots and birds’ light feet.
Yet sit I by thy tomb,
And dissipate the gloom
With songs of loving faith and sorrow sweet.
And fate and darkling grave kind dreams do cheat,
That, while fair life, young hope, despair and death are,
We ’re boy and girl, and lass and lad, and man and wife together.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes

DREAM-PEDLARY

IF there were dreams to sell,
What would you buy?
Some cost a passing bell;
Some a light sigh,
That shakes from Life's fresh crown
Only a rose-leaf down.
If there were dreams to sell,
Merry and sad to tell,
And the crier rang the bell,
What would you buy?

A cottage lone and still,
With bowers nigh,
Shadowy, my woes to still,
Until I die.
Such pearl from Life's fresh crown
Fain would I shake me down.
Were dreams to have at will,
This would best heal my ill,
This would I buy.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Let us go back 80 years to 1929:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2tNgDZ62-w

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