Vitae Summa Brevis

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by gerryadmin

Another Victorian poem, urging us to seize the moment. Ernest Dowson wrote it, coining the phrase “the days of wine and roses”.

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate;
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.

Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight

Home / Something Wise / Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight
by gerryadmin

Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931) was a wandering poet-minstrel and a great chronicler of America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries:

 

Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight

BY VACHEL LINDSAY
(In Springfield, Illinois)
It is portentous, and a thing of state
That here at midnight, in our little town
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
Near the old court-house pacing up and down.
Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards
He lingers where his children used to play,
Or through the market, on the well-worn stones
He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.
A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black,
A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl
Make him the quaint great figure that men love,
The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.
He cannot sleep upon his hillside now.
He is among us:—as in times before!
And we who toss and lie awake for long
Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door.
His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings.
Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep?
Too many peasants fight, they know not why,
Too many homesteads in black terror weep.
The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart.
He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main.
He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now
The bitterness, the folly and the pain.
He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn
Shall come;—the shining hope of Europe free;
The league of sober folk, the Workers’ Earth,
Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and Sea.
It breaks his heart that kings must murder still,
That all his hours of travail here for men
Seem yet in vain.   And who will bring white peace
That he may sleep upon his hill again?

Vitaï Lampada

Home / Something Wise / Vitaï Lampada
by gerryadmin
The Victorians loved inspirational poetry and this one by Sir Henry Newbolt impressed me when I was a young lad. It took me decades to understand the first verse which describes a school cricket match. The hero is the last batsman and he needs to score ten runs despite the hard fast balls that will come off “a bumping pitch” and the light of the sinking sun in his eye. The sporting spirit which his school has instilled enables him as a young officer in the Sudan to rally the troops surrounded by hostile natives.
There’s a breathless hush in the Close to-night—
Ten to make and the match to win—
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,
But his captain’s hand on his shoulder smote
“Play up! play up! and play the game!”
The sand of the desert is sodden red,—
Red with the wreck of a square that broke;—
The Gatling’s jammed and the Colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England’s far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:
“Play up! play up! and play the game!”
This is the word that year by year,
While in her place the school is set,
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind—
“Play up! play up! and play the game!”

St Francis and the Sow

Home / Something Wise / St Francis and the Sow
by gerryadmin

Kinnell (1927-2014) was an American poet, much involved with the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War.

Saint Francis and the Sow

BY GALWAY KINNELL
The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Hope

Home / Something Wise / Hope
by gerryadmin

I’m not a fan of Emily Dickinson, but here you go:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –
I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.

Forgetfulness

Home / Something Wise / Forgetfulness
by gerryadmin

Continuing our poetic adventures of an uplifting nature, consider this on the perils of aging:

Forgetfulness

Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue
or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

 

The Mower

Home / Something Wise / The Mower
by gerryadmin

The Mower

Philip Larkin

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

Listen!

Home / Something Wise / Listen!
by gerryadmin

Listen!

Vladimir Mayakovsky 1914



Listen, 
if stars are lit

it means – there is someone who needs it.


It means – someone wants them to be,

that someone deems those specks of spit


magnificent.

And overwrought,


in the swirls of afternoon dust,


he bursts in on God,
 afraid he might be already late.

In tears,

he kisses God’s sinewy hand

and begs him to guarantee


that there will definitely be a star.

He swears


he won’t be able to stand that starless ordeal.


Later,

He wanders around, worried,


but outwardly calm.


And to everyone else, he says:

‘Now,

it’s all right.


You are no longer afraid,

are you?

‘
Listen,


if stars are lit,


it means – there is someone who needs it.

It means it is essential


that every evening 
at least one star should ascend


over the crest of the building.