Venice masks

Saturday 31 December 2011

Friday 30 December 2011

Lullaby - Louisa May Alcott

Now the day is done,
Now the shepherd sun
Drives his white flocks from the sky;
Now the flowers rest
On their mother's breast,
Hushed by her low lullaby.

Thursday 29 December 2011

Anniversaries - Aldous Huxley

Once more the windless days are here,
Quiet of autumn, when the year
Halts and looks backward and draws breath
Before it plunges into death.

Wednesday 28 December 2011

Love And Age - Thomas Love Peacock

I play’d with you ’mid cowslips blowing,
When I was six and you were four;
When garlands weaving, flower-balls throwing,
Were pleasures soon to please no more.
Through groves and meads, o’er grass and heather,
With little playmates, to and fro,
We wander’d hand in hand together;
But that was sixty years ago.

Tuesday 27 December 2011

The Nativity - Henry Vaughan

Peace? and to all the world? sure, One
And He the Prince of Peace, hath none.

Monday 26 December 2011

My Little Doll - Charles Kingsley

I once had a sweet little doll, dears,
The prettiest doll in the world;

Saturday 24 December 2011

Journey Of The Magi - T.S. Eliot

'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.'

Friday 23 December 2011

[little tree] - ee cummings

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower

Thursday 22 December 2011

Christmas Bells - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Wednesday 21 December 2011

The Garden Year - Sara Coleridge

January brings the snow,
Makes our feet and fingers glow.

Tuesday 20 December 2011

I Saw Three Ships - Anonymous

I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas day, on Christmas day;
I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas day in the morning.

Monday 19 December 2011

The House Of Christmas - G. K. Chesterton

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

Sunday 18 December 2011

When Christmas Comes - Virna Sheard

For thee, my small one--trinkets and new toys,
The wine of life and all its keenest joys,
When Christmas comes.
For me, the broken playthings of the past
That in my folded hands I still hold fast,
When Christmas comes.

Saturday 17 December 2011

Love Came Down at Christmas - Christina Georgina Rossetti

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and angels gave the sign.

Friday 16 December 2011

The Oxen - Thomas Hardy

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

Thursday 15 December 2011

Wednesday 14 December 2011

Star Of My Heart - Vachel Lindsay

Star of my heart, I follow from afar.
Sweet Love on high, lead on where shepherds are,
Where Time is not, and only dreamers are.

Tuesday 13 December 2011

Home For Christmas — Old Style - Cicely Fox Smith

"I'm goin' to get 'er 'ome
For Christmas," said the skipper
O' the clipper
Flyin' Foam . . .

Monday 12 December 2011

A Visit from St. Nicholas - Clement Clark Moore

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

Sunday 11 December 2011

Christmas Gifts - Carolyn Wells

Ten Christmas presents standing in a line;
Robert took the bicycle, then there were nine.

Saturday 10 December 2011

Christmas In The Olden Time - Sir Walter Scott

On Christmas-eve the bells were rung;
The damsel donned her kirtle sheen;
The hall was dressed with holly green;
Forth to the wood did merry men go,
To gather in the mistletoe.

Friday 9 December 2011

At Christmas - Edgar A. Guest

A man is at his finest towards the finish of the year;
He is almost what he should be when the Christmas season's here;
Then he's thinking more of others than be's thought the months before,
And the laughter of his children is a joy worth toiling for.
He is less a selfish creature than at any other time;
When the Christmas spirit rules him he comes close to the sublime.

Thursday 8 December 2011

The Christmas Homes of England - Caroline Hayward

The Christmas homes of England!
How far-famed and how dear;
In bright array they ever stand,
That glad day of the year;
When gathered round the hearth-stone,
The loved ones joyful meet,
With one accord from far and near,
The circle glad to greet.

Wednesday 7 December 2011

Christmas At Sea - Robert Louis Stevenson

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could stand;
The wind was a nor'wester, blowing squally off the sea;
And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.

Tuesday 6 December 2011

Christmas Bells - Hattie Howard

Ring out, O bells, in joyful chime!
   Again we hail the Christmas time;
In melting, mellow atmosphere,
   The crown and glory of the year.

Monday 5 December 2011

John Greenleaf Whittier - After Election

THE day's sharp strife is ended now,
Our work is done, God knoweth how!
As on the thronged, unrestful town
The patience of the moon looks down,
I wait to hear, beside the wire,
The voices of its tongues of fire.

Sunday 4 December 2011

Friday 2 December 2011

In Memoriam, July 19, 1914 - Anna Akhmatova

We aged a hundred years and this descended
In just one hour, as at a stroke.
The summer had been brief and now was ended;
The body of the ploughed plains lay in smoke.

Thursday 1 December 2011

Song: A youth for Jane with ardour sighed... - Amelia Opie

A youth for Jane with ardour sighed,
    The maid with sparkling eye;
But to his vows she still replied,
    ‘I’ll hear you by and by.’

Tuesday 29 November 2011

Hot Sun, Cool Fire - George Peele

Hot sun, cool fire, tempered with sweet air,
Black shade, fair nurse, shadow my white hair.

Monday 28 November 2011

Song of the Little Cripple at the Street Corner - Rainer Maria Rilke

Read the translator's notes
Maybe my soul’s all right.
But my body’s all wrong,
All bent and twisted,
All this that hurts me so.

Sunday 27 November 2011

Student Taper - James Stephens

When
- At end of moon,
At end of day -
My lamp is lit,

Saturday 26 November 2011

The Ballad of Sally in our Alley - Henry Carey

Of all the Girls that are so smart
There’s none like pretty SALLY,
She is the Darling of my Heart,
And she lives in our Alley.
There is no Lady in the Land
Is half so sweet as SALLY,
She is the Darling of my Heart,
And she lives in our Alley.

Friday 25 November 2011

Thursday 24 November 2011

The Arrow - William Butler Yeats

I thought of your beauty, and this arrow,
Made out of a wild thought, is in my marrow.

Wednesday 23 November 2011

Agamede’s Song - Arthur Upson

Grow, grow, thou little tree,
His body at the roots of thee;
Since last year’s loveliness in death
The living beauty nourisheth.

Tuesday 22 November 2011

People are Legends - Kevin Gilbert

Kill the legend
Butcher it
With your acute cyncicisms
Your paternal superfluities
With your unwise wisdom

Monday 21 November 2011

Sunday 20 November 2011

The Lamb - William Blake

      Little Lamb, who made thee?
        Dost thou know who made thee?

Saturday 19 November 2011

The Green Isle of Lovers - Robert Charles Sands

They say that, afar in the land of the west,
Where the bright golden sun sinks in glory to rest,
Mid ferns where the hunter ne’er ventured to tread,
A fair lake unruffled and sparkling is spread;
Where, lost in his course, the rapt Indian discovers,
In distance seen dimly, the green Isle of Lovers.

Friday 18 November 2011

Spring - Thomas Nashe

Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year’s pleasant king;
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing—
     Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

Thursday 17 November 2011

The Ordinary Man - Robert Service

If you and I should chance to meet,
I guess you wouldn't care;
I'm sure you'd pass me in the street
As if I wasn't there;
You'd never look me in the face,
My modest mug to scan,
Because I'm just a commonplace
      And Ordinary Man.

Wednesday 16 November 2011

Corrymeela - Moira O’Neill

Over here in England I’m helpin’ wi’ the hay,
And I wisht I was in Ireland the livelong day;
Weary on the English hay, an’ sorra take the wheat!
Och! Corrymeela, an’ the blue sky over it.

Tuesday 15 November 2011

Eileen Aroon - Gerald Griffin

When, like the early rose,
   Eileen aroon!
Beauty in childhood blows,
   Eileen aroon!
When, like a diadem,
Buds blush around the stem,
Which is the fairest gem?
   Eileen aroon!

Monday 14 November 2011

The Magic Flower - E. Nesbit

Through many days and many days
The seed of love lay hidden close;

Sunday 13 November 2011

Presence - T.E. Brown

Expecting him, my door was open wide:
   Then I looked round
   If any lack of service might be found,
And saw him at my side:
   How entered, by what secret stair,
   I know not, knowing only he was there.

T.E. Brown (1830 - 1897) Isle of Man, England

Thursday 10 November 2011

Karolin’s Song - Ben Jonson

Though I am young, and cannot tell,
Either what love, or death is well,

Wednesday 9 November 2011

Manchester TRAFFIC - Mark Stubbs

There once was a project at Manchester Met
To transform curriculum was the goal that we set
Rewriting every module was the name of the game
Enhancing assessment for learning, our overall aim

Monday 7 November 2011

Evanescence - Angelina Weld Grimke

You are like a pale purple flower
In the blue spring dusk

Sunday 6 November 2011

Words on a train - Bruce Levitan

On the commuter train home
    listening to two young people
        slagging off their friends:
They talked in consonant free jargon,
    not an H or a T to be heard --
        but the invective was clear and rough.

Would it be the same in Rome?
    Do youths descend from Dante's steeple
        to incoherently speak? The same trends
across our world -- really so far gone
    that we might as well be a herd
        that speaks only in acidic guff?

Would Nietzsche include in his tome
    of humanity's idiocy and evil,
        thoughts on how to cleanse
or how to kill the dragon?
    How far must the spoken word
        be destroyed before we've had enough?

Bruce Levitan (born 1955) England (born: Kenya)

Saturday 5 November 2011

We Waves - August Strindberg

We, we waves,
That are rocking the winds
To rest—
Green cradles, we waves!

Friday 4 November 2011

I Do Not Know - Chihwan Yu

Whose footprint is that paulonia leaf
That drops softly, rousing ripples in the windless air?
whose face is that blue sky
Glimpsed between the threatening, dark clouds
Blown by the west wind after a long rain?

Thursday 3 November 2011

Wednesday 2 November 2011

The Enchantment - Thomas Otway

I did but look and love awhile,
    ’Twas but for one half-hour;
Then to resist I had no will,
    And now I have no power.

Tuesday 1 November 2011

Sunday 30 October 2011

The Happy Man - G. K. Chesterton

To teach the grey earth like a child,
   To bid the heavens repent,
I only ask from Fate the gift
   Of one man well content.

Saturday 29 October 2011

Afternoon On A Hill - Edna St. Vincent Millay

I will be the gladdest thing
   Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
   And not pick one.

Friday 28 October 2011

To a Sea Shell - Hubert Church

Friend of my chamber—O thou spiral shell
That murmurest of the ever-murmuring sea!

Thursday 27 October 2011

Flesh - Mary Eliza Fullerton

I have seen a gum-tree,
Scarred by the blaze
Of the pioneer axe,
Mend after long days;
Lip to lip shut
Of the separate bark,
Till the gape of the wound
Was a vanishing mark.

Wednesday 26 October 2011

Why I Love Them - Mary Alice Walton

I would tell thee of Stella, how she made glad the hours,
So oft calling mother with strewn wreaths and flowers,
Blue eyes fondly glancing, and gleefully dance,
While singing so gayly or skipping, perchance.

Thursday 13 October 2011

A Silent Mouth - Cathal O’Byrne

O little green leaf on the bough, you hear the lark in morn,
You hear the grey feet of the wind stir in the shimmering corn,
You hear, low down in the grass,
The Singing Sidhe as they pass,
Do you ever hear, O little green flame,
My loved one calling, whispering my name?

Wednesday 12 October 2011

Fluffy, A Cat - R. C. Lehmann

So now your tale of years is done,
Old Fluff, my friend, and you have won,
Beyond our land of mist and rain,
Your way to the Elysian plain,
Where through the shining hours of heat
A cat may bask and lap and eat;
Where goldfish glitter in the streams,
And mice refresh your waking dreams,
And all, in fact, is planned—and that’s
Its great delight—to please the cats.

Tuesday 11 October 2011

Monday 10 October 2011

Thanks - Henrik Johan Ibsen

Her griefs were the hours
When my struggle was sore,--
Her joys were the powers
That the climber upbore.

Sunday 9 October 2011

Friday 7 October 2011

The personal, grown-up song of Ynurti Yantune - Lyubov Nenyang

Never in my life have I taken anything
Without asking
Nor have I stolen the tiniest little thing
From anybody

Thursday 6 October 2011

Bridal Eve - E. Nesbit

Good-night, my Heart, my Heart, good-night—
Oh, good and dear and fair,
With lips of life and eyes of light
And roses in your hair.

Tuesday 4 October 2011

As Long As We Are Not Alone - Israel Emiot

As long as we are not alone,
as long as we have a partner.
Perhaps a stone also hears,
we shall rejoice,

Monday 3 October 2011

Sunday 2 October 2011

A Word To The 'Elect' - Anne Brontë

You may rejoice to think YOURSELVES secure;
You may be grateful for the gift divine--
That grace unsought, which made your black hearts pure,
And fits your earth-born souls in Heaven to shine.

Saturday 1 October 2011

Brer Rabbit, You’s De Cutes’ Of ’Em All - James Weldon Johnson

Once der was a meetin’ in de wilderness,
All de critters of creation dey was dar;
Brer Rabbit, Brer ‘Possum, Brer Wolf, Brer Fox,
King Lion, Mister Terrapin, Mister B’ar.
De question fu’ discussion was, “Who is de bigges’ man?”
Dey ‘pinted ole Jedge Owl to decide;
He polished up his spectacles an’ put ’em on his nose,
An’ to the question slowly he replied:

Friday 30 September 2011

Revelation - Edmund Gosse

 Into the silver night
      She brought with her pale hand
    The topaz lanthorn-light,
  And darted splendour o’er the land;
      Around her in a band,
Ringstraked and pied, the great soft moths came flying,
  And flapping with their mad wings, fann’d
The flickering flame, ascending, falling, dying.

Thursday 29 September 2011

Sonnet 22 - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

When our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,

Wednesday 28 September 2011

The Vanity of This World - Andreas Gryphius

Look anywhere you will, the Earth is empty show.
What someone builds today, another soon tears down;
Where now a city stands will be a grassy mound,
A place that only shepherds grazing their flocks will know.

Tuesday 27 September 2011

Monday 26 September 2011

Ossian Sang - Domhnull mac Fhionnlaidh

Sweet is the voice in the land of gold,
    And sweeter the music of birds that soar,
When the cry of the heron is heard on the wold,
    And the waves break softly on Bundatrore.

Sunday 25 September 2011

Christ in creation - Joseph Mary Plunkett

I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.

Saturday 24 September 2011

Korosta Katzina Song - Anonymous (Hopi Indian)

              Yellow butterflies,
Over the blossoming virgin corn,
              With pollen-painted faces
Chase one another in brilliant throng.

Friday 23 September 2011

The Heart of Auss - John M Wenitong

I've seen the Rock at the break of day
And it seems so right for a place to stay
A place in Law to live love and pass away
For the people of my Dreaming

Thursday 22 September 2011

To Rosemounde - Geoffrey Chaucer

Ma dame, ye ben of al beaute shryne
As fer as cercled is the mapamonde;
For as the cristall glorious ye shyne,
And lyke ruby ben your chekys rounde.
Therwyth ye ben so mery and so iocunde
That at a reuell whan that I se you dance,
It is an oynement vnto my wounde,
Thoght ye to me ne do no daliance.

Wednesday 21 September 2011

Fire runs through my body - Anonymous

Fire runs through my body with the pain of loving you,
pain runs through my body with the fires of my love for you.

Tuesday 20 September 2011

About My Poetry - Nazim Hikmet

I have no silver-saddled horse to ride,
no inheritance to live on,
neither riches no real-estate —
a pot of honey is all I own.
A pot of honey
red as fire!

Monday 19 September 2011

Sonnet 101 [Ways apt and new to sing of love I'd find] - Petrarch

Ways apt and new to sing of love I'd find,
Forcing from her hard heart full many a sigh,

Sunday 18 September 2011

A Garden - Andrew Marvell

See how the flowers, as at parade,
Under their colours stand display'd:

Saturday 17 September 2011

The Human Seasons - John Keats

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:

Friday 16 September 2011

Beyond the Years - Paul Laurence Dunbar

I
Beyond the years the answer lies,
Beyond where brood the grieving skies
    And Night drops tears.
Where Faith rod-chastened smiles to rise
    And doff its fears,
And carping Sorrow pines and dies—
    Beyond the years.

Thursday 15 September 2011

I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone - Rainer Maria Rilke

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
     enough
to truly consecrate the hour.

Wednesday 14 September 2011

Kubla Khan - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
    Down to a sunless sea.

Tuesday 13 September 2011

The Elephant is Slow to Mate - D. H. Lawrence

The elephant, the huge old beast,
      is slow to mate;
he finds a female, they show no haste
      they wait

Monday 12 September 2011

A Dream - Edgar Allan Poe

In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.

Sunday 11 September 2011

The hand that signed the paper - Dylan Thomas

The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.

Saturday 10 September 2011

Friday 9 September 2011

My lute awake - Sir Thomas Wyatt

My lute awake, perform the last
Labour, that thou and I shall waste,
And end that I have now begun:
And when this song is sung and past,
My lute! be still, for I have done.

Thursday 8 September 2011

To an Old Lady - William Empson

Ripeness is all; her in her cooling planet
Revere; do not presume to think her wasted.
Project her no projectile, plan nor man it;
Gods cool in turn, by the sun long outlasted.

Wednesday 7 September 2011

Song - Richard Watson Dixon

The feathers of the willow
Are half of them grown yellow
Above the swelling stream;
And ragged are the bushes,
And rusty now the rushes,
And wild the clouded gleam.

Tuesday 6 September 2011

Love in a Life - Robert Browning

Room after room,
I hunt the house through
We inhabit together.
Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her,
Next time, herself!—not the trouble behind her
Left in the curtain, the couch's perfume!
As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew,—
Yon looking-glass gleamed at the wave of her feather.

Monday 5 September 2011

Thanks - W. S. Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
smiling by the windows looking out
in our directions

Saturday 3 September 2011

That Sure is My Little Dog - Eleanor Lerman

Yes, indeed, that is my house that I am carrying around
on my back like a bullet-proof shell and yes, that sure is
my little dog walking a hard road in hard boots.

Friday 2 September 2011

A Poem For The End Of The Century - Czesław Miłosz

When everything was fine
And the notion of sin had vanished
And the earth was ready
In universal peace
To consume and rejoice
Without creeds and utopias,

Thursday 1 September 2011

Believing in Iron - Yusef Komunyakaa

The hills my brothers & I created
Never balanced, & it took years
To discover how the world worked.

Wednesday 31 August 2011

The Gladness of Nature - William Cullen Bryant

Is this a time to be cloudy and sad,
When our mother Nature laughs around;
When even the deep blue heavens look glad,
And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground?

Tuesday 30 August 2011

Benediction - Sister Ruth Fox

May God bless us with discomfort
at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships,
so that we may live from deep within our hearts.

Thursday 25 August 2011

The Harvest Bow - Seamus Heaney

As you plaited the harvest bow
You implicated the mellowed silence in you
In wheat that does not rust
But brightens as it tightens twist by twist
Into a knowable corona,
A throwaway love-knot of straw.

Wednesday 24 August 2011

Untitled [This is what was bequeathed us] - Gregory Orr

This is what was bequeathed us:
This earth the beloved left
And, leaving,
Left to us.

Tuesday 23 August 2011

The Changing Light - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The changing light
                    at San Francisco
       is none of your East Coast light

Monday 22 August 2011

A Drinking Song - W. B. Yeats

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;

Sunday 21 August 2011

They had it coming - Steve Turner

The South East Asians,
they were made to cry,
Look at their eyes all
narrowed up and ready to bawl.

Friday 19 August 2011

Jabberwocky - Lewis Carroll

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Thursday 18 August 2011

Ballad - Sonia Sanchez

forgive me if i laugh
you are so sure of love
you are so young
and i too old to learn of love.

Wednesday 17 August 2011

Tuesday 16 August 2011

A Blessing - James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

Monday 15 August 2011

Mother Teresa - Sydney Carter

No revolution will come in time
   to alter this man's life
   except the one
   surprise of being loved.

Saturday 13 August 2011

Friday 12 August 2011

Father's Song - Gregory Orr

Yesterday, against admonishment,
my daughter balanced on the couch back,
fell and cut her mouth.

Thursday 11 August 2011

Gospel - Philip Levine

The new grass rising in the hills,
the cows loitering in the morning chill,
a dozen or more old browns hidden
in the shadows of the cottonwoods
beside the streambed. I go higher

Wednesday 10 August 2011

Tuesday 9 August 2011

My Father's Love Letters - Yusef Komunyakaa

On Fridays he'd open a can of Jax
After coming home from the mill,

Sunday 7 August 2011

Three rusty nails - Roger McGough

Mother, there's a strange man
Waiting at the door
With a familiar sort of face
You feel you've seen before.

Friday 5 August 2011

Dream Variations - Langston Hughes

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
    Dark like me--
That is my dream!

Thursday 4 August 2011

Wednesday 3 August 2011

Tuesday 2 August 2011

Home-Thoughts, From Abroad - Robert Browning

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!

Monday 1 August 2011

As Far As My Eye Can See In My Body’s Senses - Paul Éluard

All the trees all their branches all of their leaves
The grass at the foot of the rocks and the houses en masse

Sunday 31 July 2011

Wild Yeasts - Annie Finch

Rumbling a way up my dough's heavy throat to its head,
seeping the trailed, airborne daughters down into the core,
bubbles go rioting through my long-kneaded new bread;
softly, now, breath of the wildest yeast starts to roar.

Friday 29 July 2011

Thursday 28 July 2011

Babylon - Robert Graves

The child alone a poet is:
Spring and Fairyland are his.

Wednesday 27 July 2011

Be Near Me - Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Be near me now,
My tormenter, my love, be near me—

Tuesday 26 July 2011

Mary's Lamb - Sarah Josepha Hale

Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow,
And every where that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go;
He followed her to school one day—
That was against the rule,
It made the children laugh and play,
To see a lamb at school.

Monday 25 July 2011

Niggerlips - Martín Espada

Niggerlips was the high school name
for me.
So called by Douglas
the car mechanic, with green tattoos
on each forearm,
and the choir of round pink faces
that grinned deliciously
from the back row of classrooms,
droned over by teachers
checking attendance too slowly.

Sunday 24 July 2011

Saturday 23 July 2011

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond - ee cummings

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

Friday 22 July 2011

A Birthday - Christina Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these,
Because my love is come to me.

Thursday 21 July 2011

Wind at Tindari - Salvatore Quasimodo

Tindari, I know you
mild between broad hills, overhanging the waters
of the god’s sweet islands.
Today, you confront me
and break into my heart.

Wednesday 20 July 2011

Sunday Visit - Christy Brown

We finally found him
curled up in the chair like a many-wrinkled shell
staring blindly out at nothing
among a gathering of imbecilic fossils
his one good eye fastening fiercely onto life
the hair still sturdy though silver under the old cloth cap.

Tuesday 19 July 2011

Majung Village - Ko Un

Over the steep, panting hills where
I rest my heart.
I like the simple homeliness
of the bitch and her puppies.
For how many centuries have
such homely sights been dear to us?
The stern old nettle tree standing by the village gate
gathers sweeping winds.

Monday 18 July 2011

My Aunts - Adam Zagajewski

Always caught up in what they called
the practical side of life
(theory was for Plato),
up to their elbows in furniture, in bedding,
in cupboards and kitchen gardens,
they never neglected the lavender sachets
that turned a linen closet to a meadow.

Sunday 17 July 2011

A Lesson for This Sunday - Derek Walcott

The growing idleness of summer grass
With its frail kites of furious butterflies
Requests the lemonade of simple praise
In scansion gentler than my hammock swings
And rituals no more upsetting than a
Black maid shaking linen as she sings
The plain notes of some Protestant hosanna—
Since I lie idling from the thought in things—

Thursday 14 July 2011

Wednesday 13 July 2011

Tuesday 12 July 2011

Evening Concert, Sainte-Chapelle - John Updike

The celebrated windows flamed with light
directly pouring north across the Seine;

Monday 11 July 2011

My Father's Hat - Mark Irwin

Sunday mornings I would reach
high into his dark closet while standing
on a chair and tiptoeing reach
higher, touching, sometimes fumbling

Sunday 10 July 2011

When Malindy Sings - Paul Laurence Dunbar

G'way an' quit dat noise, Miss Lucy--
Put dat music book away;
What's de use to keep on tryin'?
Ef you practise twell you're gray,
You cain't sta't no notes a-flyin'
Lak de ones dat rants and rings
F'om de kitchen to de big woods
When Malindy sings.

Saturday 9 July 2011

Trees - Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

Friday 8 July 2011

Vertical - Linda Pastan

Perhaps the purpose
of leaves is to conceal
the verticality
of trees

Wednesday 6 July 2011

Tuesday 5 July 2011

How Doth the Little Busy Bee - Isaac Watts

How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower!

Monday 4 July 2011

Shanti Mantra - Ravi Shankar

Lead me from the unreal to the real
Lead me from darkness to light
Lead me from death to immortality
Aum peace, peace and perfect peace


Ravi Shankar (1920 - 2012) India

Sunday 3 July 2011

The Mountain And The Lake - Robert Service

I know a mountain thrilling to the stars,
Peerless and pure, and pinnacled with snow;
Glimpsing the golden dawn o'er coral bars,
Flaunting the vanisht sunset's garnet glow;
Proudly patrician, passionless, serene;
Soaring in silvered steeps where cloud-surfs break;
Virgin and vestal -- Oh, a very Queen!
And at her feet there dreams a quiet lake.

Tuesday 21 June 2011

Monday 20 June 2011

Jumbo Jet - Spike Milligan

I saw a little elephant standing in my garden,
I said 'You don't belong in here', he said 'I beg you pardon?',
I said 'This place is England, what are you doing here?',
He said 'Ah, then I must be lost' and then 'Oh dear, oh dear'.

Sunday 19 June 2011

Vespers - AA Milne

Little Boy kneels at the foot of the bed,
Droops on the little hands little gold head.
Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares!
Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.

Saturday 18 June 2011

Rain, Sun, Summer - Paul Latham

A dreary drab day,
It’s grey gloomy glow gradually growing.

Friday 17 June 2011

For A Child Expected - Anne Ridler

Lovers whose lifted hands are candles in winter,
Whose gentle ways like streams in the easy summer,
Lying together
For secret setting of a child, love what they do,
Thinking they make that candle immortal, those streams
forever flow,
And yet do better than they know.

Thursday 16 June 2011

Tuesday 14 June 2011

I Remember, I Remember - Thomas Hood

I remember, I remember
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon
Nor brought too long a day;
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away.

Monday 13 June 2011

Sunday 12 June 2011

Saturday 11 June 2011

Thursday 9 June 2011

Envoi - Kathleen Raine

Take of me what is not my own,
my love, my beauty, and my poem-
the pain is mine, and mine alone.

Wednesday 8 June 2011

Tuesday 7 June 2011

Up on the downs - John Masefield

Up on the downs the red-eyed kestrels hover,
Eyeing the grass.
The field-mouse flits like a shadow into cover
As their shadows pass.

Monday 6 June 2011

A Week - Thomas Hardy

On Monday night I closed my door,
And thought you were not as heretofore,
And little cared if we met no more.

Sunday 5 June 2011

Love - George Herbert

LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
                                 Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
                                 From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
                                 If I lacked anything.

Saturday 4 June 2011

A Song from the Suds - Louisa May Alcott

Queen of my tub, I merrily sing,
While the white foam raises high,
And sturdily wash, and rinse, and wring,
And fasten the clothes to dry;
Then out in the free fresh air they swing,
Under the sunny sky.

Friday 3 June 2011

Charles GD Roberts - The Potato Harvest

A high bare field, brown from the plough, and borne
    Aslant from sunset; amber wastes of sky
    Washing the ridge; a clamour of crows that fly
In from the wide flats where the spent tides mourn
To yon their rocking roosts in pines wind-torn;
    A line of grey snake-fence, that zigzags by
    A pond, and cattle; from the homestead nigh
The long deep summonings of the supper horn.

Thursday 2 June 2011

A Boat beneath a Sunny Sky - Lewis Carroll

A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July --

With people, so with trees - Mervyn Peake

With people, so with trees: where there are groups
Of either, men or trees, some will remain
Aloof while others cluster where one stoops
To breathe some dusky secret. Some complain

They tell me to be... - Thomas Robert Hamilton-Bruce

They tell me to be a star, shining brightly for everyone to see.

Wednesday 1 June 2011

The Dot - Moiso Mlingi

I have a tiny dot
with a big name in me
the HIV dot
It scares my neighbour
It stresses the young and old
I neither love nor hate it.

Tuesday 31 May 2011

Lines On The Loss Of The "Titanic" - Thomas Hardy

In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

Monday 30 May 2011

The Bluebell - Anne Brontë

A fine and subtle spirit dwells
In every little flower,
Each one its own sweet feeling breathes
With more or less of power.

Saturday 28 May 2011

Fire's Reflection - Rainer Maria Rilke

Perhaps it's no more than the fire's reflection
on some piece of gleaming furniture
that the child remembers so much later
like a revelation.

Friday 27 May 2011

Cargoes - John Masefield

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Thursday 26 May 2011

maggie and milly and molly and may - ee cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

Wednesday 25 May 2011

On an Invitation to the United States - Thomas Hardy

My ardours for emprize nigh lost
Since Life has bared its bones to me,
I shrink to seek a modern coast
Whose riper times have yet to be;
Where the new regions claim them free
From that long drip of human tears
Which peoples old in tragedy
Have left upon the centuried years.

Tuesday 24 May 2011

Monday 23 May 2011

Rescued - Theresa Ann Moore

Clump of exploring brown fur
Exploring with a nervous grip
Hesitating… fearfully immobile
Unsure… beginning to slip

Sunday 22 May 2011

A Divine Rapture - Francis Quarles

E'en like two little bank-dividing brooks,
   That wash the pebbles with their wanton streams,
And having ranged and search'd a thousand nooks,
   Meet both at length in silver-breasted Thames,
   Where in a greater current they conjoin:
So I my Best-beloved's am; so He is mine.

Saturday 21 May 2011

The Song Of The Sword - Cicely Fox Smith

This is the Song of the Sword,
A proud and a ringing song,
The song of the tempered blade
That has lain in the sheath too long.
'It's oh for the strong tight hand,
and the hiss of the wheeling brand,
to make honour a power in the land,'
Saith the sword.

Friday 20 May 2011

A Parody - Charles Lamb

Lazy-bones, lazy-bones, wake up and peep;
The Cat's in the cupboard, your Mother's asleep.

Thursday 19 May 2011

To a Young Lady, on Her Birthday - Samuel Johnson

This tributary verse receive, my fair,
Warm with an ardent lover's fondest prayer,
May this returning day for ever find
Thy form more lovely, more adorn'd thy mind;
All pains, all cares, may favouring heaven remove,
All but the sweet solicitudes of love!

Wednesday 18 May 2011

Tuesday 17 May 2011

The Truth Will Set You Free - Francis Duggan

From lying your soul is in spiritual poverty
But the truth though hard to say will surely set you free

Monday 16 May 2011

The King's Daughter - Algernon Charles Swinburne

We were ten maidens in the green corn,
Small red leaves in the mill-water:
Fairer maidens never were born,
Apples of gold for the king's daughter.

Friday 13 May 2011

Save Me From Madness - Aleksandr Pushkin

Save me from madness, God, I beg.
No, I prefer the beggar's bag,
Prefer to starve and toil.
And not as if I praise my head,
And not as if I were not glad
To part with mind at all.

Tuesday 10 May 2011

Stone Is Not Stone - Carson McCullers

There was a time when stone was stone
And a face on the street was a finished face.
Between the Thing, myself and God alone
There was an instant symmetry.
Since you have altered all my world this trinity is twisted:

Monday 9 May 2011

Job Interview - William Matthews

Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife
He would have written sonnets all his life?
DON JUAN, III, 63-4

Sunday 8 May 2011

The Emmaus Road - Edward A. Morris

Some poor stranger strolled beside them
On their long and lonely walk.
Kind and wise, He gently plied them,
Why such sadness in their talk?
How their hearts within were burning
When His wondrous Word He taught!
Precious lessons they were learning,
Though they recognized Him not.

Saturday 7 May 2011

Friday 6 May 2011

An Exam - Gita Ashok

Filling in the blanks;
choosing the right alternative;
deciding whether true or false;
defining and justifying;
comparing and contrasting;
coding, compiling and debugging;
estimating and proving;
integrating and differentiating;
plotting and interpreting,
illustrating and debating.

Thursday 5 May 2011

Another Ordinary Day - Bullion Grey

Just an ordinary man with an ordinary wife,
going through ordinary days, living an ordinary life.
He has his ordinary job, receives his ordinary pay,
has his ordinary feelings every ordinary day.

Wednesday 4 May 2011

The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon - JRR Tolkien

There is an inn, a merry old inn
beneath an old grey hill,
And there they brew a beer so brown
That the Man in the Moon himself came down
one night to drink his fill.

Tuesday 3 May 2011

To A Mouse - Robert Burns

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

Monday 2 May 2011

In Tintagel Graveyard - Brian Patten

Who brought flowers to this grave?
I, said the wren.
I brought them as seeds and then
Watched them grow.

Sunday 1 May 2011

The Unicorn - Rainer Maria Rilke

The saintly hermit, midway through his prayers
stopped suddenly, and raised his eyes to witness
the unbelievable: for there before him stood
the legendary creature, startling white, that
had approached, soundlessly, pleading with his eyes.

Saturday 30 April 2011

Refugee - Lindsay MacRae

He can't speak a word of English
But the picture he paints needs no words

Friday 29 April 2011

Buckingham Palace - AA Milne

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
Alice is marrying one of the guard.
"A soldier's life is terrible hard,"
Says Alice.

Thursday 28 April 2011

On Wenlock Edge - A.E. Housman

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

Wednesday 27 April 2011

April - Hilaire Belloc

The stranger warmth of the young sun obeying,
Look! little beads of green begin to grow,
And hidden flowers have dated their tops to show
Where late such droughty dusts were rudely playing.
It's not the month, but all the world's a-maying!
Come then with me, I'll take you, for I know
Where the first hedgethorns and white windflowers blow:
We two alone,, that goes without the saying.

Tuesday 26 April 2011

Poem to Curry - William Makepeace Thackeray

Three pounds of veal my darling girl prepares,
And chops it nicely into little squares;
Five onions next prures the little minx
(The biggest are the best, her Samiwel thinks),
And Epping butter nearly half a pound,
And stews them in a pan until they’re brown’d.

Monday 25 April 2011

Sailing For Flanders - John Masefield

To need any more the skies or man to importune
For us departing to-day with spirits at peace,
Now that the inner warfares, that tire men, cease
For us the chosen of God's lot, the spoilt darlings of Fortune.

Sunday 24 April 2011

Easter wings – George Herbert

Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till he became
Most poor:
With thee
Oh let me rise
As larks, harmoniously,
And sing this day thy victories:
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

Friday 22 April 2011

Black Stone on Top of a White Stone - Cesar Vallejo

I shall die in Paris, in a rainstorm,
On a day I already remember.
I shall die in Paris -- it does not bother me --
Doubtless on a Thursday, like today, in autumn.

Thursday 21 April 2011

Holy Thursday - William Blake

'Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,
The children walking two & two, in red & blue & green,
Grey-headed beadles walk'd before, with wands as white as snow,
Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames' waters flow.

Wednesday 20 April 2011

Tuesday 19 April 2011

Surprised by Joy - William Wordsworth

Surprised by joy — impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport

Monday 18 April 2011

Balade - Geoffrey Chaucer

Hyd, Absolon, thy gilte tresses clere;
Ester, ley thou thy meknesse al a-doun;
Hyd, Jonathas, al thy frendly manere;
Penalopee, and Marcia Catoun,
Mak of your wyfhod no comparisoun;
Hyde ye your beautes, Isoude and Eleyne;
My lady cometh, that al this may disteyne.

Sunday 17 April 2011

The Donkey - G.K. Chesterton

When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born;

Saturday 16 April 2011

The Lady of Shalott - Alfred Lord Tennyson

On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road run by
To many-tower'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.

Friday 15 April 2011

About The Sheltered Garden Ground - Robert Louis Stevenson

About the sheltered garden ground
The trees stand strangely still.
The vale ne'er seemed so deep before,
Nor yet so high the hill.

Tuesday 12 April 2011

Hunger - Kingmerut

Fear hung over me.
I dared not try
to hold out in my hut.

Monday 11 April 2011

May my love become an alder tree - Yi Chongbo

May my love become an alder tree
  of Kumsong in Hoeyang, and
  I an arrowroot vine in
  the third month or fourth:

Sunday 10 April 2011

The Artist Lives Dangerously - Otieno Amisi

The artist lives dangerously
Cursing, blasting, blaming, weeping
The artist lives dangerously
Hits the stone with his ass
Crosses swords with the censor
Critic and state

Saturday 9 April 2011

Community - John Donne

Good we must love, and must hate ill,
For ill is ill, and good good still;
   But there are things indifferent,
Which wee may neither hate, nor love,
But one, and then another prove,
   As we shall find our fancy bent.

Friday 8 April 2011

The Pobble Who Has No Toes - Edward Lear

The Pobble who has no toes
Had once as many as we;
When they said "Some day you may lose them all;"
He replied "Fish, fiddle-de-dee!"
And his Aunt Jobiska made him drink
Lavender water tinged with pink,
For she said "The World in general knows
There's nothing so good for a Pobble's toes!"

Thursday 7 April 2011

Beneath My Hands - Leonard Cohen

Beneath my hands
your small breasts
are the upturned bellies
of breathing fallen sparrows.

Wednesday 6 April 2011

But Not Forgotten - Dorothy Parker

I think, no matter where you stray,
That I shall go with you a way.

Tuesday 5 April 2011

Wind - Ted Hughes

This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Monday 4 April 2011

Heart And Mind - Edith Sitwell

SAID the Lion to the Lioness-'When you are amber dust,-
No more a raging fire like the heat of the Sun
(No liking but all lust)-
Remember still the flowering of the amber blood and bone,
The rippling of bright muscles like a sea,
Remember the rose-prickles of bright paws
Though the fire of that sun the heart and the moon-cold bone are one.'

Sunday 3 April 2011

(For Mother's day) Proverbs 23:22-26 - The Bible

Hearken unto thy father that begat thee,
and despise not thy mother when she is old.

Saturday 2 April 2011

Wind on the Hill - AA Milne

No one can tell me,
Nobody knows,
Where the wind comes from,
Where the wind goes.

Friday 1 April 2011

The Tyger - William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Thursday 31 March 2011

Jungle danger - Bruce Levitan

The ermine softness of the leaves
Brushing against his arm.
The air, warm and moist
Like an inhaler full of balm.
Menace seems to lurk
In every shadow of apparent calm.

Monday 28 March 2011

Sunday 27 March 2011

Home From Abroad - Laurie Lee

Far-fetched with tales of other worlds and ways,
My skin well-oiled with wines of the Levant,
I set my face into a filial smile
To greet the pale, domestic kiss of Kent.

Saturday 26 March 2011

Friday 25 March 2011

In My Dreams - Stevie Smith

In my dreams I am always saying goodbye and riding away,

Thursday 24 March 2011

Sheep in Fog - Sylvia Plath

The hills step off into whiteness.
People or stars
Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.

Wednesday 23 March 2011

If - Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

Tuesday 22 March 2011

Martha - Walter de la Mare

"Once...Once upon a time..."
Over and over again,
Martha would tell us her stories,
In the hazel glen.

Monday 21 March 2011

Sunday 20 March 2011

The Telephone - Michel Quoist

I have just hung up;
why did he telephone?
I don’t know…
O! I get it…
I talked a lot and listened little.

Saturday 19 March 2011

Morning at the window - T.S. Eliot

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.

Thursday 17 March 2011

My Dream - Ogden Nash

This is my dream,
It is my own dream,
I dreamt it.

Wednesday 16 March 2011

Sonnet 113 - William Shakespeare

Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind,

Love and the Gentle Heart - Dante Alighieri

Love is but one thing with the gentle heart,
  As in the saying of the sage we find.
  Thus one from other cannot be apart,
  More than the reason from the reasoning mind.

Tuesday 15 March 2011

Five-Per-Cent - Robert William Service

Because I have ten thousand pounds I sit upon my stern,
And leave my living tranquilly for other folks to earn.
For in some procreative way that isn't very clear,
Ten thousand pounds will breed, they say, five hundred every year.
So as I have a healthy hate of economic strife,
I mean to stand aloof from it the balance of my life.
And yet with sympathy I see the grimy son of toil,
And heartly congratulate the tiller of the soil.
I like the miner in the mine, the sailor on the sea,
Because up to five hundred pounds they sail and mine for me.
For me their toil is taxed unto that annual extent,
According to the holy shibboleth of Five-per-Cent.

Monday 14 March 2011

The Lent Lily - Alfred Edward Housman

'Tis spring; come out to ramble
The hilly brakes around,
For under thorn and bramble
About the hollow ground
The primroses are found.

Sunday 13 March 2011

A Bird Came Down - Emily Dickinson

A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.

Saturday 12 March 2011

A Prayer in Spring - Robert Lee Frost

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Friday 11 March 2011

Soil - Roger McGough

we've ignored eachother for a long time
and I'm strictly an indoor man
anytime to call would be the wrong time
I'll avoid you as long as I can

Thursday 10 March 2011

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night - Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wednesday 9 March 2011

Havisham - Carol Ann Duffy

Beloved sweetheart bastard. Not a day since then
I haven’t wished him dead. Prayed for it
so hard I’ve dark green pebbles for eyes,
ropes on the back of my hands I could strangle with.

Tuesday 8 March 2011

i carry your heart with me - Edward Estlin Cummings (ee cummings)

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)