Venice masks

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.