THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHTBRIGADE
Cannon to the left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!
(Text from Poetry of the Victorian Period, eds. Jerome Hamilton Buckley and George Benjamin Woods. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, and Company, 1965.)
This is my most recent published bit. I’m not sure if I’ve already shared it. They’ll publish anything.
Wood on the Mall
In the strip mall development
that is middle America
a lonely sapling shoots
among broken concrete
centered in a curbed oasis
in an asphalt parking lot desert
midway between take-out pasta
and trendy café.
Maybe maple, maybe oak
as close as pop
culture can say.
It stands fresh
in grayed night
suburban breeze.
Behind the tree (birch or ash?)
young pines
a line thin forest.
Innocent majesty the wood
towers over nation
wide book chain,
hides barren inter
state ramps.
Hides too on-road old
women blazing the cement
trail in sport
Cadillac utilities.
They glance on tiny
wood and ponder
other outlet malls.
Into My Own
One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.
I should not be withheld but that some day
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.
I do not see why I should e’er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.
They would not find me changed from him they knew–
Only more sure of all I thought was true.
Robert Frost
Ah. Robert Frost is soothing. At first I thought I was being soothed by Blueneck. I’m just not well read enough. And the Internet is making it worse not better.
Thank you for this one: “Have you no sense of decency, sir. At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” — Boston Attorney Joseph Welch, taking down Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
I just saw “Goodnight and Good luck,” today. An incredible movie, and an incredible quote.
I had the tag line before the tag line was cool. 🙂
My favorite quote from Boston Attorney Joseph Welch, the original BostonJoe — a guy named Joe and from Boston — unlike me.
Robert Frost 🙂
I have a few pomes i wrote that I might venture to post someday soon, but Frost I ain’t….
You however, are much closer to him than I. Thanks for your above original poem. I do very much like it.
What would he be writing today. While we are killing the natural world he celebrated with sweet song. He’d be puking, huh?
Something I’ve learned in the last year blueneck. Something some now forgotten blogger, right here in our midst, said in a comment. Something like, “Don’t worry about what you share. Just share? Some will like it. Some might not. But your ideas are worth hearing.” Just post the poems. As long as you aren’t losing your rights to your work, or something. And they will inspire some people. You are a creative great Ape. An oddity in the universe. Able to communicate with other great Apes. All mounds of clay animated by the processes of the Universe itself. And now able to look back at its absurdity. And laugh. And cry. And make others do so, by sharing their own individual outlook on the world. Not a bad place to be. Could have been Krill. Got to be a great Ape instead. No offense to those caring Krill in the world.
Another of my favorites by Ernest Dowsen
A Last Word
“Let us go hence: the night is now at hand;
The day is overworn, the birds all flown;
And we have reaped the crops the gods have sown;
Despair and death; deep darkness o’er the land,
Broods like an owl; we cannot understand
Laughter or tears, for we have only known
Surpassing vanity: vain things alone
Have driven our perverse and aimless band.
Let us go hence, somewhither strange and cold,
To Hollow Lands where just men and unjust
Find end of labour, where’s rest for the old,
Freedom to all from love and fear and lust.
Twine our torn hands! O pray the earth enfold “
Gotta admit Dowson is pretty depressing, but I am feeing pretty depressed right not about the state of our country.
Another great one:
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Robert Frost
He gives me chills. Glad you created this post.
Come children, see the Master.
He is seated at an outside table
behind the Tortured Artiste Café.
He’s ready to lecture to all who would listen, and
he’s buying rounds of the special of the day:
melancholy on six-grain toast;
coffee with cream & extra angst; and
to brighten up your darkest dreams,
he’s serving up his theory for free.
“New truths?”
he begins, as a smile plays with his lips,
“There are too many old ones as it is.
German philosophy is frosted glass,
making men into the ruins of gods…
but that is not really the problem.
The problem is with my Actor.
He has Falseness with a Good Conscience.
If you’re a poet, you’ll know the game becomes serious here.
“All poets are liars & thieves,
compulsively attracted to imperfection, and
the building of dungeons in the air.
O, how I detest
a tale told by an idiot,
a gloomy question mark at the end,
an exception that wants to be the rule.
“It takes the most dangerous point of view
to ridicule the spirit of gravity,
to move the crowd without envy.
Pity spoils the taste of the party just as much
as the sigh of the fruitless search for knowledge.
(And, children, nobody forgives that.)
“Spirit and character equal work and art
unless one falls into the trap of fame–
seeming profound instead of being profound.
But then, the lack of personality always takes its revenge
on people who only want to say,
`Yes’.
“One must learn to love the evil hour,
the ivory tower of academic power–
this is a painful age for a Thinker;
`Tis a good age for selfish spirits with materialistic Notions,
for all the preparatory human beings
who believe in nothing they understand.
“For the music of the best future is
a rather offensive presentation:
bad manners,
stuttering spirits, and
luxuriously expensive secret enemies.
Given that nature is evil,
Let us therefore be natural out loud; and
Let us beware of thinking the world is a living thing–
upon what would such a creature feed?”
More chills. Is that yours IndyLib. Makes me think of a dingy cafe and some hopeless souls searching hard for answers. Very good. (I have to write something about this bookstore I was siging at Thursday — my Flying Spaghetti Monster that was a place, and a people to behold).
Thanks, yeah, I wrote it back in college on assignment for an intro to poetry class. Would love to read whatever you come up with about the book-signing; I’m one of those poets who doesn’t like much poetry, but I do like the way you hook one word to the next and sometimes those surreal moments in life make the best poetry.